Sandbox Blood Gulch Remake

looks good but there is detail needed in the middle to add terrain and for rocks in the middle of the map

 

That is amazing...just what i wanted!. I love how blood gulch is all brown like this one and I think You deserve a 9/10 for creativity and awesomeness

(second post yah woops)

 

Awesome, this is probably the best replica of blood gulch I've seen yet. Sad part is, noone has made a very good remake. The bases feel a little small in comparison to the original one, and there aren't 4 warthogs, and you could've forged some hills into the map, because there is no cover... Try merging next time to make it look neat because merging=downloads most of the times.
3/5 satisfactory.

EDIT: Yo Tsar, you didn't get first post, A Punker did. Also, it's not really creative seeing that a ton of people have attempted at making blood gulch remakes.

 

First off. Do not use screamo music in your videos. It is very distracting and you are showing us a map, not a haunted house. There is a small population of people that like that music. Use something EVERYONE likes, like a very popular or widely accepted song such as techno. I'd say the same thing if it was country music.

Second off, you said you are going for an exact replica. It'd be okay if you were just remaking blood gulch a little differently but this is DEFINITELY not an accurate remake. Maybe the bases are fine, but really, everything in between is totally wrong. I can't really say more than that.

 

I understand that you were going for accuracy here, and by all means it is. However, this should have been posted in the aesthetic map section? Because by the looks of it, it is not playable. You have provided no major cover in the center, and there are 2 scorpions, and 4 warthogs. There isn't even 4 warthogs in the original blood gulch. I recommend for v2, you fix some of the gameplay issues. Also, I like your video, looks like you're pretty good in flash, Im in Web Design 2 ^.^, just learning.

This is your personal opinion and I can tell you that WAY more people like "screamo" (which isn't even a genre), than techno. Lrn2music before bitching about somebody elses video. Also, what is the band in the video? It sounds like a mix of Children of Bodom with something a little more hardcore, I like it ^.^

 

i really like the idea, but i just dont think blood gulch was meant to be for sandbox due to its vast largeness. this map is just too small, and the tanks can just shoot across the level. another thing is the quality, some of the walls i c arent so straight, nice try, 2/5

 

it looks good but for gameplay it seems too open. i think you should add cover

 

I think this map deserves a 4.7/5*.
The map has the structures almost as close they can be from the original.
The only thing i dont like about the map is that the reciever nodes dont look like they belong. I think you should put them upside down and sink them into the map, but not to far. You'll still be teleported on ground, but you just wont see it.

 

Its way to small IMO this looks like its only a quarter of coags actal size. :/ I think it could use some more cover as well.

 

This is a pretty good attempt at a remake. The bases look good, and the cliffs are decent. You really need bigger "hills" in the middle if you want an accurate remake. Also, it would be impossible to make a 100% accurate remake anyway, as the level floor of Sandbox is just too small of an area. You would have to do a re-imagining of it with the bases in the dunes and with the cliffs being replaced by the dunes on the side for a Blood Gulch map to be any fun, imo.

 

This is a really good try to make a replica of it, but like the people above me have said, iyou should have made it to be based on blood gulch and not have been the same thing because it's not. The bases are pretty accurate but it needs hills and just some cover,lol, to make it perfectly playable

 

I'd have to agree that this definitely is too open for a Scorpion. The scorpion may also be too powerful when overviewing the size of this version of Blood Gulch.

 

I've noticed that Halo 2 remakes are a lot more common than Halo:CE ones, and tbh I think there is good reason for this. The game dynamic of Halo 3 is much more similar to that employed in H2 rather than H:CE, H:CE (especially the outside maps like this one) flourished on massive, open lines of sight, whereas H2 and, to a lesser extent but still more closely linked, H3 focused more on mid to short range battles (largely due to the increased focus on precision as a form of power). Now, I think that Coagulation wasn't a great map at all, largely because Blood Gulch revolved around this same principle and thus worked great in Halo 1, but didn't fit so well in Halo 2. So I'd say the best comparison for Blood Gulch in H3 as a working map (after all, a remake is still a map first and foremost, so should work properly within the game dynamic of H3) would be Valhalla.

