Megalodon by TEETMARE and Vorpal Saint Megalodon is an enormous Big Team Battle map. The map is set across nearly the entire span of Montana / Alaska, connecting the two areas across the ravine with a massive central bridge and tower structure. Due to the truly immense scope of this map, it is recommended to play with a very large party at all times. This map was conceived a long time ago, and has gone through considerable evolution and testing over the past month or two. I first designed the map with only the curving central bridge as the focus, but later the map grew to include the giant central building and back tunnel area. Vorpal joined in to help me bring the map to what we both consider the best it can be. This is one of my submissions for Forgetacular, to the Big Team Battle category. We hope you guys enjoy it as much as we have in designing and testing it! Enough talking now, lets get on with it! Also, Megalodon was created at the same time as another great BTB map which Vorpal will be releasing later, so keep an eye out! Recommended # of Players: 14 - 16. 12 is possible. Recommended Gametypes: Big Team Slayer, Big Team KOTH, Rocket Race, CTF, Invasion Slayer, Headhunter *If you are not using Bungie's Big Team Slayer gametype from MM, make sure to set DMR starts. This map is way to big to not have a DMR at all times.* Vehicles: 4x Mongoose (30) 4x Warthog, Default (120) 2x Ghost (45) 2x Wraith (180) 1x Falcon (neutral) (90) Weapons: 8x DMR 2x Shotgun 2x Sniper Rifle 1x Rocket Lawnchair 2x Mounted Machinegun 2x Needle Rifle 2x Needler 2x Plasma Pistol 1x Plasma Lawnchair 4x Plasma Nades 1x Energy Sword Video: Rendered map fly-through video on Bungie.net Screenshots: An overview of the central bridge connecting the two sides. The Falcon spawns on the launch pad here. The sword spawns on the bridge across the middle. Plasma Launcher spawns at the base of the large building. There are mancannons on either side of the bridge that launch players into enemy territory. Blue side: Starting area: Blue's starting base contains their sniper rifle and also their turret. Sniper is at the ground level of the base, you'll see it propped against a column when you spawn. More overview images of Blue side: The teleporters on each side lead to the central bridge. Shotgun spawns on the far walkway. Red side: Starting area: Red team starts here. Again, the sniper spawns at the base of the starting building. You will see it when you spawn at start. More overviews of Red side: Shotgun spawns in this side area, by the second mongoose. Needle Rifle can also be found in this area. Again, the teleporters on each side lead to the central bridge. A view of the back tunnel area: This tunnel ramp is an alternative path from red side to blue side or vice versa. Within the tunnel, the rocket spawns near the walkway cover pieces, as well as a Needler. The perch provides a good escape from vehicles in this area. Some more action shots with other angles of the map: Wraith raining hell on blue side The chaos from the race for the Falcon Black Theorem cleaning up after the vehicular chaos Skisma taking out a wraith from the rocket perch in the back tunnel Battle for the Wraith on red team's homeground Arnold Spartanegger lifting an entire warthog and passenger into the air with his herculean power Black Theorem catching me in an epic mid-air assassination from the mancannon Additional Notes: During testing, many people said they felt the soft-kill barrier in the sky was too low, and thus too limiting to Falcon pilots. The soft-kill has been raised, but it was not raised a very huge amount. There is ample room for a skilled pilot to maneuver. We did not feel it necessary to allow the Falcon to fly as high as it pleases, as we felt it would be too dominant. The large central building also has a soft kill on it. You can easily pass over this building, through the softkill, while flying the Falcon. The soft-kill on the central building's roof is intended to prevent players from travelling across, and camping in this area. There are also softkill areas placed in areas of montana and alaska that we did not want to be accessed or exploited on the map. We are sure that this map is solid, but if you do find a way to break or exploit it, please let me know. The map is at its absolute limit, both with budget and object limits. There are a lot of other things we would have liked to do to spice this map up a bit more, both aesthetically and gameplay-wise, but we had to compromise on plenty of things in order to balance the aesthetics with gameplay. We hope you enjoy the Big Team Battle insanity that this map provides. I've always loved the vehicular combat of Halo, and hopefully you'll enjoy it just as much in this map as i do. And also, the rec'd # of players is a bare minimum, the map is at its best with a full party of 16 people. Due to its enormous size, I prefer it be played this way. Special Thanks to Vorpal Saint, the Pub, and everyone who helped test. Download MEGALODON
WOW this map looks awesome! I love the middle bridge that you made out of large braces. Also the different elevations really make gameplay more interesting. This is my favorite BTB map yet in reach.
