Because...Grifball and Minecraft

Would you look at this, a post that isn't two months after my last one!  I do believe I am getting into the habit of posting on a regular basis.  As of lately I have been busy planning a bunch of cool stuff for Inside View and working a little bit behind the scenes on getting ideas up and running.  We have our second game night coming up on Minecraft; our first one was on Forza 4.  We also have our own clan that we started up recently, you can find out some info about that here.  There's the contact information for one of our clan leaders and my own in case you want that also.  Lastly, we have our own Grifball team we have started.  We plan on gathering people now and working on some basic team fundamentals; then once Halo 4 is released entering in all kinds of leagues and tournaments.

I've been working on on planning some details for a Halo 4 campaign challenge once the game is released for IVG as well.  I know that skulls are returning in the game thanks to the achievement list that was released a few weeks ago; but I do not know whether or not campaign scoring returning.  I hope it does otherwise I'm going to have to figure out a makeshift scoring system to tally results...and needless to say math never was one of my best subjects.  There's still plenty of time for me to find out if its returning...and work on one if it isn't.

I've also been playing a bunch of Minecraft when I have had the time to game.  It's interesting looking back at the first "shelter" I made.  I had no clue what I was doing so it was actually made out of a bunch of sand and the living space was very...cramped.

Small living space eh?

Community Content

Ah yes, the usual "it's been a while" rambling.  Well, it has been a while hasn't it?  Anyways, I've been busy a lot lately with the Inside View.  Why?  I've been trying to help brainstorm ideas to get our community off the ground.  From simply giving ideas of articles to post, things for the other staff members to look into and getting a Halo themed team off the ground.  About a week later I was just talking with the owner about an idea we had floating around and after giving him my input, I get another email back.  This time, this email is offering me a spot on the management team as their Community Manager.  Knowing I would be able to do this, I gladly accepted the offer.

We have some pretty neat stuff planned for the near future, so keep an eye on our main page.  Plus, why don't you sign up for our forum; we have a few game nights coming up that I'm sure you would enjoy.  And I would love to play with some of my blog readers from here.

I am going to wrap up this short post with a video I took from Minecraft.  Yes, I broke down and bought Minecraft; I remember the time when I used to say "I'm never going to buy that game as it looks pointless."  Well it's good if you have a few minutes or a few hours to waste.  My world I thought sucked at first, but going back to it a few days ago I found some pretty good stuff.  Also, I hate cobblestone...


Yeah, it's not supposed to be snowing on one half of the house and raining on the other...  Oh, and my house (which is the one shown in the video) has a second story to it now.  It's not so bland anymore.  I'm also thinking of doing a bunch more to it, but the massive amount of dirt around it needs to go away.  There's also a river (not seen in the video as it wasn't there until this past Friday) on the side where I am standing at the start of the video.  No idea what I'm going to do with that as of now, but I'll figure something out.

Bound for Carnage

Yes, it's been a little while hasn't it?  Surprisingly not a lot has happened with me in the meantime, I am still planning on doing the idea I mentioned in my previous post.  I have yet to start them though as I have been busy, but this did give me time to think of another idea!
You remember the original Xbox right?  No?  I'm disappointed in you reader, not really.  Anyways, as you may or may not know most of those games are backwards compatible on the 360; meaning I can take original Xbox games and play them on the 360.  So what does any of this stuff have to do with me?  Well, nothing in particular really except for the fact that I am going to take an original Xbox game, play through it and reminisce on all the amazing times.  Once that is accomplished I will talk about the game a little bit and what made it such a classic for me.  I also plan on giving you some pretty pictures to look at (aka screenshots) and even capturing a few minutes of footage to showcase what the game was like.  The only problem I am really having with this is I can't decide which game to play first.  I was thinking of leaning towards the first Mechassault (since it was my first game), but I had also been thinking about the second Mechassault game as I really love it.  However....Mercenaries has also crossed my mind as well as a few other games I used to love playing all the time.

As I mentioned earlier, I still plan on doing what I mentioned in my previous post.  I just have yet to start it as I have been diligently working on some things with the staff over at IVG.  We have some huge plans in the works regarding getting our own Halo themed community up and running.  Right now we're looking for contributors who would be willing to deliver consistent Halo themed content for us.

I know this is a short post, but it's late here and I don't have too much to discuss.  I will leave you with my first montage I did though!  It was done in Forza Motorsport 4 (I would have done a Halo one, but couldn't find clips that made me happy) and involves tons of crashes and carnage.  It lacks a proper name but I think Project CARnage sounds pretty decent based on its theme.  The editing is fairly simple and I think I went a tad bit transition happy as well; but I am happy with the end results.
So I present to you, Project CARnage by StoredGrunt360 (aka me!)

