Hey guys I created this thread to help raise awareness of how to properly create invasion maps. Invasion maps are perhaps the trickiest to create not only because of object labeling but also due to the radically different dynamics that take place as a result of the gametype itself. There have been several threads and articles about invasion in the past and these are all very informative. Be sure to check out the following. Invasion Conceptualization Invasion Forging Checklist However it may be more enjoyable or easier to understand if we go over these topics in video form. I will use this thread to post tutorial videos for invasion and will continue to update it as more episodes come out. LATEST VIDEO "3 by 3 Theory" [HD] - Invasion Forge Tips & Tricks (THFE) - YouTube The videos we have so far cover the following: Basic Invasion Mechanics Spoiler "Basic Invasion Mechanics" [HD] - Invasion Forge Tips & Tricks (THFE) - YouTube Invasion Labels Spoiler "Invasion Labels" [HD] - Invasion Forge Tips & Tricks (THFE) - YouTube Getting Started Spoiler "Getting Started" [HD] - Invasion Forge Tips & Tricks (THFE) - YouTube 3 by 3 Theory Spoiler "3 by 3 Theory" [HD] - Invasion Forge Tips & Tricks (THFE) - YouTube
These are great tutorials for anyone looking to begin forging Invasion. 3 by 3 theory is probably the most important thing people need to learn prior to building a map, and obviously labeling and everything else is extremely important as well. Hopefully once people start watching these tutorials we will finally start to see good invasion maps surfacing throughout the community.
Agreed with Duck, people really need to learn 3 x 3 theory and the simple fact that invasion maps have 2 areas, not a new one for each phase. This is a great idea Oakley, a lot more forgers will find the information here that don't know about THFE. Hopefully the era of uneducated invasion forgers will be soon be over.
I hate to bring this up again, but I reccommend that you revise your use of the word "fact". It's more of an opinion. It's a fact that matchmaking maps have two areas, but it's an opinion that two areas create the best invasion map.
These are some pretty damn good video guys. With the knowledge behind these videos, hopefully we can make some actually good invasion maps before Halo 4 Actually, to play Invasion PROPERLY, never mind optimally, the map must be divided into two. To have legitimate spawning, pathing and transitioning the map must be made up by a phase 1 area, then a 2/3. Anything else is too close or far too disjointed.
Unfortunately, no. All invasion maps with 3 separate areas have distinct issues with at least one of the areas, usually due to lack of budget, bottlenecks, or too extreme of distances. There are no 3 part fire team invasion maps that work, so until one is made the two area rule will be fact. Duck just put it really well: For Invasion to work the way Bungie intended it to work it must have two areas. If you don't want it to play the way they intended then be my guest and build as many areas as you want.
In addition to shoe's argument, when one designs an Invasion with three areas, they are forced to screw up one key aspect: Player Orientation and Environmental Awareness. A map cannot possibly expand twice and keep the players: Aware of where they are Aware of current paths and objectives Aware of current weapon and vehicle spawns What happens, is you end up with players having to play a map 3, 4, or 5 times before they understand where everything is and how to move around properly. The 1 + 2/3 system works so well because players find themselves playing the same area twice in two different phases. And because these phases have different styles (Territories vs CTF), players utilize different routes, strategies, weapons and vehicles to win the game. The use of all these 'things' better the player's knowledge of how the map works. The 3 area logic does not accomplish this.
Boneyard and Spire just so happened to not have areas behind the 2nd area. They were very wide and yet still allowed a transition, because the defender's spawns would be moved further back and the attacker's spawns would be moved further up, so no, it wouldn't be disjointed. Even the MM maps have surviving defenders trekking back to the new objectives- an awkward aspect of any transition that no map can avoid without a teleporter or a really small map. If there were three seperate areas in those maps, you would be saying that 3 areas would be best. You could argue that forgers have limited resources, but Summit, Island Complex and The Hushed Apprentice all have three seperate areas and aesthetics. I know that I typed this before, but the second area of the MM invasion maps are the DMR- vehicle phases and the ones that are use for Invasion slayer and BTB. It seems more likely to me that they developed interesting well rounded main areas for DMRs and vehicles and decided to save time by not creating a third one. Edit: taking 3/2 of the time to get used to a map, if it does take that much more time, is not an argument as to why 2 phase maps are better, just like someone learning 2 invasion maps is not worse than learning one. If weapons and vehicles are placed close to the spawns then spawns should be easy to learn; it would be the different objectives and playstyles that would take time. [br][/br]Edited by merge: The distances would be too extreme? What invasion map have you played where you spawn at the very beginning of the first phase area during the second phase? Or do you mean that the forge world terrain doesn't give enough area to transition? Island complex is a fireteam invasion map.