It's been a long time since I've posted here. Lurked a lot, but finally I saw something that really caught my eye. Seeing as I'm a huge fan of BTB, I had to check it out and post my thoughts. I spent a good fifteen minutes bouncing around in forge mode checking the map out. Given matchmaking's current lackluster BTB map choices, I was definitely curious to see what this map brought to the table. And I'm fairly impressed with what I see. The center bridge structure is breathtaking to say the least and the giant coliseum wall structure breaks the map's LoS up quite nicely. I have a few questions regarding gameplay and since I don't have an extensive enough friend's list to get 16 people to play on this thing at a time I probably won't be able to answer them myself. It would seem blue base's LoS of the main bridge is way better than anything red base has to offer. Between the spiral looking structure and the single large horizontal brace, blue has a noticeable height advantage overlooking the bridge compared to anything red can offer. I'm wondering if a competant sniper on blue team can shut down foot traffic around the bridge since the bridge itself is fairly open. It looks like red team's sniper would need the jetpack load out to gain a similar advantage. I'm also wondering about the weapon selection. It seems the map could use a neutral spartan laser to counter the wraiths/warthogs present. With the LoS so long around the bridge area, the rockets/plasma lawnchair don't seem like they'd be adequate at range (unless that was the intention). I personally like the laser on Halo 3 maps like Valhalla and Sand Trap and ultimately am wondering your thoughts on why it's not present here. Just a side thought on the weapons - your list doesn't include the sword located in the middle of the bridge. Aside from some flickering in forge mode, I was happy to see very minimal z-fighting. It's obvious you took great care putting those overlapping coliseum walls together. So yea, those are my thoughts on what looks like an awesome map. I'm just curious on the few points above and your thoughts behind the design of the map. Great job.
That's interesting that you felt blue side has a height advantage over red side. Red side's terrain is definitely higher than blue, perhaps you got your two sides confused. But either way, i will address your concerns. During playtests of the map, sniper has not been found to be overly dominant at all. Its true that there are some very long LoS on the map, from both red side to blue, and blue back to red. Red side has the advantage of height, and trees for cover near the bridge. Blue side has a couple additional structures for cover since there was no trees on that part of the map. Throughout testing, any time i was being sniped across the map, i was able to sprint to cover easily and avoid being killed. A really good sniper would still be able to get a few easy kills with the open LoS across the main bridge, but i dont think it is overpowering at all. At least, it was not proven to be during testing. As far as the Spartan Laser, we originally had it on the map in place of the Rockets, but during testing it was proven to be way too powerful. Because of the Laser being on the map, it had made it a stupid choice to even bother going for the Falcon, because the Laser can take it out with minimal effort. Vehicles are abundant in the map, and they actually each other better than any of the anti-vehicle weapons do. In most cases that vehicle combat occurred during testing, any vehicle leaving the fight alive was usually VERY damaged and got cleaned up shortly after. The sniper is a VERY good anti vehicle weapon, and believe it or not, so are 4-8 DMRs. There was a couple moments during testing where a Wraith was getting a little out of control for a few minutes, but it was quickly compensated for and taken out. One of my first games of testing, Red team gained a 30 point lead on Blue team in the beginning of the game, simply because they got lucky and ended up taking out the other team's wraith before theirs was damaged. They ended up raping with the Wraith for a short period of time, but in the end Blue team actually came back from the deficit and won the game by 3 points. So, what im saying is that so far it has all seemed to work out, at least in my playtests. I'm aware of the flickering in Forge mode, it is due to being at the maximum object limit. It has not occurred in any custom games to my knowledge. Thanks for the intelligent reply, i hope i have adressed your concerns. My gamertag is TEETMARE, send me an FR and we'll get you into a 16 player game. =)
Yeah.... this map is cool and all, but it needs more trees and interlocks. 2/5. No srsly though, making this map with you was a lot of fun. I really did enjoy the hours we spent on it... even if we weren't doing ****. lol. I'm really hoping bugnie takes notice of this and puts it in MM (even if it's just for RR lol)... but even then, I really do enjoy playing this map. I am sad that I didn't get in on more games of the closer-to-finish vers' but that's fine. I'm sure I'll get some sooner or later.
