UM was only glitched in terms of the geo-merging that took place... which I don't think has an effect on performance. But I believe it was damn close to the item limit and sitting right around 0 budget. That aside, I hate this map, because it's competing with Hawaii Hustle for BTB Forgetacular glory. That aside, this map is awesome. I wish you guys had twice to budget to play with to really make the details shine. But, you were surgical in your use of objects, and it came out pretty damn well. I haven't played any full-sized games on this, but I reckon if you turned on invulnerable vehicles and got rid of the falcon, I could have Halo-CE-Blood Gulch levels of fun on it. Nice job, guys.
yea i know, i was referring to the geo-merging =) so far, the map has performed fine in customs, with no visual or performance lag that ive noticed. im hoping that it doesnt fail Bungie's "rigorous stress tests" or something... that would suck. i really wish we had twice the budget to play with as well. ****, even like 2000 more would have been really convenient. i really wanted to spice up that central building. i wanted the central building to rise into the sky, similar to structures on maps like Relic and Tempest, except more human instead of Forerunner. then i wouldt have had to put a soft kill on its roof, because it would have been ridiculously tall. but yes, we had to compromise. haha, we really were "surgical" with object use. i'd say that a good 20% of the forging time on this map was spent with object economy. anyways, glad you liked it. ill have to try that invulnerable vehicle idea some time.
I've seen many maps that use the space between Montana and Alaska, but none of them have quite accomplished what this map has. This is a great area for a bridge (which is why so many other maps have one), but Titmar and Vorpal Saint built MORE than just a bridge here. They built a whole freaking structure. I always thought it looked like Waterworks from Halo 2, and I felt it played somewhat similarly as well. If you are looking for an awesome big team map, then you have come to the right place. (BONUS: Rocket Race is really fun on this as well!)
I haven't played on this yet, as it's tough to get a large party together sometimes, but I've done a thorough forgethrough. I'm a BTB fan, and I'm really looking forward to a game now that I've taken the tour. The most imperssive thing about Megalodon, besides the epic extension bridge, is the integration of Forgeworld's natural terrain into the design. The map is very large, and spreading a budget over a space that large can be tough. You managed to build out the two areas very nicely, without having it look sparse. Vehicle and weapon placement look solid too. Great collaborative forge!
cool, i will accept it when i get back to my xbox in a couple days. i've taken notice of a couple of your BTB maps as well, im looking forward to giving them a playthrough. you can send me an FR if you'd like, and hopefully we'll manage to get a party together. i think getting a BTB party together may get slightly easier once Reach is populated with more good BTB maps. and im very glad for your comment about the integration of the design, that has become my main goal in forge lately. ive become obsessed with BTB layouts.
Titmar and Vorpal this map is a beast upon beasts of maps for big team. You both have out done yourselves by playing god amongst men in creating one of the best BTB style maps I had the pleasure of playing on. Words can not describe my astonishment of how fun this map is. Game play and aesthetics are so crsip, its like biting into a fresh apple from the tree of forbidden fruit, and that sirs is just what this map is. A freshness so forbidden that no one has dared to accomplish such great feats in a map. The play style so wonderfully crafted a single tear of pleasure dropped from my cheek as I basked in the ambiance of such a fine map. Not only do you recommend to have DMR starts you, DEMAND it. And that says a lot about how much effort and time you guys have spent on your map. The demanding of a DMR says "Hey I'm a fun map and an excellent play style, no bullshit here." I like that. Gives the map character. I love everything about this map and its aesthetics, from the bases to the bridge, to the side along the Cliff, and its openness for vehicles. Overall a great map and very very much worthy for matchmaking. This is one map I hope to see in the BTB playlist very soon. May god have mercy on bungie if they dont. And with that I leave you my dear Titmar and Vorpal with the TL;DR version of my post. YouTube - South Park - Nice.avi
This needs to become a TGIF staple, no doubt. I remember seeing this map in it's really early stages (before Vorpal came on board), and even then I had no idea what this could become. You guys really pulled off something special, and I hope this gets some BTB love from Bungie. The bridge is one of the coolest pieces I've seen in Reach yet, and the map is just a joy to play on (which is really saying something, because BTB in Reach is extremely lacking IMO). It really speaks to a well-crafted design when a sniper rifle on a relatively open map like this doesn't just dominate. It's a wonderful balance of infantry and vehicles, and I couldn't recommend this map more to anyone who's looking to log in some Big Team Battle. Great job guys, I'm really happy to finally see Megalodon see the light of day. orly? One more reason to play this again as soon as possible.
