"LaForge" (A Star Trek level)

This is my big project, or at least my biggest one to date. And interestingly enough, it was the first thing I started experimenting with upon opening up H4's Forge.

I went through and messed with the Impact pieces, and noticed the Station Core piece.

I looked at it, and thought. "that really looks a lot like a Warp Drive on Star Trek". Then the perfect name for a ST-themed Halo 4 level popped in my head... "LaForge"

So this is named in Honor of the Enterprise 1701-D Chief Engineer "Geordi LaForge" who I personally liked a lot as a character on The NExt Generation.

Without further adieu, here is the level! (NOW IN FILESHARE)
(FYI, this is at 10,000 budget ATM. NOT FOR SPLITSCREEN, but seems okay on single player per screen. I may produce a splitscreen version later.)

Name: LaForge
Players: 1-6
Types: FFA Slayer only at the moment.
Gamertag: ExTerrestr1al

Video Walkthrough: Courtesy of Kazeroid's video capture service (THANKS!!)Halo 4 Forge Map | LaForge | Exterrestr1al - YouTube



Main Engineering:

Spoiler

The Turbo-Lift system:

Spoiler

The Main Bridge:

Spoiler

The view from the Captain's chair, as the ship engages in a battle, including launching torpedos at the enemy ship.

The Observation Lounge:

Spoiler

The Captain's Ready-Room:

Spoiler

"Plasma, Earl Grey, HOT!"

Transporter Room:

Spoiler

(Intra-ship and extra-ship transport options)

Away Mission Remote Location

Spoiler

The transporter pad on the right takes you to the following remote location, a Dilithium Mining Facility which is the cause of the skirmish outside.

Armory/Astrometrics Lab:

Spoiler

 

lol, yea there will very likely be some polishing up done on some of the piece alignment/fitment. I'll take a look at the piece you mentioned tonight.

due to budget I had to use a lot of pieces that are naturally at an angle such as Ramp Bridges and Station Ramps, so it was not possible to nudge things perfectly every time.

Sometimes spacing was an issue so I made some consessions on alignment here and there. As I said, some polishing hopefully...

FTR, this is not my first Forge Map, but the first idea I came up w/ and started working on once I got into Halo 4.

I made a few unpublished maps in Reach and have Morpheus (finished), Stone Henge (in preview) and Precipace (published soon) under my belt. All of the forging i've done has gone into this level, however.

And while I appreciate that this is aesthetically pleasing, it will hopefully play fairly well too. That's what I'm aiming for. I just couldn't do it justice without the aesthetics

 

File is now up in fileshare: GT= Exterrestr1al

@ starship, I actually thought briefly about DS9 about something to do later, but never got past the imagining how part! The sheer number of pieces needed to do even this medium-sized map, was daunting. Making it look good took an entire budget, as you can see. But doing it much smaller as aesthetic only might work??

@unriveled, it's playable, but is it or will it perhaps ever play as good as some others which are dedicated to gameplay only? No. But hopefully a little bit of fun factor will compensate.

@MrGreen, that's high praise, thank you. The ship itself on the viewscreen is a capture plate, 2 shotguns and a storm rifle (but they can't be reached). But you can still download anyway

 

@Aussie,

framerate seems okay with 1 player on a screen. I may produce a splitscreen-friendly version later, but it will have to cut a lot of pieces out. Budget doesn't seem to be a concern for framerate. rather, it's how many pieces you have crammed into a small viewable area, or if you leave too large of an area open that is also complex.

The Bridge and the Engineering section bog down pretty bad w/ splitscreen. If/when I do reduce the complexity for splitscreen, I'll likely remove two of the chairs from the bridge, for instance. That is eight block pieces right there! For engineering though, I'm not sure I can tastefully remove things and still have it look more or less the same. I've already removed lots of pieces from that area...

@ Unrivaled, I would be available to test just about any evening this week. Maybe I'll make a list of those interested and send an invite out when people seem to be available.

Long hallways may be a bit of an issue, but I wanted the authentic "Deck corridors" experience of walking around a starship. When using sprint, each hallway takes only a few seconds to traverse, and there are bends and crates etc. to break up LOS a little, but still allow for a firefight down a long corridor.

I would have liked a few more bends or corners. Heck, I would have loved to do more rooms and sections of the ship. But integral pieces such as long block pieces, bridges, ramp bridges etc. get used up quickly when doing hallways.

For Hallways, their evolution was:

1. bridges and ramp bridges - I built a couple hallways coming out of the lifts with just these pieces as floor, ceiling and walls. It became clear that it was aesthetically boring, and that I would run out of those pieces very quickly.

