haloman30

Hey, everyone! We have a new project to announce! This one being far more ambitious than any other project we've ever done. That project is the Blamite Game Engine. Now, I know what you guys must be thinking. Over the years we've been announcing project after project, with so far none of them being public. It seems like a joke, like we aren't taking any of it seriously. But this one is different - not because "oh, we're actually working on this one" or anything of the sort. Raven Runner and Project: Infinity have both been worked on since their inception. The thing with Blamite is that it will be the engine for Project: Infinity, as well as all of our games going forward (with the exception of anything that is released before its completion of course). So, why the change? What happened to Unreal Engine? Good question. This decision was made after going back and forth between a custom engine or Unreal. And while, yes, going the Unreal or Unity or any other "ready-to-go" engine would have been a much quicker route, and would at least be something to help us offset the fact that, compared to other projects like Installation 01 or Project: Contingency (two other fan made Halo games, you should go check them out and support them too), it isn't the route we are planning to go. From what has been seen with these teams, they don't seem to have much planning on what comes next for these people. Some of them will probably stick together, but the Installation 01 team themselves have said that they will more or less disperse after that project's time ends. Project: Contingency has not made such statements as far as I'm aware, but it's safe to say that these guys aren't really going in for the long haul necessarily. This isn't necessarily a bad thing really, as some of them will probably get a fair amount of attention by other industry giants and I suspect they won't have much difficulty getting jobs after the fact. Here at Elaztek, we aren't here for a one-hit-wonder. We are here for the long haul. We aren't here to push out one or two games and fade away, we are here to last. This engine isn't going to just be used in one or two games, it's going to be the foundation for all of our games going forward. On top of that, there are real technical reasons as well. First off, by using a custom engine, we have a lot more control over everything. We can choose how we want to store game data, we can choose how to distribute tools, we can change anything we want - it's our engine, and we can do literally anything we wish with it. If we find a bug, we can fix it. If we want a new feature, we can add it. If we want to support DirectX 11, OpenGL, and Vulkan, we can do it. Beyond that, we also have a strong passion for modders. We love when community members create content and expand upon their favorite games, taking them further than ever thought possible. Our marketplace will allow mods of any sort - as long as they aren't cheats, viruses, or anything else malicious of course. We support creativity, not ruining people's fun. If you develop a mod that uses crazy file patching of the actual executable and you need to provide 6 paragraphs of tutorials, you're welcome to distribute it. Got a cool tool that introduces some new features? Awesome! Just note that as a user: we aren't liable for any damages to your game data, account, or anything else as a result of using mods. We can't screen every single one for perfect integrity. If you do find something malicious, do report it to us immediately. But I seem to be getting off topic. The point is, Blamite is being built to enable modding. Not every single game will support it, of course. But we (for the most part) won't take steps to stop you from playing with a game you either obtained free of charge from us, or one you paid for. What exactly is this engine going to do? Our engine is being designed to operate similarly to Halo's Engine (unofficially known as Blam), and use many of the same basic ideas of operation - with some of our own blood mixed in, of course. Our goal is to make it where those used to creating maps for Halo Custom Edition or Halo 2 will find themselves in a fairly familiar environment, as well as make modders feel at home when doing some simple tag editing within a map. Now, I know what you're thinking. This has got to be illegal as hell. We believe that Blamite is legal for the same reason ReactOS, ElDewrito, and other projects are legal. Halo's engine is not sold on its own, only games made with it are sold. On top of that, we have a strict policy against using any reverse engineering to decompile official game executables. We don't use any official code - decompiled or leaked somehow - from the official games. Period. If you happen to be a Microsoft or 343 Industries employee reading this, and you determine that our work is ultimately not within legal bounds, we are more than willing to cooperate and reach an agreement on how to proceed. You can reach us by using our contact form or via emailing us at [email protected]. But the real question is: why? Why start this project that has a chance (albeit an incredibly tiny chance based on our understanding) of getting shut down or massively hindered by "The Man"? Passion. We are developing this for the same reason we are developing Project: Infinity. Out of passion. The Blam engine is an incredibly fun engine to play with, and with our first project being Project: Infinity - a fan made Halo game, it's a match made in heaven. Beyond that, we plan to continue to develop and update the engine from here on moving forward. How can I help this project? Want to help? Great! We have a huge amount of open positions at the time of this topic, since the project is still in very early stages. If you want to help out, you can click here to go to the signup page. Keep in mind that, like Project: Infinity, you will not be paid for work on this. This is being handled the same as Project: Infinity, partially because of the fact that this is being made for Infinity initially. We are mostly looking for those with experience in modding official Blam games (any game, preferably within Halo 3 to Reach, however any is really accepted) or those with experience in creating Halo Custom Edition content and working with the editing tools (Sapien, Guerrilla, Tool, etc). If you happen to just be a programmer with a love for Halo, that's cool too. If you're just a programmer looking for something to do, just understand what this engine is. Regardless of your status as a Halo modder, content creator, or just a fan, you will have relatively strict guidelines on how to develop the engine. As in, you will for the most part be making things work and operate in the same way the official Halo games load content. If you don't know how this works to begin with, be prepared to be educated (by someone, nobody in particular is in that role yet) about the ins and outs of the engine. Modders and creators will be at a strong advantage as they will already understand more or less how the engine operates. Relevant Links We have added some new sections to the website to help account for our new project, and all relevant links can be found below: Blamite Game Engine - Official Site Blamite Update Notes Blamite Development Blog Blamite Subforum Blamite Team Signup Page So, what's the plan? As the engine matures and grows, major updates and improvements will get their own announcement, with smaller, less significant updates being posted more frequently to the development blog. Changelogs for versions can be found in Blamite's update notes blog. What are your thoughts? Are you excited for the future of Elaztek and Blamite, and the future of all our upcoming projects? Do you think this is the dumbest thing ever? Let us know!