Same here. Halo 3 really limited what I wanted to do (build big!), and now with reach out I can really push my map designs to the limits. Perhaps one day we should co-forge something (warning, I'm quite a stickler for geometry perfection). Anyways, I took a look through your map, and holy crap it is very large. You definitely need a vehicle to traverse the entire span in a reasonable amount of time, which I'm sure ate up a large part of your budget (why do warthogs cost 150, but falcons only cost 100???). Anyways you did a good job limiting lines of sight in the map, so you can't see the entire map from any one point. The weapons seemed placed appropriately as well. My only concern is how big the map actually is. Now I haven't played a match yet (and I know you recommend it only for the largest of parties), but someone unable to find a vehicle may become frustrated being stranded so far from battle. That's just an assumption I'm making without playing though, so take it with a grain of salt. =P My only beef with the forging is that I did find some Z-fighting on the map which I downloaded from your Forgetacular entry. I know there was some subtle stuff going on in the bridge that only someone as neurotic as myself would notice, as well as somewhere near one of the ends of the map (I didn't spend enough time to familiarize myself). That might become an issue when it comes to judging unfortunately, as I remember Shishka talking about it when he was accepting map entries for Halo 3. Other than that the map is quite cleanly forged. I'm looking to playing some matches with you on this beast of a map. Good luck to you and hopefully we hear the results soon enough!
Megalodon Enjoyment Megalodon is a big team battle map that makes use of the Alaska and Montana regions of Forge World to create a battle scene of enormous proportions. In fact, enormous is almost an understatement. That being said, vehicles are indeed a necessity on this map and trying to go without one is sure to lead to death. Now while there were some “foot-friendly” areas to the map most of the map is plagued by wide open spaces that make treks by foot dreary and often times, fatal. This isn’t to say that this big team wonder isn’t equipped with a plethora of vehicles; because it is. Vehicular combat presents a whole new perspective to Megalodon that the habitual foot trekker just wouldn’t see. Some of the most interesting vehicular battles take place on this map, especially in the skies and on the central bridge structure. Objective games play wondrously, and BTB Slayer is not bad either. Snipers at the bases and power weapons peppered about do help the occasional guy left without a seat to hop into fend for himself at least for a while perhaps in protecting a base from oncoming attackers, but the mostly outdoor bases are kind of a turn off to trying to protect the base directly when Warthogs and Tanks begin to come over the horizon. Whether a player enjoyed this map or not depended mostly upon how dominant they were with a vehicle. If they could not stay in one, and were constantly forced on foot, then there were complaints about how long it took to get places, but if the players did manage to stay in their vehicle and engage the enemy regularly they for the most part had a blast playing this map. Making vehicles invulnerable could have relieved this issue a bit, but then you take the risk of the opposing team dominating all the vehicles the whole game which isn’t fun either. Either way, Megalodon is definitely a fun vehicle oriented BTB map that a lot of effort was put in to, and the end result definitely shows. Balance Each side of Megalodon is made up of a main base, something of a mini base in between it, and the central structure/bridge which makes for a balanced approach to the center piece of the map and something of a relief for foot soldiers trying to make their way to the center and then onward. These bases are not identical which adds originality to each side and also helps identify your position on the map. Structurally, there were no areas of the map that possessed a clear advantage over another that wasn’t done away with by a kill barrier or a Wraith mortar to the face. Weapons wise, almost all of the same weapons that were on blue side were on red side as well, and whatever wasn’t were evened out by something else of equal caliber I.e. Needle Rifle for DMR. At the center of the map are all the weapons that aren’t on either side and are usually fought for at those areas. Rockets, Needles, and a nice shiny Falcon all sit at the center of the map, and many a skirmish is fought to get to them. Whoever controls the Falcon has a semi-distinct advantage over the almost flightless rest of the players but the barrier for the proverbial ceiling isn’t very high and if a jet-pack loadout is present coupled with a Plasma Pistol or two then the Falcon can be made short work of. Spawns, for lack of a better term, were flawless. In fact not a single session of this map did anyone ever complain about being spawn killed or spawning in front of the enemy. If there was an enemy at the main base it spawned that player at their mini-base and it just seemed to work so well it was almost professional. Flawless is definitely a fluffy word, especially when it comes to devising one of the most difficult aspects of forging, but not another word could more perfectly describe something better than Bungie has done itself in Reach thus far. Durability Being an extremely large, wide open play