"...armed to to teeth with an absurd pile of snowballs."
Ever since the introduction of Sandbox into Halo 3's Multiplayer space, players have been amazing us with the incredible maps they've whipped up via The Power of the Forge.™ We figured we might as well pluck some of the interesting offerings out of the community pile and let you get a better look.
Kicking off our Community Cartographer Map Spotlight series is a player you should already be familiar with, GhaleonEB. After getting some hands-on with the Mythic Map Sandbox, he's been spending tons of time crafting some very unique Map Variants. You should spend some time checking out his Map, Entrenched.
A Tale of Two Bases
Q. What’s the core concept behind your map (what makes it unique and awesome)?
A. To start with a bit of a tangent, I got the idea for Entrenched reading a Calvin and Hobbes comic – they’d built two u-shaped snow forts right next to each other, armed to the teeth with an absurd pile of snowballs. I was in the process of tinkering around in Sandbox, and that simple image clicked with me: two facing forts with snowballs whizzing from each side. Or rather, BR fire. So rather than build a base at each end of the map, I split the entire map into two giant u-shaped “forts” staring each other down across an alley. Think of them as two bases, writ large. I’d call the alley a moat, but it’s in a desert. And you can drive in it.
The idea was to build a vehicle-friendly BTB map for objective games (though Slayer works well) that also provided clear, sheltered routes for infantry, long sight lines and a few choke points.
Q. Is this the first draft, or did you sucker your poor friends to play it and ask them to tell you what sucked so you can make a bunch of revisions based on feedback?
A. This is about the fifth version of the map, each one updated after a few games from some very tolerant friends. Playtesting brings out the good, bad and ugly on a map, and the first few versions were pretty painful experiences. But that’s the only way to find out what really works. Fortunately, I play with a crew that provides, shall we say, unvarnished feedback. If a map sucks, that message will be faithfully delivered, and how.
Q. What gametypes should folks fire up when they want to throw down on your map?
A. As the map was refined and began getting some better responses I started thinking about an Atlas submission, so I began to tune it for the three most common gametypes: Team Slayer, Multi-Flag CTF and the various versions of Assault. I’m sure it could be tuned for some other gametypes, but those are the built in variants. Blame Shishka; that seems to be popular.
The Good, the bad, and the Warthog
A. What worked right away was the segmentation of the map and the sight lines it created. The spaces between the bases and the tunnels along the outer walls seem just right for mid-range BR combat. The separate routes for vehicles and infantry also seemed to gel better than I expected. Nearly everything else about the map changed quite a bit: the weapons, vehicles, spawns, routes in the base and the central structures all changed gradually after each playtest. After all the revisions, the perimeters of the forts were the only things not to change.
Q. What was the most difficult bit to get just right?
A. The vehicle/infantry weapon balance and spawn points. Initially the map had more vehicles and much more firepower to fend them all of with. That led to lots of explosions – yay! – but also turned the vehicles into deathtraps. I discovered that sometimes less is more.
Spawns proved an even tougher nut to crack. I was initially much more conservative with the respawn locations and had most of them up in the safety of the outer walls. The result was a bit of a monster closet: killed players would respawn all around the attacking team, only with superior elevation and cover. It was one of those problems that was hard to identify during the games, but jumped right out when going over the saved films. Adding a lot of spawns and making some small changes made all the difference. So with those I discovered that more is, um, more.
Q. What’s your prime motivator for mucking about in the Forge?
A. I remember when Frankie was first teasing Foundry before the formal announcement of the Heroic maps, he described the parts as “Legos”. In hindsight, that’s the perfect description, and it fits even more with Sandbox. That’s the appeal to me: Sandbox is basically a giant Lego set to play with, but instead of dropping action figures on it and using my imagination, I can drop right in and run around on the creations in the game. It’s actually quite fitting that the idea for this one came from another staple of my childhood.
Beyond that, I’ve found that if I get an idea in my head – usually a simple concept or a shape for a map – I can’t get it out of my head until I’ve tried slapping it down.
Q. Advice for anyone looking to build their own masterpiece? Warnings? Shout-outs?
A. Don’t fall in love with your first version. If something isn’t fun for others or just doesn’t work as planned, then that brilliant idea you spent hours building might have to go. And that can be a be a tough pill to swallow. Beyond that, spend some time watching saved films of the play tests and see if people are doing what you expected them to on the map. If not, adjust. And especially, play other peoples maps and see what works. I still see the community coming up with new ideas that blow my mind every week.
Bruhaha is a recent example of someone doing stuff with Forge that I’d never even considered.
Thanks to GhaleonEB for taking timeout to bunker down and answer the volley of questions we fired his way. If you read his report and want to take Entrenched for a spin, you've already scrolled past the link. Head back up to the top of the page to queue it up for some Custom Games Carnage.