Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Map Confusion and Clarification

I think we have all been there when we wanted to explain to a teammate exactly where someone is. And we have all been there when we couldn't quite explain it.

Pablito and I decided that we should post a couple maps at a time with a grid and have a discussion on what we should call certain parts of the map. I feel like the maps in Halo 1 and 2 were easier to describe where things were. I could be mistaken but I feel like the symmetrical maps don't have as obvious of sides as in previous Halos. For example "The Pit" we are constantly referring to things as what side we spawned on, or on "Snow Bound" we refer to the different maps as what gun spawns there as opposed to blue or red side, or big and little bases like in previous maps.

Some things are more obvious than others, the devastating weapons like rockets and sword are always a good way to describe areas, but confusion can still happen with certain weapons like sniper areas. Does that describe where it spawns or where 99% of people use it like in "Guardian".

Anyways, enough of the explanation. Here are the maps of The Pit and High Ground.

The Pit



I added a couple of weapon spawns there so you can get your bearings. I somewhat arbitrarily decided on a direction which is open for discussion. I think we need to pretty much find a name for almost every 2-4 squares (that might not make sense). For example D2 and E2 can be described as the West Ramp going up to Sword Room, or the West Ramp going down to the Overshield. This might be overkill (no pun intended) but it could really help us working as a team.

UPDATE:
After finding a video walk through of the Pit, I noticed the different sides have different names. or letters I should say. I took some screenshots, they can be seen below. M is the side we originally decided would be West, while K would be East. East Shotgun Room would be M1, while the East Blue Room is M2. I don't think this is any better than East or West but at least we have writing on the wall to help. Just a thought. (Also, any rhyme or reason they went with K and W?)


High Ground

This map is obviously pretty large and might not work well with this small of map, but it might help to get the discussion started.

Anyways, what's your take on the locations within these two maps?

16 comments:

Josey WaIes said...

This is a good idea and needs to happen. I think and Daymonster already stated it, that we should use names of places that everyone knows e.g. rocks, soward... and then from there refer to the side we spawned on for the next level of reference. For example, in pit "Guy is on the ramp into soward on side we spawned." Or "Cloke hallway oppside side from our spawn."

This seems easy and would work but, once the game is rolling, the spawns become random so, we can used this as long as we remember which side we spawned on.

I think as far as High Ground goes, we need to refer to the bunker out front with the needler on top as the "bunker" i think everyone already does. The tunnel where the sniper is at is often filled with guys or a sinper I think we should call this just sniper cave (i realize it not really a cave) but its fast to say and easy to remember. When the guys are at the bottom of the map, we can just say "at the beach". The middle of High Ground is hard to discribe, I think we should go with "no mans land" to refer to this area, because really if guys are in "no mans land", we should be killing them, they have no cover, and we usually have a gost. I dont have time to offer anymore ideas, but cant wait to use the ones that we come up with in two weeks!

Pablito Neal said...

The Pit:
J3 and C3 are either West and East Turrent or West and East Tower.
The corners B8 and K8 are the shotguns West and East.
I like to call the launchers to the towers 'blowers'.
Plasma Pistols spawn near F4 and G4.

I'll continue later, gotta do some work

Daymonster said...

Basically I was hoping to get away from the side we spawned on for a couple reasons.

It seems like it could get confusing and it takes a little while to say. I am not sure if there is any sort of indicator we could use but I suggest we should agree on a direction if they are identical.

For Highground, all those ideas sound fine, but maybe even more specific like where the shotgun spawns, or overshield ridge, and what do we call the area above the bunker on the far west side.

Also "in the base" is a little too ambiguous for my liking, like what floor might help.

Josey WaIes said...

My thoughts on saying spawn side is the same I realized that when I was writing, but its hard to think of something else with a symmetrical map. We need Damination back, good old asymmetrical maps and halo one!

Jeff said...

If you can just find out and remember where red spawns and where blue spawns I think that is often the best way to remember for symmetrical maps. I haven't payed close attention to the maps though, so I dunno if there are any red v blue coloration differences like in previous Halo's.

My feel on the West East stuff is this, in the middle of a game of Halo I don't know how often you're going to say West or East correctly, as opposed to associating West with what is to the left of you and East as what is to the right. It'd be interesting to test it out and see. Also, a note about when you do announce something and I'm as guilty of this as anyone, the person you see is probably moving so giving a heading to the person can help. If you say "by the turret" when you're in high ground, the person is probably on his way somewhere, so where is he going? "Turret, headed towards laser" might be better suited.

