My friend and I tried playing your new 1.2 update but we did have a crash very early on (I was near an orange jackal). This happened in the first or second interior room I believe?
tried mod manager download and manual download of map files and neither had any audio when i started up[ the level. is this a known issue, or how can i resolve?
I think it might be problem with the sfx.fsb file, the file that handles all the sounds being played. Did you download a mod that came with custom sounds before? If so, you can reverting to the original sfx.fsb file, and see if that does anything. Otherwise I don't really know what would cause this.
Had a great time blasting through this today. Played on Heroic.
The way the map starts off interior and opens up is great. I love the sky box and that you can see your destination from afar as you weave your way towards it. The map reminded me of a Desert Temple level from one of the Serious Sam's.
I appreciate the mauler's much needed buff, and carbine being less effective meant I felt free to pick up other guns.
Some of these brutes are buggers to take down (I died most to Brute Shot Bois), and I'm glad I found the crashed pelicans with the Spartan Laser. I died 7 times to Fuel Rod fella and his compadres, but I was trying to John Wick the encounter, cause it felt cool and I'm not having fun unless I'm fighting at 100mph haha.
Feels like this could be part of the campaign. Replace Floodgate with the Golden City and you have 5 awesome vehicle missions in a row, heheh.
Hey, thank you very much! The maps ascetic is indeed very much inspired by Serious Sam. It's kind of a weird mix between two of my favorite video games series. Glad you liked the weapon changes! The Carbine nerf was indeed kind of a necessary evil to encourage more weapon variety.
Okay, wow! You did a fantastic job, feels like a lost Halo 3 mission. Great mission location, good amount of scaling, great choice of music, and even some cutscenes. Honestly, the only things missing are more cutscenes and dialogue, but you did incredible with what dialogue you had. And honestly, some amateur voice work probably would have tainted what is otherwise almost pro level!
Armored berserkers work as well as in Infinite, and feel more like their Halo 2 versions. Some additional changes to armor and health for brutes also helped make it a bit more challenging than your OG Halo.
I think if you could have imported models, weapons, etc, this would've felt incredibly fresh, but the small changes you did to the suite made it feel like Halo 3 still, so it still feels quite fresh. I'm just looking at making it even better.
I might try getting voice acting for a project at some point, but for these stand alone maps with little story it's not terribly necessary. Rearranging existing voice lines is working so far, and also saves a lot of work (and also the risk of it sounding unprofessional like you said).
I tend to like to stick to stock Halo 3 assets because new models have the risk of clashing with the Halo 3 art style. Also always people to use weapon skins from multiplayer if they want to. I was thinking about maybe using optional custom sounds, but there are already a lot of great sound mods out there.
That's a good idea! I would be a fool to say no to financial support. I can't say when the next map will comes out however. Halo modding tools aren't the most user friendly ones, so it might take a while.
First and foremost, this is a FANTASTIC mod that really captures a feeling of a Halo level. The aesthetic was perfect, and so was the map design--I am a huge fan! I was taking my time, enjoying all the small little details scattered on the outskirts of the map, as well as inside the battle box rooms! I think you did a phenomenal job!
Of course, I do have a few issues, but know that the pros vastly outweigh the cons. For the record, I played on normal difficulty.
Really, the biggest criticisms I have is pacing, and the balance between enemy health vs amount of enemies present, and encounter design.
Pacing: The pacing was absolutely grueling in some sections; with very little downtime between firefights. The one that came to mind was mainly the bridge, with 4 encounters:
I understand that this is meant to be a well guarded facility, but taking two steps into another wave is pretty harsh. One of these waves after the initial bridge encounter would probably be enough to get the idea across that this place is a big deal.
There was also never any downtime, save for a few hallways, and the preparation room before the big push up to the Fuel Rod Brute.
Enemy Health versus Enemies Present:
When it was a massive amount of Grunts/Jackals, I had no problem; it makes sense that they would overwhelm you with numbers, after all.
Though, allot of encounters shortly after the first few rooms ended up being extremely Brute centralized, with even the lowest Brute taking an absurd amount of damage before dropping. I do like the idea of the Brutes being tanky, but I feel that you should lower the amount of them, and increase minor infantry if you want to exaggerate that feeling. Otherwise, firefights ended up being less tactical, and more pop-out to drop one, then go back behind cover. I also like the idea of higher ranking brutes having this 'secondary shield' so they can't just be headshot after losing their initial shields; but again, I felt all the minor Brutes take away from them feeling more threatening, since they are all giant HP pools.
