Inspirated; Where Do You Find It?

Anywhere really. Stare something long enough and you'll plot it out, did that with a bookshelf after blankly staring at it for a few minutes(would have been an awful map). I generally don't take entire layouts from things I see but smaller landmarks like the design of a bride formation or something like that. I'll normally have a central point of the map and build around it, tweak and adjust as I go. I'll look at an area in Forge World and think of how that would look if cut off. My current map I'm working on is loosely inspired by a few rooms from Batman: Arkham Asylum. My Halo 3 map Remedy was somewhat inspired by the geometry and ambiance of Bioshock. I once made a map based off a wrestling ring.

Inspirated isn't a word btw. You can be inspired or have inspiration but inspirated isn't anything.

 

Big production films are a good way. like the map im working on now, watched the film 3 times and have some fairly good layout drawings. You have to be reallistic though as you can't get everything to work... so my map is more of a halo interpretation of the atoll. As long as you find a way to keep major landmarks similar I find you can even improve on the already existing ideas!

 

I have no idea really. Sometimes ideas just hit me and I try them out, and sometimes they work and others they don't. Sometimes I'll just play around in forge and a piece or an area of Forgeworld will inspire me.

Of the maps I've done for Reach so far - Speleology was inspired by the cave tunnel and the rock objects, I just thought it would be cool to have a cave map; Magma was inspired by an idea I had to build a volcano on the island (and the map layout itself was basically an afterthought, although I think it came out pretty well and not as a typical map); for Murder Manor I wanted to build a greenhouse, and I liked the proof of concept so much that I ended up drawing up a map on paper to go around it; and Canals of Venus was pretty directly inspired by the guy who showed how to make "boats" with an underwater grid - although I ended up ditching his design feature that made the water still deadly to people on foot, because it would have made the map much harder to travel across, and especially it was making it hard for me to find ways to let people get safely in and out of the vehicles (without also letting those vehicles on to the land portions of the map).

 

Its all about replicating a thought and translating it into reality. whether it is beautiful art piece or an epic race course or maybe a creative mini-game, people create maps to create something that they are thinking about...
For me it is usually situational, meaning, I have a situation(s) that i think would be fun - say, last man standing on the top of a mount in the center of the map with a ray of light over head fending of a swarming horde of zombies - And I create a map where that situation (or those situation) can occur.
Of course that is not the only method, and certainly not the best one. Another one would be to look at everything you learned about halo reaches game play, and think of a map that encourages only the best parts of the game play and discourages the worst.
But ya...the inspiration mostly comes from wanting to see a thought become reality...

 

My imagination is HUGE when building Forge stuff.

 

Most of my inspiration comes from playing various amounts of FPS and what makes a map adaptable and balanced. Normally when I forge I've a vision of what I want to make and I start with a basic foundation. From there, the inspiration is on the spot with trying new things with forge. The main thing I always try to do is make a map easy to learn and very balanced. I've played to many custom forge maps and they are just way to confusing or unbalanced. Those two traits (in my opinion) are what makes or breaks a map.

 

Have you ever been doing anything and then just got hit with a picture in your mind and you HAD to draw it? For me, thats similar to map forging. And actually, that usually only happens when I'm in the middle of forging a map. I get an idea and go with it and as I'm building it I'll add on to it in ways that I think would positively effect the flow of the map

I have a new idea for a map right now that I'll start working on at some point, but honestly I have no idea how I got the idea. I was forging my last map and all of a sudden it hit me to make a multi-level building where on the second floor the two teams can see each other through windows but have to go down some stairs to fight. Sounds good for CTF.

 

Break it down then build it back up. Repeat.

 

I just float round Forge World and plan things out in my mind. From there I'll lay out a sloppy framework, then I'll delete everything and put it back as perfect as I can get it. A lot of the time I'll finish one map and not even release it because the general design helped me think out something better. So it usually takes me a long time to finish a map.
It's also useful to not put too much time into it in one day. I tend to get lazy with it after a while and put in useless stuff because I want to get it done. My better ideas come to me when I'm not even playing.

 

@SecretSchnitzel I haven't seen Pans Labyrinth but I am aware of the film/plot. You are right about production artworks, people making LOTR themed maps could get a lot of help with all the extras on the extended versions of the films! At the moment I am toying with the idea of making a Bleach themed map... Maybe re-create the Soul Society or something!

 

lol should of specified that I meant the Seireitei, focusing on the Senzaikyū and Sōkyoku Hill!

You could collaberate with the guy that just made the pantheon, he seems to have a good eye for making those types of buildings!

