Horizon- Invasion WIP

Hello all, Zero here.

I have spent a good amount of time in the ForgeHub niche of things. Whether it is the competitions, or lobbies hosted on a daily/weekly basis, i'm amazed by the dedication of this community. Im also thankful for those that look past my mistakes, (I do not keep an Xbox kill count @Ascend Hyperion.)

Now with that preamble over with, i'm excited to present to everyone my progress on a map, now known as Horizon. I am not alone in this endeavour, I am joined in this project by @straymorais, he has been a great help helping me craft this experience. Now without further ado, i will speak about Horizon.

To begin, I will speak about selecting a theme. Originally I had wanted to convey an old school feel, reminiscent of the way Invasion worked in Halo: Reach. However, putting a creative twist on it was also one of the priorities. Enter Boneyard, a map many of you may have nostalgia for. Boneyard started out with two objectives, that would have to be fully captured. Each objective was placed higher up, giving defenders an advantage in preventing players from progressing. I have done, very much, the same thing. As it works, (very much), the same way. The creative twist ended up being set in a city environment. Some people who have personally seen the map, and say it reminds them of ODST. While i would love to market the map as such, I will leave it to you to decide.

With the theme selected, and the base gameplay in mind, we set out to create from scratch a true Invasion experience. We started with a Pelican landing pad, copied from something I noticed in the distance:

Spoiler

We built off of that, adding detail as we went. I wanted to convey a little bit of a boardwalk feeling.So we used angular peices, and stairs to make it feel like an industrial park. Keeping the theme of a map, built off the side of a building, in mind, we had some limitations. We are building on a DEV map, Empire, meaning lighting never bakes, and the edges of the map will warp you back to spawn point. The trade out for this is the awesome skybox, and the Low Detail Models. Low Detail Models are the textures you see at a distance from the object. The entire map is made up of these, lessening the chance of framerate moving forward.
I personally like it because it makes the Spartans look a little gritty.

Here are some screenshots to show our progress thus far:

Spoiler

In terms of the first objectives, they are dynamic and show as something to be attacked by the attackers, and to be defended by defenders.

Spoiler

This is alot better then using strongholds, because it allows a whole new world of scripting goodness.

Phase two is still a WIP, as is phase 3. If you have any questions or comments i would love to hear them.
Some eye candy:

Link to gif

And in case you're wondering how the hell i am going to create the progressive gameplay, including progressive spawning, spawn selection, vehicle spawning etc, the great folks at Creative Force have that handled.

 

Actually i have just edited it, waiting for my recording to upload. The second camera actually follows the drop pod this time .

 

That is actually a great request. Time to put my sub par photoshop skills to the test. I will edit the post with an overview soon. Hopefully later today. I can understand where you are coming from.

I'm quite proud of it, however the parachutes that i meticulously included are hardly noticeable because of how fast the pods fall. I have been tweaking the intro since.
One of the things i added was an animation location, so if you play with a full lobby, someone will step out of the drop pod.

As for entering your lobby, I definitely plan on it. I will however polish it as much as i can before entering it, so i can give a great first impression.

 

Thank you for your valued feedback.

 

That's a great idea, i'm not sure however, if the drop pod's geometry supports embedding the door in it, but if it allows, then i see no reason not to make this change.