And Oakley (RivalMass), the maker of Island Complex will be the first to tell you that invasion should be in two areas, not three, he just hadn't really realized that when he made island Complex. It's not an accident or a time-saving scheme that caused all three Bungie invasion maps to be divided into two areas. There is a pattern among all three maps, and the 1+2/3 formula is a big part of it. Otherwise, you're basically building three seperate maps that just happen to be connected. With the 1+2/3 formula, you end up with a first phase area that is later used as a backfield spawn for attackers, and then a second/third phase area where the map expands. The point of invasion is to expand, not just move on and leave areas behind. this is what creates a cohesive invasion experience. Another very important function of the 1+2/3 formula is something that Berb touched on; it prevents players from having to learn three separate areas. As the map expands, you learn the paths of the first area in phase one, and then of the second area in phase two. Then, in phase three, you use the map knowledge you gained in phase two to your advantage, which is how the map culminates. Otherwise, it just moves on twice, and has nothing holding it together, and defeats the purpose of the added weapons/vehicles in phase three which is to make an epic finale. Now, this is just invasion the way Bungie intended it. This isn't to say that you can't create a fun map that doesn't use the 1+2/3 formula, as Summit, Island Complex, and the Hushed Apprentice have shown. This is to say that in order to create what Bungie would consider a true invasion map, you have to follow this formula. This argument is silly. We're not telling you you can't have a three-area map. We are just saying that you can't if you want the map to function as a true Bungie-style invasion map.
For some odd reason, I don't think I would.. So, it's not because of gameplay advantages, it's because Bungie were lazy and wanted to get Reach released... Then how come they kept the formula for Breakpoint, a DLC map?
EDIT: I'm sorry, I was typing my post while the VM suggestion was posted. Oh! Why didn't you guys just say that it's a fact that Bungie-inspired invasion maps have two areas? Btw, the time saving thing isn't so much of a scheme as the fact that it's simply not necessary to create another phase when you have a BTB map, which is not what most forgers try to create when forging an invasion map. It is not true that you are simply creating 3 different maps with 3 different areas- the territories (not the same as regular territories) gametype alone is enough to seperate an invasion map from 3 other obj maps, and then there is the spawning and the fireteam spawning, as well as the different play styles in one round, without, let's say, the four four-minute rounds of other asymmetrical BTB gametypes. Saying that the second phase teaches you so that you can play well in the third phase means that you're designing the map just so that players can have play well a third of their first game. While forge maps may not get as much play as the MM maps, if the map isn't broken it might just get played again such that players learn it even though it itself has no repeated areas. I feel like I wasn't clear with the 3/2 thing: 3/2 the time spent learning accompanies 3/2 the map and 3/2 the experience, so it's a tradeoff, just like learning 2 maps is twice those things.
I see your point here, but Summit is quite honestly the only Invasion map I've ever seen that used 3 area expansion and did it right. Except Meta is a genius and it still took him almost two years to perfect it. Even then people either love or hate Summit because of issues that Berb and Shoe pointed out. However, regarding philosophical terms of fact and opinion, you are right. It is not a fact that 2 area expansion maps are better, but it is a general rule of thumb that they are easier to build and play on because two areas often leave more room for strategics and sandbox play of the map that increases its longevity whereas 3 area maps are more often than not doomed to linear play which may be fun for the first few games, but like any linear campaign you have ever played, it gets stale after a little bit. This is something that even Summit suffers.
