You lost me there. Can you clarify that a bit. I can sort of tell what your talking about but its kind of jumbled to me.
lol yeah i kinda rambled a bit there.. Basically, the OP states that you cant just add in random clutter to provide (cover or scenery) The map itself should just provide the cover and the lines of sight be blocked by itself.. where as my point in the pit was, if all the extra stuff bungie put in wasnt there.. it would change how the gameplay played on the pit.. Pit default would be a lot more like MLGs variant. (which you can agree plays a lot differently due to other things aswell) BUT i was trying to say that it also does happen in Casual maps, like the infection variant of the pit.. Has random garble everywhere to try and congest the zombies attacks to only narrow paths. I suppose the pit might have been a bad example.. Foundry could be the best, because in my eyes. Its default map is random crap everywhere.. and thats used competitively in nearly every playlist.
well, for the pit, only fusion coils really change gameplay on there and those are placed to prevent camping around the corner so I wouldn't really call that random placement and all of the other stuff is scenery. Still not random. Nasty means random placement by theres a single wall in the middle of the map for no purpose. Even foundry doesn't do that.
Yeah the pit was a bad example really, and with bungies map creation.. anything could have been random stuff. Like the green box at the end of the camo tunnel.. is in effect.. just a random wall. And in foundry.. the truck is the first thing that hits me as randomly placed.. Q: why is there a truck inside a warehouse just randomly parked angled under a bridge? A: To provide cover.
Whoa...whoa...please don't go saying stuff without knowing what your talking about. The green wall is hugely important to the way Pit works. Without that, the whole invis area would be practically useless, along with being able to shoot straight across the map into the objective...Bungie knows what their doing. Most of the time (*cough*Epitaph ;D). Cover is not an important part of Halo (relatively). This isn't Gears, in Halo players are constantly moving. MUCH more important are the lines of sight and way you influence player movements. The truck is there to make it possible to jump up to corner/rocket bridge, blocking a line of sight or two, and as a little addition, adds cover. Cover is NOT what Halo is based around.
Truth. Truth. Truth. Lets talk cover here. Cover, in halo, is anything that isn't a full structure, and is placed somewhere solely to let players hide behind it. Things like Sandbox default's obelisks and colored columns are cover. Building a big structural object that chops line of sight(green wall on the Pit) is not just cover, even though it certainly functions that way. Every time I see that somebody stuck an object somewhere for no purpose other than the flawed belief that players can or will successfully hide behind it, I do a little facepalm. "Cover" in the gears or paintball sense of the word can work because in gears you're 3rd person and can see a bit while hiding, and in real life(paintball) you can pop your head out for an instant without being absolutely certain to be shot, unlike in Halo, where any exposed body part will get hit except maybe in snipes. Plus, grenades completely invalidate the usefulness of little objects that act as "cover." Build a structure that defines player movement, actually cuts significant LoS, and generally makes the map look better, and you'll have a better map for it.
this is a very good guide thanks for the post. it will help me making maps because i have never really thought about some of this stuff
was that aimed at me. I just got really confused. I don't think I said anything about cover being good.
Im obviously getting my views out wrong.. Greenbox is useful yes, i never once said it was useless. Although in effect, it is a "randomly placed" object made by bungie. When i mean "randomly placed" i mean it looks peculiar for an object to be there. Especially one, that a) is green when the whole map has yellow and stone coloured objects (I cant actually think of another green piece of scenery on the pit) meaning the scenery item is "random" as it doesnt follow suit, and b) the same sorta reason applies to the actual placement of the item, whilst bungie can create, edit, design and do anything with any item (They have the full power to make a ginormous pig if they liked) it doesnt physically fit in with the pits actual design scheme of the map IMO. So really, this item is randomly placed cover, because in effect it is their to cover a line of sight. Cover to me is something that prevents line of sight, a pallet could be used as temporary cover, as well as a wall, as well as a weapon holder (if used correctly) everything on a map is essentially cover. However, When im stating bungie uses "Random Cover" or "random scenery" i mean where it doesnt quite fit in with the map. Which bungie's default maps have some of these put in to help gameplay. Like greenbox in the pit, like the truck in foundry, like the support beams in epitaph, like the trees in guardian. Random scenery is always about providing cover as well as providing the map to get a personal touch. I dont support the random placement i think your getting at where someone just hovers over an area and drops an object down and says "that'll do" it needs to be strategically thought out, even if it does look random, it should still have a beneficial effect to the gameplay. Basically, to clear things up this is what i meant. The truck in Foundry, is something very random and out of place, despite having a good reason to be there. Its parked peculiar, doesn't have anything behind it for towing purposes and is there only to provide access to a higher level on Foundry. My result: Random Green box on The Pit, this is debateable whether Bungie initially intended the wall to be a part of their map. If they had this wall there before they did any initial test runs on their map, then its clearly not random. BUT, without knowing that this existed before the map went into testing it cant be clarified that this is randomly there. My result: IMO I believe Bungie found a problem during the test stages of The Pit (Before Beta) and addressed that using the walls. What i also find peculiar is the way the skin was placed on the object, as it stands out more. The only thing following that skin is the upper walls on Camo tunnel, and the walls surrounding Training. It just basically stands out to me as something that simply was NOT initially part of the design of the map, but was later added in for GAMEPLAY purposes. This is therefore not scenery, but "randomly placed cover". This also cant be proven. Randomly placed objects in maps (meaning objects that stand out from the rest, For example, A stand alone wall in the middle of a room) should only be used if they generate a purpose for gameplay. My Result: If randomly placed objects were never used, the maps would be a complete bare minimum, with only basic walls, every map needs something in a room. Otherwise the gameplay everywhere on the map would be identical, despite what open space you have around you. There would be nothing dividing the map except the map itself. Last of all, I understand your points you've all made against my posts, but I still believe maps need the extra things inside rooms or corridoors that are STRATEGICLY placed, even if they appear to be randomly placed. No one can look at a picture and see how many "randomly" placed objects there are without actually playing the map and seeing how the map works. This is what I've been trying to get across to the people viewing this guide. As the OP suggests ALL random scenery/ cover should be removed, and I remember reading someone agreeing and saying "I hate looking at peoples pictures and seeing random cover and slapping myself in the face saying "Another random piece of cover"." or something similar.
Steve, nobody's said you should never use those things. The problem is when people try to remedy poor LOS design on their map solely by placing things like single walls or similarly small objects just to "add cover." To continue using The Pit as an example, something that was clearly placed just to add cover would be the corner walls on top snipe as well as training. Those I view as somewhat lazy and especially the training one I feel could have been done better, but since they are not overused, they work just fine. The green wall, on the other hand, is not simply "cover" just because you can take cover behind it. Shooting around it requires a decent amount of movement, and its being there restricts your movement from just jumping straight through to the flag. And it is that movement changing and significant LOS cutting that makes it more than just "cover" and makes it a structure. I don't want to call out any specific maps, but I'm sure you could dig through the first few pages of the MLG or Competitive map forum here and find many maps where the mapmaker saw that spots were too open and dropped in columns or walls or wedges or any number of little crappy "cover" items. There have been loads of maps around here that consist solely of cover items lain out on the floor of Sandbox or Foundry. That is the cover we're arguing against taken to its most extreme, but that type of map design should still be avoided in a map with otherwise decent structures as well.
Fair enough, thats probably how i needed to word it really, but you get what i mean about adding items in isnt always necessarily crappy cover even if it looks crappy and isolated to block lines of sight?