In German this is called week "Zwei" of the Halo 3 Academy's stint on Bungie Favorites. A quick Q&A with these folks awaits you.
Last week was The Halo 3 Academy's first week on Bungie Favorites. Now here's their second batch of entries, as well as a lengthy Q&A with the folks that make up this Bungie.net grown group.
What are your favorite maps?
Guardian, Ghost Town, Valhalla, Blackout, The Pit, Standoff, Avalanche, Rat’s Nest and Foundry.
Favorite Gametypes?
Slayer, SWAT, Team Snipers, MultiFlag, Infection, MLG, Assault.
What would you like to see in Matchmaking that isn’t?
A Permanent Team Snipers playlist is something most people in the group want to see with a permanent Grifball playlist in close second. Also an Objective based FFA hopper that would include Oddball, KotH, Juggernaut, Infection, etc. This would let people get some medals you can’t get in ranked and make Lone Wolves pure slayer. Other notable mentions were the Guass Hog, Team Actionsack and Headlong…..
What inspired your Forge map, The Hive?
Seeing as I'm a part of this great community known as the Halo 3 Academy, I figured I would make a map that would be great for training those who wanted help in different aspects of the game. So I made this map, The Hive (featured last week in Favorites), with trainees in mind. It's design is interestingly tied to different parts of Halo 3 multiplayer that are quite important to understand in order to improve your game.
A few examples:
The map is designed with floating platforms that players must jump to in order to get more powerful, long ranged weapons including the Battle Rifle, Covenant Carbine, and Sniper Rifle. Therefore, while players are jumping between platforms, they must learn to aim their weapons while jumping, a critical aspect of the game tied to the Bumper Jumper weapon layout. Players must also learn to shoot jumping targets, a closely related skill that must be mastered.
It's a free for all map, so players must be able to watch their backs and be able to tactically make it up to the higher levels in order to control the map better. Once up to the top, players can use the weapons used at longer ranges to learn how to control a map better. Spawns are fairly easy to learn, so players can learn how to watch the spawns, as many more advanced players do in any multiplayer game.
These are just a few of the ways the map was designed to help trainees improve in various aspects of the game. However, the map was not just for trainees, it was also made for any regular custom game. After I created the first draft of the map, I recreated it to make it more balanced for various other gametypes. These are the gametypes that work with the map:
- Multi-Flag
- Slayer (FFA)
- Team Slayer
- Neutral Assault
- KoTH (FFA)
- Oddball (FFA)
- Infection
How long did it take to create?
Well, the first draft of the game was created while I was still at college. I originally had the idea that I wanted to create a training map with free floating platforms, and I basically just built on top of that. So, as you can imagine, it took a great deal of tweaking and hoping for things to fall into place, I would estimate about 16 or 17 hours.
After a bit of map testing (within the group) and some reviews as well as hints from fellow H3A instructors and trainees alike, I was able to tweak the map and create a second, more finalized draft of the map that was cleaner and more balanced for gametypes other than FFA. Using new forging techniques that I had picked up since the first draft, this second draft took about 8 to 9 hours to complete. Not too bad, I guess.
What aspect took the longest to get right?
Definitely the upper catwalk around the perimeter of the map. I had recently learned how to merge objects together (a basic technique, I know) so I used this to make the catwalk nice and clean all the way around. If you know how to merge objects, you can imagine the amount of time it took to line all of the bridges properly and merge them together so they were even and looked nice all the way around, not to mention all the time I spent waiting for objects to reappear between rounds and merge together. I even made the entire catwalk once only to delete the whole thing and start over to push it out towards the edges of the map and give some more breathing room to the middle and those hopping around there.
How could The Forge be improved?
Well, there are 3 things I would suggest:
1. One of the most annoying things I have dealt with in The Forge is picking up an item that is already placed. I don't like how when you pick up a previously placed object, the object floats towards you a bit as if you have pulled it forward. This can be a big nuisance when you are only trying to tweak or move something you already placed just a little bit.
2. A 90-degree turn for objects would be nice. It would make it much easier for us to align objects that we want to be perpendicular or parallel with one another. There would be no strange angles or orientations to make our maps asymmetrical when we want them perfectly symmetrical. You have no idea how many community members we have out there spending hours trying to align everything just perfectly.
3. The layout of Foundry is sometimes very difficult to work with. I know some fellow forgers who have complained about the strange U-shape to it. My biggest complaint is with the overhang at the top of the map. If you play the Hive, you will notice that it is difficult to jump from the platforms to the catwalk on the sides because of the overhang. There is really nothing I could do about this except lower the catwalk, which would have made it difficult to place the platforms correctly. Either way, my point is that some of us forgers would like some more even maps to work with.