Lone Souls in a Lost Mine
Created by REMkings

Thread has been updated a lot as of March 1st, 2012

At the time the chain of the elevator cracked, dropping them into the mineshaft and breaking all hope to be rescued to pieces, they now had no other choice but to enter the unknown.
Desperately trapped in this abandoned mine, they must face the devilry awaiting them and show their true willingness to work together and survive the madness of the living dead, presumably craving for their brains, hunting them in the shadows of the concealed mine galleries.
Working together or dying alone, surviving as a team or getting seized in the dark as individuals. The choice is up to you. Quickly, make up your mind!

Prologue
Hello and welcome to my newest map on ForgeHub, called “Lone Souls in a Lost Mine”. This is actually my first post ever in the “Casual Maps” section, because up to now all the maps I’ve ever posted were minigames. Because of several reasons though, I decided to make an infection map. (Expect my next series of maps to be minigames again - EDIT: Not so sure about that now, minigames take more time so I guess it'll have to wait until I finish some other infection maps first).

The first reason I made this map was because of iflod101’s contest (on his YouTube channel, V1rtualFlod, he posted a contest submission video.)
The theme of his contest was to make a new map for one of the game modes that were featured in the videos on his channel to celebrate its first year of existence. Because I was really interested in the concept of the map “Mine of Lost Souls”, an infection map that takes place in a mine, I decided to make a new map for the belonging gametype. That also clarifies the name of my map: “Lone Souls in a Lost Mine”. (I wanted to use a name that was similar to the old one, yet new and refreshing.)
The gametype of the original map, called “Lost Souls”, can be found on Flavior101’s fileshare. It’s mostly similar to usual Infection gametypes. The only changes are that the zombies have active camo and the humans have the choice between two load-outs, Sprint and Hologram. (You’ll find this second load-out to be very, very useful.) Also they can pick up weapons, which are supposed to be placed at the beginning of the map. My own gametype works a little better for the map than the old gametype but both work fine (which was the main condition to enter the contest, so it’s actually pretty obvious that it’ll work too lol xD). In the old gametype zombies have better camo but humans have a shotgun instead of an assault rifle. This last difference is – unlike you’d expect – a much greater change to my gametype than the degree of active camouflage. It’s up to you which one you want to use, you can find the old gametype here and it’s in the file set as well.

Click the spoiler to view the old map.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQAv9sC5Hwc

The second reason was because of the Hub of the Dead II contest that had been going on last month. It wasn’t this map I entered though, but another version of the same concept: infection situated in a mine. That map was/is called Poor Souls in a Lost Mine. Unfortunately I had to rush that map to be able to enter the contest so it didn’t turn out the way I initially wanted it to be. That’s why I decided to make a whole new map, and this is the result. (That doesn’t mean the old map is a bad map though, so I’d highly recommend checking it out if you’re interested because I will take it off my fileshare if people like this new map better, which I expect to be the case! Link here) The old map was entered in the Hub of the Dead contest but the new map was meant for V1rtualFlod, to clarify any confusions.
So indeed, I was not able to submit this new map in time for HotD. L

The map
This map takes place in a mine, obviously, which means the ceilings are low and the floors are rough. As you start the game you will spawn in front of several weapons, to be exact one Shotgun only with limited ammunition and for the rest only Assault Rifles. People will rush towards the first weapons they see so they can grab the weapons they like before somebody else does, because there will be a lot of competition since there aren’t very weapons at all. But… if you are patient enough to look around you might just find some other weapons that aren’t noticed by anyone else.. :P
Once you’ve picked some weapons and ammo you may now enter the mine. There are five entrances you can pick.

The first entrance will lead you to a partially collapsed room with a small gallery around one side of the room. I found one of the back areas of this specific room to be the first main hold out place on the map. In here people would choose to stand and try to keep off the zombie horde the most next to the second main holdout, but I’ll come to that later. This room is indeed a good hold out place but you will have to work together in order to survive since there are many entrances for the zombies to seize you.