The Jumppack brutes are a great example of this, where you just get swarmed in seconds, with very room to retreat. I had to hit my head against that wall until it broke before me, only to be met with more enemies 2 steps later.
Encounter Design:
Honestly, the encounter design is where I think allot of my issues stem from. Normally, it's an insane amount of enemies that are an extreme resource hog-which isn't a bad thing; but it feels like every encounter was always requiring my absolute 100% focus. On Legendary, that's perfectly acceptable-even excepted, but not so much on normal.
This plays into my previous point of 'Enemy Health vs Enemies Present', where there are just too many high health enemies in instances where you're already beat to hell. The vehicle section comes to mind, where there are 2 wraiths, 2 fuel rod brutes, several regular brutes, and some Jackals. If you don't immediately B-line to the Wraith, I have no idea how you'd get past that part tbh.
Typically, I would say that an intense, but short encounter, is much more appealing than a difficult and long one.
Anyway, so that's just my personal view on the mod. Overall, the rest of it was a really enjoyable experience! Just to not sound overly negative; here's a few things I really liked!
Bosses: So, unlike most people, I actually really liked the 2 bosses at the end. My only issue was the actual enemies surrounding them being the best defenders since Giant Soldier of Stone released in Yu-Gi-Oh. Even in a 1-1 fight, I feel these guys would be a challenge; especially Hammer Bro, who was actually much more enjoyable once all the others were dropped.
The Map: As I said before, I LOVE this map! It felt right at home with the series! The arenas you would fight in, as well as the skybox was so on point with the games! Not to mention the CQC to wide open vehicle combat sections was A+ in the sense of how well it flowed together conceptually. I really hope to see more excellent areas like these in the future!
The Weapons: The re-balanced weapons felt soooo good to use! The pistol, and mauler had some of my favorite changes added to them, and were always a pleasure to handle. The missing dual wield feature definitely means that each weapon gets to shine in its own niche, rather than just being relegated to Assault Rifle P2.
Very Specific Encounters: So while I said I had a problem with most encounters, I didn't have a problem with ALL of them. My favorite one, was actually the room with all the spec-ops brutes. I felt like they were a true threat, as one went feral, one threw down a radar jammer, and another 2 tried to flank me. The massive amount of room means they can pretty much be anywhere-leading to much more intense encounter.
Another example was the Brute Shot Brothers on the bridge. I felt that 3 of them were perfect, since they have the same strengths and weaknesses; allowing for the player to capitalize on it in whatever way they can. I only wished that they didn't have to come after the Jumppack Squad.
In Conclusion: Anyway, overall, I loved this mod! I know this review might sound negative, but I promise that I am beyond impressed with what you did with these mod tools. I hope this doesn't dissuade you from creating, because I think you'll continue to make some great stuff! Balancing is STUPIDLY hard, so I'm sure you'll get better and better at gauging it with experience. Anyway, yeah, if you read all this; thanks.
Hey thank you for your lengthy review! it's very useful.
Pacing is definitely and issue yes. It's very much a result of the "I spent quite a long time making this map, better use every square inch for something" syndrome. Definitely something to look out for for the next map. Also fun fact about the bridge: there was another cut encounter there at some point. It involved getting rushed by the turret chieftain. Was cut for obvious reasons.
You might be surprised to hear this, but the minor brutes actually have roughly the same amount of health as their retail counterparts. They technically have slight more health, but since most weapons deal more damage, it balances out.
There are 3 weapons which deal noticeably less damage tho. Those being the normal melee, the needler and the Carbine. Melee was changed to make CQC less one sided for mister chief, and the Carbine was nerfed to encourage more weapon swapping to shield stripping weapons. The Carbine has been slightly buffed in damage in the new update I just uploaded tho.
What might make the minor Brutes seem tougher than they are is their new health. They very quickly run for cover when shot, which greadly increases their survivability.
The map was very much play tested on legendary, where basically every encounter is always a tread. Didn't consider how this would impact the more casual difficulties tho. The new update should address this a little, where some of the harder encounters have been nerfed and encounters now have less enemies on lower difficulties. Hopefully this will make the map feel less relentless.
