• Viewing the site
• History and ethos
• Movies
• Pictures
• The future

To get the full functionality of the site (such as getting drop-down menus, and seeing pictures in a pop-up window when you click a thumbnail image), you need to have Javascript enabled. That's a setting you can make in your browser's preferences.

At present I'd say the site is best viewed in Firefox (3.0 or higher) or Safari, partly because they'll give nice rounded corners on things - including my banner area, drop-down menus, section heading bars, and thumbnail images. Firefox is free to download, and I can recommend it. If you'd like something to compare, here's a snapshot of how part of one of my pages looks in Firefox on my iMac, with a drop-down menu activated (the cursor wasn't captured but was in the menu item "Other") and with my default font size at 12.

Opera seems bizarrely unable to italicize Bad Cyborg's default font for the main content (Lucida Grande), in which case you'd be missing the nuances of the text. So if your computer has that font, I can't recommend Opera. Here's a test for you: whatever font you're looking at, this should be in italics! If you don't have Lucida Grande you'll probably be seeing the font I specified as second choice, namely Arial. At present Opera also doesn't cope with rounded corners.

If you want to use Internet Explorer I'd strongly recommend version 8 or higher. Earlier versions are less compliant with modern web standards for page display, and although I tried to make fixes to counteract some of their deficiencies, my patience soon wore out. Here are some of the shortcomings as they stand. (1) I've disabled drop-down menus for versions below 8, as there were display problems I couldn't fix. (2) You won't see any rounded corners. (3) In versions below 7 you won't see any nice drop-shadows. (4) I make no attempt to cope with versions below 5. Bear in mind that even version 6 is antiquated!

If you're having any trouble with the site, you're welcome to contact me and I'll take it on board. But if you're using Internet Explorer below version 8, I'm not sure I'll be able to help.

Hey dude, your font is too big!

If the site's main font is looking way too big for you, that's probably because your browser isn't properly set up for your own tastes. Somewhere in your browser's preferences (see note below for help) you should find a setting where you can specify your 'default font' or 'standard font', including the size. The size is effectively meant as your preferred font-size; the size you generally find most comfortable for reading. Bad Cyborg respects that size preference just as it should. Trouble is, browsers initially have it set to 16, which a lot of users are going to find way too big. That's almost certainly your problem. If you adjust it to something a little smaller, the site should look better for you. My own preference is for size 12, and I used size 12 Lucida Grande as a guideline for site layout, though things should still look fairly optimal with sizes close to that.

Note: In Firefox you'll find the relevant font preference in the 'Content' section of the preferences dialog. In Safari look in the 'Appearance' section of the dialog. In Opera look in the 'Web Pages' section of the dialog. In Internet Explorer 7 look for the Fonts button in the 'General' section of the 'Internet Options' dialog (which you can select after clicking the Tools icon (gear wheel) beneath the search box, or in a Tools menu above the browser window).

Digression: A big dumb mess

In regard to that font size business, the browsing world has actually got itself into a real mess which I'll briefly explain to the best of my understanding. It's something I realized in the course of doing the site coding for Bad Cyborg.

Somewhere around 2004 the main browser developers agreed to have size 16 as the initial setting for the user's default font size. For many people that's going to result in text being too large however. Most users are also fairly non-technical and might not even be aware they can control things by adjusting a preference. Web designers knew this and started working on the assumption that most users will have their default font size set to 16, just what the browser came with. But they didn't want their sites to look silly with oversized text - and people wouldn't pay them for sites that ended up looking silly - so they compensated by making their sites use a text size smaller than the user's default, figuring that this would maximize the number of users who'd be happy with the text size they end up seeing.

Trouble is, anyone who's adjusted their default font size to less than 16 to reflect their true preference, is likely to end up with annoyingly small text at all those sites. In effect, those web designers have removed the whole purpose of that default setting, namely to help you optimize your viewing experience across the web. Anyone creating a site now has a dilemma. If they go with the "assume size 16" approach so their site looks ok for the mass of users with default set to 16, they prolong the madness. If they instead respect the user's actual default size, treating it as the user's true preference (like it was meant to be), they have to contend with the fact that many users will see foolishly large text, and think the designer is daft in the head. It's a big dumb mess.

