Tower Of Power

Will be adding pictures tomorrow for more clarity, just too late tonight

In my years of playing Halo 2, I experienced great joy playing a game most people have also enjoyed. This game was Tower of Power on Ascension. I wasted, or you could say invested, hours on hours into playing this game, and don't regret any of it.

So I decided I wanted to bring back Tower of Power. Problem was there were no maps like ascension, and also there are no immovable turrets, besides the elephants, which was obviously out of the question. So I fiddled around for awhile on several maps until I finally settled on guardian.

My first rendering of the map had the turret placed on several boxes over near the forest area where the bubble shield spawns. Problems became evident when it was too difficult to get to the turret and if someone moved the boxes, they would respawn in awkward positions. So I had to change the turret position. The final result is a very very very simple map, but when did complex = fun.

I moved the turret position over to the little wrap-around tower on the overshield side of the map. I placed the turret up on one crate, so there are no respawn problems, and for higher elevation. And thats it. Thats all the "construction" I had to do. Very very simple.

The next step was to place the starting spawn points and respawn points. I made sure to spread them out in a variety of ways and also to put many in the middle so the turret man can rack up kills, which is the reason for holding the tower in the first place, and why its such a key place to hold.

The next step for me was to tweak the base player traits. As many of you know, the shotgun in halo 3 is much more powerful than its halo 2 predecessor. You can basically snipe people across the map with the normal base settings, hyperbole of course. So I tweaked the damage resistance to 200%, and the weapon damage to 75%. After testing it thoroughly, I believe these are extremely close to the halo 2 "feeling", although its still slightly easier to kill people.

So the way the map is set up, there are 4 ways to enter the base, compared to the two in halo 2.

1. By crossing the open area in the middle and running toward the overshield, which obviously isn't in this gametype. The problem with this is the same as it was in Halo 2, the turret man is easily going to gun you down. Basically suicide.

2. The next route in is by the lift that takes you from down near the shotgun, up to the wrap around tower. Problem with this is that you can easily be gunned down by the turret man, unless of course he is not skilled or snoozing on the job.

3. The next entrance is from the elbow that connects the jungle area up to the overshield area. This is comparable to the "bridge of death" that existed in halo 2's ascension game. The gunner can still shoot at the people entering this area for a second, just as he could in halo 2, but they are soon out of his reach.

4. The next entrance is the route that connects the gravity hammer to the sniper. This will also make a bridge of death type area, and allow the attackers another route in.

This allows the overshield area to stay relatively uncongested because the defenders will have to split up to cover the bottom and elbow areas.

A little addition I added two custom powerups. I put one were the brute shot normally respawns in the jungle and one where the active camo normally respawns. This will make them mostly only accessible to the attackers.

The powerups have spawn times of 120 seconds. They give the owner 500% damage resistance, which is really only a few more shots for the kill. They also give him 150% weapon damage so he can get easier kills. The person's speed has been reduced to 75% though, making him much slower, and it is only active for 30 seconds, just enough time to reach the tower and kill a few people, if you dont' get mowed down by the turret first. There is also a waypoint marker above the person's head so you can see where him, and probably all the people hoping along his bandwagon, will be coming to attack you.

I am still not sure about the powerups, I don't know if I should stay original, but I think they can add some fun to the game. More testing will determine that. I also am not sure if I should block off the gravity hammer, sniper route to stay truer to the original Tower of Power, leaving only the Elbow as the main way of taking the tower.


If you would like to try it out here is the link to my fileshare:

http://www.bungie.net/stats/Halo3/FileShare.aspx?gamertag=DareDefyMe88

Please download both the Tower Settings and Tower of Power items.

If you guys test them, or have just read my post, and have any suggestions, please tell me, I would love some feedback and anything I can do to make the gametype more fun.

Thanks