Hey, everyone! It's been a bit, hasn't it? While the public side of Elaztek has been rather quiet, our team has still been hard at work on both our games and the website. Our frontpage is no longer just a lazy placeholder thing, and now actually features stuff like upcoming events, the latest announcement, and still contains all the content you've grown used to seeing on the homepage. Unfortunately, the shoutbox is not added to the homepage (yet) due to some weird bugs with how it retrieves chat messages - and as such we've elected to hold off on its implementation for the time being. Additionally, we have a brand new theme - Midnight 7. I'll give you 3 guesses where the theme comes from. Our main page is currently only compatible with the new theme, but as time goes on we will be making sure to get it looking decent on all the different themes we have, old and new. For those of you who hate this new website design, you are free to revert back to the original 'Midnight' theme by scrolling to the bottom of the page, clicking the Theme menu, and picking the theme. Additionally, we are introducing our Helpcenter, albeit in a beta stage. Some topics are still a work-in-progress, and absolutely all content within it is subject to change. Take anything you read in there with a grain of salt for right now, you will see something like this at the top of each article: This article is not yet finished and may contain inaccurate information. If you don't see this banner on the top of the article, then it's most likely good to go. In either case, what do you think of our new site? Vote with your reputation on here or the reacts on our Discord announcement!

The beginning of Elaztek Studios, Haloman Development, was founded on April 13, 2013.

Hey, everyone! Today we did some upgrades to the Elaztek Website as well as over on the CU forums. Both sites were upgraded to the new IP.Board 4.2 software, which brings with it a ton of awesome new features! We ourselves haven't even finished exploring the new features to be added, so there may or may not be a follow-up to this detailing more features that have been introduced. First off, Content Ratings are back! They have been absent ever since the Nuclear District forums were updated to IPB4, as the application was not updated at the time. Later, it was discovered to be finally updated - for the price of 30$ and a renewal every six months. So it was ignored. Then, IPB 4.2 was pushed out and lone behold - content ratings are now a built-in feature. All likes and dislikes on posts are counted as Upvote/Downvote ratings which sport a similar icon as it has in modern IPB. The other ratings were NOT built in but the functionality to add them was all there - hence why they have rather dated looking icons. I will be working on designing new updated and HD icons soon - so don't worry. Until then, enjoy their long awaited return. Additionally, some of you real old CU folk may remember Group Collaboration. Maybe not by that name, but the general functionality was you would make a sort of sub-community within the website, that allowed you to have various members, exclusive topics/posts, and so on. That functionality has also made a return as a feature built into the software. You should see the "Clubs" tab added to the Navigation Menu. From there, you can create a club, with one of the following statuses: Public - Everyone can see the club and its posts, and can participate without joining. Open - Everyone can see the club and its posts, but only members can participate. Everyone can join. Closed - Everyone can see the club and who's in it, but only members can see posts and participate. Users need to ask a leader to join. Private - Only members can find the club and see its posts. Users need to be invited by a leader to join. It is a feature that also had an addon, however when I tried to add it back on the Nuclear District forums, well...it caused some severe database problems that Nuke had to go and clean up for me (we love u nukeypoo <3) Can't wait to see what kind of crazy clubs you guys create! Go on, have at it!

Hey, everyone! The website has gotten a much-needed facelift. Our new theme is a nice dark style that is easy on the eyes and overall fits our website a lot better. The old theme is still available in the themes dropdown menu at the bottom of the page, along with most of the classic CU themes. The old theme was nothing more than the CU forums theme except with our logo applied to it. This theme has been in the works for over a month and is custom tailored to fit perfectly. That being said, if you find something that looks a bit odd, be sure to let us know ASAP so we can fix it. We also have another forums theme in the works too, that has more of a Halo-y feel to it, so stay tuned for that. That's all for now, folks!

So, some things have gone down over on Chaotic United that has led to Elaztek Studios coming up to fruition. Over the past few months on CU since Aly was demoted, I was sitting around miserable due to the loss of my friend, Alycat. Today I had a weak moment again and I wanted to bring my friend back. I was talking with Michael regarding it and he later spoke to Wind. Wind ended up quitting CU outright and is back on WindFrontier. At that point, Michael and I had little faith in the future of CU due to Wind leaving. Eventually, it came to a point where Michael and I were considering rebranding CU under the Elaztek name and CU would effectively die off, but I came up with a different plan. Aly has returned to Chaotic United and is once again my friend. CU may or may not continue to move forward but I will retain a hefty level of control over it - as in, Aly isn't coming in and totally taking over. The staff of CU that would rather stay away from Alycat have been invited here to Elaztek Studios, a brand new start with a brand new goal: To make great games that kick ass. Should Chaotic United close down in the future, it will become a trademark of Elaztek Studios, and this will be the parent company. If you have come over from Chaotic United, welcome aboard, and we hope you have a great time here. Nobody, staff or player, in CU will be asked to leave. However, Alycat will never be seen here on Elaztek Studios for various reasons. This place may also serve as an escape for those who cannot stand Aly. Upvote this post if you're happy to be part of Elaztek Studios! If you have any additional questions or concerns please ask them below! The Elaztek Studios Team ----------------------------------- haloman30 AwakenedRage 16dbaxter Atomicbeast101 Blizzardbball

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