Timeline of a Forger
There are a lot of people out there who want to become better forgers. Not better forgers than someone else per say, but just able to make maps that more fully accomplish what they want them to do, such as playing a better game of flag or looking more like a certain theme. Most forgers aren't really sure what they need to do to get there though, and many quit before they can reach their full potential. I've been forging for a few years now, and looking back I now I can see a lot more clearly how I got to the skill level I am at today (a skill level I am still looking to increase.) I realized that most of what I know I learned from the sheer volume of maps I made, and from the failings and accomplishments of each one. To help aspiring forgers better understand what it takes (or at least what it took me) to improve, I've created this timeline of my own forging career.
The maps in this list range from my first projects down all the way to my current ones. Each contains when I started it, how long I spent on it, and a brief description of what I was trying to do/ my thought process behind the map. I will also try to explain what I learned from each map, and how each led me to make better and better designs as time went on. Hopefully this will give forgers some insight into the work required to improve as a map maker, as well as to how every map you make matters so long as you can look back and learn from it. Most of my early maps were pretty bad, and these are only the ones that actually became playable. There were many more that never reached this stage and so didn't make the list. I would estimate that I have started at least 50 or more forge projects, less than half of which I have tested and but a quarter of which I have released and considered finished. I hope this doesn't daunt new forgers with the sheer amount of time I spent doing this, but instead encourages them to keep at it and to look critically at their own designs. This will be a 2 part post, as I broke the word limit. 
Also, I'd like to make it clear that this is designed not to just be a portfolio of my work. If I had wanted that I wouldn't have put my early crap maps on the list, but I did. I want this to be something that can help other forgers, showing them my story so that they might be able to look at their own and decide where they want to go next. This is heavily personal because I can't think of a better way to explain it besides personal experience, an issue I've had in explaining things like this to forgers in the past. I hope it helps, but I hope at least you don't see it as an act of self-promotion. It wasn't intended to be, but I thought people could mistake it for one, hence the disclaimer.
Halo 3 Maps
Unfortunately I have since lost all of my Halo 3 data. However, there were about 15 maps that I would have in this list that I would have considered playable, and more that never made it that far. None of them were much better than the first few Reach maps I made, and most were a lot worse than even those. They were my starting point though, where I just did what I thought would be cool no matter how I thought it might play.
Halo Reach Maps
Insurrection
Started: September 2010
Spent: Less than 1 month
Insurrection was my first Reach map. I wanted to make a Covenant Cruiser map, and so I did. It did not play well or look pretty, but it was a place to start. I knew I could do better however and decided to move on fairly quickly. I didn't really know much at this point other than that I liked to make maps, and so all I could do was keep making them and hope to learn something.
Mendicant Plaza
Started: September 2010
Spent: Less than 1 month
My second map in Reach had a bit more structure than the first, but I still had no idea how to design for good gameplay. I wanted to make a cool place by a waterfall, but I was disappointed at how random it felt, and the lower level was no fun to play in. Once again, I couldn't do much more than try to make another map.
Bandwidth
Started: October 2010
Spent: 1 month
Bandwidth was my first symmetrical map, and here I tried to make something a bit more solid and structural. I planned out the paths in a triangle shape with a line through the middle and made sure there were 2 levels. This would have led to a lot of choke points had I tested it, but I was still mostly making maps for fun and to play with 1 other friend over split screen. I liked where this was going though and decided to take it to a new level.
International
Started: October 2010
Spent: 1 month
International was another symmetrical map, a theme I stuck with for some time. Being a new forger symmetry made it easier to make a decent map, and so I started using it a lot. This map now had 3 levels, lifts, and some basic fighting areas and bases. This map was the first one where I really tried to think about gameplay, and though it was never tested it did not have the choke points Bandwidth had and there were lots of movement options. Slowly, through brute force forging, I was getting the hang of things.
Aqueduct
Started: November 2010
Spent: 2 months
Aqueduct is the first map I ever tested with more than 2 people. I got into a lobby with 8 people and put it on and got some of my first feedback. I wasn't really sure what to do with it at the time because I barely understood what made a map work or not, but I tried to follow it as best I could so long as it made sense to me, something I still try to do. Aqueduct was designed to have a risk vs reward system, another first for me. Taking the flag through the center was risky but fast, while taking it around the U-bend was safer but long. It didn't work exactly right, as the middle path was way too safe, but I learned from this and kept its issues in mind when designing other flag maps.