Glad you liked the Invis brute encounter. I'm also very happy with how that one turned out
Downloaded and played as soon as I saw it lol. Saving Sgt Johnson has been my favorite custom mission since I first played it and I'm glad this mission is more of the same. The weapon and ai balancing makes these missions so damn good. The combination of challenging ai and an effective arsenal makes killing the covie bastards feel like you've actually defeated a worthy opponent in a fair fight, at least with the brutes and hunters. The choice to do away with dual wielding is definitely a good one, seeing that it allows for individual weapons to be useful on their own. There wasn't a single weapon that felt like it sucked or wasn't worth using. The only thing I couldn't really praise was the vehicle section, it didn't feel like much had changed from vanilla, but it did break up the foot sections which is always good, and it didn't go on for too long. I still think Saving Sgt Johnson was better overall, but this is still an amazing mission and I'm definitely looking forward to playing it on legendary. Thanks for putting time and effort into creating this, I can't wait to see what else you come up with. You definitely know what makes Halo's gameplay enjoyable.
Hey, thank you for your kind words! I've never been into vehicle combat as much as the on foot combat with Halo, so I didn't really know what to do with it TBH. That would explain why that section may be a bit run of the mill.
Also very happy you like the ai/weapon changes! Spent quite a lot on trying to get it balanced, even if the changes are as large in scale as a lot of other mods.
With the slight exception of almost no dialogue, this was a very well-designed level, to the point where it felt like a cut mission from the actual campaign. 8.5/10; great job.
I also very much appreciated how the path of the level slowly contracted inwards, honestly giving the impression of fighting through a long-abandoned city-fortress, striving to reach and gain access to the citadel at its core. And this is no visual-over-function fortress either; the design was arguably quite sensible to defend against and slowly reduce an assaulting force, though with obvious reduction in such performance when one factors in air travel... which is probably why the Golden City's constructors (or the complex's potential later Forerunner residents) integrated a battery of anticapital air defense emplacements into the citadel.
I will not lie, due to the presence of those torii-esque struts and the design of the catacombs/access tunnel + deep interior area of the Golden City's citadel, I did find myself wondering if I was playing a Halo mission or had somehow wandered into a Nioh level/map/etc. A part of my mind was on high alert, expecting the hated bird dude to spawn in at any point and promptly stunlock me back to the last save-point like they are so oft-capable of doing...
This also made me ponder the potential lore of the Golden City; was it originally from the potential offshoot of the AHE that also held settlement on Heian, later retrofitted by the Forerunners (or maybe the original residents integrated scavenged Forerunner technology/components into it) after a potential exchange of ownership, before being left abandoned for (more than?) a hundred-thousand years until the Covenant arrived to take up residence? Or is it an extrusion by the Tenrai Fracture upon the "prime" Haloverse/timeline, one that subverted/combined/merged with with a potential Forerunner complex that might have previously occupied the same space?
(On side note: this map would make for an absolutely mad Invasion map in Reach. I wasn't overstating earlier, the design is actually rather accurate with regards to a fortress. Probably wouldn't be able to utilize the whole map in three phases due to its size and the fact that the bailey + interior citadel access tunnel would end up being an absolute killzone, but the point stands..)
The final boss.. oof. This is the reason why the previously stated score is 8.5 out of 10. It honestly felt like it was designed for Infinite's sandbox, most pointedly the Grappleshot mechanic. The primary reason why Horatius was not a borderline unbeatable miniboss in Infinite was because Chief was fully capable of utilizing vertical movement to evade the charging ape-bear from thoroughly wrecking him. All the support spires in the banquet hall of the citadel felt like they were perfectly set up to grapple off of... only for no such mechanic to exist in the game, much to Cokus' delight as they eagerly pounce across the whole chamber to HAMMERTIME the Chief and send him back to the last checkpoint. Cokus' goon squad just increases the "fun" of the encounter, really brings back all those wonderful memories of Harbinger's third phase and oh look it's the superbouncing Brute Chieftain again I was very glad/relieved that I trucked a fuel rod cannon through the entire mission in expectation to shoot down any Phantom that might show up (had slight disappointment in that they don't), because it was my only saving throw against Cokus and his Olympic-tier mobility.
