Phalanx

I see that you used a lot of the station corridors. I had the same problem on my map, and there are very simple, and great ways of fixing it. The station corridor piece takes up $100 of the shadow budget, but the station ramp piece takes up only $25, and it you use the bottom of it, it covers up a larger area. The ramp piece is set up on and angle of 25 degrees, so put it to that to get it completely flat. If you are still having lighting problems, try switching some of them to a station 90 degree. That piece only uses up 1$ of the shadow budget. also, get rid of pieces like struts, which also take up a lot of the shadow budget. Hope this helps.

 

I love the urban map feel, and I'm interested in seeing the mantis/scorpion combat. One thing that I dislike that nobody has mentioned is the low ceiling height in 4:45 in the video. I know people sometimes use the low ceilings to limit "dancing room" and deter players from going places, but I don't think that is what you were going for. You can probably easily fix that by raising the ceiling piece a bit.

 

well after 2 games of 29-2 and 28-3 we realize the tank destroys the mantis at the distances in this level

 

Yeah! lol well that is what the testing is for!! Also Noticed that there were alot of power weapons being on the map at once even when no one had ordinance drops. Probably need to take some of the power weapons out of random drops.

 

Hey, so after playing this map around 4-5 times here is some feedback from my experience:

Give power weapons a larger spawn timer, because you get personal ordinance there just ends up with way too many power weapons. I think double the timers for all power weapons would be a good idea, just because infinity slayer brings so many more into the game, not really a problem with your map but the gametype i think.

The map seems to play really well, i like the layout and middle area, but i feel as if the bases are a little messy. Your aesthetics are not quite as nice as they were on strongside and bastism, you should consider going through and de-cluttering the red and blue main bases a little. I also noticed some walkways sticking up a little making bumps as you walk, if possible making the areas flat would be nice. Best example i can think of is in the middle where the upside down corridor pieces meet the upside down bridges.

There was some frame rate issues i was experiencing which i think should be fixed before anything else. Overall I enjoyed the map, thought it played well, but was a little disappointed with the aesthetics after playing your previous two maps.

One last thing... I think you should try stick with one map, and work on it until it becomes something amazing, you do what i do, just make a lot of maps really quickly then abandon them. Only difference is I don't post my maps unless i am really happy with them. I think this map could become really popular if you just stay focused on it for a while.

 

Some help: haven't played it yet but I hope you will still use some of these suggestions.

1. I'm pretty sure the station incline is 23.5 degrees and not 25. Whatever it is, you can always get it perfectly flat by setting it to fixed and pushing it against a flat object.

2. Mantis/Scorpion balance. While you say that the scorpion would beat the mantis at close range, the scorpion, ESPECIALLY on this map has an easy time at long range as well. Because the only route from mantis spawn to scorpion spawn is one long open path, nothing stops the scorpion from sitting at one end of the path and effectively "sniping"the other team with explosives. The scorpion really only works on maps with short lines of sight where the ability to kill effectively from long range is restricted. - Thats why they took it out of hemmorhage.

3. You also have to be sure that they are cross-balances against all other vehicles. While you may be able to find a way to balance the two in a one on one fight, the scorpion, with its insta-kill on all other vehicles, will still no overpowered against the full rocket barrage + a few seconds of chain gun to blow up a warthog alone.

My biggest suggestions would be to create a back pathway that goes from the base to the enemy's rocket hog spawn, allowing some choice of maneuvering, as well as a back route to escape from having to fight the other heavy vehicle. They should have the option of playing it safe and not risking death if they so please. Other than that, switching the scorpion to a mantis is probably a good idea. Your map is symmetrical in all respects except for one, which will be frustrating for many players, especially because it is meant to played symmetrically, as well. Whatever you end up doing, I would suggest you add some sort of line of sight blocker in the center so that either A: the scorpion cannot "snipe with explosives", easily overpowering the mantis, or B: the two mantises don"t have awkward out-of-comforable-range battles like you see from time to time on Valhalla, and you will se almost certainly every time on yours.

Anyway, I hope you liked my suggestions, and I am interested to see what you will make of them.

 

Good to hear.

I didn't mean to say your map played like Valhalla, I just pointed out that you would get awkward long range fights with long range sight lines, as you can see frequently in almost any Valhalla match.

Why? Have you tested it without the scorpion? I would assume it would be quite a bit easier to do so. If it still doesn't work, back routes would really do the trick to allow the mantis to move more.

Maybe push/pull gameplay is not the best thing for this map. Especially on a map where you try to emphasize capture the flag, capturing the flag usually means that you were able to get into the other team's base while many of the players were away, trying to do the same for your base, the rest of your teams, struggling to defend their flag from the attackers. With one road leading to each base, you get push/pull gameplay, and stagnant push/pull gameplay as you have said. By using push/pull gameplay for capture the flag means that the only reason that you were able to get to the other team's base was because you forced the rest of the enemy team into their base area, making it even harder than it would have been to capture the flag than before. To break this up and turn it more into a game of slipping by enemy lines as opposed to pushing them back, the back routes I suggested before would be an excellent remedy.