You have this listed as Blue teams area, isn't it Red's? Also, where is red teams 2nd mongoose? Blue team has one next to each warthog, but for red side I can only seem to find one. Anyway, in your test matches, have you been watching the vehicle respawn times? If this were my map, I would have concerns about the old Coagulation problem. That is, running out of vehicles too often, on such a vehicle heavy map. Have you had any games where a team lost all their vehicles, and went a significant time without any at all?
sorry about that, there was a little confusion with the file names and photobucket was acting strange. the image links have been repaired. edit- sorry i spaced and didnt reply to the rest of your post.. its 3 am anyways, red team's second mongoose is pictured in the 3rd red team picture. To answer your other question, i will update the post with the exact respawn times of the vehicles later, but yes, there can be moments in games where one team will temporarily gain vehicle dominance over the other team. usually, these moments can either be come back from, or countered with anti-vehicular tactics. like i said earlier in another post though, even the DMR is a good anti-vehicle weapon, especially when an entire team is DMR'ing a vehicle simultaneously.
yes I believe I played this map with you at one point with noklu. This was excellent to play and the only thing I didn't like about it was the random falcon death over the tunnel. Great map will definately put into the queue
thanks man, i appreciate the comment. the "random" death over the tunnel in the Falcon was most likely due to you spending too much time in a softkill zone. in earlier testing versions of the map, the softkill in the sky was too low, and caused to Falcon to often spend time passing through it accidentally. your 10 second countdown probably had added up without you knowing. the softkill in the sky was raised up on this published version of the map, so this problem should be minimized now. however, there IS still a softkill covering the top of the tunnel and central building, as i mentioned in the post. it is there to prevent camping on top of the building.
YouTube - Portal 2 Teaser Trailer Great to see another BTB map, and by Titmar! Though I'd like to know how much of this Vorpal did. Hopefully this plays well, I can't see why it wouldn't.
I did most of blue/red bases, weapons, and a few other things... though, titmar did do the majority of the work (IMO).
When I first played the map, I expected to see a really big shark. Obviously, that wasn't the case. I really enjoyed this map, both sides were equally balanced and I definitely enjoy getting to use the wraith. You guys have some really unique architecture and the way you closed the gap between alaska and montana was the best that I've seen so far. There were a couple weapons on the map which I felt were almost completely useless (sword for example) due to the massiveness of the map. Another thing I liked was how easy the falcon was to destroy but also how effective it was. Get a good pilot, rack up a decent amount of kills. Bad pilot, get eaten alive by DMR and rocket fire.
Thanks Titmar for the reply; you've addressed my thoughts. I've sent you a FR (GT: Backwards Logic). Looking forward to getting a game or two on this!
Awesomesauce!!!!! We had a full boat last night on this one 16 players and it plays every bit as good as it looks. There are very few good big team maps for reach so were hangin on to this one. Great flow and balance with weapons and vehicles. Spawns left you far out sometimes (on team slayer) but its a big map so thats to be expected. We loaded it up and gave everyone DMR starts. plays awesome 10/10 and I dont give out many. Monster map! MRX WHERE EAGLES DARE
This is one of the best BTB maps I have seen. Ive played it at least twice and I had very nice results. One of my favorite Reach maps. I really like the idea of the huge road. The huge road is the first thing I notice in this map.
thanks for the great comment, im glad that everyone liked it =) regarding DMR starts - Big Team Slayer in MM uses DMR starts, so yes i recommend that you also do when playing on this map. i assumed that was already understood, but i will edit it into the original post just in case.
I love BTB games and too feel Bungie's MM supply a little disappointing. One can only play hemorrhage and spire so many times before getting pissed off at being shot in the back when getting the sniper or falcon. I'll definitely dl but I rarely have 16 friends on willing to play these kind of custom games with me
This has got to by my favorite Big Team Battle map in reach so far. The first time I played this I was actually amazed at what you made. Not only does the map look awesome, but it plays just as awesomely. The balance between vehicles and infantry is awesome, and sometimes it seems like there are more than 16 players playing on that map, which just adds to the already awesome theme you have going on. ...Awesome!
After the many test sessions I've been through on this map, I can say that it has come a long way. The changes and tweaks you've made to this map really payed off as the outstanding gameplay shows. Technically this map has been "releasable" for well over a month now, and the fact that you just released it shows that you truly wanted it to become the best it can be. Combining the aesthetics with the gameplay and the amount of time spent tweaking and updating it, I believe Megalodon has a great shot at winning Forgetacular! Lets just hope Bungie doesn't scrap it once they see it's low budget.
Thanks again to the great comments from everyone. Vorpal and I are also hoping for this to have a shot at MM. We are also pretty concerned about it being at the object + budget limit, and thus being immediately disqualified. Lots of effort was made to reduce object use in every area of the map, and it works the best that it can for the limitations that we have. We both think this would be a blast to play in MM as well. That sure would be cool if it won, but I am just hoping for a shot in MM, could care less about winning the whole package. Maps have made it into MM that make use of glitches in the past (Utah Mambo) so we can only hope that Bungie wont mind about it being so near the limit. I am curious if it will pass their stress tests. It didnt have any problems or slowdown during our own tests, but I'm sure Bungie's tests are more rigorous.