BASTION Citadel Remake by UberAURORA --UPDATE-- Current version (Ver 3.4). Comparison screenshots reveal on mouse over. NOTE: If you cannot access my Halo 4 File Share, just send me a message on Xbox Live / and I'll reply so you can then access it from my Xbox Live profile; or send a private chat invite / or friend request then cancel it. Current screenshots are from version 3.0. The map has some minor differences in terms of appearance, so I felt it was unnecessary to update the screenshots. Updates Log; Ver 2.0; - Dynamic lighting now works (replaced most of the Station, Corridor pieces with Station, 90's) - Cover points on the second floor now exist (there is only 1 on either side, I run out of budget) - Fusion coils on the second floor now exist (to replace power cores on the original, originally removed due to their explosion actually killing you rather than just taking away your shields) - All extraction cylinders removed (they were for decoration, but in the interest of reducing lag they have now been removed) - Slight cosmetic changes to the furthest back corridors ramp into it (looks quite good, what happened when the corridors were replaced with the 90 pieces to resolve dynamic lighting problem; featured in screenshot 2) - The added wall to the left of the open window on the third screenshot (to somewhat close off that sight line and thus improve gameplay) Ver 2.2; - Curved roof above the second floor changed. Please download the updated version and leave feedback. For me the lag has been substantially reduced, however still present. Lag is still entirely resolved, when scoping in. If someone can identify the source of the lag for me that would be great. I can't figure it out. In playtesting it seems that newer slim Xboxes don't suffer quite as much. Also the lag seems not to get exponentially worse the more players are in the game anymore. Ver 3.0; - Fixed most of framerate lag 80% reduced. (I'm not certain how to fix the other 20%) - Some floors look cosmetically different however they are functionally identical. (Replacing pieces to fix the frame rate lag) - Both cover points that exist in the original now exist in my remake. (Was able to get extra inclines back to accomplish this.) Ver 3.2; - Framerate lag is very marginal now. - The added wall to the left of the open window on the third screenshot no longer exists. (I decided it was unnecessary) The cause of the majority of the framerate lag was due to the floor in the corridor that surrounds the center of the map was made of upside down station pieces. I've now changed them out for other pieces and such lag has been substantially resolved due to this. Please download and test yourselves and comment on your experience. Ver 3.4; - Map made compatible with Extraction. Try it out with Extraction. I've done something interesting with it. Original Thread: Link Bastion is a faithful remake of the Halo 3 map, Citadel. I felt this map didn't get much of a chance considering it was in the very last map pack for Halo 3, that came with Halo 3: ODST and then later on for everyone else. I decided to remake it as its one of my favourite Halo maps, and to give it new life with a new aesthetic. The map is compatible with all Slayer gametypes, Oddball, King of the Hill and Extraction. I've tried to make this as accurate as I can as well as keeping the aesthetic. Things that are different to the original; - Blue accents are now purple (goes with the gold better and is more promident) - Cover blocks and explosives are removed on the second floor (to make it seem larger, explosives can kill very easily in Halo 4 so they were removed.) - 4 initial spawns added for both Red and Blue teams (Halo 3's spawning system didn't incorporate initial spawns) - Hexagonal pieces used in corners of central room (since there is no triangle shaped flat block, I used these instead. Opens up more tactical options.) - The room in screenshot four has been enlarged slightly and the ramp near the center of the image has been moved a bit further in (to block off the sight line somewhat to improve gameplay) Weapons on map replacements; - Suppressor replaces Brute Spiker (seems similar in terms of fire rate and how it fires) - Concussion Rifle replaces Brute Shot (seems like the closest replacement) - Assault Rifle replaces SMG's (was going to go for the SAW but its a lot more powerful than dual wielded SMG's) - All other weapon spawns are the same Center Room: [mouseoverimage=http://i48.tinypic.com/2a8ov94.png]http://i50.tinypic.com/djm.png[/mouseoverimage] Blue Hall: [mouseoverimage=http://i49.tinypic.com/2hqxrw5.png]http://i47.tinypic.com/whzdyd.png[/mouseoverimage] Blue Arch: [mouseoverimage=http://i45.tinypic.com/25im7au.png]http://i45.tinypic.com/2pocyub.png[/mouseoverimage] Blue Courtyard: [mouseoverimage=http://i47.tinypic.com/9u42df.png]http://i46.tinypic.com/2zjb953.png[/mouseoverimage] Blue Balcony: [mouseoverimage=http://i46.tinypic.com/2ppdhcn.png]http://i46.tinypic.com/2z8nv4g.png[/mouseoverimage] Gold Backlot: [mouseoverimage=http://i50.tinypic.com/25k1no1.png]http://i47.tinypic.com/ru49ya.png[/mouseoverimage]
For the most part, I like what I see. However, in the second to last picture, I'm not really liking how those airlocks overlap It's sorta weird and distracting looking. The center looks awesome though.
I took a look at the map ingame, it's spot on and very pleasing in the aesthetic aspect. My only gripe is that there's somewhat of a frame drop of you look across the map in the middle left and the middle right. Otherwise, well done.
I would have used a glass sail there but that piece doesn't exist in Halo 4 Forge. Has anyone tried to make it from the center platform to the second floor by crouch jumping? That is something I really wanted to get right. Yeah I believe that is due to the extraction cylinders. It was worse before I removed some of them, but I didn't find it to be that bad in personal experience. [br][/br]Edited by merge: I removed 4 of the extraction cylinders. Lag is reduced. They are not the entire problem though. I tried removing all the extraction cylinders and it still lags. I think it might be something to do with the dynamic lighting switching off. Around the 7000 budget mark it just stopped rendering when I went into player mode. I thought that this was only a problem on the other two forge environments but apparently it happens on Impact too. The reasoning behind this is it only seems to lag when looking down the longest 2 sight lines in the map. From end to end and the ground floor and from the second floor across to the other side. Interestingly enough, lag is completely resolved if you scope in. Curious, curious indeed.
