Simple, sweet, and symmetrical.
The Upper Echelon returns for another round in the spotlight. For week two, they're talking about their Map Variant, Sand Gulch. It's so awesome, it took two people to get it into fighting shape. Read all about it.
Q. What inspired Sand Gulch?
Skitzo yo: To begin with, Dino's lack of wanting to play matchmaking and my fear of playing alone (lots of strangers on that there internet). I don't know about Dino, but I wanted something simple, sweet, and symmetrical.
Haloassassin92 (Dino): Well, when I first started working on it I wanted a good symmetrical big team map like Blood Gulch (hence the name) since all we had was Valhalla, Standoff, Avalanche and Rat's Nest. All good maps but I wanted more variety when I was playing squad battle (or was it rank big team battle at the time). One that was good for Slayer, CTF, Assault, Oddball, and King of the Hill.
Q. How long did you spend getting it into shape?
Skitzo yo: We might have different ideas on how long it took to create (Dino takes forever). I'm going to make a huge estimate and say three days. (Not three days straight though).
Haloassassin92: In total it took about a month. I started about ten days before Skitzo, working on the center and how the bases may look because I had the Mythic maps.
After he started to help it took another three days to get it to look good enough to get test played. We tested played it over and over and over with many people (most from atlas, others from other friends) asking for there feed back and editing the map little by little until it not only looked great but played great.
Q. What aspect took the longest to get right?
Skitzo yo: Trying to get the bases aligned and have similar proportions wasn't the funnest task ever.
Haloassassin92: For me the center, once we started working together getting the bases symmetrical (one of those times I would loved to have copy & paste).
Q. How could Forge be made mo better?
Haloassassin92: I would love to see a "click" option for moving objects so with one click the object rotates 90 degree so I can keep objects straight.
Skitzo yo: Copy & Paste? I've heard quite a few people complain about not being able to have one side of their "symmetrical" map, well...symmetrical to the other. Having copy/paste would help some of the more 1 sided thinkers. Copy/paste would also make Forging quicker and not such a tedious task. Take all that time to make one base and what next? Make it again...who has time for that? All that would be needed is to highlight the structure you want to duplicate, and as long as you have the budget and space...POOF! Twins.
Oh, and with copy and paste should come the rotate ability so both structures aren't pointing the same direction. The ability to drag multiple pieces instead of one at a time would of been nice too.
If you think it's a drag to have to read about Sand Gulch without getting to play it, no worries, The Upper Echelon slapped it in their favorites from last week. You can get it, and a whole new batch of
Bungie Favorites right now. Nice guys, eh?