Sandbox Affliction

[madz333]

Map Name: Affliction
Created by: DeadLock25 and D4VY JON3S
Gametypes Supported: Slayer, Team Slayer, One Flag, Multi Flag, One Bomb
Recommended Gametypes: Team Slayer, One Flag

One night, out of inspiration, and boredom, two forgers set out on a test of skill and determination. They decided to participate in the Forgehub Template Contest, and after one whole month of rigorous forging and testing. I present to you the descendent of Deadlock25's imagination, and of my heart and soul (I have no doubt that I left some behind when I finished the map). Without further ado, I present the epicness that is Affliction.

-D4VY JON3S

(click to download)





Affliction started out as an idea. There were to be two bases on each end, which were each connected to one of two side bases by a path. How many different ways this was tried, I can't count on my two hands. The map was refined with new ideas, to try to get the flow of the map to work. We wanted the vehicles to have to take the long way around to get to the other bases, or risk close quarters fighting, which greatly influenced the map's layout. This called for a rather cramped middle, which worked well in slayer, but caused asymmetrical games to become confusing. So we opened the middle up. Now vehicles can get through, but it is tight, and they risk getting hijacked, thus balancing the vehicle vs. on foot debate of how best to get the flag.

Affliction was meant to be two different maps in two different situations (speaking hypothetically of course) we mean different gametypes. We wanted the map to be the same, yet different. With the same layout, the same gameplay, but a totally different experience in different gametypes. Because the weapons on this map are set to Symmetric or Asymmetric only in many places, i have clarified which weapons are in which gametypes.

Symmetric

Weapons-
Br x10
Carbine x2
Brute Shot x2
Rockets x1
Needler x2
Missle Pod x2

Equipment-
Plasma Grenades x8
Power Drain x2
Bubble Shield x2
Regenerator x2
Grav Lift x1

Vehicles-
Warthog x2
Mongoose x2
Banshee x1


Asymmetric

Weapons-
Br x10
Carbine x2
Brute Shot x2
Rockets x1
Needler x1
Missle Pod x2
Spartan Laser x1

Equipment-
Plasma Grenades x8
Power Drain x2
Bubble Shield x2
Regenerator x2
Grav Lift x1

Vehicles-
Warthog x2
Mongoose x2
Ghost x1

This picture should help you locate the weapons, vehicles and equipment. (I reccomend that you look closely)

I have omitted the Battle Rifles as they just clogged the picture up. For extra clarification, at the Banshee Base, the Needler is set to Symmetric and the Laser is set to Asymmetric, with the Banshee Being Symmetric in the garage underneath the base.

You should see how Red base is connected to the middle with the carbine fin in-between, and how it is replicated between Blue and Banshee Bases. But once we had done that we had nowhere to put a Brute Shot, which agreed would liven up gameplay (and it did) and we had two holes in the map near each bases garage. So we built a Brute shot base in that spot, which also holds the power drain, and serves as a good respawning spot in multi-team, or Free For All games.








Here is our rational on Map layout, Vehicles and Weapons

Map Layout

Many people say that this map was inspired by Utah Mambo, but the only correlation I see is the placement of the bases, one on one side in the middle and one offset in the corner merged into the sand. Deadlock and I were actually inspired by many maps, including Rats Nest beleive it or not, the middle structure is mainly where the people go, and the vehicles go around the outside, but we wanted gameplay to be less linear than Rats Nest, which is basically a figure 8, so we had the paths curve, going from Blue Garage around the middle to red Garage, freed up gameplay and made movement less linear, as it were.

And we also tried to break the mold. Many Large team or BTB maps on the mid-level sandbox have just two bases and random cover, and we wanted to be free of that, so we connect 4 bases with pathways and merged higher grounds into the sands etc.

Vehicles

After testing this multiple times, we found out (and Deadlock was very good at this) that the mongoose could very easily slip around Banshee and Red Brute Shot bases, go around the back and hide behind on of the pillars and wait there for a man to go on foot grab the flag and get in the mongoose. This was very easy to do and was nearly 100% effective (I believe that there was only one time where they actually stopped us if we had gotten the flag on the mongoose.)

Anyway, the mongoose is set to 90 sec respawn which is twice as fast as rockets (180 sec) and 150% as fast as Warthog (120 sec), which means that it is almost readily available but often doesn't work a second time on the same enemy (There was once a player who camped behind the pillar the whole game just to make sure no mongooses went there.)

About the other vehicles, since Laser and Banshee aren't in the same gametypes (Laser=Asymmetric & Banshee=Symmetric) we have two Missle Pods in each bases front bottom to counter the Banshee (there also the most effective thing against Mongooses because they respawn at 90 sec so you always have one when the other team gets a new mongoose.

Weapons (considering the Laser and Needler)

By the time we had finished the map for the contest, we were at the item limit and far over the budget limit, so we had decided to just leave it as it was, we couldn't even spawn a sniper or a box for all we cared. The only thing we did after we put it up for the contest was a few spawn tweaks that didn't help at all, so we didn't repost the map on fileshare, so everyone of you guys have the older spawn system(which works really good IMO) and even if we wanted to create separate versions for the Contest and the public (we would've had to since the laser is part of the Template for the contest) we couldn't do it because of said reasons.

