Adventurous map makers and modders will now have a some new toys to play with thanks to Halo 3’s Forge creation tool, park of the Legendary Map Pack shipping April 15th. On top of the new scaffolding and shipping containers that you can use to vanquish your enemies, the thing that should get you really excited is the new suite of visual filters. In this week’s Bungie update, Bungie reveals the latest Forge improvements, including some wild and fresh filters that will give your map a “juicy”, “gloomy”, “old timey”, “Nova”, or “Colorblind” look. So with all these filters, how did they forget the rose colored glasses filter?

Hit up Bungie for the full story.

Bungie Weekly Update: 4/04/08 [Bungie.net]

The 3rd and final map included in the Legendary map pack for Halo 3, coming out April 15th 2008 should be familiar to fans. This one is called “Blackout.” The map is basically a remake of Halo 2’s “Lockout” and completes the set along with “Avalanche” and “Ghost Town” in the Downloadable Content (DLC) from Bungie. This official Bungie site gives us a Q&A with “Blackout” design team members: Producer Allen Murray, Designer Dan Miller, and artists Paul Russel and Blake Low. But we know you just want to see what it’ll look like, so along with interview highlights here’s some Pictures of Blackout too!

Legendary Map: Blackout [Bungie]

What did each of you do on Blackout?

Allen Murray: I am the Producer for all of the Halo 3 DLC, which means I helped plan which maps were going to be made, when we’d ship them and who was working on them and generally kept them on track. So I was one of the guys early on who said we need to remake Lockout and then managed the process to make it happen.
I didn’t actually ‘make’ any of it, but Luke is taking pity on me and included me in the interview process. Thanks, Luke. Also, if any of you have any issues with other DLC maps, you can talk to me directly. My email address is frankie@bungie.com.

Paul Russel: I was the primary environment artist for blackout from concept to completion. I also invented the grommet.

Dan Miller: Designing odds and ends, I kept stewardship over the level and fixed bugs. There wasn’t really a whole lot to do design-wise after the weapons and gametypes were placed.
We tried to keep it as close to Halo 2 as possible and let the community Forge it up how they wish.

Blake Low: I was responsible for adding all the little details to the level that made the area seem functional. Things like power boxes, wires, pipes and more.

How is equipment placed on Blackout?

DM: We’ve decided to go with a ‘less is more’ attitude with Blackout after some playing around with a bunch of different placements, we’ve settled on one regenerator, one bubble shield and one power drain.

AM: With such verticality to the map and the narrows spaces, the Bubble Shield is terribly effective for just shutting down certain lines of sight. It’s also fun to toss a Power Drain onto the helipad while everyone is fighting in the middle and just clean up.

What’s some stuff we don’t know about Blackout’s creation? What was the toughest part to “get right?”

PR: This is the first time I believe we’ve tried a full-blown nighttime multiplayer map. Originally I wanted it to take place on the back of a giant llama. I’m still bitter about this.

Maintaining some of the little things that expert players liked to exploit. Those are all gone, now, your pets are dead, go home and cry.
Kidding, we did our best to keep it all in.

BL: Making an environment look cold and unbearable is always a challenge.

AM: We almost didn’t do it because we already have Guardian, which was similar and ‘inspired by’ Lockout. But when I started up the DLC project we gathered a ton of data from the community, looked at the most played maps on Live and did some very unscientific polls on Bungie.Net and other community websites and Lockout was leaps and bounds ahead of every other map in terms of games played and the public demand. It also fits a need in our overall map portfolio to help round out the small maps that are available in Halo 3 and was a great artistic exercise.

The toughest part of making it was trying to be as faithful to the original as possible while also accommodating the inherent gameplay changes between Halo 2 and 3. The second toughest was getting Paul and the gang to fix their bugs on time and making sure lightmaps weren’t screwed all of the time.

Finally Bungie has proved generous enough to show us the 2nd of 3 maps (the 1st one was Ghost Town) that will be available in the Legendary Map Pack coming out April 15th.

