Edit: Map has been released: http://www.forgehub.com/maps/smokestack.1812/ Smokestack is my first real map for Halo 5. It's a 2v2 Slayer map with a layout inspired by Quake's Aerowalk with visual design akin to UT's Outpost 23. It also has poopwater. The lore behind the map is that humans found a rich source of poopwater so they built a factory to harvest all of it. If you wanna check it out in-game just add Overdoz1z as a friend and download the map Smokestack from my fileshare.
Ooohh, I like the look of this. It just looks to clean for something that has poopwater though. Maybe try to create some rust stains here and there with the use of lights, I'd imagine that it would be possible to get it looking realistically.
Poopwater aside, the games we played on this earlier this week were really good fun. It's one of those maps that you can acclimatise to quickly, and the spawns were well placed for weapon pick up and map traversal. I really enjoyed this.
mfw i saw all the poopwater Anyway the map looks great. The theme is very convincing (including the poopwater). Aesthetically, there are a few areas that I think ought to be bulkier, mainly the orange rooftops. Having the orange hang off all of a sudden is a bit tacky to me, but if there was a darker block beneath that made them 8-16 feet bulkier, it would help to ground them onto the building. I also feel that the two ceiling ramps near your plasma pistol hallway could use a flat orange or black 4' block connecting the ramps to the wall; i couldn't tell it was a ceiling as i walked towards the ramp in that direction. Color wise, I think it could use a bit more contrast as well. The overall palette is solid, but it feels like it's missing a darker shade of gray or even black - perhaps to make the walls stand out from the floors. I'd understand if you wanted to avoid that color scheme however seeing as how it's popular with the industrial theme. Layout wise, I like the pathing and verticality. I agree that the railings are good to make the person up top commit to engaging the bottom levels. I am however not the biggest fan of having multiple lifts on a map because of how loud they are in this game, and then you also have two teleporters. I don't know how the map flows yet so perhaps someone who played it can say otherwise, but the two way teleporter seems like it'll be easy to abuse. I'd at least explore making that a one way if you haven't already. I'd also explore a crate clamber jump instead of a straight lift to top poop on the open side to add one more quiete route to the top. The last thing that sticks out to me is the weaponset. OS is in a good place and the Binary could work on this map, but I think it needs something more. For example, I don't see much reason to go to the hallway that launches you over the poopwater, but I would if Camo was there. As a flanking route, it's seems a bit long, and playing this with radar would mean I'd probably end up trapped over there. It seems like it could even use a second power weapon. Hydra would be devastating in the atrium, but I hate that weapon so I'd probably opt for a Plasma Caster spawning behind the cylinder near the Plasma Pistol. It's a solid map nonetheless, and +1 for an original compound name. I hope the February update fixes the FX so we can play it with them intact. Dat object count on the floors though
Thanks for the feedback, Goat. I agree with basically everything you've mentioned and I've been thinking about those types of changes for a bit already. The biggest thing that's currently bugging me is that I can't change the amount of ammo on weapon pads. I'm already not a huge fan of a lot of the new power weapons in Halo 5, but this limits me even more. Also, I've got the feeling I'll have to either remove the grates entirely are greatly simplify them at some point. Having a hundred or so extra objects would help me out a bunch.
Another example of perfect aesthetics in my opinion. Clean, simple, readable and still beautiful. To add to it, it's aero walk inspired? Mmmmm.
increasing the metallic properties on darker colored objects can give the illusion of dirt or stains. A rust colored light on top with one of the static gobos could also enhance the effect.
got a game of this in today. some feedback from the lobby a lot of hopping between the top portal during fights. matches played slow until binary/OS spawned. there wasn't any traffic in the poop lift area. map felt 2-3 times larger than necessary with how frequent cross map engagements were. Hate to say the dreaded word, but I personally think this would play much better if it was 30% smaller. It feels scaled for Halo 4. We played on v0.1
I've had that in the back of my mind for a while. I gotta think on that. I do have a newer version now, though. Not finalized yet, but it has some fairly big changes.
So decided to take some screenshots of the newest version of the map: Smokestack v0.3 Changes: -Binary Rifle replaced with Railgun and spawnpoint moved down a floor -Narrowed upper walkways -Red spawn layout changes to accommodate the walkway changes -Catwalk teleported is one-way now -Blue spawn moved 32 units closer to the middle of the map -Main gravity lift area 32 units smaller -Main gravity lift area opened up a bit -Poopwater room streamlined and now also connected to red spawn directly -Grates simplified to free up some object count space -Jump-ups added to both the poopwater and red spawn gravity lifts