Blood Above The Gulch

The Battle of Blood Gulch.

The UNSC Sparta Orbital Defense Platform was called into action above the Blood Gulch mining facility in 2547 in response to a full-scale Covenant invasion force that swept in from the sea intending to harvest the rich spoils paid for with the blood, sweat and tears of the civilian miners stationed there. Her deck was fully loaded with a fleet of Scorpions, enough raw firepower to level a city ...but the enemy knew no fear. Even with the Sparta and her troops stacked against them they still had us outgunned, outnumbered and outclassed, all that remained was for them to reap their harvest and obliterate their enemy ...or so they believed.
But the heavy ordinance carried upon the Sparta's decks was a shield, not a sword, and it was the sword they should have feared. The blade sheathed within the Sparta's hold upon it's descent from high orbit was drawn the very moment that massive vessel once again settled into a stationary orbit, now resting directly overhead of the massed Covenant forces still engaged in the slaughter of the civilians below, and this was when the enemy finally learned fear. A five man team of armored warriors was blasted into the horde from the Sparta like an artillery strike, and then the slaughter began in earnest. These armor clad killing machines fought with a righteous fury that not even the Sangheili could stand against, they knew no fear and they knew no weakness, for these living breathing weapons of war there was only one reason for being, the motto they lived and died by;

Victory or Death.

The only Covenant to survive The Battle of Blood Gulch were those that ran from the armor clad "Demons" sent against them, and this decisive battle in a gulch that had truly lived up to its name was where the legend of the Spartans was born.

(sorry, I got bored so decided to give my map a story



This is my first attempt at mapmaking in halo and I've attempted to create a large scale slayer based map which allows players to choose whatever style of combat they're most comfortable with, be that vehicular, snipers or close quarters, plus gives players willing to find them access to tricks that can prove quite advantageous in combat such as a teleporter jump in the center of the map and multiple routes into the flying fortress that is intended to be the focus of the action. This map is primarily designed to be played as a red vs blue big team slayer map, although it is equally suited to solo slayer so long as you have enough players to fill it. Jet-packs do provide players with an obvious advantage on this level (particularly when used in conjunction with the launch pads, try it from the red or blue airbase launcher's for another exceptionally quick route to the top btw , but it has been specifically designed so as jet-packs are simply a benefit rather than a necessity, thus allowing the benefits of the other armor abilities to shine through in other ways should you choose to use them. The teleporters are all two way and all color coded with the sections they lead to in an attempt to guide new players around as much as was possible. So far I've only played this map split-screen with 3 friends so it's not really been playtested as such since a total of 4 players is nowhere near enough to really test out a map of this size to it's full potential. There are some seriously LONG lines of sight on this map, but I've yet to notice any major lag problems in splitscreen so hopefully the design has overcome the system limitations, although if it has it was pure luck since I knew nothing of the line of sight issue when creating it

p.s. storming the enemy base has never been as much fun as it is on this map, try it and see what I'm talking about (although lets just put it this way, at the speed you'll be moving when you hit their base it's gonna be a real test of shooting skill to hit anyone on the way in, in which case you may end up doing it on the way out, presuming you live that long in a prime enemy spawn point

p.p.s. be sure to read the actual map description for info on the teleporter jump should you wish to try it out, although I'll give you one more hint: "the plank" is blatantly obvious if you actually look for it

Oh, and one last thing, the two way teleporter on the field near the hill, the one without a frame used for the teleporter jump, will teleport whatever goes through it, be it player, scorpion, warthog, ghost, or even falcons and banshees, providing vehicular access to the flying fortress.











OK, in response to the unanimous criticism of my grid by absolutely everyone who saw it I decided to attempt a refit in the hopes it would at least end the grid complaints, hope this is more to everyone's tastes ...and yep, now it's done I have to admit that I agree with the criticisms, the whole thing does look more solid, sturdy and aesthetically pleasing now that the grid is gone. I've also attempted to address the line of sight issue on the grid area that seemed to be drawing complaints from the majority of people who saw it. Please let me know if you consider the refit a success ...or not, as the case may well be

 

thanks for the advice sh1shka606, much appreciated, sorry about the lack of pics, just wasn't sure how to go about it until I read the guide Bloo Jay posted a link to, so many thanks to the both of you.

