AMBROSIA by Darkprince909 (Still a work in progress. To Do: tighten spawns, weapon timers, increase traffic toward monolith.) Thanks to MultiLockOn and Given to Fly for helping me test the first versions last night, and giving me some very useful feedback. Ambrosia is an asymmetrical arena-style 1v1/2v2 map. Featuring multiple interconnected floors and a beautiful setting, Ambrosia is shaping up to be my best original Forge design. (Whether that actually says anything is up to debate. I'm not usually too good with original designs.) Every path and platform has multiple ways to access it, and there are many ways to outmaneuver your opponent. Weapons 1x Sniper at 60 sec, 0 clips 2x Battle Rifle at 30 sec, 2 clips 2x Carbine at 30 sec, 1 clip 1x Overshield at 90 sec 1x Speed Boost at 75 sec I may test out SMGs or Assault Rifles in the near future before I release the map. If you want to help me test, send me a FR and when I'm on (usually between 6 and 10 PM weeknights, pretty much whenever on weekends) we'll get some games in. Gamertag is Darkprince909.
It's much smaller than it looks. Plus with all of the different routes and the semi-open nature of the map, the TTK is still pretty low.
Ambrosia v1.0 is now on my fileshare. It's not yet ready for a full release, but if people want to jump on it and try it out, let me know what you think (good and bad). Also, if anyone's online right now and wants to help me test, message me.
Like iParanormal says, a lot of changes to Ambrosia were made over the weekend. The map still plays 1v1's, but compared to what those judging the contest likely prefer in their 1v1's, the map is probably a bit too big and sectioned off now. I'll still enter it, of course, but I doubt it'll win anything. I anticipate that this map will play some great 2v2 objective, and might even be able to handle 4v4 team slayer (haven't had a chance to test that one yet). I'll post pictures at some point today, either over lunch or after I get off work. Changes from v1.0: Near-complete overhaul of center structure (top mid had proved to be far too powerful in testing due to being able to jump between both rails and escaping line of sight while still maintaining the power position. Added a tall sloped ceiling along nearly the entire length, with a small extrusion at each end to jump to the other side, and a hole in the ceiling about halfway through to drop down into the temple. Blocked a couple problematic lines of sight by walling off alternating sections in the struts in mid. If I'm not explaining it well, the pictures will be pretty obvious. Added a bit of dancefloor to the outside of the temple structure, allowing for more routes to get the drop on your opponent. Added pathways from the outer edges of the map to mid. Each requires a jump and has different pathways underneath. Removed the monolith and redesigned Blue Base to be more structurally similar to Red Base (although not identical by any means) and integrated it into the rest of the map better. Set up static spawns for all weapons, and added 2 SMGs to the map. They are playing well so far. Pretty effective in several spots, but the BR is still king. Messed with the heights of some of the platforms to introduce more vertical variation into encounters, as that was a somewhat common complaint with the first version. Tightened spawns (all will be continuing to tune them.) At this point, I think only one spawn point might be presenting a problem, and I haven't yet determined if it actually is a problem or just a fluke. Edit: Removed all of the trees inside the actual map, as they were just frustrating where they were placed before (blocking lines of sight, being inconsistent, just general bad feelings). If I can find some spots on the map that will allow trees without interrupting lines of sight or negatively impacting gameplay, I'll add a few back in if framerate will allow it, because they do add a lot of atmosphere to the map. All in all I'm hoping these changes Are for the better, and I'll be putting version 1.1 on my fileshare after a little more testing. Thanks to iParanormal for helping me out a ton last night and suggesting several of these changes (even though I didn't win one game against him the entire night... jerk )
Here's some pics of the latest version: I'll have the map uploaded to my fileshare once this next round of testing takes place.
Nice changes all around. It would be good if you could incorporate more elevation changes on the ground level also.
Depending on how having two or three more grass planes on the map would effect framerate, I might be able to come up with something Interesting to do with the ground floor. I'll try it out after this version gets tested.
Update: As of right now, version 1.1 is playing really well. So much better than the first version. Even better than the version actually a few posts up. I added static spawns for all of the weapons on the map, and that helps the map flow SO MUCH! I played a few rounds last night with the new weapon spawns and there was never a long stretch of "Where the hell is this guy?" like before. Movement gravitated so much more toward the sniper and the powerups than it ever did before and it made the map feel pretty awesome. I do still have a few changes in mind for a v1.2, but I'll release v1.1 later tonight when I get home. For v1.2, I'm planning (actually I already have it built, just need to clean up a little and test) to remove the teleporters and replace that bottom-level movement path across the map with a tunnel through the bottom of the temple. I don't have an overhead of this yet, but I marked them here: The red circles mark where the tunnel entrances are. The green outline is the tunnel walls, and the yellow areas mark where I included some dips in the height of the bottom floor. I added some shallow stone pits that lead into the tunnel, which descends about two blocks total from the height of the grass floor. This area should add a good bit of cover for players spawning on the bottom of the map when a player is up top mid and allow them to survive long enough to get into a decent position to fight back.
Yeah. I'll have you come take a look if it turns out to be a problem. Lines of sight aren't a problem due to the angle of the pathway (You literally cannot see from one side out the other side) and it accomplishes the same thing as the teleporters in roughly the same location, so they shouldn't be too bad. Edit: I guess I should say that this has effectively become a co-forge with iParanormal. He's helped me a lot with the changes from v1.0 to 1.1 (especially the spawns. I'm really bad with spawns)
I recorded a video of the latest version. It's a flythrough of the map while 5 people are playing oddball. Held up really well. One person did say the bottom tunnel felt kinda campy, but after watching the video again, no one really stayed there very long. They were always just passing through, which is what it was intended for.