Anyways, that is all my friends.  I hope to have my first "Look Back" post up either this week or next, depends on when I am able to get it done.  If I don't have it up this week, I'm positive I'll have my first series of videos regarding NCAA Football 12 up.  It'll be from my second trip to the national title game as Illinois...I'm not sure who I was playing in it though.  I think it may have been Boise State, but I am not sure honestly.  Oh!  And I may start working on a Forged map in Halo: Reach next week if I can.  If I do, I'll keep you updated on regular basis.

So I Heard You Like Ideas?

I know, the correct internet meme is "so i herd u liek..."  Well I'm one for semi-proper grammar when writing usually, so no internet correct-ness here!  The past few days I have been brainstorming ideas to kick-start the activity of my blog and for my YouTube channel.

As you know I did purchase a capture card about a month ago, anyways my idea is this.  I've been wanting to get back into my NCAA Football 12 Dynasty I have in progress and I have thought about capturing the awesome highlights that happen during the season.  Then at the end of said season compiling all of them into a small (I mean small) countdown montage showcasing the best of the best highlights of the previous season.  If I can pull of the idea smoothly, I think it might be cool and actually work.  My second idea regarding my in progress Dynasty would involve recording the biggest games of the season that I would play.  For instance, say my Illini are ranked the top team in the nation and are taking on the second ranked Cornhuskers of Nebraska (which is not a Big Ten team...sorry 'Huskers fans reading this) in the Big Ten championship game.  Since it's a conference championship game between the nations two best teams, I think it could easily qualify as one of those "Games to watch" kind of things.  What I would do is take and record each quarter of the game and upload them to my YT channel so you could see it if you wanted to.  I think it would be a cool idea and it could show you how much I dislike the other Big Ten teams.

My third idea comes based off of my "Bowl Bound" series, I'm going to take the biggest games of the week (and probably ones from Illinois' season) run a simulation on those and post the results.  Plus with my good 'ol capture card I can either record the enitre game and post it or of the highlights from the game.  I think I might do the latter option though, I have to be mindful of my internet connection as other family members use it and I really don't want to wait four to five hours for an entire movie to upload.  I don't know, this idea I'll have to scratch out some more details before college football season actually starts.

My final idea I was brainstorming was already in existence...  Yep, I was thinking of an idea I already have done something with.  See at the top of the paragraph where I mentioned the Bowl Bound series of posts I did?  If not, I basically took all of the college football bowl games for the 2011-2012, which the bowl season lasted from about late December to early January; then simulated all of the games I could.  After I had the simulation for one done, I would post a picture of the score and called it my "prediction".  I ended the bowl season with a 17-15 record with three forfeits.  Those forfeits were only because I forgot there was a game on or couldn't get to it.  Once it ended, I was actually really happy with my final results and enjoyed doing the simulations each day.  Granted it did get a little hectic with keeping up with the games later on in the bowl period as there were so many games in one day at times.  So yes, the "Bowl Bound" series was an idea I thought of (again...) and will return this Winter for the 2012-2013 college football season showcasing the bowl games.

That's what I've mainly been up to lately, I hope that I am able to kick-start the activity on my blog; especially now since I've joined the wonderful staff of the Inside View.  I'm still going to post about other games, I'm not going to focus solely NCAA Football 12 from here on out.  So if you came across this blog and expected Halo related posts, you'll still get them.  That and my general banter that I always end up typing up instead of a concise post.

Oh yeah and carnage.

News and Reviews

Hi everyone, I come to you today with some exciting news and thoughts.  In my last post I made reference to Inside View Gaming and how I applied for a reviewer position.  I am officially announcing that I have joined the staff over at IVG permanently as their Lead Reviewer.  I am very excited to bring all of my followers of Twitter, here and those that come across IVG reviews for games and the latest gaming news!  You can keep an eye on the IVG front page for all the latest news and a bunch of reviews for games.
They also are looking for content writers.  So if you enjoy playing games and writing about them in your free time then hit this link to send in an application to join.

My other news I have to tell you, is I finally got a capture card.  What's a capture card?  You know, those things that people use to record footage from their gaming consoles that help them make those awesome montages and walk throughs for levels?  I haven't had a lot of time to play around with editing videos (Lord knows I need to...) but I have had the time to simply upload three short clips from both Sniper Elite V2 and Halo Anniversary.  I'll post them in the order that I uploaded them in...starting with the first clip from Sniper Elite V2.