I think the only real way out is for browsers to make it much clearer to users that they can, and probably should, set a 'preferred font size'. Note that I want the term 'preferred' rather than 'default', because it makes things much clearer. Really it's the single most important preference, and I've even seen suggestions that when a browser is first run, it should give the user an explanatory notice about this. Education is the sensible way - and it's not as if it's something complicated! The preference should be made far more visible in the preferences dialog or wherever. Rather than just having a preference for default font and letting the size be part of that, there should be a separation for clarity. There would be a setting for "Preferred Font Size"; preferably the first preference the user sees! Elsewhere you'd have the default font setting (you wouldn't specify size as part of that), which I think is a relatively unimportant setting for most users because (I believe) hardly any websites leave font choice to the user.

Launched on April 22nd 2004, the site was originally created to describe the amazing rockslide megabattle in Halo's second level. At this time I'd been playing the battle for many months after first stumbling into it. I couldn't find anything about it on tips pages, yet to me it looked like being easily the most important 'extra' for any trigger-happy Halo fan to know about. The combat was so much more intense than normal Halo fare, and the terrain offered so many possibilities. So I did a lot of writing and launched the site, which also included the beginnings of what are now the Halo 1 fun section and combat tips section. When I advertised it in the HBO forum (which was new to me then), it turned out that some people had bumped into the megabattle before, which didn't really surprise me since all you have to do is leave when the dropships start arriving, and come back later. However, I don't think it had been written about much or was known widely, so I think the site did its intended job of helping to spread the word.

Later megabattles

By now we actually have four megabattles to play with in Halo. Here's how things unfolded in regard to the other three.

I posted my first account of the spiral path megabattle in September 2004, and as with the rockslide megabattle, it turned out that at least a few other people had bumped into it beforehand. Actually I'd already stumbled into it myself when the site launched, but I was too busy revelling in the rockslide and didn't fully realize the potential for a while. In fact it's very much on a par with the rockslide megabattle in being something every Halo fan ought to know about, bearing in mind how easy it is to arrange.

The dustbowl megabattle arrived in May 2006, and as far as I'm aware, this one was completely new to the Halo community. It certainly came as a big surprise to me to find a megabattle lurking in level 3 of all places. It was just bizarre to suddenly see so many enemies together there! I can still remember laughing at those first hilarious Grunt swarms. It wasn't quite as good for serious battling (tricky environment to survive in, plus there's no Marine support to enjoy), but it was still a lot of fun.

Finally there was the twin bridges megabattle in November 2006; the biggest ding-dong of all. It was actually something I'd had a hint of in January 2006, but it was a while before I finally put the work into exploring it fully and realizing just how good it was. I never expected the rockslide and spiral path megabattles to be rivalled, but this new rumble seemed to take hectic combat to an even higher level. Battling alongside a large squad of Marines here was a revelation. As far as I'm concerned, this last megabattle plus the first two provide easily the best combat situations in the whole game. It's just a darned shame that none of the subsequent Halo games have had anything to rival that level of intensity and excitement. Can't help feeling Bungie missed a trick there!

More and more fun

The Halo fun section and growing Halo 3 fun section are pretty much the core of the site, devoted to squeezing additional fun out of campaign play, particularly in regard to obtaining novel combat situations, be they serious or mischievous. The majority of this stems from my own explorations, but there are also quite a few items based on things I've read about or that people have suggested by email, which I try to make clear as appropriate. I've tended not to look at tips pages much, just so I can enjoy discovering and exploring possibilities for myself. That can often mean I'm lagging behind on some of the things the tricks brigade get up to, but never mind.

Actually though, 'tricks' have never been a strong interest with me, except in their potential for opening the door to new combat situations or mischief. For example, when I eventually found that I could descend into the main facility abyss in The Silent Cartographer, something the tricks folk had done long before, the best thing about that was in realizing how it enabled you to launch a novel prong attack on the enemy, giving lots of new fun; much more so than the descent itself, which is hardly something you'll be interested in doing again and again. Another well known trick - this time one I'd read about early on in a magazine - is getting up on top of the island. Sure you can just admire the view, but the main thing is that there's a whole lot of fun you can have once you're up!

