- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Yeah, there were originally 2 teams... Stefander, JamesD, MonoxideC, ZexGX, Madrox, cold_Fusion, GHL, and myself...
Nitrousoxide's team consisted of himself, Mrs Doublefire, Farsight, Kornman, Kerr Halla.. (and anyone else I forgot..sorry).
Most of us lurk in a halo modding chat room, and when Stefander saw the E3 2004 halo 2 demo, he wanted to recreate zanzibar. As soon as we had access to the tools, a group was formed to try and achieve this. We knew there was another team working on a Halo 2 style map (new mombassa) but we didn't know that they were also working on zanzibar.
We started our project, and things were going well. I remember the first times we got some of our models in game, and especially the first beta when we got the sword into the game. Stefander had modelled an awesome recreation of the base, and we also had camp froman in there. That was about it... the rest was a badly textured surface that was pretty damn boring. I actually built that build, meaning that i compiled everything into the .map file (using the very unfriendly tool.exe). We played for hours slashing each other with the sword etc. We took a few screenshots, and then released them on the gearbox software forums.
I think it was by this time that one of our team members found out about the other team's zanzibar. When we saw a picture of what farsight had modelled AND got ingame, we were amazed. It was around then that the idea came about to get the two teams together into one...share information etc. The best parts from each BSP that had been modelled would be used to create the final (obviously after alot of tweeking).
At first I was all for the merge, however, after a few days I began to see that some members weren't being as...friendly as they could be. Communication was limited. Members from the team would only contact other certain members that they knew, and some never visited the IRC channel that we had set up. I only knew nitrousoxide from the other team, so apart from updates by him, I was pretty much left in the dark about things. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the guys aren't good people (I play with farsight on Halo 2) but by this time I was getting pretty annoyed, and 3D modelling was getting boring for me. In the end I decided to quit, (about a day after GHL quit), and that was the end of my involvment in the map.
A few months passed by, screenshots were released by the team, then one of their beta testers leaked the map, which sucked ass big time. This obviously upset the team members, seeing all their hard work given out withour permission by some little kid who was probably about 10 years old. Once all that mess had been cleared up after about a week, the team released a big update saying it was about to be released very soon... and a few days later we got the link for the download (i got it like 30 seconds early because JamesD posted it in the halo modding chat room :P) and many many servers were set up. The player numbers for HaloCE (which had been low for quite some time) quadrupled that night as everyone got on to play the best CE map of all time.
What this team did, with such complex tools, limited support, a collapsing community (there were alot of guys who would flame the team for not releasing public betas of their map) was amazing. Things like this had never been seen before in Halo. They had everything... a moving wheel, boosting ghosts, dual weilding SMGs, the sword, a hog horn and the gauss hog. Not to mention custom animations, all new weapons, and the fact that the map looks almost identical to the real thing. AND they achieved it all before Halo 2 was released.
This group of people deserve everybody's respect and admiration, and I think they have made a massive tribute to bungie's fine work.
Anyone who hasn't played this map... do it now. All you need is a copy of Halo PC, and then you can download Halo CE for free. I don't know how much Halo PC costs over there in the US, but it's well worth what you'd pay over here for it to play such a great map.
Thanks go out to all of the team for bringing such a great map to us.