Hello everyone.

Here, I present to you, a classic (and intended to be) epic SinglePlayer made by me. It utilizes the BSPs of Damnation and Gephyrophobia. Another thing to take note of is that its completely classic, meaning no custom stuff (apart from Healing feature and music).

Story:
On the surface of the planet known by the UNSC as X67G, Master Chief has been sent to eliminate an Elite Commander in charge of a Covenant Hydro Processing Plant. The Hydro Processing plant provided a third of the planet's Covenant with water. If cut off, it could delay the plans of the Covenant.

MC was supposed to go there, silently, quietly, and kill the Commander and destroy the complex.

However, unexpected guests arrive to the complex, and soon the whole thing turns into a full-scale war and an epic adventure.

Features:

*Cortana dialogue. Cortana will speak to you and give you tips.
*Chapter Titles
*Advanced Cutscenes
*Smart AI
*Music. Really cool music.
*Heal feature. Press 'Q' to heal yourself. Take note, however, that it takes a long time to recharge. Use it wisely.
*Awesome Covenant vs Flood battles - Bungie style
*Other SP stuff, like Nav Points, Checkpoints, Objectives, etc

http://www.mediafire.com/file/xzdt2yddzmy/demise beta.zip

Link to the map. For those who have problems completing it, you might want to use cheats( cheaters!) or read teh walkthrough, which I will write soon. :\

Hope you enjoy!

Feel free to drone me with endless critiscm

Also, one final note: at the end, the screen goes balck, and you can't enable the pause menu. Open up dev, and type in game_revert. That will revert you to your last checkpoint, where you can view the pause menu.

Edited by Polamee on May 3, 2009 at 05:24 AM
Edited by Polamee on May 4, 2009 at 07:10 AM
Edited by Polamee on May 8, 2009 at 10:56 PM

Polamee, even though you gtg by this point of time, the freaking file is corrupt (at least for me)

I'll reupload.

Edit: Done. http://www.mediafire.com/file/xzdt2yddzmy/demise beta.zip
Edited by Polamee on May 3, 2009 at 04:55 AM

Its fairly alright so far, but i demand more shotty ammo!
Also, would be better if you forced the player to fight through the wraiths.
Live broadcasting now, add jacknme on xfire to watch

I was the first beta tester :O (Of the pre-beta)

Edited by Tuaha on May 3, 2009 at 07:55 AM

Testing.

Also, use filefront next time.

Mediafire works faster for me when I upload.

This is awesome, I hope you make more maps like this.
Also, what's the name of the first song?

Luck Arrival

Fix the string lists for the heal feature.

That jump off the level in Damnation :P
Oh, though i told Polamee that I would upload some Screenies, I forgot :P Instead made a broadcast.
Anyway, just picture yourself in damnation and geophypobia fighting covies and floods.

Yesh. As for the screenies I'll upload some tomorrow maybe.
Edited by Polamee on May 3, 2009 at 10:44 AM

Too many explosions :X

Overall, it wasn't a bad level, but I can certainly see why it's a beta.

Not really. There weren't a lot of explosions in the Damnation part.

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/natural/6b99e4240c6557fcd75f5d07330a626d10bcf2d4.png

<3

I didn't stick the grenade on him...honest! He stuck himself!
Edited by Tuaha on May 3, 2009 at 11:36 AM

when i go in halo and start it i keep getting an exception...

Are you using the dev console?

i tried with both still same

You just might not be able to play it then. Every computer is different, and runs programs differently. Some people can play maps that other people can't. For instance, every time I load contact, I get an exception. I can't play it. Other people can. Your computer may just not like that map very much. Sometimes though, early betas will exception anyway. I suggest you wait for a later build. You might be able to play it then.

gotcha thank you

Are you launching from the LAN menu?

no.....

How are you launching it?

Needs some more video, but I'll check it out since the feedback here seems to be fairly positive.

It was pretty fun, to be honest. The last music did not fit at all, either do eye of the tiger ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mu9xx5Ri278 ) , or stick with the traditional halo music. Also make the music fade out properly, instead of just switching to something completely different which happened way too much in the level.

Finish this, then try it again with a custom BSP.
Edited by ACoLOL on May 3, 2009 at 01:51 PM

1.) Damnation lagged a bit for me. You're putting too many unecessary AI encounters all at once, which never plays well.

2.) Gephy was more fun, but the music was out of place in several areas. Fix it and stick to the original Halo1 music.

3.) Your cutscenes aren't advanced.

4.) Some of the enemies looked like you just put spawn points everywhere (jackles on the ledge). Fix that to where it makes sense.

5.) Take out the flashing fire-stuff on Damnation. Causes laggy hell.

6.) The Banshee run was short lived and some parts were annoying to get around.

7.) Your AI weren't overly smart unless they were SpecOps, which are smart by default.

8.) Cortana's dialogue never really made sense or was pointless to have in. Fix that.

Gephy's biggest flaw was the vehicle spawning throughout the level, where you had two Wraiths (and other enemies) at the end of the bridge that could have been spawned when you reached the other side. Also, the Flood's placement in the last part of Gephy was awful. They posed no threat to me.

Damnation was just laggy. Too many disorganized, unnecessarily placed encounters. The last scene of the game was bad. The leader fell off the side and the paths through the level were unclear at the end. Fix that up.
Edited by DarkHalo003 on May 3, 2009 at 04:03 PM

I didn't have most of those problems, could it be your comp?

