"A Forger's Portfolio"

The 0micron

Selppin
Jan 27, 2013
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Introduction:
Well hello there reader! My name is The 0micron, or if you aren't sure how to say it, you can just call me 0mi. Just to make it very clear, 0micron, not 0mnicron. 0micron. Okay I'm not creating this thread to make sure people say my name correctly, I'm creating this to keep up with the youth these days, or how Mr Duck says, "the Rage these days". I'm not much of a writer like Zandril, but I'm going to have a Timeline of sorts from the beginning of my forging experience up until the present day. Apologies ahead of time if something that is written below the screenshots doesn't make any sense or sounds weird. Regarding the screenshots with spawns and stuff, I didn't see them until I went to edit, I am sorry. This is my second time doing this, because I'm dumb and it got deleted. With all of that being said, Enjoy!
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Halo 3 -
Sorry to say, but I've lost my old old account from when I forged in Halo 3. Therefore I don't have anything really to show you... but don't fret, I didn't make much. My old old Gametag was "RYOKUSI" (if you were wondering). I wasn't aware of any forging communities and started forging because I enjoyed doing it. I only made a few "aesthetic" maps that weren't very good. To name one that I remember, Ryo's Resort, It was a curved building with nothing inside and next to that building there was a pool. That's it :p. Once again, Sorry for no screenshots.
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Halo: Reach -

Ooo Reach... that was quite the "Jamboree". I went into Reach with no goals, just wanting to make fun maps for
others to play. Learned a lot and made quite a few of maps. So without further delay, My first map!




Zeta.jpg


O goodness Zeta. What were you? well basically an "Octagon" to say the least. That's about it. Not much more can be said about it. I thought it looked half decent, but it fell due to poor frame rate. Even though this was my very first playable map, I really do think it came out better than I expected though.

Injection.jpg


My very first "serious" map, and my first Infection map. Once everyone got into the groove of Halo: Reach, I decided to start watching some youtube forging channels to see what others are creating. That led me to Mr Pokephile,The Pro Forge League, and VirtualFlod to name three. The Pro Forge League released a contest and I thought, "why not take a swing at it". With help, I managed to take third place in the contest. Most of the inspiration behind the map was from Dead Space.
KotBC.jpg


After the success I had with the Infection Contest, I decided to attempt to branch off and try other types of forging. This was my attempt at a minigame. Very basic and became bland quite quickly.
In basic terms, The golf ball is the hill and you try to stay close to it to score points, while not letting the opposing team near it.
Impulse.jpg


During that phase of wanting to see what else I can forge, Slayer came to mind and in result, a very small 2v2 map that didn't play very well. None the less, I can at least say that I've made a slayer map :cool: Also, there was contest, so that helped motivate me to create it.
Adrift.jpg


Decided to take a stab at another Infection map with a new friend, in result it came out as a fun, balanced, and tilted map. To this day, I can say that this is in DUN3Z and I's favorites.

PrimordialDepth.jpg


At this point, I knew that I was mostly an Infection forger. This was an experiment that me and a friend created. The entire map looks like the screenshot, bland and confusing. I think we both enjoyed creating it though and we both learned a lot about design from it.
Genesis.jpg


A new gametype called "Linear Infection" was gaining hype and this was my first stab at it. Quite pleased with the result, but a little short sadly.
UnexpectedA.jpg


This was a very experimental map for me since before this map, I only created indoor only maps. Had a lot of trouble balancing it, and in result didn't play very well. It was a good learning experience for me though.
WitheringWaters.jpg


I decided to take a second stab at Linear Infection with Withering Waters. It was a bit longer than Genesis but I wasn't too happy with some aesthetics and a few bland gameplay moments.
FODR.jpg


DUN3Z and I reunited our powers to create an entry for Mr Pokephile's Necrosis Contest. Sadly, we didn't place but was still one of my favorite maps to build in all of my forging experience.
DivinitysReach.jpg


My final map before the launch of Halo 4. This was another linear infection map that sadly didn't get seen much. Definitely my favorite linear map of mine. With all of that being said, That was all of my finished Reach maps! I can't fit all of my Halo 4 content into this thread, so i'll create a new thread with that soon. Tell me what you think of everything! and share your own stories like mine! Sorry about any errors I may have made as stated prior, this is my second time writing this... anyways that's it!

Cont. - http://halocustoms.com/threads/a-forgers-portfolio-cont.14869/

With Love-
The 0micron

Special Thanks
to everyone who helped motivate me to keep
creating maps and being there to support me :heart:
 

PA1NTS

Master
Jan 1, 2013
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Nice looking maps. Sadly I don't think I've played many of them. That's most likely because I didnt even know you. I was a nobody in Reach. I made shitty maps and nobody knew who I was either. I spent most of my time going absolutely ham in the living dead playlist.