Roundabout
Started: November 2010
Spent: 2 months
Roundabout was my first rotationally symmetric map, with each side being a flipped image of the other side. This was also my first map to incorporate a piece of natural terrain, with the central water basin. I found I really liked how this added color and depth to the map, and so I continued doing it on a number of maps in the future. This map was extremely cramped to fight in because of all the stuff on the roads, and driving was a bit of a pain. I did learn a few techniques from people I knew however, like making ramps from rocks to fit just perfectly into the geometry. Testing really ramped up with this map, and I started to learn a lot from just playing the maps and finding flaws and things I enjoyed. I wrote these things down when I could so I would remember them for later.
Highroller
Started: November 2010
Spent: 3 months
Highroller was another cool idea map, this time based off of a casino. I made it a split level and had a few cool areas and decent segmentation, meaning that players couldn't see each other all the way across the map. However, I found that putting shotguns on top of the lifts caused camping, my first encounter with bad weapon placement. The fact that the only way to the top of the map was by lifts was a huge issue alongside this, as whoever held the top owned the map.
Impenetrable
Started: December 2010
Spent: 2 months
This is the first map where I learned that it is important to name your map correctly. Go ahead, laugh. Done? Ok, good. Anyway, this map had a lot better paths between the floors than Highroller and actually played decently. At this point I was making pretty decent symmetrical maps but I was losing inspiration to keep making these kinds of maps. I resolved finally to try something completely different and to break out of my comfort zone.
Tuscan
Started: January 2011
Spent: 3 months
Tuscan was my first decent asymmetrical map. It was designed for a 2 v 2 contest on Forge Hub (though I doubt it ever got close to winning.) This was also the first map where I designed the whole thing before building it. I used both paper and a 3d modeling program to make the map beforehand, after which I built it. I found that this style worked for getting the basic design figured out but left me with very odd piece choices to fill gaps I hadn't planned for. I decided that this map was decent at the time but that I wanted to go even further in another direction. Breaking away from one's comfort zone often can help if you are stuck in a forge rut.
First Tracks
Started: January 2011
Spent: 5 months
First Tracks was the first map that I tested into the ground. I spent 4-5 months testing the map nearly every week with friends, trying to understand why things worked or did not work. The map ended up playing fairly poorly because of it's unusual design, but I learned a lot from it because of the hours of testing and hundreds of tweaks and changes I made. First Tracks was a larger map that I had made before and stemmed from 2 things: I wanted to make a map based on a ski resort, and I wanted to make an Invasion map. Though it may have played rather poorly and it looks silly now, I learned more from this map than from almost any other. Even with maps you may not think are good, test them until you really understand why. You'll learn a lot and feel nostalgic for them later. 
Riparian
Started: February 2011
Spent: 5 months
Riparian was the product of all I learned from First Tracks. There were many paths to reach the objective (the map was designed for 1 Flag CTF) and lot's of cover from the high ground areas. This map, as my second BTB map, was a huge leap from First Tracks, and like with First Tracks I tested it to death. By the time I was done I knew that the map had horrible driving paths, that the defenders spawned too close to the flag, and that coliseum walls looked bad when put in a line like these to form a barrier. But these were all good things I got from the map, and following through with later maps I made sure to not make to same mistake twice... or at least not that badly twice. Sometimes you have to learn the hard way repeatedly.
Quayside
Started: March 2011
Spent: 4 months
Quayside came about during Riparian's testing, but I already knew I wanted to try something with better vehicle driving paths. Learning from what I'd done before, I gave them plenty of room to get around and created things for the Falcon to fly around (Falcon did not make it in the end.) I also chose an urban setting to better disguise the coliseum walls as buildings. I also started a trend of building my maps right on the surface of the water so as to save parts keeping players in the map, something that I continue to do today. Between this map, Riparian, and First Tracks I learned a lot about BTB and was ready to put it all to use in one map.
Coronary
Started: March 2011
Spent: 3 months
Coronary is an example of how you can have learned a lot and think you know what you are doing and still make a bad map time and again. It is also an example of why experimentation can help you. The map was designed to play all game modes based on different sets of items and also to look like the inside of a heart, neither of which I accomplished. Still, it was a good reminder of where I had come from and I moved on after a few tests no worse for wear. Every map is important, whether it is a success, a failure, or a mixture.
Styx
Started: June 2011
Spent: 2 months
Styx was a throwback to the small, symmetrical maps I made in times past. I made this map for one reason only: to make a map drawing from the shadow temple in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Sometimes it is good to break out of your shell and try something totally different, as you can learn from the experience. The map didn't have great 2 v 2 gameplay because I didn't play 2 v 2's, a factor I learned from and remembered whenever trying something new in the future. If you don't play something and understand it, how can you hope to design for it? Still, it looked cool and inspired me to keep forging when I was having a mental block.
