“He who battles armor lockers must take care, lest he become an armor locker/ And when you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”

Hello There

Thanks for checking out my thread and reading my post. I assume you’re reading it anyway, and aren’t one of those mucky pawed children who scrolls straight down to look at the pictures. This thread is about my map Abyss, which I have been working on for quite some time. The map is small, designed for 1v1 and 2v2 slayer games, and is designed around an area of negative space in the centre.

Abyss came about because I decided to build a map that focuses on the things I really really enjoy doing in multiplayer- namely, doing ridiculous escapes and making rad-ass jumps with the aid of the sprint armor ability. I really like the way that sprint extends the distance of your jump, but I haven’t seen many maps which are designed around said extended sprint jump. Well I wore my fingers to bloody stumps sprint-jumping around Abyss while forging, and there are a plethora of sprint-jumping shortcuts which can be made while moving around the map: some obvious, some less so.

UPDATE- Changed plasma pistol spawning time to match time advertised in thread, removed one way system by high red spawn and replaced it with ramps to aid traffic. Have now increased clip on sniper to 1 spare up from 0 spare, I thought 4 shots was playing out as a bit measly.

Enough talking, let me see the map!

Well if you’re going to be like that...

Abyss Flythrough - YouTube

To further enhance your understanding, I’ve taken a video of me playing a 2v2 match on the release version of the map. Just to head off any tiresome comments, I play this game for fun and fun alone. The video is included only so you can see a match going down on Abyss, I am unfussed if you think you are better than me, I’m the worst reach player of all time. If my halo reach stats got into a chicken pen and had sex with the chickens, they would all lay eggs that hatched into accursed basilisks. The video has annotations that were meant to be about map design etc but ended up being me mocking my own play and raging at DeathReaper because he loves to get up in my grill during 2v2s:

Abyss 2v2 Exhibition Match - YouTube

For those who ‘don’t do’ youtubes, I have pics too. This is the loadout cam, showing grenade launcher spawn plinth, top GL balcony which is an important map control point, and the teleporter which takes you across the map to top sniper side, near blue hall. -

Sniper side with sniper spawning plinth visible-

Red hall, towards sniper side

Blue hall, again towards sniper side

Top sniperside, towards blue hall. You can see the teleporter exit.

Red spiker loft, which is basically a continuation of top sniperside but towards red hall rather than blue.

UPDATE- added ramps to top red hall, leading up to back GL side. This replaces the one-way system that existed in version 1.1 of Abyss. Nobody actually suggested this but I've been worried about this area for a while and I couldn't see a reason to keep the one way drop. This should open out flow.

Back of top GL side, passage down to bottom GL spawn.

GL spawn

Yellow strut balcony at top GL side, which gives you a nice sniping view of blue hall

Going for sniper

Lift from sniper area to top sniper

Lift from sniper area to red hall

So are there guns?

I can confirm that Abyss contains various guns. Remember that guns are not toys. If you find a gun on the ground, DO NOT PICK IT UP. Please tell a responsible adult. Under no circumstances are you to run around the map like a maniac using the weapon to kill other spacemen.

Weapons are as follows-

The ever popular SNIPER RIFLE- 118 second respawn, 1 spare clip, max count 2.
The excitingly explosive GRENADE LAUNCHER- 118 second respawn, 3 spare clips, max count 2.

The dastardly DMR- 40 second respawn, 1 spare clip, x2.
The nefarious NEEDLE RIFLE- 40 second respawn, 1 spare clip, x2.
The BRUTE ‘banned in Singapore’ SPIKER- 30 second respawn, 1 spare clip, x2.
The delightfully green PLASMA PISTOL- 45 second respawn, x1.
The magnanimous MAGNUM- 40 second respawn, 3 spare clips, x1

The weapon set is split between long range precision play and some close range shield stripping weapons which are of use in the lower regions of the map. You will also find a health kit in the red and blue hall, and grenades of corresponding varieties can be found alongside the precision rifles on the map. I dislike grenade spam so there’s only one per spawn, and they’re on a 40 second timer. Use sparingly.

Gameplay

As to how you actually win on this map, I suck pretty hard at reach but what I’d advise is get the sniper early and get yourself up to top GL side. There are some long sightlines and you cover a lot of the map, especially in a 1v1 where it’s less hectic. Top GL balcony deliberately doesn’t have much except a sight advantage, so if you get hurt or you’re low on ammo you’ll need to go down and get supplies. The sniper spawns regularly and you can take a fast but exposed route from top GL to snipe spawn, which you’ll see me trying and failing in the gameplay video I’ve posted below (I get taken out with NRs). The situation is complicated, as ever, by the presence of the other team, who will want to do similar things.

