halo.bungie.org

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Submission Guidelines

Want to submit content to us? Not sure what the procedure is? You've come to the right place. Below you can find specific instructions for almost everything we take, along with some general guidelines about posting.


General | Wallpaper | Misc Art | Movies | Music | Tricks | Links | Fan Fiction | Comics | Random

General Uploading Rules:

To upload content to us, look for the 'Uploads' link near the bottom of our navbar, on all of our pages. It leads to an upload interface that's pretty self-explanatory. Be sure to read the instructions - if you submit content without following the basic guidelines, we'll just toss it. (If you choose to use this to upload content that has specific uploading rules (Movies, Fan Fiction, Tricks, Websites, Comics, etc - in short, anything that's SPECIFICALLY mentioned on this page), it'll probably get deleted.

Wallpaper:

Wallpaper is easy to submit. There are many ways to get it to us. You can email us, at halo@bungie.org, and attach it. We'll use the username and email we get from your message, unless you tell us otherwise. (We don't have to post email addresses; we do, by default, but if you don't want yours made public, simply let us know that.) You can also upload it to our upload site; see the General Uploading Rules. You can also put it on your OWN web-accessible space, either public or private, and send us a link. Finally, you can put it on your own space, and post it on our forum.

If you post it on our forum, and the link is direct, to a private webspace (i.e., not someplace like DeviantArt), and the wallpaper meets our posting criteria, we'll grab it and automatically queue it. (If you DON'T want it to go into the Wallpaper section, be sure to mention that in your forum post.) If you post it on our forum, but the link points to another art site, we'll ASK for permission to add it; it won't be added automatically. (If we forget to ask, you're welcome to email us and point it out.)

As always, there are some minimal standards your submission has to meet to be placed in our collections - you can find the Image Posting Guidelines in our Miscellaneous section.

Format: If you submit a huge, uncompressed JPEG or a BMP file, or sometimes even a GIF or PNG file, we may re-encode your submission for display. It's your work; if you're unhappy with our re-encoding, let us know. It's our bandwidth, though, so while we'll do our best to accomodate your wishes, if you can't live with our final compromises, you can always simply choose not to have your image in our collection.

We will never ask you to make your material exclusively available here at HBO; you're welcome to post it in other locations, as well. (Some artists have CHOSEN to have their work exhibited here exclusively - but that's their choice, not ours.) As as side note, if you're a fansite maintainer, and would like to include some of the material you find here on your site, you must first obtain permission from the artists - we CANNOT give you blanket permission to use images hosted here.

Miscellaneous Art

If you want to submit Miscellaneous Art, the rules are identical to those for Wallpaper. Please read those.

Movies

As the HBO movie collection gets bigger and bigger (there have been over 600 Halo-related movies mentioned in our news, not counting the older Tricks-related ones), the chances that we'll host your '2v2 gameplay in Blood Gulch, set to [name popular band here]' vid get smaller and smaller. We're still hosting new trick vids, entertaining stop-motion vids, machinima pieces, and plenty of other Halo-related video material... but if you don't want your submission tossed in the bit-bucket, you really, really REALLY need to pay attention to what we already have, and to our Movie Hosting guidelines. Our bandwidth isn't infinite; we already serve over 10 terabytes of movies per month, and we have to be careful about what we accept.

As of April 8, 2005, the movie submission system has been automated; visit the Movie Peer Review Rating System to get started! (Unfortunately, the MPRRS went offline in 2006... but YouTube got much, much better, so we do much less hosting than we used to.)

Music

Music submissions can be uploaded to our main uploads site (see the General Uploading Rules), emailed, or you can send us a link to an existing web-accessible piece. If there are special rules about displaying, please let us know when you tell us about the piece.

Gameplay Tips and Tricks

We are no longer updating the Tricks section. Mostly, this is because of information overload; it became too complicated to keep track of stuff. We still accept Tricks videos, if they stand on their own, and if they haven't been done before - see the Movies section for submission guidelines. We no longer accept tricks, One-shot photos, or other such material. We're sorry about this, and we have every hope that we'll re-open this site soon, but for now, please don't send us this material, because we'll simply ignore it. Thanks! The Gameplay Tips site, however, IS accepting submissions - there's a 'SUBMIT' link at the bottom of the main page.

Halo Websites

Our Links page is now automated; if you would like your Halo-related website to be included, simply click the 'ADD YOUR SITE' link at the top of the Links page, and fill out the simple form. When we first instituted this system, we received almost 100 links in the first week; it was no longer feasible to announce new websites on our front page. That policy is still in effect; please don't ask us to make a special news post for your new Halo website.

If you want a front-page mention for your site, you need to do something unique. Host content nobody else hosts, post articles about ideas or events nobody else has written about. If your content is newsworthy, we'll mention your site. If you have a new clan, though, or have just set up your very own Halo 2 forum... please don't ask us to announce your site, because we can't. Our forum is a fine place for you to announce these things.

Fan Fiction

The only way we accept Fan Fiction these days is via the Fan Fiction submission page. It's pretty self-explanatory, though we still get tons of questions from people who don't bother to read the 'READ ME OR ELSE' link at the top of the form. Occasionally there are problems with it, which we'll try to solve; send us email if you run into one of these. There IS a known problem with the particular combination of Windows XP and the Internet Explorer browser that can keep certain people from posting; the only solution we have for you is to try a different browser. If you tell us that this is not an option for you, we're going to tell you that posting fan fiction on our site is not an option for you; harsh, but it really is that simple. (The Firefox browser is less than 5 mb to download, and doesn't modify your system in the slightest. If you can't be bothered to download a 5 mb file, we can't be bothered to host your fiction.)

Please, please, PLEASE don't ask us to make an exception for you; we won't. It's not that we're mean - it's that you're one of HUNDREDS who would be taking advantage of that 'exception'. The system was automated because it HAD to be; there wasn't time to maintain the section manually any more. The choice was automate or close. Please understand that we're human, we have lives outside of HBO, and we have to draw lines occasionally. This is one of them.

Comics

Since March of 2004, we've been working on a Comic-specific Halo site; many, many MANY things have gotten in the way. There is no ETA at the moment, and until it IS finished, we're not accepting any more comics for hosting. Stinks... but that's life. Sorry.

Random Stuff

Sometimes people have totally random information they want to submit. A neat halo-related stuffed animal they've made and taken pictures of, odd things they've done with their Halo action figures, things they've painted on their walls. We do our best to put up as many of these as we can. Some fall through the cracks. (Some we look at, and decide we don't want to announce.) If you've submitted something to us, and it doesn't go up, and you don't hear from us about it, you're welcome to send in a short note asking us what happened. You'll get a much better response if you're not rude about it, and we really, really, REALLY want to ask you NOT to resend whatever you sent the first time without hearing from us SPECIFICALLY that we need you to.

If there's anything obvious we've forgotten, send us a note, and we'll add a section to this page. If you want to submit material that IS described on this page, and you fail to follow these guidelines, we'll likely just point you here. Hopefully, this will reduce some of the more obvious (and frequently-asked) questions. And thanks for being such a prolific community - it's your submissions that keep us going!



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