space it is hard to test every nook and cranny of Megalodon to find a place that perhaps a safe/kill boundary doesn’t cover fully, but had there been, it was not usefully taken advantage of. This stage has many structures that are tall and short alike, and all of the buildings that it is clear that players are not intended to traverse on top of them there were soft kill barriers. Even the questionable rock wall on blue side had a nice kill barrier that had no holes that could be taken advantage of. In fact, as mentioned before, there really isn’t a distinct vantage point of Megalodon that can be exploited to ensure a cheap win which makes the map more fun for all to play and (at least in my eyes) solid. Aesthetics Even Forge World has its limitations. These limitations definitely show when trying to design a BTB map especially of this caliber, but as a golden rule of forging: Gameplay > Aesthetics. This isn’t to say that there is not any aesthetic prowess in Megalodon. The center structure/bridge is definitely impressive and takes the center stage as this platform’s signature piece, but where there was excellence in one area there was a lack of excellence in other areas. Much of the in between areas amongst the bases and mini-bases is very open and as a result very dull, and even as over-shadowing as the center structure is, Wall Coliseum just is not that pretty, but it does do well for creating some ridiculously large buildings as was done here. This map was stretched to its limits so nothing could possibly be done to improve the aesthetics anymore and had the creator had more to work with then maybe some of the dull could have been improved upon, but alas, apparently ten thousand dollars and an enormous amount of objects is not even enough. However, this map is a little bit too big in some instances and maybe going a little less extravagant could have helped in designing the aesthetic portion of this map. On a side note, the circle of satellite antennas feels really out of place. Originality Megalodon, a large map with consistent action moving towards the middle of the map, feels a lot like Waterworks from Halo 2 when it’s played. Vehicular dominated gameplay is very reminiscent of Blood Gulch and all its successors. Symmetrical set Wraiths is definitely not something that is seen often in many maps on Reach and it is implemented fairly well too. Many times has a bridge been built between the gap of Alaska and Montana, but very few quite as phenomenal as the one on this map. Seldom is a Falcon used as a power weapon of sorts instead of simply being given to both teams at the beginning. All the aforementioned things are elements of the map that, be they original or not, stood out as definitive of Megalodon. Those coupled with the fact that nothing new or incredible in terms of gameplay was brought to the table gives originality a decent score, but not the best it could be. [floatleft]Enjoyment Balance Durability Aesthetics Originality[/floatleft]6/10 10/10 10/10 6/10 5/10 [floatleft]Average Score [/floatleft]7.4/10 As a lot of the prejudices of this review had to come from a section (Originality) that can be unfair to a particularly good map I find it would do justice to raise the final score of Megalodon slightly. Final Score Understanding the Review Hub's Ratings
Thanks for the great review man. I'm still hoping that Megalodon garners slightly more attention than it has now, hopefully that review will help that along. I'm glad that you detailed the emphasis on vehicles in it. Many people have commented on the large space, and it being difficult or time-consuming to traverse without wheels. Like you said though, its really on a player to player, and situational basis, how that actually works out in each game. The other thing related to that that i want to point out about this map, and sometimes every BTB map in general... dont forget that every weapon you have is an anti-vehicle weapon. 8 DMRs take out a Wraith pretty fast. Anyway, thanks again for the good comments.
Having played this sometime ago in a test (as I remember, it was with a bloke called TEETMARE...) and again more recently, I can attest to the size of the map. However, I found that the map's gameplay focused almost entirely on vehicles, which I believe was by design. For vehicle oriented players, it is hugely entertaining, yet the gameplay for foot players is lacking. I know this for a fact, as I'm not a vehicle oriented player due to a lack of driving skill and an inability to get into vehicles due to a sticky right bumper skill (controller set Recon). Having such a gross unbalance between vehicle and foot players can at times be frustrating. Having said that, I do not by any means say that the map itself is unbalanced, simply the two broad forms of gameplay that Halo offers are at two opposite extremes. Aside from that, there was no other concern I had. I wish you the best of luck towards getting your map into matchmaking, and congratulate you on a map (mostly) well done.
I did a fly through of the map (as well as a few drive-throughs on the big half-pipe like bridge) and thought the map looked very good! All I can see that I didn't like, besides horendous framerate issues, was the fact that as the map spread out from the middle it became less original, going from intrecate structures on the bridge to 1 or 2 piece bases at the far ends. I haven't tested it yet, but so far I would give it a 7/10, which is pretty good for a map I haven't even played on. Keep up the good work!