Now, I know the audio is actually ahead of the video.  I'm not sure exactly why that happened but I did figure out a way around that.  It simply involved me exporting the raw file (MP4) into a WMV file and then uploading it to YouTube that way.  See, I was so excited to use the capture card and that I could upload videos directly to YT from the capturing software that I had to wait four hours for this video to completely upload.  So yeah, not making that mistake again anytime soon.  The next two videos tested my theory, which was to export the files out of the capturing software and then upload them.  It drastically cut down on the upload time (a half hour compared to four hours, I'll take that), my only concern was when exporting the file if the video quality would degrade.  See for yourself if it did or not.

I personally don't think so that much, especially if you watch it in 480p.  Next subject!

More Sniper Elite V2 gameplay, showcasing my terrible sniping skills.  It's odd because I used to be decent at this game when I first got it...hmm.  Anyways, if you can I suggest watching it in 720p HD as that will provide the best results...obviously.  I need to tinker around with the settings yet and figure out what caused the delay in video from the very first film I took.  I love the quality of the video from that film, but I don't want the delay between audio and video all the time.  It will be a learning experience from here on out for a while.

I hope to get the editing down so I can create montages and walk throughs for certain games at some point in the near future.  Editing for montages will be simple enough all it will basically be is capturing the clip, use the software that came with the capture card to trim the clip down then import it into the full fledged editing software to add titles and transitions.  Walk throughs will be a little bit more difficult but follow the same premise as a montage.  Only with those I might have to add some form of commentary, which won't be a problem as I believe the HD PVR will be able to capture my own voice if I simply plug in my Xbox LIVE headset.  That is something I will have to toy around with and get the hang of.

With that said, I hope you have enjoyed this little (and short) post containing some exciting news from me.  I hope to see anyone who reads this over at IVG now and then!

A Bunch of Stuff

Yes, just like the title says, a bunch of stuff has happened in the what two months since my last post?  Where to begin?  Ah, well we can start with this.  I finally reached 20,000 Gamerscore with an achievement from Forza 4...after all this time I don't remember what it was even...  I'm not sure if I want to continue my quest towards the amount of 30,000 or give achievement hunting a rest for a little while.  I am trying to get all the achievements from Halo Anniversary; however, some of the achievements are proving a little difficult.

I also completely missed making a post on here, which does sadden me to some extent, but life had taken over at that time.  On March 29th of this year, it marked my 5 year "anniversary" for joining Bungie.net.  I didn't follow the semi-tradition of creating a thread stating my opinion on the moderation in my time being there or anything else, besides I have to wait another two years before it becomes mandatory.  Honestly because I was so busy at that time I almost forgot about it, only remembering it halfway through the day.

My next piece of news is in regards to my last post where I mentioned I was joining a Grifball team with Storm.  Well we changed our minds on joining a team shortly after I posted that.  Instead we decided to start our own team.  Very long story short, neither Storm or I had people on our friends lists that enjoyed playing Grifball so in order to find teammates, I went to this place called GrifballHub and they had a thread for players looking for teams and teams looking for players.  The day after I had posted that I received a message from this person with the name of oObeX asking about our runner position.  I replied back with my Gamertag and the best day to catch us online to get some games in.  A couple days later I was browsing through the same thread and saw that UCCxZAKORE was looking for a team.  I sent him a message asking if he wanted to join the team and he was interested.  Farther into the future we came to an agreement on a name and thus The Light Redcoats were created.
So far we had our first experience with league teams in a Vanilla GRUNT...it didn't go too well for us.  Sadly our only win was by a default as one team dropped out.  Since there was an uneven amount of teams that signed up we got a first round bye, once the second round rolled about we got to play our first game; which was a really close game.  We jumped out to a 2-0 lead and were getting ready to score a third time to technically take the game, but we let that game slip out from underneath us.  Our last two games of the tournament were rather...embarrassing.  We got shut out 5-0 in each of them.  Granted they were against veteran teams and we're only a rookie team.  I still stand by what I have said before, with some time, patience and practice I know our team will be able to hold their own during actual league games.

The last thing I will quickly cover in this very short post has to do with my passion for both gaming and writing.  A couple months ago, I was sitting and browsing through the gaming news blog that a few of my friends and fellow Xbox Ambassadors had started and noticed they were looking for staff members.  So I sent a tweet away to the owner and founder asking if they were still accepting applications, he got back within a few minutes stating yes.  So I sent in an application and they gave me a two month trial period to see if I had what it took to become their lead review.  Nothing is official on that yet, but I have wrote a couple of reviews for them (one on Forza 4 and one on ODST) in that time and they were happy with them.  I'm pretty sure I'll at least be a reviewer for Inside View Gaming for a little while.  They are looking to expand greatly in the near future, it sounds like they are hammering out the details for some big stuff as well.

That does it for this short post, but it was at least something right?  Remember, always keep an eye on the ever so elusive Grif.  He's very sneaky if he takes over the right person.