Say hello to Suzie

The whimsical Frontline with Suzie series kicked off soon after Bad Cyborg launched, the first broadcast going out on May 9th 2004. The name 'Suzie Hoffenblatt' was actually taken from the Soapbox page I'd written earlier. I suppose I was thinking that she'd done a nice enough job of interviewing me there, so we'd pack her off to get busy on Halo. I'm a bit peeved that she still hasn't sent me a postcard though.

I had several broadcasts written at that point, but the first one posted was actually the first I worked on. Followers of the series might notice that it's a bit different from later episodes. A central theme of the series has been for Suzie to be in places we've all been ourselves as MC, and often to talk with specific enemies or allies we encounter. It makes things more engaging to have Suzie woven into the campaign like that. But I only fixed on that idea after writing most of that first broadcast, in which she was simply aboard an unspecified 'enemy ship'.

After broadcast 10 there was a gap until October 2004 when we heard about Suzie's grunty encounter on the Silent Cartographer island, in Danger! Falling Grunts. That broadcast was inspired after experiencing the Grunts' amusing tendency to fall off the hill as they rush over to attack you. Suzie returned in February 2006 with another five broadcasts, and a year later with four more, making a round 20 to be going on with. Maybe we'll get more in due course, but she does have to send them halfway across the galaxy, so you can never be too sure when they might turn up.

Some of the entries in the Halo in a nutshell page (October 2004) were influenced by bits in earlier Frontline broadcasts. After all, both are concerned with poking fun at things in the game. In turn, some of the nutshell entries (such as the one about Captain Keyes following a brief career as Flood goo) influenced or inspired later broadcasts.

Everybody welcome

Here at Bad Cyborg we're into inclusiveness, with an easygoing "fun for all" sort of atmosphere. You can be playing on Legendary, you can be playing on Easy - we're all just here enjoying Bungie's masterpiece (oh, and Halo 3). I myself arrived quite late on the Halo scene, not getting my Xbox until about a year after launch. Halo was actually my first FPS and I can remember having trouble on Easy! So I know just what it's like to be a newcomer to the scene.

Sorry, no Halo 2 fun

Unfortunately I didn't get along at all well with Halo 2, as you may have gathered from my Halo 2 disappointment article. Aside from that article, the site is purely about the original Halo and now also Halo 3. I can't tell you how much I was looking forward to Halo 2; yet I ended up trading my copy back to the shop within a month or so. The only thing I missed at all was the visceral feel of the battle rifle - until I remembered how quickly it ran out of ammo! A big part of why I decided to finally part with the disc was that the altered aliens were spoiling my image of the Covenant too much, particularly those Elites talking hammy English. It just destroys the menace of the original guys. As for those Jackals, they were awful too; character completely lost! Meanwhile the Grunt voices were different and the little guys were nowhere near as hilarious as the originals. And then there were all the other changes of course, including the ruination of the previously glorious needler (all hail, mighty dispenser of stingy pink death). No, I couldn't take it and it had to go!

Of course, you may have quite different opinions, and if so, good luck to you. Don't bother emailing to point out the error of my ways; you have your preferences, I have mine, let's leave it at that. Save your aggro for the covies. Actually, along with people suggesting I was crazy (the logic apparently being that they like Halo 2 and therefore so should I), plenty of people emailed to agree with much of what I said, and were really pleased to see someone saying it. So I'm far from being the only one unhappy about it.

Now with movies and pictures!

For a long time my content was purely text, and I used to get pointed remarks from people who wanted pictures as well. Unfortunately I just didn't have the technology to oblige - and I wasn't too fussed about it anyway. But I increasingly felt a desire to produce movies to illustrate my gameplay fun and to showcase what Halo has to offer, so I finally got myself kitted out. In September 2009 the site moved into a new phase as I released my first movies, along with a visual re-styling of the site that included my first batch of pictures. The production of movies and pictures will probably be my main occupation for some time to come, and I'll be putting a lot of effort into those to try and do the games justice.

My movies are simply named BCM1, BCM2 and so on, in the order I release them (BCM = Bad Cyborg Movie). The best available versions are hosted at HBO and kindly produced by Louis Wu from the master versions I supply, for which I'm most grateful, but I also now have a YouTube channel called Bad Cyborg Movies providing another platform. At the moment I'm focused on H1 movies (see my H1 movie page), but later there may be some for H3 and ODST too.

