"Deep within the bowels of Maethrillian, an old entity stirs its forgotten halls once more"

EPITAPH REDEFINED FOR THE MODERN ERA

As Halo fans, we all know the story of what it is really like to rebuild an existing Halo map- if you have actually attempted to do so, that is. Put simply, it's A LOT harder than it looks. Unlike an original layout of your own design, you need to adhere and stay true to that of the original, in most cases. Epitaph is pretty much composed of 90 degree angles, so capturing that design with the sharp, aggressive, angular nature of the Forerunner parts, it took a monumental amount of patience to find the right angles and fits to have everything come to a T.

Unlike most who have the luxury of an Xbox 360 coupled with an Xbox ONE, side-by-side, to replicate an existing map, I do not. In order to execute my project I had to come up with another solution to properly reflect Epitaph to its original and have objects distanced correctly in relation to one another the way they should be. My answer- using what I do for a living as my ultimate tool: CAD (Computer Aided Drafting).

After retrieving a nice floorplan of Epitaph, I got to work on tracing both levels of the map after importing it to CAD.

BOTTOM LEVEL

TOP LEVEL

With both Bottom and Top layers properly traced, I drafted in all weapons, spawns, and Fusion Coils while referencing Epitaph in-game. After everything was properly in place, I overlapped Bottom and Top, providing a full plan of Epitaph for me to manipulate as an aid to build INCARNATE!

With my own plan of Epitaph put together, I have the ability to toggle ON/OFF both levels of the map individually, so that I could clear it of visual noise as I looked at the geometry to craft the map. The different colors of the plan represent different layers, each of which can also be toggled ON/OFF as I see fit. With everything there, I can see exactly where Bottom level meets Top, so that I know how it connects; and obviously, looking at the plan, I then proceeded to lay down the spawning, weapons, and Fusion Coils.

With Halo 3's tenth Birthday fast approaching at the time, I had to do things quickly, and I wanted it to be SPECIAL to celebrate it. Using my plan, I didn't want to simply recreate Epitaph 1:1 as it was 10 years ago, but rather reinvent it from the ground up visually, and with minor geometry and scale changes so that I may pay my respects to a beloved classic while supporting the movement of a modern Halo.

There you have it. I hope you enjoy playing on INCARNATE as much as I enjoyed building it....well, try to have a better time on it than I did building it. It was a royal pain.

Thanks, and have fun!