Although this choke point can become chaotic and fun, it essentially creates what is called a "Cluster****". an onlooker or a first time player may see a lot of explosions and excitement, but soon enough, it turns into repetitive suicide missions in hopes of finally breaking through, which seldom happens, and with no structure to the gameplay at all. Though your map plays very different from Valhalla, I still want to use it as an example. Part of the reason the Valhalla Worked so well was because of its compartmentalization, something that proved very effective in Big Team Mapmaking. In the early days of Halo, Blood gulch was the big team map du jour, and although it is an insta-classic, it had many problems: The map was the whole map at the same time. Once you ran out of your base, you had the possibility of engaging with almost anyone on the map. The sightlines allowed you to see almost the whole map and fight with anyone. Along with fighting with anyone, you also had to keep tack of everyone. Eight enemies is too much for the brain to handle, so we just pick a guy and shoot. Unfortunately, this has rendered us defenseless against the rest of the other team, and gets us killed. Again and again, our lack of options to control who we are vulnerable to frustrates us and creates hectic gameplay, though it is never an accurate representation of skill or strategy. In Halo 3, Bungie introduced the idea of Compartmentalization to Valhalla, and the gameplay became exponentially better. The maps were divided into smaller sections, creating small skirmishes,all part of a bigger battle. The raised center keeps you from being randomly and unfairly sniped, and the small compartments to the map allow you to engage someone while still being fairly certain that you won't get killed without any control over it. The idea that you could pick your battles has helped the Halo maps overall, and I think it will help yours. Back routes, while somewhat a diversion of the hecticness that you enjoyed is a much better, more structured, and less repetitive way of allowing players to pick their battles. A mantis driver may want to relax, kick it back, and play defensively, or take the other mantis head-on one on one. A sense of control over what they are doing is very comforting and ejoyable to the player.

If all the players are forced down that one road, then the rest goes practically out of use. The rest of the map that you put s much time and effort into essentially becomes one glorified armory to scavenge and use to mindlessly charge your way into yet another suicide mission.

As for your worry of too little player population, you don't have to worry much. It's a self balancing system. You'll still get plenty of traffic through the center, just slightly less than normal so that the center battle becomes more comprehensible.

If you want the vehicles to pass through the center on this second centralized route, then it does't add more options. You still have to pass through the cluster like you did before, and will only really give you two clusters intead of one.

 

Sure.. Peter 700100 is the name, my gamertag. Or i will add you, i think i have some time tommorow, i really want to try this map out.

 

Nix the Assault Rifle as a global ordnance drop. It clutters the UI and players can already spawn with it. Such is the rough side of the global ordnance coin.

I agree with others who have said that at current the map feels too funneled toward one central choke point. It causes stagnation in flow and makes vehicle-destruction far too easy.

And as a last thing, STOP BREAKING THE LIGHTING! Take yourself to school in this thread.

 

Based on scale alone, this map looks incredible, really a testament to the awesomeness that is the Impact forge palette. And as always, beautiful presentation.

I'd really recommend reading mazdak26's thesis essay of a forum post, though. He made some great points, and I agree fully with his suggestions.

On another note, I really miss the glowy billboards from Baptism. Any chance you could add something similar here to break up the sea of white?

 

I'm flying around in forge right now, and I immediately noticed several things, but one in particular stood out to me:

The driving path. I wouldn't call it a figure eight, it's more like a straight line with a circle at each end. While that might seem like pointless semantics, it makes a real difference in terms of the vehicle engagements. With the current layout, vehicles will just run headlong into each other, and that's as interesting as it gets. You don't have any opportunities to flank, circle around, or get the drop on anybody when you're in a Hog... you just charge straight in and most likely get stuck in two seconds and die.

I think you really need to work in another central pathway for vehicles. As it is, the pathing is simply too linear with too few options. If there were two central lanes instead of one, you would at least have the opportunity to weave in between the lanes and dodge an enemy hog coming your way, as well as being much less vulnerable to stickies and PPs due to the middle divider. S by Psychoduck is a great example of a simple, linear vehicle path made interesting and fun by adding curves and cut-throughs between the lanes.

In addition, your driving path suffers from a chronic case of The Flats. I really think you should create some height variation, either by raising one side up higher than the other or by splitting the central path into multiple lanes and offsetting their heights, potentially even weaving them together with a crossover or two like a length of wound rope. This would allow for much more dynamic vehicle battles and would help break up the massive LOS down the center of the map without resorting to sticking barricades in the road that get in the way of smooth hogging. Examples of maps that do height variation well: Vortex, Embarcadero by Shoe, and Panic Station by Duck.

Jumps are also good. I approve of jumps. Harvest, although not a BTB map, wins a lot of points in the driving category because of the jumps. Every map can benefit from a [lot of] jump.

 

aha. Thank you. I try.

 

Hey Soulcrusher, I'm gonna send you a friend request at some point today. I haven't played much Halo at all recently, but I'm really interested in trying this map out. Let me know next time you get a game going.