Valhalla has a lot more verticality to its main terrain than Blood Gulch whilst de-emphasising the high ground dominance of the edge ridges, again because of the shorter range nature of H3. Where Bungie fell short with Coagulation, I'd say they definitely hit the mark with Valhalla.Therefore, whilst I know people are complaining about it being smaller, quite frankly a true Blood Gulch remake would have to be smaller if it wanted to maintain the flatness of the original whilst still working in Halo 3.

But, as others have said, this is a bit too flat in it's main terrain. The central area needs some hills and heights that obscure lines of sight across the whole map. The various building blocks should serve you well here, especially the flatter ones like Huge Blocks and Tall Blocks (again, you don't want there to be too much height to the raises and dips in terrain, that would separate out the areas of the map too much and give too much dominance to the central, hilly positions). Using thinner blocks built up in various heights with smooth ramps up on all sides (there really should be no jumping transitions involved in the central area of the map, you want to maintain that mock-terrain element that emulates smoothly curved, hilly ground). Geomerging these central mock-terrain areas could help you alot in acheiving subtly different heights and lines of sight, so I'd experiment with building various smooth, gradual hill structures then plan out how you want to implement them into the map itself.

Valhalla focused on central high ground, whereas Blood Gulch focused more on a central chasm (albeit not that steep), surrounded on Red and Blue sides by more significant terrain hills. I think you should stick with this if you want to try and recreate Blood Gulch effectively, so I'd personally recommend defining reasonable hilly areas on each side of the map (red and blue, not left and right), then leaving a smallish central dip between these at the height of the normal ground level. Now, you don't want to go mad here, plus it would suck resources insanely, so you should keep the standard ground height for a reasonable portion of the map. But try to make this standard ground level form pathways around the hilly bits you build, rather than forming wide open areas like it does now. These pathway-esaue flat ground bits could link in with the central flat ground dip I mentioned and form the low ground transition around the map, whilst still maintaining the purpose of the more hilly bits in a way which would remain true to the original.

I think the side structures do well also, they fit purpose quite well and remain largely true to the original whilst fitting the H3 mechanic in gameplay terms. But, as put so eloquently in the first episode of Red vs. Blue, Blood Gulch is "just a box-canyon, no way in or out". The central focus in this case is 'box', and that's what the ground level of Sandbox as a canvas is missing. Sure it's contained by the outer limits of near instant death, but the gradual hills surrounding the flat area are a long way from the sheer cliffs which engulfed Blood Gulch so definitively. This is going to be the main concern when remaking Blood Gulch on Sandbox, and as it stands the surrounding sand dunes only serve to detract from this maps faithfulness from the original. You can easily track around these dunes gaining a high ground perspective on the rest of the map, plus you can go and sit behind the side structures in a way not even close to possible in Blood Gulch. Unless you want to box in the entire map (not possible in my mind resource-wise, plus it would make building more in the center pretty much impossible even if it didn't mean stealing materials from what you already have), then you're going to have to work these more gradual edges into the nature of the map. I'd therefore suggest moving the side structures outwards so that they sit more at the edge of the map in real terms, rather than just the edge of the flat building space. Merging will again be a valuable tool here, as you want to keep the side structures defined and flat whilst integrating them into the sand dunes at the edge of the map's playable area. You may also want to not build them so much with height in mind on the higher side of the map, building more outward from this dune than upward to maintain proper height balance between the two side structures. On the flatter side of the map, building the side structure closer to what you have now would be more suitable, try to balance each structure in rough height to each other, and not make them too much higher than the central hilly areas. Also make the one on the flatter side right up against the line of markers in the sand so that you cannot go behind it without being killed by the guardians.

