SHIV SHACK An Attempt To Fix Sword Base 1. An overview of the map There is a map on Halo Reach. A map that is infamous for it's camping-rooms and it's gameplay being squished into one corner. A map that has been around since the Beta and is considered by many to be the quintessential Reach map. If you ever play the Team Slayer or Living Dead playlists, then you will know this map well. They call this map Sword Base, and it is the devil itself. But I suspect I'm being melodramatic. Sword Base is certainly popular, right? It's not actually the worst map on Reach, (which is in fact Cliffhanger by the way; they proved it with Science) although it is certainly let-down by a few specific areas of the map. My theory is, as with most of the maps that shipped with the game, a lot of these problems arise from the map having to work both in multiplayer modes and in campaign missions. I thought I'd try and solve some of these problems which I think Sword Base has, and so Shiv Shack was born. It's very much a work in progress, but I think I've laid enough of it down that I'd like to hear some feedback on what I've done so far, and find out if there's anything glaringly obvious that is either missing or needs fixing. I feel at this point I should add, if there are any other attempts to 'fix' Sword Base around at the moment, I'd love to see them and see if the forgers have highlighted the same problems I have. My Personal Problems with Sword Base: The Yellowy-Green Lift Exit room is far too camp-able Teams often fight across the bridge between the two lift exits on the top level. Those with medium to long range weapons (Sniper, DMR, Needle Rifle) dominate those without, and the bridge becomes almost impossible to cross. This bridge is the only way to cross the level at the top of the map. In Zombie variants, the human players immediately rush to, and camp, both the High Vent area on the top level, and the Red Lift Vent on the bottom level, both of which funnel the zombies towards rooms with only one entrance, but an escape route for humans. Great fun for the humans, not so much for the zombie players. Now here's some pictures of Shiv Shack, amongst which I'm going to explain how I've tried to solve these problems. I'm going to number them so if you want to ask something about the map, you can refer to them easily. Please bear in mind it's not finished 2. An overview from the opposite side Problem 1: Camping of the yellow lift room To solve this problem, I made two small changes. First, I slightly changed the location of the lift, and more noticeably, I changed the direction you emerge from the lift. Secondly, I left out a wall, merging the lift room with the area at the top of the stairs. 3. The new lift exit 4. A shot of the bottom and top of the lift Problem 2: Top level combat centred across a single, hard-to-cross bridge This problem I solved with three very different additions. The first is the most obvious solution to the problem; I added a second bridge to the top level, connecting the High Vent to the opening where the red lift would throw you out on Sword Base (more on this area later). I kept the height variation from the vent in the hope DMR battles from bridge to bridge wouldn't be dull. 5.The new bridge My second solution to this problem you've probably noticed in the pictures so far, I changed the walls and windows on the top level for pillars. This gives lines of sight across the gap from a number of angles, making the top level more dangerous and hopefully forcing gameplay into other areas. That's not to say it's impossible to survive on the top level, I've placed the pillars in such a way that if the gap between two pillars is on one side, on the other is a pillar between two gaps. This prevents a straight line of sight across the gap, instead giving more interesting diagonal ones. In the picture below you can see what happens if you try to fire in a straight line ahead. 6. The pillars The third solution to the bridge problem was to add in these two little balconies between the bridges. I tried to get the distance just right so that jumping between them is impossible, but sprint-jumping the gap is quite easy. If both bridges are being held by the enemy, you can still flank them by jumping across this gap. 7. A sprint jump across the gap. Problem 3: Camping areas in the High Vent and Red Lift Vent Well the first half of this problem was already solved by adding a bridge to the High Vent, so I'll tell you what I've done with the Red Lift Vent at the bottom. For starters, the Red Lift no longer takes you to the top level of the map, as I didn't see that being necessary and just encourages more camping of the top level. Instead, it takes you to the mid-level. Secondly, the lift itself is no longer located at the end of the vent, instead it is found just left of the entrance to the vent. The end of the vent is now the bottom of a drop-down hole right next to the lift exit, to stop camping of this enclosed little space. 