Anyway... Reach lobby sometime?
Also, I'm really thinking about doing a portfolio too. You made this one look really good.
 
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The 0micron

Selppin
Jan 27, 2013
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"A Forger's Portfolio" cont.
________________________

Halo 4 -

Since the fantastic experiences of Halo:Reach were coming to a close and a new game was releasing with a fresh start, I had big plans for the future. I wanted to get better and better, create better looking maps, fun atmospheric places, and in general a "different" forging experience. Some people will tell you that I'm more of an "aesthetic" forger, and that I'm good at creating things. In reality, I'm not at all. I can't make objects for the life of me honestly. I enjoy creating textures that look different from the norm and creating a refreshing experience for players within flood, which is most likely why someone might feature a map. Enough of my bullheaded spiel though, onto the plethora of maps!

__________________________________

Sadly, I don't have screenshots of my very first map on Halo 4... somewhere along the lines of then and now, I misplaced the file... (might have deleted it). But thankfully I received a few features of it. Here is one from Online Knights.

The transition from Reach to 4 kind of destroyed me when it came to Linear maps. The map worked, but suffered from new problems that I was unaware of: Broken lighting, unbalanced gameplay, broken progression barriers,and a bad ending.
Scrapyard.jpg


Scrapyard was a very basic Flood map that Boltz and I created to get back into the groove of forging since my failure of a linear map. It used a gametype created by Pol Wah and I called Phagein. Since then, Phagein has gained quite a good amount of publicity.
Refugee.jpg


Created to help me and my friend get better at creating outdoors maps, this medium to large sized map is a fun casual flood map with multiple buildings to holdout in. The map took good advantage of Erosion's natural terrain. Since this map, I took a well-liking for the Erosion canvas.
Collapsed.jpg

The original map entitled, "A Feast for Crows", was a very dark cavern filled with green acid pitfalls and enticing aesthetics. I got a lot of great feedback from the map and with a few months of changes, including a name change, I was extremely close to getting it into Matchmaking for Hivemind! Sadly though, Bravo wasn't too fond of the suicide that took place due to the large pit shown in the screenshot above. O well!
sd.png

My brain swirled with ideas of new ways of implementing objects and creating better texturing, in result "Something Different" (Thanks xEasyTargetx for the name!). Unquestionably my favorite map that I have created. It was small, dark, and eerie. Humans had shotguns to start and no radar. Probably my most renowned map.
RelocateLD.jpg


Auxi Klutch and I created this map for Mr Pokephile's March Template Contest and swept 1st place! I'm personally not a huge fan of the layout, but the aesthetics were good enough to push it to the top. After this map, I decided to take a break from Erosion and focus on some other projects.
SomethingShocking.jpg


One of those projects was Something Shocking a map that followed the story of "Something Different" before hand. The map was entirely underwater on the semi-new forge canvas of Forge Island. The Idea behind the map started back in Reach with my map "Primordial Depths". Lots of inspiration for the map was from the Bioshock series (as the name suggests). Received lots of mixed opinions about it, but it was a great challenge to create as many people tried to avoid forging underwater.
SomethingUnsettling.jpg


After all of the features and remarks I received from "Something Different" & "Something Shocking", I tried to hit it home with the final "chapter" of the story, creating a trilogy of maps. Sadly the map was small and uninteresting for the most part. Therefore, It was mostly ignored and taken as a generic map.
GITM.jpg


After joining in some random custom games, I met this forger, SuperMcSweet, with an awesome concept. He created a rough map for the concept and I helped create the atmosphere around it. In result, A minigame very different from others, using the nova effect and green screens as the flooring. After a few months, it landed us hundreds of downloads. It was a fun change of pace to go back to forging a minigame type of map.
TVFF.jpg


While still in the scene of minigames for a short amount of time, I had a humorous idea for a minigame. So I grabbed my friend and we created this in a day for a fun "lobby buster". It's a single street with a team on each side, everyone has one life and pistols. Duel it out Ghetto style.
DeadVolt.jpg


At this point, I created a number of maps, but none on Ravine..So I told myself I really should try, so I flew myself in and squeezed, (emphasis on squeezed), a map into the literal ravine. In the end the map was very interesting, but had fairly terrible flood gameplay because of the limited size I had to work with. In my opinion, my worst playing map.
Cabin.jpg


My longtime friend DUN3Z and I decided to take the challenge given to us by Mankill258 to create a map in half an hour. Well lets just say that It's playable. :y: O and why all of the versions? Why not.
CleverName.jpg