The second entrance was usually one of the hallways most people chose to enter, which was exactly what I wanted it to be since it’s a pretty big entrance, and it’s right behind the weapons placement so directly in front of your field of vision. At some point in this mine gallery you will have to choice to go either left or right, both directions will lead you further on into new parts of the mine.

The third entrance leads to a really small mine gallery and is quite dark and the
ceilings are low, which is probably one of the reasons people don’t really queue upto go in here. However, I’ve seen people do it anyway and when you have some backup you can actually get to a safer place really fast when using this route.

The fourth entrance will pretty much lead to the same place as the third one, but this one takes you up a little higher which might help you to get away in time so the zombies won’t have an eye for you once they’ve reached the human spawn room.

Finally, the fifth door will lead you directly to the second main hold out spot on the map I was talking about, but surprisingly I haven’t really seen anyone use this route, including myself. However, that was actually exactly what I wanted this route to be: one of the quickest roads to a safer place, but not likely to be used a lot. So I’m glad to see that this turned out to happen for real when we tested the map. But there’s also a downside to this corridor: zombies can spawn right next to the passage and they can also take a shortcut to cross your path from above. So be careful when walking down there.

Like I said the humans will spawn in the weapon room, but the zombies will either spawn on top of the mine where a large pit will lead them to the humans, or elsewhere in the mine. If the zombies spawn on top of the mine and decide not to go down a teleporter will spawn in later and force them into the shaft. There’s a 33% chance a zombie will initially spawn in the mine itself and a 67% chance he’ll spawn next to the pit.
The fact that zombies can spawn both in front and behind the humans will cause them to rush picking the ammo and hurry towards one of the doors. This is major difference compared to the old map where humans had all the time they needed to choose their weapons of choice since the zombies wouldn’t spawn so close anyway.

Key things
I’ll go into some more detail on the differences between the original map and my version now.

The three things that played a key role in my map improvements/changes compared to the old map are as follows:
1. It looks a lot more like a mine now.
2. The map is a lot more sinister and more terrifying than the original map.
3. Teamwork has become a much greater deal

In the first place I wanted my map to really look like a mine. No offence to the old map because it really is a great map, especially when you take into consideration that it was made a long time ago already, but to me at some points it looked more like a cave than a mine, which is – once again – not a bad thing, but I wanted my map to have this real ‘mine feeling’ and not look like some random cave. Once I had finally finished all the mine galleries, hidden short cuts and halls, I could now work on the aesthetics and I think I did a decent job on those. I’ve added special fx and lights, a railway which goes through the air and passes by a few mine galleries, two carts, several crates, a fire room, some heaps of stones and a whole lot of supports, posts and struts. I literally used all my budget so I could get enough aesthetical pieces to make it look like a mine, so if you have any ideas for other aesthetics unfortunately I can’t use them since I have no money left and I don’t feel like deleting things. But it looks OK the way it is.

Also, teamwork has become MUCH more important, as you will get caught if you dont cooperate with each other. I can tell from my own experience lol. I could never walk around on my own for a long time, I’d always get picked off by a zombie soon enough. But also in the more safe hold out places you still have to work as a team because there’s always more than just one entrance to prevent people from camping in corners. And these entrances can’t be viewed at the same time so you’ll need somebody else to take care of the other entrances.

Finally, the third thing I wanted to achieve was to get this map to be more frightening than the original one. The old map was more meant to be a relaxing and funny map, where you would LOL when you were seized by a zombie from behind. This map had to be a lot more stunning and creepy, and I didn’t want there to be any moment where you could relax and lean back: not when you spawn and have to pick your weapons, not when you walk around in the mine galleries or hold out in a safer spot, not even when you respawned after being infected. I had to put a lot of kill barriers at the infection respawn points because I didn’t want humans to be able to camp in there if they would be able to get in there. Most infection spawns are closed off because zombies can jump really high but humans can only jump for 25%, but still if there would be a way to get behind that rock or to jump on that platform, I wanted to force the humans to go back to the battlefield. This also helped me making it look like there’s more to the map by adding blocked gangways which can only be used by the zombies to get back on the map after they died. I added a few shortcuts as well so the zombies can head a person off if they’re after someone, but can’t be accessed by the humans. See if you can find these shortcuts!
I’ve made special fx and to make it more dark but I created lights as well when I found a place to be too dark to get an eye on a running invisible zombie in time.
The ceilings are low and there are a lot of turns so you will have to watch out when you turn, especially because you have no motion sensor. This is where the hologram can come in handy.
Making the ceilings lower did mean that the usability of jumping so high when you’re a zombie got decreased, but thanks to the shortcuts it has a new purpose now.