 

The grid is primarily up there for vehicles since vehicles have full access to this map, including the flying fortress, via a 2 way teleporter unit set out near the hill on the field (the very same teleporter used for the teleporter jump actually) there are 4 rocket launchers available plus 1 spartan laser up top and 13 sniper rifles spread throughout the level, a falcon and a warthog for each team plus a scorpion tank up top for whoever gets to it first, so anyone who gets pwned by the banshee kinda deserves it really, plus theres an awful lot of cover to steer clear of it with, so the banshee isn't likely to be owning anything or anyone on this level ...presuming maverick isn't flying it of course. Oh, and there's multiple routes EVERYWHERE, I made absolutely sure of that. But anyways, I spent the better part of a year on this particular map so should you choose to review it without so much as trying it out then so be it, but such criticism without actually trying it out seems somewhat lacking in both courtesy and decency to me, people who don't try don't know and therefore should not be making criticisms of any sort. Thanks for your time anyways though.

 

I don't know, I found the ghost to be very effective in the topmost base, and with a good gunner and driver the warthog should (in theory since I've never yet had a half decent gunner on there with me) be quite effective up there too, and vehicles are certainly one of the fastest and easiest means of getting to the top, and the scorpion has it's uses both up top and down below, primarily as an anti-aircraft weapon, as do the warthogs, and the ghost is just a great fast attack anti-infantry vehicle ...I did originally have a wraith in place of the scorpion, but it proved useless against the aircraft, just getting raped by a combination of warthog and falcon and there was also an issue with the vehicle teleporter I have in there, the wraith would go down to ground level through it just fine, but when you tried teleporting it back up top it had a tendency to be shot into orbit in a very vicious corkscrew type manouever which was guaranteed to kill both wraith and driver if the driver didn't have a jet-pack, the revenant had the same problem too for that matter (which is odd because the ghost goes up and down it just fine, but I found a lot of physics issues in this game to be kinda odd personally)

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well, it may have been mashed together, but a lot of thought was put into that mashing and it sure wasn't knocked up in a day. Judging a map from 5 screen shots doesn't seem all that great a means of judging maps either, I think if some of you guys doing so actually tried my map out you might be pleasantly surprised, and if not, at least I'd have a definitive critique then, but you can't judge anything from looks alone. As for the snipers, well, this is one hell of a big level and long range should always be an available option on it so I made sure that it would be for the majority of players, although bear in mind, this map is very big and those snipers are spread all around it so locating them may prove harder than it sounds.

 

thanks for the kind words, by far the best I've had on here so far, and the only replacement for the grid, which I feel, needs to be there so as vehicles can both get up top and have a fighting chance when they get there, as in something of an arena to circle around should someone up there have a rocket launcher or the like, is a Colosseum wall, which would blind anyone on the ground to whatever may be going on up there meaning you could take your warthog through the vehicle teleporter only to run head on into the tank which could just wait up there by the teleporter for just such an opportunity, and the wall looks kinda ugly in my mind too, although I actually thought the grid looked pretty decent up there as well as serving a purpose, I mean this is supposed to be a futuristic UNSC flying fortress after all. And from what I've seen of forge so far pretty much every built up map you create ends up looking like a big metal maze, but I've tried to simplify the maze as much as possible by creating clear obvious paths to the next section, although there are some routes in there which are purposefully not so clear so as those who are willing to explore it a bit can use them to their advantage. Personally I don't think any good large scale map is all that much fun to start with, you need to learn every level to get the most from them, and you only learn them by playing them, but (hopefully) if you give the level a decent try out you should find the maze like sections easy enough to navigate. Oh, and I've taken note of the 13 snipers complaint and have currently dropped it to 10, and they only have 12 rounds each, so 2 snipers are required for a full ammo count, leaving 1 sniper with 4 rounds, so it's very unlikely anymore than half the players would be equipped with snipers at any given time, and considering this map is designed to make all weapon options viable in the right sections, with an obvious emphasis on long range outside of the main structure, there's no way I feel I could drop them any lower than an 8 count because with only 2 or 3 snipers available in a 16player game on this level, those two or 3 people could very easily dominate from a good vantage point, of which there are many. Besides, I've only ever played the slayer game types and as such this map is only set up for slayer, if anyone wanted to play CTF on it I guess they'd have to modify the weapons themselves (and place whatever flag points are required, no idea how that one works exactly, as I said, never played it, with the exception of Battlefield conquest games I tend to avoid objective based shooter game types like the plague). Anyways, thank you for your constructive criticism and time, much appreciated.