With exception of THAT encounter, I very much enjoyed my foray through the Golden City, and eagerly await whatever experience might come next. plz no cloaked superbouncing Chieftains though
Hey, you're great at writing! I'm happy the map managed to spark your imagination.
In terms of lore, I think it's better to keep it a mystery what I had in mind. Wouldn't wan't to ruin the fun! I think you came up with a very interesting explanation tho. And (again) very well written as well.
I think your idea for invasion is interesting, but I know rather little about Halo multiplayer. Technical nor gameplay really. Always been more into campaign. If someone else wants to use the BSP for a muitiplayer map, I would be happy to give it to them. Hopefully they won't be too judgmental of my modeling tho hehe.
That Brute Chieftain is controversial to say the least. I'm still looking into what to do with him, but it is save to say he is getting some form of nerf. Better not give me ideas ;)
I absolutely loved playing this level, the amount of detail and balanced enemies, the last fight tho kinda pissed me off because it took me forever to beat the boss lmaoo. Definitely hope you come out with another custom mission. I feel like the only things missing is more marines stranded in the city/dialogue and a few of the corridors seems too odd being boxed walkways, overall I loved this mod!
Hey, thank you! Yeah, that hallways didn't get any detailing attention whatsoever. I'll probably make it more visually acceptable in a later update. I did somewhat avoid Marines this time around because of my terrible experience with marine scripting in the previous map I made. Next map will probably have marines again tho.
To be honest, I liked/appreciated the absence of Marines and/or friendly AI. Mostly because of own OCD of worrying about surviving friendlies, as well as rushing ahead to save additional friendly units/assets.
A variant/alternate file of successor missions/updates without friendly AI/maintaining the absence of friendly AI would be very appreciated by players like myself.
35 comments
The way the map starts off interior and opens up is great. I love the sky box and that you can see your destination from afar as you weave your way towards it. The map reminded me of a Desert Temple level from one of the Serious Sam's.
I appreciate the mauler's much needed buff, and carbine being less effective meant I felt free to pick up other guns.
Some of these brutes are buggers to take down (I died most to Brute Shot Bois), and I'm glad I found the crashed pelicans with the Spartan Laser. I died 7 times to Fuel Rod fella and his compadres, but I was trying to John Wick the encounter, cause it felt cool and I'm not having fun unless I'm fighting at 100mph haha.
Feels like this could be part of the campaign. Replace Floodgate with the Golden City and you have 5 awesome vehicle missions in a row, heheh.
Armored berserkers work as well as in Infinite, and feel more like their Halo 2 versions. Some additional changes to armor and health for brutes also helped make it a bit more challenging than your OG Halo.
I think if you could have imported models, weapons, etc, this would've felt incredibly fresh, but the small changes you did to the suite made it feel like Halo 3 still, so it still feels quite fresh. I'm just looking at making it even better.
Best custom mission I've played honestly!
I might try getting voice acting for a project at some point, but for these stand alone maps with little story it's not terribly necessary. Rearranging existing voice lines is working so far, and also saves a lot of work (and also the risk of it sounding unprofessional like you said).
I tend to like to stick to stock Halo 3 assets because new models have the risk of clashing with the Halo 3 art style. Also always people to use weapon skins from multiplayer if they want to. I was thinking about maybe using optional custom sounds, but there are already a lot of great sound mods out there.
Of course, I do have a few issues, but know that the pros vastly outweigh the cons. For the record, I played on normal difficulty.
Really, the biggest criticisms I have is pacing, and the balance between enemy health vs amount of enemies present, and encounter design.
Pacing: The pacing was absolutely grueling in some sections; with very little downtime between firefights. The one that came to mind was mainly the bridge, with 4 encounters:
-The initial bridge wave
-The swarm Jumppack Brutes
-Brute Shot Brothers
-Hunters and Homies
I understand that this is meant to be a well guarded facility, but taking two steps into another wave is pretty harsh. One of these waves after the initial bridge encounter would probably be enough to get the idea across that this place is a big deal.
There was also never any downtime, save for a few hallways, and the preparation room before the big push up to the Fuel Rod Brute.
Enemy Health versus Enemies Present:
When it was a massive amount of Grunts/Jackals, I had no problem; it makes sense that they would overwhelm you with numbers, after all.
