Why is it going to be our biggest month?

With four brand new ‘Survive The Undead’ experiences & what we plan on being the most advanced forge creation ever made (I will go over the Battle Royale in a later article) this easily marks our biggest month in just content alone, let alone quality. We plan on releasing these five new experiences in the space of just 13 days.

All of this has been made in just under a month which still blows my mind, the team have been hard at work to get these experiences into the communities hands. And man did they blow it out the park. So sit tight, it’s time to go over what these experiences will bring, the new progression system and more.

TFF | Mines Of The Wretched

Mines Of The Wretched is a unique experience focused on close quarters combat, tight corridors and fast paced gameplay. With all of the returning Spartan Enhancers from Countdown Of The Dead offering players needed upgrades for late game.

We wanted to keep the feeling very similar across all of these maps for the experience but still wanted to offer variety for the player & I think we have done that just right, every map feels different yet feels so similar due to the experience itself. And as some of you may know already, we have a new progression system that I will go over later.

Release date for Mines Of The Wretched: September 16th

TFF | Creek Of The Fallen

Creek Of The Fallen probably sounds familiar to you & that’s because, Creek Of The Fallen is a remixed version of Battle Creek. With additional pathways and a remixed map, new aesthetics and lighting, the map feels different to the original but still recognizable. With Creek Of The Fallen, we wanted to honour the classic but build on it to better fit our experience & although it’s still in active development. It is coming along really nicely.

As you see from the image below, we went for a Flood theme this time around. And with the forerunner aesthetics, we think this really fits the theme of the map. Alot of work has gone into this one, from it’s very first release which was in our Map Pack 1 (may it rest in peace) to now, and the difference is night and day in, visual quality, performance, scaling and readability. Because yes, this has been scaled up to play great in modern Halo.

Release date for Creek Of The Fallen: September 18th

TFF | Station Of The Lost

Station Of The Lost is another original map by us. Set on an abandoned space station orbiting a mysterious planet. Players must do what they can to Survive The Undead. This is one of my favourite because I am a sucker for stuff like this. But the map (like all of our maps) looks incredible & it really is just incredible how talented our team is.

This map has a more dark theme & has a horror theme to it, which is what we wanted. All of our undead experiences have a horror theme but there’s just something about being trapped in a piece of metal, drifting in space with no one but you or your team… and the undead of course.

Release date for Station Of The Lost: 20th September

(no render yet so, have this cool image)

TFF | Installation Of The Dead

This map is a very unique one. Set on the cliffside overlooking a forerunner installation, this map has some strong vistas and is much more open then most of our experiences yet. But like the other undead experiences, this once also comes with all Spartan Enhancers.

Every undead experience will have the same fundamental gameplay but the only things that will be adjusted depending on map size is the speed and health of the undead. If there’s more open areas, camping areas, they will be faster and stronger. If the map is more closed in without too many visual line of sights, then the undead will be slower and weaker. This is something we look at very seriously to get the balancing just right across all of our undead experiences.

Now let’s get onto the progression system that all of these undead experiences will have from September 16th and onwards (Countdown Of The Dead is also included) Night Of The Undead will remain with the mode it has currently.

Release date for Installation Of The Dead: September 22nd

(again, no render yet so another cool image)

The Brand New ‘Survive The Undead’ Progression System

The current progression system is good, but the way it tracks your points is using ‘player score’ and for what we are aiming for, this isn’t good enough and just won’t work. So, we came up with a new system that we think not only is far better, but it’s more dynamic for the player and alot more readable.

So let’s start off with how your points are displayed. The way we currently display your points is with player score & to check this you need to get the scoreboard up, but not only does this break gameplay it also sometimes doesn’t show you on the scoreboard due to too many players.

The new system will display your score at the bottom of the screen, this is currently where the ‘completed rounds’ or in simpler terms ‘team score’ are displayed, so this will be swapped out for your points and will be updated in real time.

So what makes this more dynamic? Well now with this new system we can give multipliers on headshots, assists and just normal kills. Assists will now give the player 25 points, a normal kill (body shot) will give the player 50 points and headshot kills will give the player 75 points.

This means, everygame and the amount of kills & assists you have, you’re gonna be on different points every time, even if you have the same amount of kills cause you might have less/more headshots or less/more assists & we think this adds alot of replay value for the players.

Spartan Enhancers

The Spartan Enhancers have seen some new changes, not all of them but a few. And one of the big upgrades we gave to ‘Rush Sandwich’ is that now it increases player movement speed, reload speed, melee speed and slide speed. Previously it only increased reload speed and we didn’t feel this was a big enough upgrade for the points it cost.

All Spartan Enhancers now have names which are: Rush Sandwich, Juggernaut Sandwich & Doomfruit Sandwich. As explained above, Rush Sandwich increases anything speed related. Juggernaut Sandwich increases player health and Doomfruit Sandwich increases player damage for them to cause…Doom. (yes I went there)

The Alpha Undead

The Alpha Undead is also a new addition to the experience. And from Round 9 onwards, there will always be 1 Alpha Undead on the map, it can be killed but it does respawn right away. To kill it, it takes ALOT of ammo but to counter it’s insane amount of health, it is also *VERY* slow. And again, we think this is a great change because not only does it counter camping, but it also makes the map more dynamic, because if you see this Alpha Undead, you’re gonna want to save your ammunition & go the opposite way or if you’re feeling lucky, take it out and get a random power weapon as your reward. This will also be added to Countdown Of The Dead at a later date when 343 improve the 2mb file size limit.

Thank You All So Much

The support you all show our experiences and the studio as a whole is incredibly overwhelming in a good way. We do what we do because of you. All we want is for people to be able to zone out and just enjoy, escapism. And with our experiences, that is what we always aim to do whilst offering great replay value for the player and alot of dynamic features to the map to keep it as fresh as possible.

Thank you all so much and I will be writing another article going over ‘Legacy: Battle Royale’ our next major experience which will be the next boundary pushing forge experience that we aim to make the most advanced forge creation, ever made.

See you soon Spartans & remember, Halo is for everyone