This 2nd map, called either Avalanche or Cotton Ball, apparently both names work just fine, fits in well with the artic paint schemes of the new vechicles we posted about earlier. Described by the guys at Bungie as a lovingly crafted re-imagination of Halo: Combat Evolved’s classic Sidewinder Map. One could probably argue that calling it a remake isn’t entirely wrong, as apparently there are elements of Avalanche certainly “borrowed” from Sidewinder – it has the same familiar U-shape, multiple routes from one base to another base, and a whole sandbox full o’ vehicles to play with. But there are many, many changes too.

Designers Niles Sankey and Lars Bakken, along with effect artists Mike Buelterman and Jason Sussman were on hand to answer some questions about Avalanche. Here’s some of the highlights of the Q&A session:

Question: What did each of you do on Avalanche?

Lars Bakken: I did the initial map set-up work (weapons, game types, vehicles, etc) and then handed it off to Niles so he could make it better. Towards the end, I oversaw any bug fixes that impacted design.

Mike Buelterman: I somehow got slapped with the ownership of the map but we all did our part to help pull the map together to really let the soul of Sidewinder shine through with Avalanche. …I worked with design to help fix the issues that occurred on Sidewinder when it came to stalemating and infantry fatigue while on foot.

Jason Sussman: I worked on the Forerunner center pass section and the outer portions of the bases.

Niles Sankey: Designer. This generally entails guiding environment artists in developing the spaces, As a designer I also work on objective and object placement and weapon/vehicles types.

Question: What’s the fictional setting for Avalanche?

NS: Snow… duh.

LB: Hopefully I’m not ruining it for anyone that hasn’t finished Halo 3 yet, but I believe it’s on the new “under-construction” Installation 04, yes?

JS: I think we all had this idea of it being some sort of power plant type of structure where the power was being drawn from within the ice.

MB: Avalanche is a large forerunner power station set on the front of a huge glacial shelf on an under construction Halo installation. The structure is pulling its power out of the densely compacted ice that constantly builds up behind the station before it falls into the ocean below.

Question: Why Avalanche instead of [someone from the Internet’s favorite map, here]?

JS:  Honestly there are so many maps I would personally love to see placed within Halo3’s DLC.  And for me and others Sidewinder was one of them.  I think it’s just one of many we really wanted to do.   Not to mention I believe there were allot of folks banging on the door requesting it.

LB: Since the Halo: CE days, Sidewinder has been a fan favorite. Sure it might not be on EVERYONE’S list, but it seemed to be on the short list for a lot of incredibly vocal fans. And hell, it’s HUGE! And we needed more BTB maps.

MB: It just made sense. Looking back at the release maps and DLC1 maps, everyone could see that we needed another Big Team Battle map along the lines of Sandtrap, and with the Community’s love of Sidewinder, it was a great fit.

NS: Two reasons: Sidewinder is one the most requested remakes and we also needed another big vehicle map. And maybe this isn’t the only classic we’re remaking. There’s always hope for said Internet Halo fan.

Question: How will objective gametypes play out?

NS: We wanted to try something new with Avalanche. One idea was to include the Scorpion tanks seeing as they are so iconic in the original sidewinder, but in the past felt as though it was too powerful to include it in our big maps.
Question: What are your favorite gametypes on Avalanche?

JS: My personal favorite is neutral bomb with Multi Flag coming right behind.  But honestly having so many vehicles and man cannons on this size of map is great for any game type.

MB: Personally I think CTF (one flag and multi flag) is where the most fun can be had but territories and king of the hill really focus the vehicle mayhem into one big wet spot.

NS: One Flag CTF.

LB: Team Slayer, and Team King are good, but the favorite Friday afternoon playtest has become Multi Flag on Avalanche. It’s definitely brought back memories of Halo CE LAN parties. The games are completely epic, and by adding vehicles into that mix, crazy things are guaranteed to happen. Can you say Capture the Flag with a Hornet?

Halo 3 will have this available on Xbox Live for DLC (Downloadable Content) on April 15th, 2008 for 800 Microsoft Points.