8. The new vent 'red lift' room 9. The lift exit and the drop-down hole That concludes the solutions to the problems I had, so here's a few more shots of the map, and for anyone interested, a story about a problem I had with the new yellow lift. True Tales of Yellow Lift Troubles: Spoiler The sharper forgers amongst you might well have noticed that my new yellow lift throws you out facing backwards to the direction you walked in. This is not really very good for gameplay, and anyone else on the top level would have an advantage over you whilst you found your bearings. After considering putting back the wall I had taken out from the top level, I hit on an elegant solution inspired by Verticaus, which features teleporters which drop you onto grav-lifts aimed at a central pillar. I simply placed a teleporter sender behind the lift with a custom area of effect like so: And placed an exit on the grav-lift itself, so that as you approach it you do a simple 180 flip, like so: If you've never played the map before and you're not expecting it, the flip can be a little disorientating. However, by the time you've reached the top of the lift, players should have worked out that they actually haven't teleported any vast distance, and have come to terms with what happened, although a counselling session with coffee and cake will be available for any Spartans who remain upset by their spacial upheaval. Arriving safely and facing the right way: Some of these images have come out a little funny when I uploaded them to imageshack, but I think you can still get the gist. 10. Entrance to the High Vent 11.Inside the High Vent 12. Centre-cover on the floor, housing focus rifle (this piece of cover will be changed, it's neither neat nor functional at the moment) 13. Floor ramp leading up to yellow-lift side mid-level 14. Floor ramp leading to red-lift side mid-level (currently missing walls) 15. View of the yellow lift and floor level, this area will probably be used for spawning 16. View of the red-side mid-level. The glass between pillars makes the area safe from snipers above. 17. A poor quality image showing the red-lift-side top level. The sword currently spawns in the area which would normally be the lift exit on Sword Base, although this is liable to change Thank you reading all this, and if you have, please let me know what you think so far! A lot of areas are simply not finished, and some general cover is missing from 90% of the map. It won't be finished for a few days at least, after which I'll probably see what the Testers Guild makes of it. Thoughts?/Opinions?/(Constructive♥)Criticisms?/Suggestions?
'Problem 1- Sword Base I tried to fix this problem by removing my hard drive, scrubbing it with salt and then having a preist perform the roman catholic exorcism on my reach disk. when that didn't work i began to work on a remake...' For serious I really like the idea of re-imagining a map you despise, people always cite lockout etc. as a map they're inspired by, but i for one think the missteps of professional map designers can be an awesome starting point too. Erm my personal problem with sword base as I've realized is the fact that the different levels feel so disconnected and if my freinds are being attacked on a higher level there often seems to be almost nothing i can do, in stark contrast to say countdown where you actually can fight between levels pretty easily, although top is still dominant. i think freedom of sightline and movement between the top levels can only be a good thing. I also like the move away from sword base being room-based to a more freeform open design with play firmly between seperate sides than between individual cramped spaces like sword base has.
Just when I'm getting tired of Sword Base and all of it's cheat tactics you come up with a perfect solution for all of them. I especially like it how you ma de the red grav-lift take you to the middle floor instead of the top floor and now it makes me wonder why Bungie didn't include this in the first place. The only problem I can see is the lack of cover here and there. Placing a a few crates or something couldn't hurt, otherwise I can only imagine spamming my DMR in other player's faces for dear life. However, I haven't played the map so I'm not entirely sure about this statement. Lastly, I like the little grid you added up top. Kind of adds a visual uniqueness to the map. Of which, again, something I really liked about the original Sword Base. Good luck with the map and I hope to see more soon.
@MUDNUB, Thanks man, I'm trying to make the whole thing feel more open so it's easier to keep an eye on where the combat is happening, or where the enemy players are moving. In Sword Base you just have to assume that the fight is around the lift room at the top and hope that no-one with a power weapon is lurking in any of the mid-level corridors while you try and sprint your way back up to the top. Up to the top, where the power-weapon-enemy-man is waiting. And he kills you. And you spawn at the bottom of the map. And so the cycle begins again, do not pass go, do not collect 200 halo credits. @Dizzyman, Thanks for your kind words! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who's tiring of the same few glitches being used over and over on Sword Base. And don't worry, I'm aware how open everything is at the moment and as soon as I finish tweaking a couple of walls and floors I'm going to move onto the mammoth task of placing just the right ammount of cover to still make it a fun map for DMRs but for automatic weapons to have a chance too.