Ever Green Valley

With that much vegetation, I swear I will eat myself live on camera if this doesn't has framerate issues.















Disclaimer: I had my fingers crossed when I typed that

 

I will be going through this map and giving it 3 reviews, an aesthetic (appreciation of nature/ accurate depiction of it), an artistic, and gameplay. I will tell you if it has frame-rate! and if it doesn't, I will eat my shorts. I am very excited to see all natural maps though it pleases me

 

@BIGbear33slides it does not look like this map is search visible

 

I took a look at a few of your natural maps. I like the concept, natural terrain is one of my favorite things to work on in maps and I love seeing it done well. That said, there were some issues I noticed that all three maps share to some extent:

• Frame Rate - The frame rate tends to drop on all of these maps, especially when near the edges looking inward. This is almost certainly being caused by the vast quantity of trees, bushes, and other bits of animated foliage. While the maps look nice with all of these natural elements, the frame drops are going to harm the overall gameplay experience for most players.

• Soft Cover - This is another problem cause by the foliage. The bushes and trees provide what is called soft cover, geometry that can be shot through but not seen through. This leads to awkward engagements where players cannot quite see who they are fighting, as well as players hiding inside of foliage and camping. Many players find that this takes away from the core Halo experience, especially when used excessively.

• Player Orientation - While the lush, heavily forested aesthetic makes for good screenshots, I found it a little easy to get lost in at times. This was the least prominent issue that the trees caused, but I think it's worth noting that when nearly everything is nature it makes it harder to create a mental map of the space in one's mind.

• Fire - The fire FX causes damage to players around it. I'd recommend switching to the [human; flames & smoke; x-small] fire and putting it deep enough under the pit to not cause damage around it.

• Gravity Lifts - Man Cannons and Gravity Lifts should offer some indication as to which direction they launch the player. I see a few that look like they are pointing up but actually launch the player sideways.

• Kill Boundaries - There are a lot of soft kill boundaries intersecting with the play space. While this does keep players from camping in the bushes it is frustrating to be constantly bumping into kill timers while just walking around the middle of the map. A better solution is to just cut down on campable bushes.

• Weapon Positions - There are a lot of oddly placed weapons on the map: weapons stuck in trees, weapons wedged in the ground at odd angles, and weapons in hard to notice locations. Try to make sure all weapons are visible and are in positions that logically make sense. Weapons also should spawn in locations where they can be used but not in positions that will dominate the rest of the map. For example, putting a sniper in a sniper tower that has views over the whole map will probably make it too powerful. Putting it at a lower position allows it to still be used but prompts players to seek out better locations to snipe from after they pick it up. High level REQ weapons are also usually overpowered in arena Halo, but this is something that is best left up to individual preference. See how it plays before ruling it out.

 

'sal good, I'm just trying to offer a more gameplay oriented perspective. It's definitely still a cool looking set of maps.