It looks like you put a lot of work into this looking at you screen shots. Im excited to see such a good competitor to my citidel. Good luck and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Ps btw sceenshot 5 !
Thanks, I hope the judges get ver 3.2 though. It's been optimized so that the framerate lag is as minimal as possible. Good luck to you as well. Also, where you the winner of the last Forgotten Treasures competition? I only ask because the name of that map was HCTF Citadel. I figure there's a connection.
It's pretty nice, I just think that the colours are too bold n brash to fit. Also, it might be worth having a play around with forge pieces to get the same sort of aesthetic. And it's probably too late to mention it now, but why no buildy near the waterfall on ravine?
There is a plethora of reasons why I chose Impact. - I wanted to primarily use blocks for the coloured columns as part of my new aesthetic. - Impact has the most useful new forge pieces, you can use the station pieces upside down to create a floor. Also the central floor caps are useful to replicate windows found in the original. - Erosion's palette is somewhat correct for some of the map, though its primarily silver. Although I was going for a new aesthetic so I decided not to use it. - Ravine is too bright for the kind of map the original was. I did some tests on Ravine and its more correct in terms of lighting on Impact. On Ravine it was either too light or not light enough. - Though I found it out later, Impact is the best for the lighting budget. Had I forged it on one of the other two I would have struggled to get the dynamic lighting to turn on again, if at all. - There is no waterfall on the original so why would I build it on Ravine.
The Needler is facing the wrong direction. This is a terrible remake. You are a terrible person. jk But no srlsy. It looks pretty good, I cant complain to much, you already stated why you didn,t choose ravine, although I feel the lighting would have been better :/
This map is very aesthetically pleasing and close to the original. Though we tried playtesting it and it was completely unplayable due to the excessive use of objects. It's a real shame too because it does look so amazing, but a map has to be playable. Would you be able to reduce the object count and remove some of the heavier weight objects for lighter ones?
Something tells me you have an older version. My advice is to delete all the versions of the map and redownload the current version from my fileshare. It has been optimized quite a bit and is mostly playable. You get some minor lag in certain sightlines but its is vastly improved from version 1.0.
I totally agree, that happened to me, i re downloaded it for updated version and it still used old one or i accidently chose the wrong one that i had, probably older version. But i must say it runs WAYYYYYYY SMOOTHER NOW. Before was very bad like the other guy said but now is much better
The lighting isn't really all that different. All the forge environments have once source of light, what I was pretty annoyed at was, I initially tried having the window side facing the light and have the light shine though like on the original. I was very annoyed when I found out that the whole map needed to be way higher to accomplish this goal. I had already done the whole other side of the map at that point so I wasn't about to raise the entire map, some pieces are not set by co-ordinates and some pieces had fine tuned heights. (If your wondering to yourself how I accomplished this without precision height editing, I found a workaround using magnets.) So I decided to still have windows but face them towards the supernova on Impact. This is another reason I chose Impact. This just involved switching the object colors around but this had other ramifications, the light shining in the roof isn't shining on the correct side as you can see in screenshot 1. Though I don't mind this I just wish you could change where the light source is coming from (height and angle). Although I believe the original has two light sources, one pointed down from above the roof and another for the windowed side.
Got to do a walkthrough, and I noticed that the frame rate does drop in certain areas, mostly when you're in the upper areas looking over at the middle platform. This was while walking around by myself without splitscreen or any other players, so I don't know how much worse it would be with multiple screens and players. If you can possibly remedy the frame rate issue, I think more people will enjoy playing on your map, as kdavis' map doesn't seem to have this problem. That issue aside, I really like this remake. You did a great job on this!
Unfortunately, there is places where I can't actually use other pieces without drastically changing the aesthetic of the map, the reason being there isn't any pieces left in many of the pallettes, I have minimized the framerate lag as much as I can from version 1.0.
Oh, I see. I had a feeling that it might be beyond your control (a flaw/limitation of the game itself)... Hopefully Halo 5 will work well enough on the Xbox 720 to where frame rate issues like this will become a thing of the past. It's just a shame since Halo 3 did not have this problem as far as I can recall. Perhaps the graphics engine just became too bloated for the 360 since then... But once again, great job on your map! And thanks for sharing it with all of us in the community. Looking forward to trying some custom games with it soon.
I will take another look at it soon and see if I can resolve some of the lag. For now for the FT3 competition, this is as good as it gets for now. If I can figure out how to get a incline back and a few walls I could probably completely resolve the lag. It took a lot of time to get the dynamic lighting working again as well as resolving the lag that I have resolved. It just takes some careful tinkering, however that process is VERY time consuming and tedious. I wish I could ask 343i or Certain Affinity exactly what pieces are causing it but alas I can't so I have to use trial and error.
Yes, I understand. Thanks for looking into it. If only 343i could somehow fix their graphics engine to make it a bit leaner (perhaps a title update?)...
--UPDATE-- Map version 3.4 is now available on my fileshare. The only change from the previous version is its now compatible with Extraction. Try it out let me know what you think. I decided to do this on account of Extraction being my favourite new gametype. Have fun!