Though, allot of encounters shortly after the first few rooms ended up being extremely Brute centralized, with even the lowest Brute taking an absurd amount of damage before dropping. I do like the idea of the Brutes being tanky, but I feel that you should lower the amount of them, and increase minor infantry if you want to exaggerate that feeling. Otherwise, firefights ended up being less tactical, and more pop-out to drop one, then go back behind cover. I also like the idea of higher ranking brutes having this 'secondary shield' so they can't just be headshot after losing their initial shields; but again, I felt all the minor Brutes take away from them feeling more threatening, since they are all giant HP pools.
The Jumppack brutes are a great example of this, where you just get swarmed in seconds, with very room to retreat. I had to hit my head against that wall until it broke before me, only to be met with more enemies 2 steps later.
Encounter Design:
Honestly, the encounter design is where I think allot of my issues stem from. Normally, it's an insane amount of enemies that are an extreme resource hog-which isn't a bad thing; but it feels like every encounter was always requiring my absolute 100% focus. On Legendary, that's perfectly acceptable-even excepted, but not so much on normal.
This plays into my previous point of 'Enemy Health vs Enemies Present', where there are just too many high health enemies in instances where you're already beat to hell. The vehicle section comes to mind, where there are 2 wraiths, 2 fuel rod brutes, several regular brutes, and some Jackals. If you don't immediately B-line to the Wraith, I have no idea how you'd get past that part tbh.
Typically, I would say that an intense, but short encounter, is much more appealing than a difficult and long one.
Anyway, so that's just my personal view on the mod. Overall, the rest of it was a really enjoyable experience! Just to not sound overly negative; here's a few things I really liked!
Bosses:
So, unlike most people, I actually really liked the 2 bosses at the end. My only issue was the actual enemies surrounding them being the best defenders since Giant Soldier of Stone released in Yu-Gi-Oh. Even in a 1-1 fight, I feel these guys would be a challenge; especially Hammer Bro, who was actually much more enjoyable once all the others were dropped.
The Map:
As I said before, I LOVE this map! It felt right at home with the series! The arenas you would fight in, as well as the skybox was so on point with the games! Not to mention the CQC to wide open vehicle combat sections was A+ in the sense of how well it flowed together conceptually. I really hope to see more excellent areas like these in the future!
The Weapons:
The re-balanced weapons felt soooo good to use! The pistol, and mauler had some of my favorite changes added to them, and were always a pleasure to handle. The missing dual wield feature definitely means that each weapon gets to shine in its own niche, rather than just being relegated to Assault Rifle P2.
Very Specific Encounters:
So while I said I had a problem with most encounters, I didn't have a problem with ALL of them. My favorite one, was actually the room with all the spec-ops brutes. I felt like they were a true threat, as one went feral, one threw down a radar jammer, and another 2 tried to flank me. The massive amount of room means they can pretty much be anywhere-leading to much more intense encounter.
Another example was the Brute Shot Brothers on the bridge. I felt that 3 of them were perfect, since they have the same strengths and weaknesses; allowing for the player to capitalize on it in whatever way they can. I only wished that they didn't have to come after the Jumppack Squad.
In Conclusion:
Anyway, overall, I loved this mod! I know this review might sound negative, but I promise that I am beyond impressed with what you did with these mod tools. I hope this doesn't dissuade you from creating, because I think you'll continue to make some great stuff! Balancing is STUPIDLY hard, so I'm sure you'll get better and better at gauging it with experience. Anyway, yeah, if you read all this; thanks.
8/10 is my score!
Pacing is definitely and issue yes. It's very much a result of the "I spent quite a long time making this map, better use every square inch for something" syndrome. Definitely something to look out for for the next map. Also fun fact about the bridge: there was another cut encounter there at some point. It involved getting rushed by the turret chieftain. Was cut for obvious reasons.
You might be surprised to hear this, but the minor brutes actually have roughly the same amount of health as their retail counterparts. They technically have slight more health, but since most weapons deal more damage, it balances out.
There are 3 weapons which deal noticeably less damage tho. Those being the normal melee, the needler and the Carbine. Melee was changed to make CQC less one sided for mister chief, and the Carbine was nerfed to encourage more weapon swapping to shield stripping weapons. The Carbine has been slightly buffed in damage in the new update I just uploaded tho.
