Another round of testing on Spellbound done. Thanks @Demption, @Merder Smerf and @AgentPaperCraft for hopping in. These games were super enjoyable. The scaling issues I worked on earlier tightened the map up and it played a lot faster. There were still some minor issues though: The sunshafts were obscuring sightlines a bit too much, so I toned down the intensity of those. There were a whole bunch of carney holes that I didn't bother to patch because it's an alpha build, but I've gone ahead and blocked them off to make the testing more representative of the intended gameplay. There were some bad spawns in intersections that I removed, and some superfluos spawns on high areas that I've relocated to the safer bottom areas. I improved the consistency of some clamber areas. I adjusted the arc trajectory of the lift to enable more movement in the atrium. I will be monitoring this very closely to see how it performs. The Grove death pit was a bit misleading, so i'll be looking into making it more obvious. I plan to tighten the scaling of the map up a bit more to improve travel times, especially around the bottom. The middle is really nicely scaled I feel, so it's just a matter of bringing the Grove and Crossroads closer to the Atrium. It's starting to feel very cozy right now and I love seeing that in a map. All of the fun fights are in red reticle range, but there's still some great lengthy sightlines from important positions on the map. Sightlines will be the key to how good this map plays. I haven't done much with the weapon layout yet aside from moving Carbine and Storm Rifle around a few times. Carbine might need to be moved again; even though it's in a good place to counter Beam Rifle, it's also in a good place to pick up more ammo for the players camping Pink. There was a lot of traffic on Pink in these games, which is by design; I would however like to see more encounters in Grove for Slayer. I need to figure out a way to empower that side of the map. Perhaps simply bringing it closer to Beam Rifle will work? I'm not the biggest fan of the Overshield fight either. OS is in the weakest part of the map by design, but it's also kind of an oddly shaped area which doesn't lend itself well to interesting encounters. I'll be keeping an eye on that as well. Worst case scenario, the Beam RIfle gets moved further away from OS and then something else is added in the Grove to triangulate the pick ups. Plasma Caster in the middle of the Atrium plays really well though, and it's a great weapon on this map. I haven't noticed any fundamental flaws with the map's layout at this point. Everything now is just testing and tweaking to see how good the map can play, and then I will clean it up and optimize the piece usage and final art assets for the beta testing. Can't wait to see where it goes next. :3 Also, I ****ing love this part of the testing stage. I'm not wracking my head against major layout changes and I'm not tripping over design. It's just play the map, solve the problems, iterate and then repeat. And most of the issues have been scaling, which I really enjoy adjusting because you start to see the map make sense.
Can you change the color? Can you say cobblestone streets? Happy dance! Now where is that huge flat sheet of grass they gave us in the Halo 2 Anniversary Forge? The one thing I wish they had brought over...
@A 3 Legged Goat I will get a damn game on that map eventually. I hate being so pre-occupied by stuff. But it will all work out in the end and then I will start participating in WAYWO and have stuff to talk about very soon. Also @Doctor Squishy that steel factory map is looking AWESOME!!! Blew my mind. lol... will it be done for the MM deadline?
I have not had a chance to test the layout of the map yet, so I will most likely submit it for the second due date for infection. That should be enough time to test weapon placements and hold out locations for humans versus the infected.
A preview of things coming to Forge in the next update! Can you guys guess whats going on here? EDIT: I see you guys beat me to it... I'm really excited about this, some really incredible stuff coming
Got my 2v2 (4v4?) map at the stage where I feel like it can be shown off. Calling it Ellesmera for now (off the elven capital city from Eragon). Really tried my hand at making an immersive environment this time around as well as incorporate some more interesting than normal natural terrain. (I've been largely inspired to make a good natural-terrain-heavy map since seeing Goat's great job on Ashlands and Spellbound... seriously dude you're ****ing awesome at natural terrain. Currently running an OS, Sniper and Plasma Caster, haven't gotten any games yet, but a preliminary power weapon change I've considered is a lower-energy Sword in place of the Caster or Sniper, but I'm gonna stick with what I've got for now. Something kind of different I tried to incorporate in this map... You can slide up those rings over the near torches up to the dark brown bridge right next to them over the teleporter. Now this is obviously a super powerful position on the map, but there's a timed kill barrier on it so you've only got ten seconds to utilize it. Who knows if it'll be used? I don't, but screw it, it's there if you wanna use it. If anyone cares to download and give it a shot, it's in my bookmarks, completely set up for Slayer only right now. Also if any of you are into trying to break maps, please give it a shot. I've already tried to get the boundaries completed.
Looks great, but you might wanna set the streets to 0 metallic. Having them look shiny just feels wrong.
The ODST streets are really strange to recreate, I checked in the game and they are a mix of matte and metallic. Guess I'll check better! Anyway thank you
Oh I can't wait to splurge on this along with Ashlands and Spellbound. You should send this map through the Alliance man. Get some quality testing on it from the UCC pros.
I can tell you now that player orientation is going to probably be an issue on that. I've got a map with a similar problem for some of the same reasons I could see myself struggling on yours. Try to differentiate some colors and maybe some messing with the matte/metallic level of different pieces. _ In other news, I got a Slayer game on Ellesmera earlier today. Played pretty well in my opinion. Multi pointed out the large building was the only area of the map not getting much play. Might need to redesign the pathing to get in there, or as Erupt suggested, flip the other end of the teleporter so it's in that building instead of on the other platform. Definitely paced pretty well for twos. 4v4 would be way too cramped, but that's okay I designed it with 2v2 in mind. Really want to get some games of Oddball on it sometime soon, think it'll be fun.
Oh yeah I understand, I do that last on my maps. I just build it all as one color to start with. That is a pretty early stage of the map though, I just dont see myself finishing it.
Thanks @Box_Knows, @Doctor Squishy, @Duke of Mearl and @Element for the rigorous testing session. Spellbound is holding up really well at this point. There weren't many issues today, but there are some things I'll be looking into: I increased Beam Rifle spawn from 2 minutes to 3 minutes . This puts OS and Sniper rushes on different intervals and also makes the Sniper come up less often. I want to test this a bit more, but so far I think it plays a bit better. I'll be cleaning up some of the deceiving areas of the map, particularly around the waterfalls, to improve visibility there. I might add an additional weapon to the map. I'm not sure what or where yet, but I agree that it could use another pick up. I'll be adding some additional respawns and shifting some of them around to make them less predictable. I think the Red spawn/Pink connection still needs work. It's the only area on the map that feels off at this point. I don't think anyone complained about the scaling. The pacing varied from game to game. You could play it aggressively with coordinated pushes and flanks, or you could play it passively by sitting back and watching key sightlines. Somebody mentioned that the map had really good flanks and I agree. I'll be keeping an eye on those paths and sightlines to make sure they're controllable and predictable. I think that was it, right? The list is getting smaller!
Not sure if it was my fault but I spawned once and ran forward and fell off the map lol. Probably my fault but I am not 100%. It was by blue I think? Maybe you could have a fuel rod somewhere with like 1x clip? It would be nice to have when playing ball to help defend areas of the map easier while watching your teammate who has the ball. Just an idea. Either way played great.