Pablito Neal said...

i don't think there's certain red/blue starting spots. i thought i had it memorized for guardian that red started nearer the shotgun but it didn't happen that way once last night. for the pit it could be easy to remember the direction as sword-north. as far as not knowing if someone's announcing it correctly, yes it'll take a bit of practice to know your direction without thinking about it, but ya we just need to practice it a lot. when we play tonight we'll remind ourselves when we see we're about to play one of these maps. saying a direction that the opponent is heading is very helpful too, right on dammer

Jeff said...

Yeah after looking at some screen shots they kinda got away from the color scheming. They shoulda had like red and blue mancannons or something. At least in Halo 2 they used little glow lights of red and blue.

I think The Pit is perfect for North-South namings. After a game or two I'll bet it comes pretty natural here. The map is small enough too where I think if you say a region like Northwest the person should be able to see who you are talking about. I'll throw these out there (West and East are interchangeable):

Northwest OS ramp
Northwest Sword ramp
Northwest Tower turret (high?)
Northwest Tower Sniper (low?)
Northwest Tower backramp?
West blue room (those big rooms are blue right?) low
West blue room high
West mid-platform
Southwest shotgun room
Below Southwest shotgun
Southwest needler walkway
Rocket spawn
West barrels
Cloak spawn low headed east/west
Cloak spawn high
South? Center? sword ramp
Below south/center sword ramp
West open area

High Ground......is crooked. I fear I will constantly think of North as towards the back of the base and South as the beach.

Squatting Bear said...

hey,

i really like where we are headed with this. I think directional naming is a good idea, and those that have trouble picking it up will just have to work at it. I instantly knew where everything on dammer's list is, and with practice, it will come even easier. Some maps will be more difficult than the pit, but I think most if not all should be able to be directionalized (yeah i just made up that word, deal with it).

Daymonster said...

yeah, i like it too. thats what i was thinking. and i dont think we even really need the northwest turret, as there is only one turret on the west side. ya know?

As for highground. I meant for north to be the diagonal towards the top of the base. essentially the directions wouldn't be used that often unless you really needed to pinpoint something like hiding on the east side by the beach.

I am researching if there is anything that can disinguish the pit besides directions. Even the painted numbers on the walls could have been blue or red. lazy ass creators.

Jeff said...

I really think the Pit will be easy to recognize. North and south on High ground will be easy too, although it might be better to just do directional stuff up by the base and use stuff like beach, OS, below OS, bunker, sniper cave, above sniper cave, goose spawn, opposite goose spawn, etc since there are quite a few non-ambiguous landmarks outside.

Daymonster said...

yeah. also check out my update about the Pit in the post. let me know what you think.

Daymonster said...

Another thing what about Garage be where the ghost and goose spawn in the highground base. And we need a name for the area where there is the ramp inside the base and the spot below, like next to inside bunker. any thoughts?

Pablito Neal said...

in high ground there's a satellite or is it a big launcher, can't tell from the pic) in the back of the base, which is far north.

there's a room where you have to lay the bomb during assualt. this can be the bomb room or command center since there's like computer equipment in it.

garage should north of this command center since it's covered and dark.

another place would be the pipe room. how about the pipe exit for the spot where the pipe breaks near the cloak. then there's the bridge, i like calling the area in front no man's land because anyone there should be dead really fast. i don't know how we could classify the rooms underneath the laser, there's about 3 in there on a couple different levels with no real good markers. we'll need to look for some tonight when we play there.

closer to the beach there's the sniper spawn, which is that dark area behind the big rock south of the cloak.

hmm, any other ideas?

Jeff said...

For rooms underneath the laser, there are some good weapon indicators. Needler and brute shot specifically. Obviously you would need to say laser needler or something....just a though.

Pablito Neal said...

ya i think you're right. directly beneath the laser is a room with a carbine. there are carbines outside on the walls near the bridge but i don't think there's any others in rooms so this can be the carbine room. it has stairs that go down to the bunker. the other rooms can be the needler room and and brute shot room but i don't know which is which right now without seeing them. the brute shot also spawns way back near the garage on a walkway going to the pipe room but, as with the carbines, this is outside so underneath the laser we can have a brute shot room

Daymonster said...

I heard some peopl call that room beflow laser Fire Room 2 and the one below fire room 1 i guess there are posters of fire on the wall or something.

Im leaving now, be on in 45 minutes