About the needler, oh here comes a story.

Deadlock had wanted to keep our weapon set similar to that of default sandbox, but we had a laser and Banshee which we had to incorporate in the flow of weapons, so we ditched one of the Rockets and centered it, made Symmetric games have 2 Needlers, and Assymetric have 1. The laser and one of the needlers are in the same spot, but in different gametypes, which causes there to be a lack of anti-vehicle weapon in Symmetric gameplay (read above post for more info) and there seemed to be a lack of support weapons in Asymmetric games (the power weapons almost always dominated until they ran out of ammo) so we lowered the respawn times of the brute shot (support weapon) and needler (the one in asymmetric only) to weaken the strength of the power weapons (Rockets & Laser).

I however had wanted to ditch the Needler altogether, however it was the only way we could counter the power weapons, so we ended up with a chaotic (in the good way) BUT balanced (how we did that, it was a miracle) map.

Anyone that read all up to this point I would like to thank you for your patience, but now you probably are already here for the PICTURES!!!!yay

Overview


Red Base (Defenders)


Back of Red Base


Blue Base (Attackers)


Back of Blue Base


Middle of the Map


View from Red Side


View from Blue Side


Red Regenerator Base


Blue Regenerator Base



Action Shots (not really)

TeamWORKS


Epic Flag Grab with no primary weapon (it happened in game!)


We played a Game of Multi-Flag, and ended up playing 3-Flag!


Download AFFLICTION

I would like to thank
FTR Church AO- For everything he did and all the time he was there. You made the ride enjoyable.
[Some random from Matchmaking] - for joining our game and placing one spawn point, you were a great help
Sir Toppum Hat - For trying to fix the center structures height (I'm still not sure if he ever got back to me about that)
Some people- for taking host so that we could easily geomerge into the sand (yes thats right they took host, no ghost merging for us
All of our testers- you helped us with spawns and weapon times etc

and Lastly

DeadLock25- for Basically forging and reforging the whole map, for your amazing ideas and gameplay suggestions, without you the map is nothing (quite literally).



For all of you looking at my awesome sig \/, that structure holds the overshield in the middle.

[BlazeIsGod]

WTF is this? Who cares.

Edit: If it's a joke. lol. If you are one of the obsessed people......... ya.. wow

@ the map... Some of the structures in the map is very inspiring. I think I may give this a try.

[AssassinChao]

wow this looks like a great map :) i would say this is one of the best maps ive seen on the mid floor on sandbox but i cant truly say that since i havent been active in the past few months.

@BlazeIsGod
I'm pretty sure he put that there as a joke at how some ppl r soo obsessed about recon. As kind of a sarcastic joke. At least that's what i perceived.

[madz333]

Originally Posted by BlazeIsGod

WTF is this? Who cares.

Edit: If it's a joke. lol. If you are one of the obsessed people......... ya.. wow

@ the map... Some of the structures in the map is very inspiring. I think I may give this a try.

Quite frankly in fact, I care, and for what it is, it is a picture of red team, or three of the people on it, grabbing the flag and running through the red carbine walk , while the guy with recon stands there and looks cool and while the other guy itches his butt. I hope I helped

We completely finished the map one month ago, and we had people with recon test our map, before ODST came out, so i thought is was a big deal. Of course, I posted late, so now recon is the new hayabusa, everyone has it, but no one wants it. (if you get what i mean)

EDIT- wow, i see your edit, and yes it was a joke, laugh (i dont even have recon yet)

[rewib65]

well frankly recon doesnt matter anymore, since people can get it just by doing some achievements, i was hoping that would be the end of the obsession.

Anyways, onto the map, its very very good. The geomerging is great, and the rest of the forging is very neat and well done. The thing i like about this map is it seems like theres tons of little details, and because of it the gameplay could be very varied, which is good. Overall, its a very impressive map

[iTz Fuzzywig]

It seems that you followed some of Cosmic Ricks ideas there in your map, it seems very much like Utah Mambo but with more of a slayer side to it instead of an objective feel to it. The architecture is very beautiful and it flows very nicely with the map. Many maps just have random cover out there in the middle of the map that doesnt feel as if it should have been place on the map because it feels..out of place... This map,however, has none of this. Its aesthetics are solid and beautiful- a 9.5 out of 10 for me =]

[Virus]

I like the affliction map more than the rest just because of the creativity and the nice blending/geomerging put into it, the only thing I would change personaly are the bases, put more spots to hide for cover inside the bases, then it's a great map.

[gnurdbn]

I like that you didn't put the lights floating in the air between two obelisks like everyone else does. Personally i never put lights in the air, mostly because they give such a huge effect, and putting them high up in the air is kinda wasteful. They barely do anything at all up there.

[DeadLock25]

lol at the Recon & the three Flag. I remember how much "Fun" we had merging stuff into the Geometry, like the middle bridge without ghost merging. Cant really criticize the map i help build, but it turned out very very well. Cant wait to see the results of the Template Contest.
I give this a 5/5.....yes i just rated my own map.

[Recon Speller]

Good merging i very love the concepts of your map ! The base look symetrical but they have some litle change ! Good map budies !