This is part 2 of a 3 part article, you can find part one here: Part 1 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ C: Yeah and I'm sure that you're also able to give some sort of mini description to give them an idea of what you were going for with certain layouts/designs for the map to still give it a little bit of your own touch. T: Yeah I think in concept at the very beginning stages of making a level it's the level designer's job to convey what they want to make, so you still have that control and that influence, but it might not be exactly what you thought it was going to be because it's up to the artists' interpretations of what it is you're trying to achieve too, You can convey all the ideas that you want to for a map but at the end of the day there's going to be a whole team of really talented artists' who're going to come in and either make what you made look better or interpret it in a different way and just make it just as cool as you thought but in a different way. If that makes sense. C: Yeah that makes perfect sense, it seems like the artists and you kinda have a close-nit kind of work relationship, as I'm sure you guys communicate all the time anytime that they need to make a Geo change they need to make for a specific piece of art or like any changes they could ask you if you could do or vice versa, I guess you communicate with them pretty much constantly about that type of stuff. T: Yeah there's a bit of partnership there too like the Level designer owns their map and they kinda do what they need to do to make sure the gameplay kinda stays the way they were designing it for and the goals they're trying to achieve; but also you have the Art leads on the maps too, to where sometimes there's a bit of giving and taking and compromising between two people to kinda achieve the vision that two people have for the same thing. Sometimes there are examples of, in order to achieve something really cool and artistic, and maybe realistic, there have to just be compromises made between the designer and the artist. Usually, it's for the best, at the end of the day it's up to the designer to just kinda have the level play the way they want it to and make it successful, but it's also their job to make sure the level is being arted adequately and that the other designers and artists are leaving their mark and creative vision on the map too. C: A hundred percent, when it comes to the maps that you have made, so I know you've made Behemoth, Catalyst, Deadlock, and have had some work on Aquarius as well, would you like to shed a light on the process of some of those maps? T: Yeah so I did Behemoth, Deadlock, Catalyst, and Aquarius; so the first 3 (Behemoth, Deadlock, and Catalyst) were all originally my conception, my concept. Aquarius on the other hand was a map I took over from another designer, who had started it, he ended up changing roles in the middle of production and so I kinda took the map under my own wing and worked on it for that, but generally, my process for making a level is scanning through countless amounts of concept art, trying to get inspired and trying to get something that both the game needs, for gameplay and something that game needs visually to help set itself apart from what's already there. So I guess, for Example, Behemoth was actually the first map that I worked on for Infinite, which was also the first Forerunner map for the game's Multiplayer. We needed to get some more Forerunner Halo feeling maps into the game at that point, so that was an exciting process to kinda think about what Forerunner meant to me, which is these kinda giant and iconic monolithic structures, so I kinda took that as a concept as a baseline concept, and started working up from there. We wanted to put it into the desert as well as we didn't have a desert biome map at the time and I wanted to make what feels like a pretty traditional Halo Layout, but inject as much of that classic Halo DNA into it as we could. Which were Gravity Lifts, Man Cannons, Equipment, and the return of Vehicle gameplay. Shotgunning it into that level if you will. C: Vehicles were brand new to the Infinite 4v4 sandbox at the time right? T: Yeah it was the first time since Halo Reach or Halo 3 where the 4v4 sandbox rarely had vehicles anymore, compared to the older titles like Halo 2 and Halo 3 where they'd be more prominent as a fun tool to work with on the map. It was our first chance to bring those back into the forefront of the backbone of general Halo Gameplay. C: That's awesome man! I think for the social setting you were definitely successful in the vehicle elements on the map on Behemoth. Honestly, it's cool to hear that you guys were able to work with the other developers so closely on that map or if a dev switches roles then you're able to finish up their maps for them so that content isn't lost dev time/isn't just gotten rid of. I mean Aquarius is one of my favorite ranked maps to play on in matchmaking, even though it can be one of the hardest to play sometimes (not out of frustration, but out of difficulty to co-operate with randoms haha), depends on team composition I guess haha. T: Yeah I think from the beginning we saw a lot of potential in it, so we all wanted to carry it forward anyway, you know. It wasn't just something that got dumped on my lap, it was something that we all really wanted to keep pushing forward on. C: Definitely, when it comes to Catalyst since that's your most recent released map, what inspired you to make Catalyst, and what're some of your favorite things about the map? T: Yeah, Catalyst originally started from a piece of concept art I was inspired by from the early campaign (That I'm pretty sure was released in the latest Halo Encyclopedia/Artbook) stuff, I'm not sure the specifics of it, but it was this really cool, it was essentially a spartan standing on the middle of a light bridge, in the middle of this crazy long Forerunner tunnel under the ring, and I thought that was super, it had a really cool sense of scale and atmosphere. I really wanted to build off of that. So that was kinda a starting point, and one of the goals too I had was to breathe a little more life into Forerunner in general; I remember a lot of stuff from the past games where like there's like Fireflies and the Quadwings on Guardian, creatures flying outside of the map