Due to it’s size I highly recommend playing Abyss in slayer pro rather than vanilla slayer. I recommend this partly because I think no-radar enhances small team games (and I suspect I’m not the only person on FH who holds this view), but also because Pro ensures everyone has sprint which is necessary to perform sprint jumps which are the entire reason I made this map. Playing the map using a jetpack is basically like spitting in my face. I supplied a custom gametype that I like for 1v1 where you spawn with magnums and have a choice between sprint or hologram. See how you like it.

I didn’t support any gametypes except slayer because all I want to do in my space gun game is kill people, I don’t care about flags or balls or being the king of some dumb hill. The map has always been envisioned as slayer only, I dislike objective gametypes and had no wish to test them in my map. If you really love CTF then this isn’t the map for you, apologies.

Design

The map has been through quite a few different designs, including an early model which was built for 4v4 and featured two sniper rifles and very large elevation changes, somewhat like sword base (shudder). You can see my sketch above. This version was extremely bad and was deleted before the initial forging was even finished. I felt ashamed of what I had brought into the world. I went into forge and began to mess around with 2x4’s, realizing I needed a much smaller map for it to have the thrilling jumps and fast gameplay that I craved. The map I’ve ended up with is nearly unrecognizable from that first draft, but the central design goal always remained the same. What I’ve created is asymmetrical, has large height variations, and to me at least plays rather fun in a small scale slayer match.

Aesthetically my prime concern has been framerate and smooth movement during gameplay. The map’s looks are not going to blow anybody’s mind, it’s a ‘grey box’ map made from a collection of smaller grey boxes. I tried to use a consistent piece pallet centering around large braces, platform Ls and 2x2 blocks of varying types. The red and blue halls are as heavily color coded as I could manage, and areas of interest are highlighted in bright orange to draw the player’s eye. Due to the asymmetry and some long sightlines I don’t think orientation is much of a problem past your initial playthrough. Fans of budget maps will be pleased to know that Abyss weighs in at just under $5000, and fans of aesthetic cones will be pleased to know that I spent $10 of that budget on a cone. Overall aesthetics took a back seat to gameplay, but I hope you find it to be cleanly forged and inoffensive to the eye.

But wait, there’s more!

Here’s some ‘light hearted’ shots that some people might find ‘funny’ although they would be wrong because posting reach maps is super serious and I am frowning right now at my computer:

I know who the real Quaid is-

My spartan reeeally loves to ham it up when he dies

And again. Seriously he could not be more dramatic about this-

“It’s a really nice neighborhood, the sniper attack problem was highly exaggerated…”

Goth MetalCore attempting self fellatio

In this picture Explosium has shot me so hard I’m turning into a ghost.

Finally I leave you with a video of me making the jump for the sniper and failing horribly-
Abyss Fail - YouTube

T-t-that’s all folks!

Thanks for reading my long post, which I was trying to make fun and informative and to really give you an idea of what Abyss is all about. Let me just say it would be a pleasure if you downloaded my map and gave it a whirl with a couple of friends. Maybe you could play it with people you dislike too? I don’t know, you’re making the rules here. Go hog-wild.

I should probably thank people who did a thing SO:

Henry Explosium, my forge bud and 1v1 tester, without whom this would not have come about. Especial thanks regarding the use of ramps XLs as walls and the lift design. What can I say Explosium, you shunted the grey objects around really hard. Your forging could make grown men weep or an old woman feel young again. My forging is a dog’s forging. Also it feels really weird that I can’t use your real name to thank you.

GothMetal core, my main 1v1 partner, who consistently rocked me on this map so bad I couldn’t sit down for a week. The dude has got no mercy and you can thank him for the map no longer having a concussion rifle. Being completely destroyed on something you created smarts even worse than a normal defeat because you create all these boss dropdowns and then he uses them to kill you and you’re like ‘Next time I am going to edit the map so he spawns in a little box I can drop grenades into’.

Berb, a forgehub tester’s guild member, who tested Abyss not once but twice within a week and proved to me that other people on the planet had constructive things to say about the way I had arranged various grey boxes in a computer game (my family aren’t very understanding of my hobbies). For real it’s mainly thanks to him I removed the custom powerup, which really improved gameplay.

Various other testers including Prophanity 01, who is a cool manly guy with a real nice scent and a melodious voice, as well as a DeathReaper, COPkiller50 who are my American brothers from a different mother, and people who played with Berb- Gekko77, DUCK NG, Mr H1dden, Th3 Equin0x, DHG Redemption7, Tolerance Clam, Gambit87 and Zatheria, none of whom I know but I’m certain they’re upstanding community members who are friends to dogs of many sizes.

I’d thank my Mum except all she ever said while I was making this was stuff like ‘get a job’ and ‘go outside’ which wasn’t helpful AT ALL and look at me now Mum I posted the map I made on THE INTERNET and people are LOOKING AT IT so who came out on top?

Anyway, you know what you need to do if you made it this far. Download my map, fire up slayer pro and sprint jump around until your brain shrivels to the size of a pea. It’s the only way.

Thank you and goodnight.