The Dragon's Tail obstacle course by ak4Oseven and NoYork Greetings ForgeHub, I'm pleased to present the first major Forge project designed by my colleague NoYork and I. This breathtaking, addicting course was heavily inspired by petetheduck's Flaming Ninja Challenge, with features like invisible mazes, and teleporters at the start which take you to checkpoints throughout the level. The required Gametype for the course, also titled The Dragon's Tail, is modeled after the Flaming Ninja Gametype, featuring two classes: - Warrior Starting weapon: Magnum Secondary weapon: Energy Sword (included for visual, aesthetic purposes only) - Pookie Starting weapon: Plasma Pistol In order to officially conquer The Dragon's Tail challenge and receive full bragging rights, the player must choose the "Warrior" class and complete the course without using the jetpack. The "Pookie" class is available for players who just want to have fun and be able to skip ahead to different checkpoints. The recommended amount of players is 1-4. It's possible to run the game with more people, but the obstacles can get quite narrow so it's recommended to play solo or with a small group. There is a Prize Room at the end of the course, where only the fittest dragon slayers will venture into alive. The object of the game is simply to make it to the final Prize Room in one piece - killing other players will result in a negative point. The player begins stranded on a mysterious platform, surrounded by the open sea, and must figure out how to reach the mountain ahead and scale it to the top. With the "Pookie" class, the player is able to fly up to a Falcon landing pad. The Falcon was included so players can freely spectate other players attempting the course. The teleporter to the left of the Falcon will take players to the first checkpoint, which is halfway up the mountain. The teleporter to the right will take the player to the final checkpoint, where they will face the legendary Ghost skyway. As the player scales the mountain, treacherous minefields will cross their path. Leaping past deadly gaps and out-running soft kill zones on the way to the mountaintop, the behemoth Ghost skyway looms in the distance, giving players a glimpse of the journey that lies ahead. A gateway awaits at the peak of the mountain to teleport players to the beginning of the Ghost skyway, the vehicle portion of the course. There is no way to cheat this obstacle. Even if the player is using a jetpack, there is no way to reach the final Prize Room without using the Ghost. Players will find themselves sitting atop one of the tallest, most intimidating ramps that Forge World has ever seen, as they slowly edge their Ghost to the starting line. The key here is: don't boost until the wings of your Ghost have passed the flags. The player will be able to line up the reticule of their Ghost with a cross-hair line floating in the air, to help players stay straight throughout the ramp. Once the wings of a player's Ghost have passed the flags, we recommend holding the boost button during the whole way down. The Ghost platform has been updated to carry two Ghosts instead of one. As players boost down the giant ramp, they'll approach a jagged rock face at blazing speed, only to be launched through a strange portal device right before impact. After the driver is launched through the teleporter, the player will achieve some massive airtime as they fly towards the next series of Ghost ramps and half-pipes. Players are able to shred their way down a series of half-pipes and gaps as they approach the Dragon's Head, where they must boost across a watery gap towards the final Ghost teleporter. Enjoy! We look forward to hearing your comments and feedback. Shout out to ForgeHub for taking the Forge craft to the next level and running such a well-organized community.