Production

If you're curious, here's the set-up I'm using to create my H1 movies.

A cable leads out the back of my Xbox and branches into four cables. One ends in a scart which is plugged into the TV, enabling me to play without any lag as normal (i.e. without any lag between controller actions and onscreen response). The other three carry an S-video signal, left audio (white) and right audio (red). These go into a Canopus ADVC-110 (ADVC = Analog to Digital Video Converter), which converts the signals into a DV stream. That gets sent to my iMac via a Firewire cable (6-pin to 6-pin) which also powers the converter. The DV stream is received by iMovie which builds up a large file from it. After completing my gameplay I stop the capture process within iMovie. I can then use iMovie to create finished movies from the raw footage encoded in the DV file. Specifically I get it to export movies in h.264 format using x264Encoder, a free encoder which I found far superior to the default h.264 encoding offered by iMovie. I send my movies to Louis Wu and he kindly converts them into multiple versions for final consumption by the seething masses.

The iMac has a 2.8 GHz dual core Intel processor, 2 MB RAM, and a 320 GB hard disc that spins at 7200 rpm. That seems to be plenty good enough for capturing and editing.

The Canopus ADVC-110 isn't cheap but it seemed very well regarded by many reviewers when I researched it on the web, and has worked flawlessly for me so far. The image quality is limited by the fact that it runs off an S-video signal, but the images are clear enough for my purposes at least (though I have to say that they're quite poor in gloomy surroundings, such as in the dustbowl megabattle). If you're interested in buying one, it's worth carefully searching the web to compare prices.

Looking for advice?

I'm no movie production expert, so if you're looking for advice I'm probably not going to be much use other than in having described my set-up above. There's plenty of advice on the web though, including some YouTube videos. Search for terms such as "videogame" and "capture device".

Since July 2009 I've been working my way through the site adding pictures to enhance the content, which was previously just text. If you're viewing a page I've updated that way, you'll see thumbnail images mixed in with the text. Each thumbnail links to the full-size picture, which you'll see in a pop-up window if you click the thumbnail (if you've got Javascript enabled). When you click further thumbnails the pop-up window is re-used for those; so it acts as picture viewer you can have to the side of your page window. My pictures are numbered consecutively in the order they're added to the site.

Note: Firefox seems to be a bit dumb about sizing the pop-up window. It gives me a window which is initially too small, showing the picture at only 96% scale. Maybe it's something they'll fix later, but in the meanwhile at least you can resize the window to see pictures at 100%.

Production

My gameplay pictures are derived from the movie footage I capture with the Canopus ADVC-110. Within iMovie I'm able to export any section of footage as a sequence of jpg files. So I export small sections then pick out the best frames. The exported jpgs aren't great quality as the ADVC works off an S-video signal which makes things a bit blurry and rough, but I do the best I can to enhance them using Photoshop Elements 6. I've made them about as large as I reasonably can, given the raw quality I'm working with.

Only the best for you!

As someone who used to be quite into amateur photography, I put quite a lot of work into trying to get the best and most entertaining shots I can. That usually involves doing gameplay over and over. The more footage I've got, the more I can choose from to get the best shots, in terms of composition, action, humour, and other factors. I hope you'll enjoy the results! Getting good shots is actually quite an enjoyable activity in its own right, and I may even start a gameplay gallery at the site sometime, not least because I'm accumulating plenty of decent spare shots along the way.

As for the future, I expect to be quite busy producing gameplay movies and pictures for the site, adding to the Bad Cyborg experience. Much of that will be for the large amount of gameplay fun already detailed, and it's going to take quite a while to get through all that, if I ever manage it at all! I've also got a backlog of fun to post - even some Halo 1 stuff - and now there's ODST to explore as well. I hope to get more broadcasts from Suzie and I've got some ideas for other stuff too, but it depends on how much time and energy I can muster. If you like what you see, gimme some encouragement (e.g. chip in with comments when I advertise updates in the HBO forum). It helps to spur me on if I know there are plenty of people out there making use of what I'm doing.

© 2004-2009 by Rockslider