Halo: Reach Map Vids

Hey every one! Just throwing up a quick post to keep this blog alive as well as show you what I've been working on during my spare time. Here we have two of my latest map creations in Halo Reach, Amalgam and Cold Snap. Amalgam is currently in consideration for the MLG (Major League Gaming) Playlist. Wish me the best of luck in getting it accepted. The video's were edited and posted by my good friend Jeff, aka Bleuprint. He's got some wicked tracks (the songs are his creations) and a good eye for the camera. Thanks a ton man!

The second map, Cold Snap, is a symmetrical re-imagination of Halo: CE's Chill Out. It was co-forged by Bleuprint, Mac xL and myself. 

 

 

Reaching Forward: U-Bahn

My latest map and first truly original work by me. It's based off of the Underground Station a few blocks away from where I live. It's a large symetrical map that is also capable of playing CTF.

 Map Overview.

 Side street. Needlers are found here as well as a side enterance to Green Perch.

 Red spawn. The building is the train station terminal.

 Red spawn leading to Red Snipe Street. You can see the sniper justting out by the far building.

 Inside the train terminal.

 Green perch. Ideal for sniping the city street and base spawns.

 City Street. You find a evade Armor Ability here.

 Canal Street. Under the ramps are shotguns.

 Blue Spawn.

 Having just out DMR'd a Blue, this Red sprints to a Medpack and safety...

 Green Perch is relatively easy to grenade from below... But its just as easy to dive to safe... Or is it?

 Green Perch isn't always the best place to be... If you don't keep your head on a swivel, some one might sneak up and gank you.

 One of the many hectic flag attempts along River Street...

 When playing CTF, River Street is the ideal way to run the flag (granted you can control it). Here three Reds make a run after a beautiful steal.

Newly added to the Terminal, a derailed train. Here a Red sprints to safety having found the rockets missing and some one lurking nearby...

And there you have it.
The map should play similar to The Pit.

Reaching for the Past 2

After I finished up Electrified v1 a few days ago I took what I learned from it and applied that to remaking Onslaught from H3 as well. Unfortunately Electrified was slightly too small, but this new Onslaught I spaced out much better and I believe is a near perfect port of the original.

I present to you Blitzkrieg!

Reaching for the Past; Halo 3 and MLG

The more I play Halo Reach, the more it grows on me. Over all I'd have to say its an enjoyable game thats fairly well ballanced, yet strikingly casual to play. Gone are the days of the be-all-end-all BR, and we live in the holycon era of the DRM. Yes it's a precision weapon all the same, but the shot spread of the weapon does a great deal in balancing the skill differences between players... Where once the obvious better play would own the lesser in a BR duel, there's an air of uncertainty that keeps both on edge. I love it. With this in mind, the MLG game type is more attractive than ever for me.
I'm not a fan of the "perk" system Reach brough to the table. I was stoked about it when I saw the trailers leading up to the game, but upon the advent of the Beta I lost all love for the concept. The only ability I ever choose to take is sprint, however I'd much rather play a game without any of these options. MLG fortunately has none of them. A more ballanced game with no goofy armor abilities? Sounds perfect to me.
So there are a couple of classic MLG maps from Halo 3 that I love to death. Team Slayer on Amplified and 5 Flag CTF on Onslaught are my favorites. Sadly, these two maps are not on Reach and no one has made a port of them up to my standards... Fortunately though, Forge is AMAZING! That said, I've taken it upon myself to learn how to Forge and behold! My first map which has already managed to garner much attention within 24 hours of release... Electrified; a remake of Amplified.

 Above: Blue Team's Spawn.
Below: Gold Side

 Above: Pink Side
Below: Red Team Spawn

 Below: Overview of the entire map

One issue I had with porting this highly competive map over was that there are no blocks that actually match up to the size of the ones in Halo 3's Forge. Most forgers attempting to port older maps look past this and just make the maps larger in response to Reach's larger blocks... This however throws off the various jumps that are found on each map and can completely ruin the gameplay. I attempted to the best of my abilities to find a suitable match in size to the original, and have succeeded to some extent. While that map has all the jumps and is proportional to the original, it comes off as a little small. For a 4v4 game as it's intended, it's slightly cramped... It works beautifully for 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 though.
I'm fairly confident that I can tweak and finetune it by exchanging some blocks for larger variants to make this work. This a good number of hours I still have left to put into it, but as of so far I think I've made excellent progress.
Not bad for a first timer. ;)