 

My inspiration comes from shapes or forms that interest me. I then manipulate them, add pathways, openings, and other floors to give me a map that flows and has unique shapes and aesthetics.

Below is a shape that gave me inspiration for a map that is going to be the first thing I make when I finally get my new xbox (mine broke). The shape simply came from how 4 cubic lightbulb boxes happened to arrange themselves when i put them down on the table.

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Once I had seen this interesting arrangement of shapes I went to Microsoft Word to start creating a Overhead design of a map inspired by this formation. I created the 4 boxes, and decided each would each be a separate room that are all connected through door ways. I decided the blank square in the middle would become a central gravity lift to a floor above which would overlook the 4 bottom rooms. I then decided that the rooms would be connected via an outer elbow pathway as well as the interior door. I made a ramp from the exterior elbows that would go up to floor above and the top of these 4 ramps connected in a pathway that went the entire way round the 4 interior rooms. These then connect to the interior top floor via pathways. Et Voila, I had a map design that looks very promising. From the start, I decided I wanted to make the map have a rotational symmetry of 4 turns (So, turn the map 90 degrees 4 times (to make 360 degrees) and each time it slots into the original perfectly). In the end I decided that with the overlapping exterior walkways and the how there is 4 main interior sections with overlooking walkways, that this map will feel and play like Epitaph from Halo 3 (except with a lil' bit of symmetry ).

[I'm due to release the overhead designs with a broken down step-by-step walkthrough on how I built up the design of the map in a map preview thread within the next week that will also feature a 3D sketch-up of the map which will make it clearer how everything fits together]

If you were to try to generate a map design out of the shape above using the technique I used (simply manipulating parts of it to turn it from a shape into a map), you would probably come up with something completely different! Try it and see what you come up with and we can compare once I have put my full design up.

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I have tried using this manipulating shapes method for other maps aswell. I wanted to create an asymmetrical L-shaped map that supported both symmetrical and asymmetrical objective gametypes as well as a balanced team slayer. The main reason I wanted to try something like this is, pretty much all Bungie maps are asymmetrical yet support symmetrical objective gametypes. If they can do it, I should be able to aswell, and so I tried. Below is the map design I ended up with. Initially I drew it on Microsoft Word again, but I coloured it in on Paint. I also have slightly altered Hand Drawings (which are newer) but I can't be bothered to scan them and upload them to show).

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So I had an L shape, as previously mentioned and started to manipulate it. Firstly I decided that the blue base (attackers in assymetric) will have a low, and small base with multiple entries, much like those found in many maps on Halo CE (I have this base formed perfectly in my head to the exact block, but I can't get it drawn out for some reason). The Defenders Base, will be exactly what it says in the title: It is a defending base, meaning the defenders were already settled in the area, and therefore the base will have a solid design. It is therefore a 3 storey building, but has just the same amount of firepower as attackers base to make things fair. I decided I wanted both an inner path and an outer path. The inner path would be enclosed (like a cave) and only accesible by foot. The central route is for vehicles but has challenging terrain. The slightly longer outer route is more protected and has easier to negotiate terrain. The slightly darker shade of cream in the central path shows the difficult to drive through terrain. I decided to link the defenders base to the inner path with an elbow. As I wanted the base to be symmetrical I also created an outer elbow. The raised centre created from rocks provides cover for infantry as well as a vantage point to both bases, much like Valhalla. The cave also has a raised area which has sight through a opening through to the raised centre. My latest hand drawings also include a wider and more sophisticated cave area as well as an alteration to the outer path.

This map was originally designed for Halo 3 but was postponed til Halo Reach due to my inability to master the Halo 3 forging techniques.

So there's examples of how I was inspired by simple shapes, and transformed them into fully functional map designs. That's how I like to work . And although this is a pretty big wall of text |), it is actually a relatively simple way of designing a map.
P.S. Yea, I like to use Microsoft Word for drawing 2D designs.. It is so much easier for scaling than most free editors like paint. And yea, that makes me strange.

 

A lot of my inspiration comes from other games. Just think of a theme and start to build it Halo style. My imagination also helps, makes my maps good, and gives me some great ideas. Try thinking of stuff other people have done but make it different. Sometimes Forge ideas just come to me, so I get ideas a lot of ways.

 

Just had the idea of Concept art. The Legendary Edition Reach Guide book has around 80 pages of that stuff.

Ask around in the Shoutbox.

Take buildings from various maps and games.

 

I got inspiration from the old CE map called Timberland. I started out making it like in but then it just morphed into something new.

 

Various stuff.

My Cathedral map was actually inspired by the Brace Large piece. When I saw that piece I immediately thought that it would make a perfect buttress for a cathedral.