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 Foward; Yosemite

Halo Reach gives us an amazing and powerful new version of Forge. First introduced in Halo 3, Forge has now been revamped to be more user friendly and is full of limiteless posibilites. However, despite all of its amazing features, Forge is severely limitted by a bland palette of building blocks and colors. Furthermore, there is a lack of "natural" blocks aside from rocks. This has resulted in what I consider a "sea of gray". Most all maps are very drab and full of the same gray building blocks... Few have natural aesthetics, and none so far are composed of only the natural aspect. I've taken it upon myself to design a map that is 100% building free, composed completely of the natural aesthetics already available on the map and on the forge palette. The result is Yosemite, a symetrical(ish) small map built outdoors on the Montano peninsula. It is a small map intended for 4v4 competitive play and MLG. As of right now its in its final stages of developement, needing only to be cleaned up and ballanced properly followed shortly by play testing.

Below is a general over-view of the map. The red box is where the red team initially spawns, while the blue spawn (underneath the blue box) on the mirrored side of the map. The two black boxes indicate elevated perches ideal for sniping (or DMRing) from. The green boxes are teleporter nodes that connect the backfield of the map.

The rock bridge in the center is where the power weapon will spawn. At the moment it is a Sniper Rifle with only one spare clip. Below it is a Rocket Launcher with no spare clips. DMRs will be placed throughout the map.

There are multiple avenues of approach to all key positions on the map. The rocky cliff face is climbable and acts as a back door to the snipe perch and central plateau.  There is also ample cover throughout the map.

 

 

The snipe rocks have a strong advantage point over the mid to back field of the map, however they are are vulnerable as well to balance out their strength.

This map was inspired by Beaver Creek and MLG maps such as Onslaught and Amplified. Top control will play a large part in this map, however it should not be over powered given the openness and easy navigability of the map.

Roll Call! Fall In! Attention!

Standing at attention in my other room are some 100 or so traitorous Space Marine scum. From renegades to full blown Chaos worshipping fanatics, they've come together for one purpose... To make ME happy! :p

Okay, really, to plunder and pillage Vienna till there's nothing left to plunder anymore. And collect skulls... Yes, lots of skulls.

Anyhow, my army finally arrived. Sweetness. And surprisingly, very little damage was sustained by the troops. The battle foam trays got a little warped, but I had stuffed A LOT in my 1520 box.... Lawl.

Unfortunately, no pictures as my camera is still lacking a memory card and I'm still to poor to spare the cash for one. Oh the shame.

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. ;)

Conform! Conform! Conform!

I've spent the majority of my young life fighting comformity. Its one of the few things I truely despise. Something about every one being the same... It irritates me to no end. I've always been a bit of a rebel with a cause, a James Dean if you will, and my play style and army lists I try to craft to reflect this.
This is more or less a rant about the internet and what the people at BoLS and YTTH claim. There are varying factions between the two, but the point is that the all conform to a certain ideal of what is a competitive list. Everything is either Good or FAIL, with the former being a minortiy in unit options. No matter what codex you use, no matter how versatille it is, there are only a few "builds" these people consider good. They've got list building down like its some science.
Now here's where they loose me... What reason do they have to claim X unit is awesome but W, Y, and Z all suck. Why is it this unit such a fail choice? Does everything really have to be stream lined to kill and last the entire game? What about expendable units? Effective point sinks? I understand some Math Hammer and that some units really do suck while others shine, but I believe there are many shades of grey between the two! This is a very dynamic game we play that is also heavily influenced by "randomness" (statistics) and luck. I'm positive there are more workable builds and useful units than what the high horses at BoLS and YTTH claim.
Essentially, what I'm saying is we should all strive for our own unique builds. We shouldn't confrom that only X units can win a game because So-n-So claim it to be. Let us unlearn what the internet has tried to shove down our throats and build our armies as we, the individuals, see best.

Annoyed...

Been here in Vienna for two and half months now... Lord knows how many boxes I've recieved that my father has mailed over, yet none are one of the first things I asked for... My plastic crack!
With every shipment I tell him I seriously want this one specific box. It's not hard to find either, its a giant Battle Foam case. Its green! Its sitting in a room of cardboard boxes. Come on, it freaking stands out!
But still, it sits back in Ohio... And I'm left with cravings for this awful addiction. I want to cut, hack, slash and glue together little bits of plastic! I want to paint! I want to kill hours of free time working on getting just the right pose!
I suppose maybe my father doesn't support this hobby of mine... He doesn't even know the expenses involved, but I think he's against it because its "childish" and crap like that. Grown men shouldn't have "toy soldiers". Bah! What a lame.