2. Impact pieces only, such as corridors etc. I tried just linkin them up in the obvious way. Looked horrible and you could see out of the ship and tell that you are not actually in a "ship" shaped map. I looked for ways to cover the windows, but that was too costly.

2-b. Same impact pieces but oriented and phased into each other so that the corridors were more box-shaped. Too many station corridors in close proximity & lighting budget began to suffer.

3. Deck system - I then looked for ways to make extensive hallway systems without using as many pieces. I came up with a system of placing Colluseum Walls flat on top of each other with space between. I then created some blockers inside the decks to make the sensation of hallways. I finally abandoned this when I realized that it didn't look very cannon and after consulting some source imagary of the engineering deck and that I could probably do better.

4. Current system - ramp bridges as floors and some ceilings. Large Braces and Walkway covers as walls. They look nice and docorative, and believable as a ship's interrior.

Finally, the main reason why the hallways are the way they are is that I needed to connect the sections that each turbo-lift takes you to by looping it back around to the other side, and there were only enough pieces to just barely do that. A slight bend here and there was all I could afford. Hopefully the few crates and extra block pieces placed there will provide just the rigth amount of cover.

 

thanks unrivaled. that was a VERY first playtest and that is probably why it was sort of rough. But it gave me several ideas of how to tweak things. However, major changes are simply not possible due to piece limitations.

A large ship design requires LOTS of pieces and the only way to do this drastically differently would be to start over completely. I might do that someday and call it something else... who knows?

But yea I will be tweaking spawns, weapons, and teleporters to spread out the battles so they are not only in that one corner

Thanks for the comments.

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Edited by merge:

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new walkthrough video courtesy of Kazeriod's video capture service (THANKS!!)
(**Some weapon placement and teleporter changes since video was made)
Please take a look!
Halo 4 Forge Map | LaForge | Exterrestr1al - YouTube


For those who helped test this in Friendly Fire Customs (FFC) thank you for the feedback. I've not been able to apply all of your suggestions due to budget and lack of pieces available.

Here are a few of the things mentioned and what has been done to address:

Too much activity in the hallways next to the transporter room - This was caused by providing four ways into that area, two hallways and two teleporters via the transporter room. The teleporter going between transporter and engine room is now one way only, taking the player away from the high-traffic area and encouraging activity elsewhere. The 2nd teleporter channel of course takes you to the away mission/remote location on the asteroid. There are no longer any respawn opportunities out there, as the game would prefer to send players to that spawn point due to its vast distance from the battles. Instantly teleporting back to the battle provided too much activity there. More spawns were also added to other locations around the map to increase the chance that players will spawn in other areas.

Confusion about how to operate Turbo-lifts - This was caused by the use of jetpacks leading the player to believe they could fly up rather than jump up the lifts, which will not work. The lifts require the player to jump so that the trait zone can apply a 300% jump height to their motion. This has been fixed by creating a custom GameType named "Star Trek" in my fileshare. This gametype does not allow AA's and forces the use of only energy weapons like in Trek cannon.

Spawn in Amory caused frustration - Spawn point was too close to ackwardly placed railings that caused the player to become stuck. Railings have been relocated slightly and respawn point moved to a safer location. High grav zone and soft kill zone near viewscreen also adjusted to provide player more leeway prior to being warned and restricted by those zones.

Too many weapons - removed some weapons and made changes to weapon lineups. Weapons are also spread out around the map more consistently.

Hallways needed more interconnection - this is not possible without redesigning the entire map which probably won't happen any time soon, if ever. I'll post some more screenshots of the outside of the map so that you can see just how much of a feat it was to make this map connect together and just how limited I was in the amount of space I could used. Budget and piece limitations are also a huge factor.

WHILE THIS MAY NOT BE THE BEST COMPETETIVE MAP >> I really hope you can find some enjoyment in actually playing it, rather than just loading it up to walk around and admire the view!

If anyone is getting a game on this, please invite me or let me know how the game went. Thanks!!

 

sorry I will put one up on fileshare at lunch today (maybe an hour or so from now)

it is being reworked in one particular hallway to connect it to the engineering room, and that will not be in today's shared file, as trying to squeeze that new hallway in with budget and piece count constraints is very difficult.

another change will be that there is no longer an "away mission" area on one of the asteroids, as that ate up budget and provided a default effect of people spawning there too often because of its distance from the battles. then, a player could go through the transporter beam and instantly return to the heavy battle area.

spreading out the battle area is the main thing that is being worked on.

thanks for the interest guys!