Hey everyone! The time has come to pull back the curtain and unveil the winners of the November Community Favorites! This past month was filled with fantastic map nominations and all of them deserve some attention, so here is the complete list of all the creations:

Map Nominations:

Guardian by @JoeDannyMan
Leyline by @Portaleer
Crosswalk (Narrows Rmk) by @AngelitoCO
WWF Fire in the Sky by @JoeAct20
Stealin' Your Flags by @RPAL
Trench Battlefield by @Darth Human
The Puzzle Emporium by @Lost Pinecone
MEMENTO by @ArturBloodshot
AMETHYST by @Mart
Spectral by @Garrett757

We are continually blown away by all of your creations and look forward to seeing what’s to come in the future. Without further delay, here are the top three winners of November’s Community Favorites!


VIEW ORIGINAL MAP THREAD

As the map title suggests, Crosswalk is a remake of the classic Halo 3 map, Narrows. The clean yet sophisticated architecture is recreated beautifully and is guaranteed to give you some nostalgic chills while playing on this fantastic recreation. The map plays wonderfully for Halo 5’s gameplay and is a great addition to any lobby, whether it’s for a casual lobby or a sweatshop lobby.


VIEW ORIGINAL MAP THREAD​

Leyline is an asymmetrical Big Team Battle map that is based on Genesis from Halo 5’s campaign. Being rich in detail and having an almost “life-like” aesthetic makes this map stand out among the crowd along with clever implementation of forge objects and beautiful lighting throughout. Along with the gorgeous looks, gameplay provides you with plenty of opportunities to play how you’d like due a good variety of weapons and vehicles. Even if you’re not the biggest fan of BTB, this map is still worth checking out for its wonderful immersion and unique visual characteristics.


VIEW ORIGINAL MAP THREAD​

The community has spoken! The first place spot for the November Community Favorites is..Guardian! To get a better idea at what it took to create this beautiful remake, I interviewed JoeDannyMan, the map creator.



The 0micron: How were you able to rescale your remake so well to the original Guardian from Halo 3?

JoeDannyMan: My method of scaling my Halo 3 remakes is either using the Standard Warthog Unit (SWU) or the Standard Crate Unit (SCU). This means that, in Halo 3, I would place crates or warthogs side by side using forge and measure distances between certain parts of the map. I used the SCU for Guardian and translated the measurements to Halo 5 to get a pretty accurate scale for everything as the crates in Halo 3 and Halo 5 are roughly the same size. My biggest challenge using this method was fitting the crates into small space in Halo 3's forge because of the clunky controls.




The 0micron: How long did it take you from start to finish to complete? What was the hardest part to recreate?

JoeDannyMan: I started my Guardian remake after finishing Ascension and Chill Out in December of 2015. The map took me about a week straight of 4+ hour forge sessions to finish the first version. The scaling and geometry I was pretty proud of, but the lighting and rocks were very bright and washed out. I released the map and gained a lot of feedback which I took to heart.

After textures were added to forge I began brainstorming how I could update the map and make it look closer to the original in terms of textures, mood, and lighting. A big part of what made this possible was a little technique I first used in my Sandbox remake to make the map appear to have no sunlight whatsoever: a ceiling above the map. Basically I went just far enough into the fog above the map so the player couldn't see any objects and placed a gigantic sheet of 256x256 floor pieces to effectively block out the sun on the map. This created an absolute shroud of darkness that gave the map, when combined with a darker green fog and covenant textures, a very faithful recreation of the original's atmosphere. I'm extremely proud of how the final look came out as it was my biggest challenge to nail that dark moodiness that Bungie created on the original Guardian.



The 0micron: Guardian is an iconic and favorited map for many people, what makes this map special to you?

JoeDannyMan: Guardian holds a special place in my heart as the first map I played in Halo 3 when I first jumped into the Basic Training playlist back in 2007. For many people though, it's that quintessential Halo 4v4 map that's just fun to kill your friends on. Taking the lift to sniper tower and raining fire down on the enemies holding it, using the hammer to knock people off the map, running around blasting people with the shotgun - all of these moments are what make Halo so great and are captured by Guardian in the best ways.

I also wanted to give the community a remake that had as much graphical quality put into it as possible. There have been some incredible Guardian remakes in the past and even in Halo 5, and I wanted to throw my hat in the ring and see if I could give the community a map not just plays like the original but looks and feels like it too. This really is my favorite part of Halo 5's forge - the fact that you can make a remade map feel so much like the original.



The 0micron: Do you have any other remakes or projects that you’re working on at the moment?

JoeDannyMan: I've been pretty busy with life lately and haven't been able to start any big projects. I'll be home on break from school soon so I'll definitely be starting some new stuff then. Lately I've been thinking about redoing my Halo 3 Sandbox remake with the new sand terrain coming in the next update. Remaking Sandbox has been something that I've done since Reach, where I remade the entire middle layer of the map using coliseum walls. My current version of the map in Halo 5 uses parallax's terrain with effects to make it look like sand, and is also scaled to the parallax canvas' old size. I'd like to make it closer to the original's size and give it proper sand terrain.

One idea I've also for a future remake is a map called Sentinel from Unreal Tournament. The map was given a gorgeous remake in Halo 3 back in 2010 by Vyctoriouz & The Sir Toppum Hat, and I'd love to give it new life in Halo 5. The idea of tackling the unique architecture of the original is really fun to me and I'd love to see how it plays with Halo 5's movement abilities.

...END TRANSMISSION...​

This concludes the November Community Favorites! Did your favorites win? Which maps do you like the most? We’d love to hear what you think of them! Be sure to check out all the other awesome content on Forgehub as well!

Thanks for tuning in, and be sure to look out for December’s Community Favorites coming soon!

- 0mi