What might make the minor Brutes seem tougher than they are is their new health. They very quickly run for cover when shot, which greadly increases their survivability.
The map was very much play tested on legendary, where basically every encounter is always a tread. Didn't consider how this would impact the more casual difficulties tho. The new update should address this a little, where some of the harder encounters have been nerfed and encounters now have less enemies on lower difficulties. Hopefully this will make the map feel less relentless.
Glad you liked the Invis brute encounter. I'm also very happy with how that one turned out
Also very happy you like the ai/weapon changes! Spent quite a lot on trying to get it balanced, even if the changes are as large in scale as a lot of other mods.
I'll upload a new file in a moment, that one will work.
I also very much appreciated how the path of the level slowly contracted inwards, honestly giving the impression of fighting through a long-abandoned city-fortress, striving to reach and gain access to the citadel at its core. And this is no visual-over-function fortress either; the design was arguably quite sensible to defend against and slowly reduce an assaulting force, though with obvious reduction in such performance when one factors in air travel... which is probably why the Golden City's constructors (or the complex's potential later Forerunner residents) integrated a battery of anticapital air defense emplacements into the citadel.
I will not lie, due to the presence of those torii-esque struts and the design of the catacombs/access tunnel + deep interior area of the Golden City's citadel, I did find myself wondering if I was playing a Halo mission or had somehow wandered into a Nioh level/map/etc. A part of my mind was on high alert, expecting the hated bird dude to spawn in at any point and promptly stunlock me back to the last save-point like they are so oft-capable of doing...
This also made me ponder the potential lore of the Golden City; was it originally from the potential offshoot of the AHE that also held settlement on Heian, later retrofitted by the Forerunners (or maybe the original residents integrated scavenged Forerunner technology/components into it) after a potential exchange of ownership, before being left abandoned for (more than?) a hundred-thousand years until the Covenant arrived to take up residence?
Or is it an extrusion by the Tenrai Fracture upon the "prime" Haloverse/timeline, one that subverted/combined/merged with with a potential Forerunner complex that might have previously occupied the same space?
(On side note: this map would make for an absolutely mad Invasion map in Reach. I wasn't overstating earlier, the design is actually rather accurate with regards to a fortress. Probably wouldn't be able to utilize the whole map in three phases due to its size and the fact that the bailey + interior citadel access tunnel would end up being an absolute killzone, but the point stands..)
The final boss.. oof. This is the reason why the previously stated score is 8.5 out of 10. It honestly felt like it was designed for Infinite's sandbox, most pointedly the Grappleshot mechanic. The primary reason why Horatius was not a borderline unbeatable miniboss in Infinite was because Chief was fully capable of utilizing vertical movement to evade the charging ape-bear from thoroughly wrecking him. All the support spires in the banquet hall of the citadel felt like they were perfectly set up to grapple off of... only for no such mechanic to exist in the game, much to Cokus' delight as they eagerly pounce across the whole chamber to HAMMERTIME the Chief and send him back to the last checkpoint. Cokus' goon squad just increases the "fun" of the encounter, really brings back all those wonderful memories of Harbinger's third phase and oh look it's the superbouncing Brute Chieftain again
I was very glad/relieved that I trucked a fuel rod cannon through the entire mission in expectation to shoot down any Phantom that might show up (had slight disappointment in that they don't), because it was my only saving throw against Cokus and his Olympic-tier mobility.
With exception of THAT encounter, I very much enjoyed my foray through the Golden City, and eagerly await whatever experience might come next.
plz no cloaked superbouncing Chieftains though
In terms of lore, I think it's better to keep it a mystery what I had in mind. Wouldn't wan't to ruin the fun! I think you came up with a very interesting explanation tho. And (again) very well written as well.
I think your idea for invasion is interesting, but I know rather little about Halo multiplayer. Technical nor gameplay really. Always been more into campaign. If someone else wants to use the BSP for a muitiplayer map, I would be happy to give it to them. Hopefully they won't be too judgmental of my modeling tho hehe.
That Brute Chieftain is controversial to say the least. I'm still looking into what to do with him, but it is save to say he is getting some form of nerf.
Better not give me ideas ;)A variant/alternate file of successor missions/updates without friendly AI/maintaining the absence of friendly AI would be very appreciated by players like myself.