Hi-tech jazzy armour now available, for the more flamboyant eight-footer…

(7:30) Level 5 ('Assault on the Control Room') on Heroic. I've shown 'harlequin Grunts' before - originally in BCM192 and lately in BCM282 and BCM283 - but now here are some harlequin Elites! Very snazzy fellows, formed using three of the Elites in the previous movie. The flickering effect, which arises when surfaces are coincident or very close together, is actually called z-fighting (relating to something called the z-buffer). An interesting shortcoming of the 3D rendering method, it's something you might see in other games too, though I doubt there's ever been such a pretty example as Halo harlequins.

Released May 20th 2018, gameplay recorded May 15th-18th 2018.

00:02 (Red and blue) After getting the two Elites into the tunnel entrance corner (which I was also using for the previous movie), I dismount to do the rest of the blasting on foot. This was mainly to give you a close view of what's going on. I could've used Banshee blasting instead, and normally I would, at least for the first few shots (and then I might dismount for a better view of how things look). After three blasts I decide to stop there, rather than risk super-merging with a fourth. When I blast the result clear of the corner so I can get a good look at it, I see that we've got an excellent harlequin, with a very even looking balance between red and blue. Subsequent blasts lead to separation, as expected.

02:38 (Red and silver) Now red and silver. The initial result isn't very good, but a couple of blasts later I hit the jackpot and get a nice jazzy appearance, the two colours contrasting strongly.

03:43 (Blue and silver) Again the initial result is unsatisfactory, but after further blasting I get lucky, just when I was thinking that the Elites may've become super-merged. The flickering is very nice, and is still good (though different) after a further blast. The effect was lost on the next blast though (not shown).

04:59 (Red, blue, silver) Finally, three clips showing examples of a red/blue/silver harlequin (note: it can take quite a few tries to get a good example; it's harder than when using just two Elites). The first harlequin has the most even colour balance. In fact it was very rare to get such even balance; I attempted creation many times and only got this sort of balance a couple of times. The effect was lost after I next blasted him (not shown). The second harlequin is predominantly blue and silver on his back (there are some very nice sawtooth effects there), and the third is skimpy on blue.

Closing remarks For a while I was working on this at the same time as the BCM284, having soon realized that there was so much to show with these Elites, I'd need two movies. But after getting shot of that last one, I did some more gameplay to finish this one off - including getting a better red and blue harlequin than I originally had. One little thing I added was a mention of the term 'z-fighting', which someone (toajames1) had helpfully mentioned in the YouTube comments for BCM284.

If you're wondering why the gold Elite wasn't part of the harlequin work, that's because I couldn't get any good flickering using him. I guess his armour geometry was too different from that of the other three Elites I used. Elite armour details are something I've only really just started paying attention to, in light of its relevance to merging. Maybe I'll take a closer look at that topic sometime.

QUICK UPDATE, SAME DAY: I've now obtained a gold and a silver who have identical armour details, and from which I can get a very nice harlequin. Looks like I'm gonna need another movie!

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