If you ask me, there aren't nearly enough obstacle courses around here! Everyone is so caught up on puzzle maps.. I'll download and update this reply when I've had a chance to play it. I'm glad to see the unlocked checkpoints and jetpack/falcons making an appearance! I think it's a good design decision to have these optional casual elements--hardcore players can choose to skip them and have a hardcore experience, casual players can use them and have fun on a map that would otherwise be too difficult for them. UPDATE: Alright, I gave it a try and here are my thoughts: -This may have been what you WANTED, I'm not sure, but I felt lost several times trying to scale the mountain. It wasn't that climbing the mountain wasn't fun when you knew the path, but several times I couldn't find the correct path. Again, it might have been on purpose, but personally I wish there were more clues on where to go next. -I skipped the invisible maze after trying to go 1-5. I took a look at it in Forge and couldn't figure out the pattern you designed. I see the weapons.. I just can't make sense of it. I don't want you to spoil it for anyone reading this post, but if you use this obstacle again, I would suggest making it simpler (my original invisible maze in FNC was also tricky, with a hidden guide and waypoints obscured from view by objects--I had some guys test the map in-progress and they told me they hated it.. I'm glad I simplified it) -Your landmine obstacle used a LOT of your Budget needlessly--you could make it across by jumping on a single antenna. Spending $1,100 on landmines seems like a shame just for one jump, when you could use a hard killzone instead and save that $1,100 for making your obstacle course longer (I could say the same thing for the killzones in the ghost part--if you touch them, you're going to die anyway, since you'd be falling off. You could delete those and save more budget. Just saying, I'd try to be more efficient so you can make it longer ..) -I gave up on the Ghost bit. I couldn't land the first teleporter launch :\ ..I tried and tried, no success. It felt like landing the jump was random luck (not saying it is, just saying it sure felt like I didn't have any control over it). Not trying to be hard on you--these comments are meant to help! Like I said, I think there need to be more obstacle courses around here!
Yo Pete, thanks for your time! It's an honor to have you download and test our course. The FNC has always been setting the bar for creative Forging. NoYork and I had the chance to play the Reach FNC 2 recently and you raised the bar once again man. And as a huge fan of vehicle-based obstacles, your mongoose race-track especially was too sick. We appreciate the constructive feedback. A lot of the obstacles should be much cleaner especially if we're going to draw comparisons to the Flaming Ninja Challenge, and we understand you just want to help us reach that high standard. You're right about those landmines eating up budget as well as parts on the mountain being too unclear. The mountain obstacle was kind of a learning experience for NoYork who is relatively new to Forge. We had a few testers who were able to figure out the invisible maze puzzle (spoiler hint: the biggest covenant weapon = 5, the smallest covenant weapon = 1) but I can definitely see how it would be a bit too ambiguous for many. I think the Ghost kill zones are necessary though. There are many parts on the Ghost track where the driver can fall off and easily survive. It also helps prevent people with the jetpack class from being able to hover down and roam aimlessly around Forge World and keeps them focused on the obstacles. I encourage you to take another stab at the Ghost part sometime. As soon as you launch out of the 1st teleporter, look as far down as you can with your reticule, then line it up straight with the landing ramp, and most of the time it should be a cushiony landing. I've seen some testers get it down to a science, and it feels very rewarding once it's been conquered. Once again though Pete, thanks for stopping by and dropping knowledge!
Thanks, you're too kind You're right--it was a major typo on my part. I meant the ghost killballs. Those killballs are $100 each (I think) and that's what I meant--if you're going to fall into a killball, you're already falling off the ramp and will die anyway. Killzones, however, are free! So you made a good call to put those around and ensure player death (I had to put one beneath my mongoose track in FNC2 for the same reason..and also to ensure the mongeese blew up and respawned--in testing, I often had the player die when they hit the ground but the 'goose only get damaged, so it wouldn't respawn right away)
As soon as I reviewed the images you posted I was instantly reminded of all the "Jumping-Maps" that were created on the Halo 3 map Avalanche. Glad to see you brought it back. As for the map itself, I agree with petetheduck that you might want to invest a bit more of that 500 hours working on efficiency of the map's budget. Oh and petetheduck and ak4Oseven I would suggest the term ...short and sweet!
i am a huge fan of the flaming ninja chalenge (I've almost beat it if you count the teleporters as checkpoints) and it's cool to see another thing like it. I'm looking forward to playing it. Well now that i have played it i can actually review it. Short answer, it is a great, well-crafted jump map. Many jumps had my friends and i dropping our jaws and praying because they looked so impossible. I havn't made it particularly far (not quite on top of the island) but after a 2 hour run i was burned out. The only thing i would ask is to put the teleporters in a place where "warriors" can reach them, because it would be nice to not have to redo everything, but still use the real class. This is extremely challenging, i hope one day i can beat it. Great job.