It is certainly terrifying to see so many zombies coming at you....

Screenshots
Okay, now I’ve been wasting your time for hours talking about tiny details of the map you can click the spoiler to see some more screenshots. I’ll add more action shots later, I’ll have to record some more gameplay first. :S

Here are some more screenshots of the map itself.

Now it's about time for some more action shots.

At the start humans will have some competition for the weapons. Make sure to rush because someone else won't hesitate picking up your favorite weapon if you don't.

And there are more reasons why you shouldn't waste your time...

Usual business: People picking their weapons, zombies hunting them from behind.

Grenade Launchers are very effective on this map.

Assault Rifles not so much.

Life-and-undeath struggling.

Check your corners by using the Hologram.

Sometimes zombies will even ignore the real humans just to "kill" the hologram. (mouseover)
http://img802.imageshack.us/img802/5524/lsialm39.jpg

Zombies will spawn at locations where humans can't get. But even if they would the soft kill zone will prevent them from camping.

Like I said, Grenade Launchers can be very useful. (mouseover)
http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/2145/lsialm37.jpg

It's certainly not impossible to get Double kills as a zombie.

But sometimes a Triple is a little too much.

Working together is the key to success for both humans and zombies.

Going on your own isn't. (I can tell from my own experience :P)

Terrifying picture, isn't it?

The timeless struggle of human versus zombie

Funny picture time!

How you like my new armor effect? It's called "making-the-active-camo-useless"!

Oh darling, how have I missed you lately! Gimme some huggin'!

Catch this mine car! It's my present to you.

I will eat you!

This is why you should check first before going. (mouseover)
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/568/lsialm48.jpg

Hope you liked the pictures! Click here if you quickly want to hide the spoiler again.

Videos
Check out these reviews and casual gameplay videos if you want to get a better taste of what the map looks and feels like!

Here is a video by Insanmiac, for his Forge the Future Redux series!

Forge The Future Redux Ep. 3: Lost Souls in a Lost Mine - YouTube

It also won the contest on Zip Zap Zop's channel!
Contest Winner - Lone Souls in a Lost Mine - YouTube

And the feature on The Halo Forge Epidemic!
"Lone Souls in a Lost Mine" - YouTube

Bonus clips
Here's an extra clip with some intense fighting and usage of the grenade launcher. Hope you like it!

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This is meant just to give you an impression of what it looks like from human's perspective.

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Still not satisfied?

Okay, okay, here are two full gameplays for you. :)

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Epilogue
Thank you for checking out my newest map, be sure to check my other creations if you haven’t already and I hope to see you soon when I’ll be presenting my newest map!

Special thanks to

- Oakley HiDef - voor helping me out a lot with perfecting this map -

Download links
Map – Lone Souls in a Lost Mine
Gametype – Lone Souls

Updates:

12-31-2011; Added a new video (using Bungie Pro).

02-05-2012; Updated the links.. for now.

02-05-2012; Also added another video showing some of the new concept (humans have more health and such).

03-01-2012; Added new screenshots, changed some text where needed and added a new video. New (and final) download links will come soon.

06-21-2012; Changed the download links, so they'll send you over to halo.xbox.com now instead of the non-active bungie.net website.

07-11-2012; Added the THFE review.

07-13-2012; Added ZipZapZop's review + updated download links in thread itself.