while the whole thing is kinda growing out of a tree so, early on I kinda wanted to inject waterfalls and flowing water into the level and sentinels flying throughout it, allowing them to use it as like a super-highway to get around places. The art team actually was pretty big on adding the overgrowth, vines, rocks, and moss creeping into the level. So that was pretty sweet. I think we all agreed that the level was looking really amazing and that was a really cool sprinkle to put on top of it (the extra details). So basically it kinda just started off as a long hallway with the light bridge, and platforms around it that would evoke really traditional forerunner geometry, allowing these encounters to kinda bleed in and out of that giant chasm. C: Nice! One of my favorite things about Catalyst and honestly I don't know if it was technically designed for the map from the beginning or if it's just a happy accident but I love how Land Grab plays on it, Land Grab has slowly become one of my favorite hill based modes that we have in Infinite and honestly, I think it plays really great on there. I also like it for Capture the Flag and King of the Hill but of course, we got to play all those over time and it's been nice to have all those cool experiences on there. It's a really great map man! T: Yeah, that's awesome and really good to hear! Land Grab specifically was first prototyped on Catalyst so it was originally and at its core is a Capture the Flag map but Land Grab was first made start to finish on Catalyst so its a pretty cool pair, the team saw a lot of promise in that mode from the beginning and yeah, it's been a good time. C: I mean it definitely has seemed to pay off, I mean I don't think I can speak for a majority of the community or not but uh, it's definitely a great mode and I've really enjoyed it, especially on Catalyst. Hopefully, we'll get more cool modes like that, that will also play well on the map in the future. My next question for you would be: What is the best thing about working on Halo? I believe that you've been working there since around late 2017, because we've been friends since before you started working there, so what's been your favorite thing about working there over the last 5 years? T: It's honestly been a really cool journey, I've been able to work with a lot of really cool and talented people over the time that I've been there, getting a project out the door and watching community members interact with the things that I've made has been amazing. Overall, working on the franchise that helped me get started and has inspired me so much has been the blessing of a lifetime. It's been an awesome journey to help shape the existing and future of the franchise that has shaped so many gamers and Forgers and developers in training, it's just been really awesome! C: That's awesome to hear man, I'm really happy for you man, always have been with how far you've evolved with time and how much great stuff you've done too! It's great to see that it has been a good experience for you, especially that you've now had the experience of hosting/launching your maps to a larger scale/scope, like Behemoth, Catalyst, Deadlock, etc. It's really awesome to see that and I'm really happy for you. T: Thanks man appreciate it! C: When it comes to the first maps that you've made in the past (Forger days not dev days), I think we talked about a coo one you made in the crypt on sandbox at some point, I forget what it was called, I think it was the cave or something? or like....sorry I'm drawing a blank here. T: Schism of light, that was my baby back in Halo 3 haha C: Would you say that that's one of your favorite things that you've worked on as a forger or I guess a better question would just be asking what one of your favorite things you have worked on (as a forger) has been? T: Aw man, it's definitely up there, at the time it was a really big deal because back in those days of Halo 3 objects didn't phase through each other we had to ghost merge glitch made making any map very time consuming, every object on that map was phased with another object because, you know I'm just using blocks and walls and stuff to try and make this natural cave kind of formation, but yeah no it was kind of tucked up of the corners of the rafters of the crypt of Halo 3 Sandbox, there was a cool concept that I took from one of my buddies Urban Myth, he had made this really cool conquest map, but the idea was you just kinda took 2 rocks that represented rocks and there were light fixtures on the map that had light beams coming off them, so we'd just shove those blocks up against them and made it look like light was just pouring into the map, it was just a little neat hack to have lights interact with the map like how we can now, a nice little art direction, but yeah it was pretty cool, I ended up starting to make it for a Halloween contest for ForgeHub back in like 2008, one of the original Hub of the Dead contests. C: yeah I think, granted I didn't go to ForgeHub that much back then because I was like 8 haha, but I went on there a little bit, but whatchamacallit, I definitely remember a lot of the hub of the dead contests, I think they were apart of the BIOC group like they were still apart of ForgeHub but a lot more Infection specific. I think Pa1nts was a part of it at some point. But yea, I remember that honestly, that's quite the throwback. T: Yeah that was the big one for me because at the time you could see it on Bungie.net you could see the performance of the map and how it was doing because the file share system was so integrated with bungie.net so I was like stalking the performance of that thing and it had like, a quarter-million downloads at one point and to me, that was like, insane. C: That's absolutely insane, especially now in comparison, it was really rare to see a quarter-million downloads but it did happen, so it's just insane to think about. It's rare but quite something to witness. T: Yeah I don't remember exactly but I believe at one point it actually went into Bungie favorites, which was a weekly refresh of maps, modes, and screenshots. But I think that was the key to my success haha. But my memory is a little fuzzy on the exact details. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ This was part 2 of a 3 part article, be sure to check out Part 3 here! Part 3