Now, I've basically come in here and told you to drastically remake your map, I'd probably better go ahead and apologise for that, and I am in no way trying to belittle what you have done. The bases are nice and faithful and pretty well built, and again the side structures caught my eye too. But, as far as remakes go, the advice can be much more specific than a user-designed map since there is a milestone to work off in the original map. If you're trying to create a new playspace with inspiration from some classic structures from Halo of old, then I'd say my advice probably isn't so relevant to you. But defining your map as a 'remake' puts a certain amount of emphasis on faithfulness to the original, at least in the senses which will work in the newer environment of Halo 3, and this is how I would personally interpret building a remake of Blood Gulch in these terms. Everything I've said so far is all in terms of map geometry really, but that's the core of a remake (or any map) if you ask me, since it frankly is the map in basic terms. I couldn't really say how the weapons/vehicles/spawning work in terms of a remake because the geometry would need a redesign to give the right basis for faithful recreation of Blood Gulch in these terms (weps/vehicles/spawning again). But I'd personally tend toward saying that 2 Warthogs for each team wouldn't work well in the current set up (and, tbh, how I described the map in my head above as well), and I don't like the Scorpion much in Halo 3 at all. It could possibly work in a more extensive remake as I imagine one to be, but I'd have to reserve judgement on that one.

EDIT: DtL is in fact correct, as is generally the case . What I said above about remake, I should actually have been talking about spiritual successors or re-imaginations of maps, since I talked to much about adapting the principles of Blood Gulch to work in Halo 3. Remake is even more specific than I was giving it credit for being, and does, as DtL says, demand a real attention to detail in recreating the map in the most accurate possible way. I'd say that's why Halo:CE remakes in true terms are so rare, because the massive changes in game mechanic from H:CE to H3 just mean that what worked so well before and brings nostalgic smiles to so many, just falls short of the mark in Halo 3's gameplay environment (again, especially with the outside maps that rely so much on massive lines of sight and open areas along with vastly different implementation and focus on vehicle combat).

 

Sorry to say, but the map is certainly far from Blood Gulch, or Coagulation. You done a decent job at recreating the bases, but as far as the map geometry is concerned, you're far off. I don't think anyone would be able to re-create blood gulch accurately, so it might be best to call it a spiritual successor to Blood Gulch rather than a direct remake.

Good luck on your next project!

 

argg well this is the best BG remake I have seen so far but something no one realizes BUILD IT IN THE DUNES BLOOD GULCH ISN'T FLAT

 

Whilst this would be great for capturing that hilly ground feel of the original, plus saving building materials by having these hills already built for you in the form of the dunes, it would spell disaster for other aspects of the map. As I said above, Blood Gulch NEEDS to be contained, and building it out in the dunes would mean that the actual map was just a collection of structures in a massive, playable expanse. Blocking it off around all the edges would be even more difficult out in the dunes than it would be in this flat build space, and there is no way to create a fully functional barrier (either physical or death barrier) around a map of this size. Gameplay would escape around the edges of the map and ruin the end to end action that, to my mind, defined Blood Gulch as a map.

 

Needs to be more spread out, i suggest a gaurdian blocked map for that,
overall very niecly done awsome bases and the hills on the side are really cool, 7/10

both of you are wrong, some Led Zepplin or Gn'R possibly some Areosmith.

 

I don't freakin care... It's blood gulch. I'm already in love!!! <3 <3 <3
G'job on the remake, i only wish there was an easy way to make terrain and a good mountain range... Anyways It's a pretty good scaled down remake, I love the fact that you were playing blood gulch as you forged, but I'd love it more if you came out with a V2 that had more accurate vehicle placement, fake terrain, and teh active camo/overshield
EDIT: Yes, There were 4 warthogs on the Halo: Combat Evolved for PC/Mac. That's why he put them in is cause he was playing the Mac version of the game, not the xbox