For the most part, this map was a practice map, went into forge one day because I was bored, and this appeared. Half decent map, but wasn't segmented very well.
TunnelRats.jpg


Robius5991 came to me one day asking if we wanted to co-forge. Since we haven't before I accepted. Added that we used a rock mod to create the entire map, it was fun but has a few frame rate drops here and there. First time forging using Pa1nt's gametype "Last Stand" too and I enjoyed it greatly. This is my only object modded map i've created.
PRtitle1.jpg


My entry for the 343i Hivemind Contest back in August. Wanted to create a small interesting map yet a refreshing take on Hivemind at the same time. Easy to understand and enjoyable for the most part. Still unsure of the results for the contest, but fingers crossed I placed..not that winning matters ;).
PHWarehouse.jpg


Finding Picklepig7 in some random custom games, I recruited him to help create a gametype, using his original concept, entitled "Prop Hunt" which was growing in popularity at the time. The gametype was modded and made mongooses into certain objects. Originally I'm the creator of Warehouse.Since then, Picklepig7 has modified it for the better.
ripple.jpg


Ripple Effect was a very quickly made map on Erosion that used Last Stand. It's a single holdout room with 3 main flood entrances. Surprisingly, it played reasonably well for being created in about a day, so not as fast as Cabin, but still very very fast. (I don't recommend forging that quickly, as it leads to a lot of extra fine tuning and tons of frustration).
Constellation.jpg


My newest and one of my favorite maps of mine. Plays with Last Stand and currently still making very small tweaks to it to make it even better. I enjoyed creating this map very much and highly recommend attempting a Last Stand map.

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Well that is it! Thanks for reading, and if you read all the way through I give you a big pat on the back (mostly because I'm a terrible baker and wouldn't be able to make cookies like Mr Duck). O and Pa1nts, you definitely don't get a cookie. Thanks again!


With Love,
The 0micron

Thanks to
everyone I'm met throughout my journeys
and told me to keep creating maps, I couldn't
have done it without you
:heart:
Special Thanks
DUN3Z
&
Shadow kryPTiiC
 

The 0micron

Selppin
Jan 27, 2013
201
218
126
28
Nice looking maps. Sadly I don't think I've played many of them. That's most likely because I didnt even know you. I was a nobody in Reach. I made shitty maps and nobody knew who I was either. I spent most of my time going absolutely ham in the living dead playlist.

Anyway... Reach lobby sometime?
Also, I'm really thinking about doing a portfolio too. You made this one look really good.
Please do man! It was a lot of work, but it was fun! Reach lobby? SURE
 

REMkings

BIOC Leader, Flood Guru
Jan 1, 2013
773
492
398
31
Really good write up, and those are some good maps. I haven't played a lot of your Reach maps either, sadly, because we only met somewhere halfway the game's lifespan. Luckily, after that we did play a good amount of custom games together. I especially remember really enjoying Injection after you'd shown it to me in a custom lobby. It had a great theme and balanced gameplay. I was thoroughly impressed and I didn't forget about your name anymore after that map.
Either way, you and Flying Shoe ILR have really inspired me to do one of these as well at some point!
And I'm down for a Reach lobby too. Like I said, haven't played most of these maps and it's been too long since I played some good ol' Infection anyway.
 
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REMkings

BIOC Leader, Flood Guru
Jan 1, 2013
773
492
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This is some excellent stuff. I like your writing style, and the little jokes every now and then complete it.
Keep it up bro! :D

Overall, really nice and informative to see how you've been learning over the years and never stopped trying to improve yourself... and succeeding at it. It's a shame I have only ever played a handful of these maps, you really have to push me more to hand over the lead to you whenever we play together because there's quite some gems in your collection of creations. Collapsed, Tunnel Rats, Port Robinson and Constellation would have to be among my favorites of yours. And I really wanna check out Something Different and -Shocking again. The first one I've only ever witnessed one quick game on which wasn't all that exciting seeing how the rounds ended quickly due to connection lag, and I haven't even played the latter at all. :(
Also, I've noticed you've only made one Linear map this far. Wanna try and get your hands on a new one together? Or we could make a Last Stand map. I'm really digging that gametype.

And I'm sure Port Robinson has placed. ;) It's a really good map. (Just gotta wait for the judges to publish the results.. grmbl. xD)
 
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xfallen1egend

Novice
Jul 15, 2014
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Omi , I was never a big Infection Lover , But you're maps always brought on inspiration due to the clean look and well thought out look with the intricate ways you used the different blocks!

P.s Zeta looks like a Paintball Map , but I don't think Paintball was big when you made that map! :/
 
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