Embarcadero
Started: June 2011
Spent: 15 months
Embarcadero was my breakthrough map as a forger. It brought together everything I knew from previous BTB maps into one big, asymmetric map. There are a few reasons this map worked for me: 1 being that I had found a love for playing BTB maps and so I payed attention to how good ones worked, 2 being that I had just visited San Francisco and was inspired to make a map based on it, and 3 because I tested the living hell out of it. I learned more from this map than any other I have ever made because I furiously refused to settle for it playing "well enough." I continued to tweak and test it at different rates for well over a year. I had other projects going on, but over time I found that I could keep making the map play better based on new knowledge from playing it and from working on other, new forge projects. Eventually, even I hit a wall where I knew I could do no better without a total redesign to fix a few major flaws, but I had succeeded in making a map that played very well for what I wanted it to, several years after I started forging in Halo 3. The map still had issues of course, I saw that looking back, but that I used for motivation to fix the same issues in later maps.
Meteora
Started: August 2011
Spent: 11 months
Building Meteora was a story of sheer persistence. I had never done a co-forge before, but both The Psycho Duck and I wanted to make a really spectacular Invasion map, one that played unlike any other. We had both made casual Invasion maps in the past, but never a true competitive one set up like the ones in Matchmaking. For about 8 months we came up with over 30 concepts between us, some of which we spent months on until we finally had to give up and start from scratch. If I had added all of the concepts we made to the list it would be double its size. Through trial and lots of error, we discovered slowly how to build an Invasion map. We also both learned to accept help wherever we could get it, looking to other Invasion forgers and players like AblesirThomas and Yardbird92. After almost 3/4 of a year we finally had a testable version ready to play… and it played badly. We were disappointed by how poorly it was playing after the first few tests, but we just did not give up. Finally, however, after much testing and some painfully hard choices to combat frame rate in the Falcon, we had accomplished our goal of making a truly competitive Invasion map. Persistence pays off when trying to make a map work, and even if you have to scrap a version you should not give up on the concept entirely.
Project Gauss
Started: October 2011
Spent: 1 month
Project Gauss was another experiment, and one that for the most part failed. The incredibly powerful Gauss Warthog in Halo Reach was nearly impossible to balance on a competitive map, and I tried my best to make it work. Sadly, it never truly worked right, but the concept let me break away from my comfort zone for a bit and in the end was good for me as a forger. Don't be afraid to try crazy ideas sometime, but do remember that they could fail, and accept when they do.
Baseline
Started: July 2012
Spent: 3 months
Baseline was my next attempt at a standard competitive map after Embarcadero. Knowing how big and simple Embarcadero was, I wanted to make something a bit smaller but more complex, allowing players to spend more time fighting and less time running around the map. I made a ton of different maps to try to realize this and other ideas, but most of them flopped after a few days of forging. Finally I did find something though. Taking the simple design of 2 concentric circles for the vehicles to drive around, I added to it and created something unique from a very simple design, something that a lot of great designs come from. Here I made a mistake however in not listening hard enough for feedback at times, requiring friends to point out the flaws very carefully when I didn't necessarily want to see them. In the end the map improved because of it, though maybe not as much as it could have. Remember, even when you have made something pretty damn good you are never excused from looking critically at your map and taking feedback.
Dust on the Horizon
Started: September 2012
Spent: 2 months
Dust on the Horizon was my final Halo Reach map and my second co-forge, this one done with MockKnizzle008. We designed the map for another contest on Forge Hub. If you ever need motivation to finish a map, build one for a contest. The deadline and updates on other competitor's projects are huge motivators for you to make your map as good as possible in a short time. I was surprised just how quickly we made it, taking only a little over a week to build and a month to test. Dust was also a strange map because neither of us had ever forged an Infection map. The reason it worked, however, was because we knew EXACTLY what we wanted to get out of the map and how we needed to do it. We had both played a lot of linear Infection and studied why it worked on good maps and why it did not work on bad ones, an important point. You can learn more from a bad map than a good map at times. In the end we got a second place slot and learned a lot from the process.
Stay Tuned for Part 2!
. I remember my first couple of maps back in the day, needless to say, they were terrible lol. But you're right, as time goes on you learn to implement your strengths and overcome your weaknesses on each of your maps. I applaud you my good sir 
! This was a revisit of the mantis vs hog concept that started with Excavation. In order to allow a team with a hog and ghost to compete with a mantis, there are a lot of high areas of the map that players can attack from. The center high point, the bridge, is accessible to both infantry and the light vehicles, allowing hogs to kill the mantis from on high. So far the map is playing 1 flag well, as I've used some of the concepts from Breakwater 1 flag. Hopefully it continues to test well as I keep going!
