The latest community update had a small feature on the 343 developed forge map, Orion. Yes, nobody liked the map, but it is tecnhically the first community developed 4 v 4 forge map in MM (or at least soon to be), and was developed by @black picture https://www.halowaypoint.com/en-us/community/blog-posts/campaign-relief ------------------------------------------ For this week's Community Spotlight, our very own Unyshek caught up with Forger Black Picture to talk about his new version of Orion. Yes, you read correctly: Black Picture has boldly taken on the task of updating the map you may remember from the Halo 5 beta and launch period. Our multiplayer team is bringing the new version into our internal playtests, and we gotta say - the updated map looks awesome. Take it away, Uny. Unyshek: Hey Black Picture! It’s a pleasure to have you here to talk about one of your recent Forge projects; updating Orion. We’re very excited to show off what you’ve done with the map and are looking forward to playtesting it within the studio. Before we get started, why did you choose to take this on as a Forge project? Black Picture: Hey John! It’s good to be here! The reason why I decided to give Orion an update is because I’m looking to get into level design, and I thought it would be a great challenge to help improve the playability of the map. It would also help build my art skill set, something I taught myself while doing a co-Forge with Whos Blaze on a map called Goliath - which was a huge help in making this project easier to handle. At first glance, it’s easy to note that you fundamentally changed most of the structures. Can you quick give us a quick rundown of these changes and why you made them? The main reason why I changed most of the structures was for gameplay reasons. After asking multiple friends from Forgehub and Creative Force what their opinion of the map was, I picked up on three main issues with Orion: it was hard to traverse through, Blue base could be spawn trapped, and Red base was too powerful. Many of the changes I made seek to address these issues. Blue base was given a basement and more routes to traverse through. Red base had the stairs shifted over to change the line of sight for the Sniper looking towards blue tower. Cave was changed from a rocky platform to a cement platform to help with clambering into the cave where it used to be awkward to clamber. Those are just a few of the changes to help improve on the map. I also noticed that you chose to update the aesthetics of the map and give it a facelift. The Forerunner door that looks like it is straight out of the Silent Cartographer is one of my favorite additions. How difficult was it for you to change the look of the map while still making it easy for a player to distinguish where they are on the map? It wasn’t too bad, but that was my main concern about this map was to not completely strip the identity of it. There were key points on the map I wanted to keep the same, while also improving on them. The rings in top center are the same, however they now float up and down. Over at Red base cage, I got a construction vibe theme ever since the beta. I also wanted to keep pride rock the same because it is a key visual part of the map. A lot of the visual changes were to help players decipher where they are on the map. You also reverted some areas of the map back to how they were in the Halo 5 Multiplayer Beta. I’m looking at the ramp up from the Sniper Rifle area to Top Middle in particular. Did you bring this back because you felt it created better flow to the map? Yep, it felt like top mid was very awkward to travel to and through. And it felt like the ramp along with making top mid bigger helped with the flow of top mid. Also the ramp helped break up line of sight from the cave to bottom mid. After this, what is going to be your next Forge project? Well, I’ll be taking a small break to take my wife on a trip to Japan for a bit, but once I get back I’m thinking about doing a updated version of Pegasus and then doing an original design with the Creative Force team. Thanks for joining me today! Hey thanks for having me!
This man has put some damn good work into Orion. I'm excited to see how it plays when being consumed by a wider variety of players. And I'm also excited to put the built-in Combat Evolves that we worked on together to use (one for each team of course). Hehehe... Congratz @black picture ! You deserve it man.
Im always a fan of editing existing maps, whether it be dev made forge maps, or just forging onto fully dev-made maps. However would be a shame if this was the only Team Arena forge map we see in the foreseeable feature.
I wish they would have included a few other pictures so we could see more of your sexy improvements to the map. Congrats @black picture!
Agreed, I can't wait until they ask for 4v4s. Many of us have been preparing for the 4v4 task for a while now. Alliance will also be a huge effort in getting a quality list of 4v4s to submit. So I'm excited about that too. *crosses fingers*
Probably about the same as before... absolute shite. The map didn't need a facelift, it needs a massive design overhaul. Tweaking it slightly isn't going to improve on the flaming bag of excrement that is 343's Orion. I half expect them [343] to put the map back in Match Making now, and if that's the case... Black Picture, love you and all dude, but you'll have earned my unbridled hate. 343's Orion needs to stay dead.
I'd like to see some more photos and gameplay from the map itself. Black Picture has it in his file share, right? I'd like to see just how much is changed.