CTF - Facing Worlds
As some of you already know, a few community members were lucky enough to get access to the Mythic Maps a tad bit early. After some initial fun the first night, I got down to work on something I had been meaning to do since the moment I heard about forge (not including this): recreating CTF-Face from Unreal Tournament ('99). I had attempted this on a couple of other maps, including Standoff and Blackout. On Standoff I was confined by kill zones and soft barriers and had to take a lot of creative liberties. The map played completely different and was horribly balanced. On Blackout, well I simply ran out of budget: 1 | 2. I gave up.
Sandbox was announced and shortly thereafter, the sky bubble was revealed; my interest was rekindled.
This, was the end result.
The Map
Halo's Facing Worlds works best with 2 - 4 players (6 is pushing it) with Battle Rifle Spawns. The map utilizes Sandbox's budget in its entirety. Admittedly, there are a few places where I can still cut corners, but this is a fairly decent representation of what can be done with a full Sandbox budget. That said, only key weapons and equipment are placed on the map, such as the Sniper, Rocket Launcher, Shotgun, Bubble Shield and Power Drainer. Battle Rifles are not available, as it is assumed the map is to be played with BR starts. I simply had no budget left to place these.
I feel it's fairly aesthetically accurate, although I did take a few creative liberties to adapt the gameplay to Halo and to work within the budget
View from the Red base looking across to the Blue base. As you old school UT players will note, the center area isn't raised as it should be. I decided that, for the sake of vehicle use and efficient use of budget, that I'd keep it flat.
There is a single Warthog available to each base located in front of a jump. The Warthog is sufficiently tough to maneuver along the narrow path, but a skilled driver can run a perfect loop throughout the map doing 'figure eights' to get in and out of the bases. This proves effective for flag runs.
These roads are slippery when wet, take the jump at the wrong angle and this happens.
ATVs are also available to each base and provide a method of travel that's easier to handle and almost as quick as the Warthog. Naturally, it doesn't have the same map dominance as a Warthog would.
Below each jump is a, somewhat, hidden mancannon. Its use is mainly to provide a quick option for those travelling on foot. Should you find yourself escaping with the flag or chasing the escapee, you can duck into the mancannon after rounding the corner by the ramp. This can potentially bounce you right into your base if you do things right. It also adds extra humilation for those who don't quite make the easy jump in a vehicle, as it launches you to your death.
The flag is located inside each base on the right hand side, as with the original. This makes for great grab-and-go flag captures in the Warthog.
Any Facing Worlds remake would be incomplete with this, the teleporter leading to the sniper perch.
This is an absolutely iconic view. If you've played UT99, you should be getting some serious nostalgia attacks here. That said, the clips in the sniper are reduced and the perch doesn't offer a whole lot of room to work with, in hopes of diminishing its power a bit. Interesting to note from this vantage point as well, is that this is the height of the sky bubble. If you were to stand on top of the coloured column (which you can't without trick jumps or forge), you wouldn't be able to jump
One of the defining features of Face was the sheer power and domination one could have with the Redeemer: a small handheld nuclear warhead launcher. I felt that placing one in each base, as per the original, would be a bit overpowered. A Halo Rocket Launcher, our closest equivalent to this death bringing device, is placed on each side of the map across from each mancannon. These will help defend against any Warthogs attempting to dominate the map (along with power drainers inside each base). What's exceptionally fun is rushing the Rockets and nabbing a Warthog as it attempts to jump over you.
In lieu of the Redeemer spawn and the secondary sniper perch, due to budget restrictions and the decision to limit overpowering the sniper, the middle floors of the base are replaced with an open spawn area. Think The Pit, but completely accessible from the upper sniper perch.
Action Shots
Here I'm using the bubble shield to save himself from a sniping goatrope above
Myself using the mancannon to shoot across the map.
Devin goatrope and myself in a free for all struggle in the entrance of Red Base
Devin uses the Rocket Launcher to dispatch an unsuspecting goatrope
The Process
I began by roughly outlining the play area in as close to the center of the buble as I could estimate I'd recommend, to anyone forging in this area, to do this. The bubble is MASSIVE. I'd estimate upwards of 4 or 5 times the size of foundry.
Next I laid out the base areas.
This is about an hour in (laying things out takes the longest). As you can see, Crab spent this entire time bringing all the pieces from the lower section up. We deemed this area, the "Rock Quarry." And yes, it's about as sick as dumping a bucket of Legos on a table
Floating objects, here, was not achieved by the save and quit method, but instead, I just propped them up. I wanted to keep the entire process in one film.
Further progress on the towers. At this point a lot of time i spent building the inside and attempting to design the upper section of the towers. Deciding on pieces to use is exceptionally hard due to the sheer number of pieces available to you.
I finally decide on a mid level design and begin to forge the center play area.
A center play area design decided upon
Lots of things happen, and the map is done
The map took around 4 hours total to create. I left my Xbox on for the two forge sessions this took and I may make a nice time lapse video in the future. Special thanks to Crab for help with some housework on the map and to Devin and goatrope for a little playtesting.
The map is in the second slot on my file share, gamertag HawaiianPig
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