Exactly what it says on the tin, any advice for forging a BTB map? EDIT: Sorry if it sounds generic but just any general advice would be great.
Interesting question ... I will start and perhaps others can add... Three good paths from one end to the other with some varying of movement style. Try to give players varying ways to move about (rush, stealth, etc) to make it fun for as many as possible. vehicles and anti vehicle weapons (laser). Flanking the center path.. make ways for flanking the enemy's push to make defense less predictable. Cover by natural geometry (buildings, hills). Don't rely on crates. Elevation should vary but not wildly. Being in an elevated position can offer a strong position but it cannot be too strong and should have paths to disarm a player in that position. Bases at each end for red and blue teams. Central power weapon to be rushed at the start and requires map control to contest as secondary objective... can have more than one, but one is a good start for your first map. Orientation .. large structure or asymmetric canvas geometry. Theme and matching structural architecture throughout. Plan to minimize your block count and overall budget. Try to minimize the visual noise by carefully selecting blocks that you can use that don't have lots of contrasting lines.
The ground level of your map should not be flat. If you decide to build on Forge Island, make sure you use rocks and/or blocks to create varying elevations. Infantry should have a fighting chance. Have enough cover so that vehicles can't completely dominate the map. Building paths that can only be used by infantry is often a good idea.
Definitely decide what vehicles you will want to use before you build your map so you can design some paths around that idea.
I was wanting to use a map from a different game and tweak it to make more adaptable for BTB and possibly improve on the developers original design. IMO it's the best map on that game and could proberly be a very good map in Halo too. Here's the map from WOT: http://wiki.worldoftanks.com/images/e/e3/Tundra.jpg I already got a few thoughts in mind: Map Tweaks: Shift the buildings in the upper left of the map towards centre left and leave more water in the buildings original place to make the map more symmetrical. Make the large hill to the right mostly infantry only and possibly provide an alternate route up. Change the bridge at the centre in to two bridges attached to a centre hill. Additions: Bases would be placed opposite each other on either side of the bridge. A Scorpion would be placed in the cluster of buildings. A Banshee would be placed on the large hill A power weapon would be on the bridge (bridges during forge). Snipers would be placed on the smaller hills. There would be warthogs and mongooses for each team. What do you think? I won't be on for a while soon but I will try and get a connection while I am away and have a look.
how the hell would you forge that? considering those grey blocks are buildings, it looks absolutely huge. doesn't look like it would be fun for infantry. would spawning with a sniper be a good idea? it looks necessary on this map if you are on foot. what happens if a team both have the scorpion and the banshee? you can probably have more than 1 power weapon.
@Fauch, I will be scaling it down to make it more suitable for Halo. As for the rest of your points, I will keep them in mind, besides, I was going to make some of the routes on the map inaccessible to the Scorpion, such as the hill and bridge. Each team is going to start with a Standard Warthog and Gauss Warthog, so they can hold their own if need be. Plus, the map should Eventully be small enough with a good amount of cover to allow infantry to stand a chance.
Hey, you're back! As for BTB, I would recommend having intended vehicles in mind and scaling paths according to those vehicles. Also, don't make the map massive to account for sprint (this seems to be a trend..) - it just butchers the ability of players to get around the map without vehicles effectively. A vehicle should be like a sniper rifle - it's great to have one, but the whole team shouldn't need one. Also, beware of your budget, lighting glitches, object counts, etc. because you'll have to go a lot further with each piece in larger maps. Agreed 100% with whoever said don't make the bottom level flat if you're doing the map on Forge Island. IMO Forge Island tends to be difficult to make large maps on because a) they either have flat bottom levels or b)they have white for floors, walls, and ceilings where applicable.
Thanks Spin! As for Forge Island, I'm including water so I'm not actually using the Islands themselves. It's just a Matter of not running out of pieces and budget. I have already started forging the Centre of the map, with a pair of bridges consisting of two 4x4s connected to a central rock pillar big enough for Warthogs to move across. I have built a simple structure at the centre of the pillar which resembles an generator with AA guns. It's simple but I might remove it depending on the budget as it is pretty big. As for bases, I have got a simple Idea for them in mind, but it would involve the bases being at each end of the bridges leading to the rest of the map. They would effectively be gates to the bridges and central hill.
Something that should you should keep in mind for BTB especially is that the overall shape and layout of your map can drastically decrease problems with budget and sightlines before even having to deal with them. It's a theory I've incorporated into some of my BTB maps. If you want, I can go into detail on how I did that with my own forge maps. But for now, let's use Longbow as an example. The elevated part of the map blocks off a lot of the cross-map sightlines. Now you gotta think, that's only one structure. The mountain has so much purpose to the map, yet it doesn't use much of the maps resources. This same concept can easily be applied to forge maps. Example: An elevated plateau made out of colisseum walls in the middle of the map (similar to Longbow.) Blocks off alot of sightlines, creates flow around the structure, creates height variation, creates a control point and/or creates a choke point. And it all can be done using only about 10 walls. I often find that if I pick the right overall shape and layout for the map, I can use a lot more pieces on making the map look interesting. That is of course, after I finish making the map's geometry. So basically, (for me anyway) map geometry is the most important thing in a BTB map. If you don't think too much about geometry early in on building in the map, your gunna have a lot of problems. Like I say, I can explain a bit further what I mean if you don't quite get what I'm saying.
The concept sounds quite interesting. Anyways, if you're using water, make sure that it's obvious that it's shallow - H4's water texture has no depth, and 100 unit deep areas will look the same as .1 unit deep areas. Paints' advice is great too