Halo Certain Affinity

[FREEDOM COBRA]

For those that don't know Certain Affinity is a developer thats has several ex-bungie employees(it was founded by an ex-bungie employee). They helped to created the maps for Halo: Reach's Defiant map pack, Halo: CEA, and all of Halo 4's maps. They also created two DLC for H2, but had no hand in Halo 3's maps.This is their website.

 

[a ninja samuri]

They made haven and exile and the new design for ragnarok and the new design for pitfall and also the updated sword room I think they should defiantly stay

 

[evergreen948]

Certain Affinity are bloody legends! Nomatter what anybody says!

 

[Skyward Shoe]

It seems to me that CA has been improving over time (or at least since the Defiant Map Pack.) Castle map pack was pretty fantastic, so if they keep going in that direction then I'll be happy.

 

[theSpinCycle]

I haven't been too happy with CA's performance.

-Complex and Vortex have framerate even without splitscreen.
-CRATES!! CRATES EVERYWHERE!!! (Solace, Adrift, Abandon, Skyline)
-A few awful maps with little metagame (Complex - camp on the top. That's all there is to the map)
-Decided to copy Valhalla - out of all of the maps they could have copied, Valhalla?!??! Hello, DMRs?
-Put the only new vehicle on the only old map. Wut?
-Bright lights everywhere. I think it was Shatter.. people I would play in customs during that 14 day PR fail would camp on the side by the sun so that anybody looking at them was blinded. Same issue on that desert map.
-Tons of maps that 4v4 players complain about being too large and 8v8 players complain about being too small (Adrift, Monolith, Landfall, Solace, Complex, etc etc).
-Haven, Solace have awful overlap, almost Countdown bad
-Abandon is a spawning nightmare. With parties of four, it boils down to spawning beach and rushing mindlessly.

I'll give them props for remastering the CE maps in the Anniversary map pack.. CA's aesthetics are top notch, but I have qualms with some of their designs.

 

[WhackyGordon]

I think CA deserves more than they're getting, both in terms of time and money. Having to work as a satellite with 343 puts a strain on their debugging capacity. Instead of being able to sit down with the coders and figure out how to work around problems, they have to do it by email, or some IM system. Given the circumstances, I think they've done an outstanding job. I think they could do a better job if they were 343's 'in-house' map designers, but they aren't just working for 343, and I don't imagine they'd want to. I lieu of that, I think more time and money would be a wise investment. I think they could do a lot more.

Of course, I wouldn't mind if they TU'd some of the buggy maps, just disabling some of the animated stuff that nobody ever looks at in MM. I mean honestly, how much time do you spend staring at the sky-box in a Halo match? lol Just TUing so they can do it via Megalo would be perfect, because they could let the original maps function the same and look pretty, but make variants that run better for MM. Like 90% of the lag inducing stuff in any map that has problems is just above the player's FoV. Hell they might even be able to script it so the animations still run in theatre, so clips would still look fancy.

 

[Skyward Shoe]

I haven't been too happy with CA's performance.

-Complex and Vortex have framerate even without splitscreen.
-CRATES!! CRATES EVERYWHERE!!! (Solace, Adrift, Abandon, Skyline)
-A few awful maps with little metagame (Complex - camp on the top. That's all there is to the map)
-Decided to copy Valhalla - out of all of the maps they could have copied, Valhalla?!??! Hello, DMRs?
-Put the only new vehicle on the only old map. Wut?
-Bright lights everywhere. I think it was Shatter.. people I would play in customs during that 14 day PR fail would camp on the side by the sun so that anybody looking at them was blinded. Same issue on that desert map.
-Tons of maps that 4v4 players complain about being too large and 8v8 players complain about being too small (Adrift, Monolith, Landfall, Solace, Complex, etc etc).
-Haven, Solace have awful overlap, almost Countdown bad
-Abandon is a spawning nightmare. With parties of four, it boils down to spawning beach and rushing mindlessly.

I'll give them props for remastering the CE maps in the Anniversary map pack.. CA's aesthetics are top notch, but I have qualms with some of their designs.

You realize that CA didn't make the on disc maps, right? You can blame 343i for issues on any of those. Also, if they maintained a 6 v 6 playlist or two we would have a space for those squad-sized maps, but they don't seem to be doing that.

 

[WhackyGordon]

You realize that CA didn't make the on disc maps, right? You can blame 343i for issues on any of those. Also, if they maintained a 6 v 6 playlist or two we would have a space for those squad-sized maps, but they don't seem to be doing that.

Didn't they outsource almost all of the maps, including most of the disc maps, as well as Forge mode to CA? I got the impression 343 basically handed CA an engine and said, "Make MM while we work on campaign."

 

[theSpinCycle]

You realize that CA didn't make the on disc maps, right? You can blame 343i for issues on any of those. Also, if they maintained a 6 v 6 playlist or two we would have a space for those squad-sized maps, but they don't seem to be doing that.

Really? I thought that CA did all of the maps.. the OP seems to confirm that too. Time to fact check...

Also, agreed about the 6v6 thing. We had the 6v6 Team Objective, but that just annoyed everybody since we got nothing for 4v4 or 8v8.

 

[A Haunted Army]

oh god no, CA have no clue when it comes to actual gameplay and tend to focus more on the graphics over anything else.

 

[A Haunted Army]

Really? I thought that CA did all of the maps.. the OP seems to confirm that too. Time to fact check...
Also, agreed about the 6v6 thing. We had the 6v6 Team Objective, but that just annoyed everybody since we got nothing for 4v4 or 8v8.

they did, its not exactly clear what part of the discs maps they actually worked on but there work is in there somewhere.

 

[PandaMan]

Given the circumstances of ca, I think they did a good job.

 

[FREEDOM COBRA]

the OP seems to confirm that too.

I'm pretty sure they did, but for the record its a bad idea to use me as a source.

 

[theSpinCycle]

Also that Complex Oddball