Ok well there are a of things to talk about so I will just try and clarify a few things while interjecting my opinion regarding invasion. YOU CAN HAVE MORE THAN TWO AREAS ON YOUR INVASION MAP. No one here believes that you cant have a larger invasion map. Go ahead and make your map as large as possible and see what happens. From experience I can tell you that often a map that is too large will have just as many issues as if you made a map that was way too cramped. You will find, for many reasons, that the happy medium seems to be the 1 +2/3 system. This is due to the nature of Reach's gameplay and the inherent nature of large maps. PLAYER COUNT The max number of players on a map is 16 which tends to favor the medium to large sized maps over the very large. You could try and compensate for this by having a ton of vehicles but that would cause issues with the invasion because you cant capture territories in vehicles and there really inst a way to build a nice map that will accommodate fair and balanced vehicular combat of such a large scale. Assuming that you could have a large scale map that would work well with vehicles then players who chose to be on foot would be essentially useless. The only ones who would be able to help would potentially be troops with snipers and lasers. The utility of the ground infantry would be lost. This is because there is no good transport vehicle in reach and to get the players on foot to the front you would have to use teleporters or mancannons that have their own issues. Believability would be lost and gameplay would become too hectic as drivers rush up to assault a base in a warthog alone and ditch it to continue on foot. WEAPONS AND BALANCE Usually in invasion you want to keep the weapon/vehicle progression up to pace with the expansion of the map. So in the first phase players are all on foot and its all about proper positioning, pushing, and use of precision weapons. The next phase ground vehicles are added and appropriate counter balancing weapons come into play. Here players must make full use of vehicles to overcome a strong defense or push back a blitz attack. In the third phase you get air vehicles and some extra weapons. All this amounts to a steady progression in the options available to players as they incrementally have to be aware of more and more possible threats. By having the map confined to 1 + 2/3 system players are able to grow accustomed to their surroundings much more easily and this helps keep the addition of new weapons and vehicles from becoming overwhelmingly confusing when thrown onto a whole new area of the map. In general by keeping things manageable and simple you allow players to focus on coming up with strategies quickly rather than having them try to figure out the map for the entire game. With this implemented the map gains alot in terms of competitiveness. FLOW This basically incorporates the first two ideas that I touched on. You want your map to play well while it does expand with each phase you need to keep the managed by keeping in mind your intended player count and the way players will react to the map. At this point ill delve a little more into my own experience. I have forged for a while and made 3 invasion maps so far. Each time I learned something new and the map got better. The first map I made was bunker complex. It was a fun map but really didnt have the right invasion set up. My progression was messed up both in the way I introduced vehicles and the way the map progressed. Though gameplay was decent it could never pass the threshold where the game could really be considered competitive. My next map was Island Complex. This map accomplished what I had in my mind to a better degree as it actually incorporated fireteams this time around and had pretty good weapon/vehicle use. The main issue was however the way the map was built. I ended up having the map wrap around the island and the whole thing essentially became divided into three sections. This seemed like a good idea at first but I eneded up fighting against it most of the time while balancing the map. Transitions between phases were awkward (especially 2 to 3) and it gameplay could change drastically based on how that went. Because of the way I had the map, right when the 2nd phase ended spartans had to sprint back to set up in the next area. Many time however the elites could get there before them and accomplish a quick core pull. Gameplay was pretty awkward and it only sometimes felt right when the spartans managed to get set up. Though doing so cost precious time on the counter as everyone had to move to phase 3 rather than just playing the game. My newest map is currently called The Docks and is on version 29. It is a huge co forge project that hopefully will be sent for consideration for matchmaking. The reason I am able to do this is because we abided by the 1 + 2/3 system (and because of all the help I have gotten from other forgers). I could go into much more detail as to why the 1 + 2/3 works best but I think its best to leave it here. Just from my own experience and that of many others who have come to know invasion well, a truly competitive invasion map that works with the reach system relies on a 1 + 2/3 set up.
Great post Oakley. Hopefully this is VERY helpful for those budding Invasion forgers... A quick word on 1+2/3... think of it as 1+2+(1% to 20%). Yeah, I made that up but you get the idea. There are reasons for this but this isn't the place. Whether they think they're "budding" or not. ;-)
Actually, the proper way to look at any invasion map is that it is all just one map and there is a mechanism forged into the map to prevent the Invaders from moving into proximity of the Tier 2 Objectives prematurely. I talk about this and much more in my new mini series of lessons on Invasion forging at Forging Reach. They were written to talk about the WHY behind the forging decisions for Invasion maps to help forgers see better what the goals are that they are trying to work toward. Some times working toward a check list doesn't quite get the whole picture across and you can miss the intent.