Image from Upside Sounds for the Buku Art and Music festival. About This Thread This map was built to submit for Forge Hub's 2v2 Dust Up contest. It was released on March 28th, so I could submit it. However, I consider the map to be a work in progress still and will try to get one or two better versions out. Buku Defined Buku means roughly "a lot of" in Cajun French. I chose this for the title of my map because I live in South Louisiana where everyone loves their Cajun culture. Perhaps, you could say I put buku effort into this map. Inspiration "Buku" is the first map that I have released for Halo 4. Originally, I began the map with inspiration from Ivory Tower from Halo 2 which one of the best maps in the series in my opinion. This is something I wanted to do since Halo 3. Also, I wanted to make the map seem like it could be in Quake which is something I also wanted to do for a while. Thirdly, I thought back to my favorite contest map which is Crown of Flies. Layout Now it may seem hard to compare Buku with any of the maps that inspired me, but I think that's the best way to deal with inspiration. The map itself mixes elements of asymmetrical,multi-room, and arena style maps. The central chamber is open with an elevated ringlike walkway. On either of the central area, there are "side chambers" that grant access to the lower and upper levels of the center. A fourth chamber connects the other three and has access to a basement style area. The last area is a hallway that connects the main three chambers on the opposite side somewhat similar to Ivory Tower. The layout of the map was carefully crafted to create circular map movement as well and movement between different levels and between the sides and the center. Below are pictures to better illustrate the layout. Weapon Set 1 Sniper Rifle 180s 1 clip 1 Railgun 120s 1 clip (not at start) 1 Sticky Detonators 120 1 clip (not at start) 3 Battle Rifles 30s 2 clips 1 Oversheild 240s 1 Damage boost 240s Pictures Overview of the central chamber View from the bottom View from Sniper Spawn View from the elevated part of Blue Side View from the other side including jump up to center/ Railgun Spawn View from the lift including Sticky Detonator Spawn (on bridge) View from the other side Yellow Side that connects Red and Blue with ramp to center and drop down to basement View of the basement from the bottom of the drop down including Damage Boost Spawn View of the Hall with Sniper Spawn and Oversheild Spawn Special Thanks I would like to thank xSharpshooter94 for being the first person to check it out as well as Black Theorem and Titmar for playing. Please feel free to tell me if something is wrong with the map. I will certainly take it into consideration.
2 pics?... Cmon scope, don't leave me hangin bro. Now I'm forced to dl it instead of judging it off of the pics! Jk, dl'd do sho. I'll get back to ya but you should totally add some pics. *fo sho
Thanks for the post, man. I know this thread sucks, but I was trying to get it up yesterday before the deadline. I'll try to make this thread better ASAP.
Well I checked it out. The pics don't do justice at all. Its way better in person than you could comprehend in the thread. You did a good job of incorporating the darker pieces for wall and the lighter pieces for flooring. I like that but I think that some of the flooring blocks that have the black strips should be flipped. That makes the textures look too busy imo. Other than that, I think you got a solid layout and I would love to get a game on it sometime.
Thanks for the feedback. I agree that it's hard to capture the map with pictures. Also, I apologize to everyone for this awful thread. So I redid the whole thing with a full descriptions and better pictures. I have also began fixing a few things with the map and I'll release version 1.1 soon. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read this thread and this post.
I'm not really familiar with the settings for the 2v2 tourney, so if your weapon/powerup setup is due to those specifications, just ignore the last two paragraphs. I have to echo some of what Zombievillian said... The layout is pretty solid. There are some good movement options. There is good connectivity that is happening on multiple levels. Right now, I feel that there are 2 main areas where you can improve this map. First is aesthetics. Second is weapon/powerup setup. I feel like the map could be cleaned up a little bit with some different piece usage. I also think it would be cool if you could open up the roof in some areas to utilize the lighting effects in this game. It might be an interesting contrast if the center atrium was open roofed, with the outskirts being roofed in. Doing it the other way around may be cool also. My main issue is with the weapon/powerup setup. In my opinion, a 2v2 map should never, ever have 5 power weapons (Snipe, Sticky D, Railgun, OS, DB). I'd personally like to see 2 of those eliminated (my choice would be to eliminate the DB and the Railgun, though it probably doesn't matter too much which ones get eliminated). Another issue is the spawn times of those power items. Right now you have the Sticky D and the Railgun on 120 second timers, and the OS and DB on 240 second timers. This means that every 4 minutes you will have all 4 of those spawning at essentially the same time (I realize that the Sticky D and Railgun are traditionally placed, and that their respawn time will change according to when they are picked up, but they'll still end up spawning at essentially the same time if you have people playing that are familiar with the weapon locations and times, which is very likely to happen in tournament play). This means that every player in the game can potentially secure a power weapon or powerup at exactly the same time, without having to even fight for it. This goes against the whole purpose of placing power weapons and powerups in the first place, which is to force confrontations. Your goal in creating a weapon/powerup setup should be to create frequent confrontations between teams. I've personally found that the most reliable way to do that is to make sure first and foremost that the number of power weapons and powerups is less than the number of players in the game (2v2 should have no more than 3). Then, give each power weapon/powerup a unique spawn time to guarantee that only 1 item is being contested at a time, so that both teams are forced to fight for that item. The Overshield is probably the weakest item, so I would give that the fastest respawn time. The Sticky Detonator is more powerful than the OS, but less powerful than the Sniper, so I would give that a respawn rate between the OS and Sniper times. The Sniper is the strongest item, so I would give that the longest respawn time. 90, 120, and 150 seconds are generally good respawn times. 60, 90, and 120 seconds can work also, but has the drawback of having the 60 second item and the 120 second item spawning at the same time every 2 minutes (which is why I usually prefer the first set of times. Also, 1 more thing... Ordnance drops take 4 seconds to drop, so setting the respawn time, for example, at 120 seconds actually results in that item respawning every 124 seconds. If you want them to respawn every 2 minutes, set the respawn time for 116 seconds. Always set Ordnance drops to respawn 4 seconds faster than you actually want them to respawn.