I really liked this level. I forgot that you didn't need custom content to make good maps.

The banshee part WAS a bit short though.
Also in the beggining of gephy the banshee would go noob and run me over. I found that really annoying.

also the last scene was pretty bad. could you try to make it a little cooler?
Edited by WWLinkMasterX on May 3, 2009 at 04:38 PM

from whar?

(also, I beat the level without using the heal, forgot it was there >.>)

get a voice actor to record real AI lines that fit. Then you could have an entirely new and fresh character too!

Release is the key word here...

500 fps ~

Overall, it was pretty good. I particularly liked the gephyrophobia bridge part a lot. It was well-populated with ghosts, wraiths, turrets (looots of turrets), and banshees, yet still beatable. I also forgot about the healing feature, and still beat the level without too much struggle.

Some things could be improved though:

- A good number of trigger volumes are placed where the player can see the AI spawn right before his eyes. It just looks bad. Move, and if needed, re-size the trigger volumes so that the AI spawn before the player can see them do so. Make sure the player is still forced to go through the volume to go to the next area, though.

- Also, after the second BSP switch to gephyrophobia, the AI are spawned right outside the room that the player's teleported to. This time, they not only spawn while the player can see them, but they're frozen for a moment as the BSP loads, which looks very bad. In this case, move the AI spawn points so that they spawn just outside the room, so that the player can't see them spawn. But, keep the firing positions that are in front of the room. It's fine that they run out immediately where the player can see them, as long as they're not seen spawning.

- Close the dropship doors if they're not dropping anyone off. It's awkward seeing them hovering empty with doors open:

(unit_close [unit])
closes the hatches on a given unit

- Also, the flood encounter at the end of gephyrophobia (the one where cortana says "oh hell") caught my attention.

I can tell you wanted to make it a surprise flood attack. Well right now, it's a very anticipated tiny group of flood.

I could hear them gurgling all the way from outside on the bridge, since you spawned them very early between the doors, which made it no surprise.

And second, there were only four of them if I remember correctly, which isn't much of a threat.

Third, when they spawned, I was standing on the opposite side of the room, and they were happily gurgling away chilling out where they spawned, paying no attention to me. I had to walk to the middle of the room before they noticed me. Seems like they were supposed to attack the hell out of me when that door opened, judging by cortana's reaction.

Well, that encounter can be a lot better:

Since they're already supposed to spawn hidden between the doors, don't spawn them until that very moment when the doors open for them to attack. That way it's unexpected. And at least make 10 of them spawn, if not more. Lastly, you want them to be alert to the player's presence no matter where the player is when they spawn, right? Use this:

(ai_magically_see_players [ai])
makes an encounter magically aware of nearby players.

That way, no matter where the player is in the room, the flood will charge him the moment that door opens. That makes it threatening and surprising, like it was meant to be.

- The cutscene camera work is very awkward. I would go in-depth about how to make it better, but even compared to the walls of text that I write that's too much explanation. To summarize, you don't have to restrict yourself to using strings of shots that transition from one to another, stopping at each point.

Vary it a little. You can snap right to a point, then have a slowly moving camera to another point that still focuses on the same objects while keeping the camera animated. A good tip is to slowly and slightly move the camera while viewing the same subjects depending on what's going on to keep the camera animated. It could be slowly zooming in or out, slowly shifting left or right, etc.

Also, there are way too many overhead shots. Try some shots that look from the floor up, or from the side. This makes the object or objects you're focusing on seem much more important, as they are taller than the view of the camera rather than distant and smaller. Overhead shots are good for when you have multiple subjects, however, you can do side shots from a distance with multiple subjects too.

But, if you have one specific object you want to focus on, like the chief or the Commander, then use more low shots.

These are just guidelines that I've gone by basically just messing around with camera angles and such to get the best shot. Don't go just by what I say. Experiment for yourself with the camera angles and movement and see what better shots you can find for yourself.
Edited by Me KS on May 3, 2009 at 08:58 PM

i'll dwnld in a few hours and test then
-sounds like a beta to me though

That's a lot of replies, and I'm too lazy to quote every one, so I'll just refer to ppl:

@Tuaha: That was funny. Apparantely AI can't see scenery objects like shield generators.

@itachi: http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?nid=386

@ACoLOL: I'll consider the music. Also, the sudden switches were due to faulty sound looping tags. If someone with experience (and a good sound editor) could create a proper sound_looping for me, that would be greatly appreciated. Also, thanks. This is better than the feedback you gave for my last SP =\

@DarkHalo003: The Damnation part didn't lag for me, but I guess it will for some people. I would have considered cutting down on the encounters except for the fact that they had to be there. I've cut down the most I can, and these are the minimum for good gameplay. I need a voice actor btw. To replace Cortana. Anyone?

@Linkmaster: Thanks. I'll fix up the proper Banshee AI.

@Sabre: Halo 3 soundtrack?

@L0d3x: Maybe.

@KS: I shall edit the trigger volumes. Thanks for the command and advice for the Flood also. My camera work isn't so good. I admit to that. I shall attempt to do better.

Funny that, I lagged on the Gephy bit, but not the Damnation bit. :|

Because you had the pre-beta. This version is the beta.