Lumoria: Episode Two

[Disaster]

Great stuff guys. Looking forward towards the release.

[SirBobbington]

Looking very nice, can't wait to play it!

If only we had maps like these 8 years ago, I think CE would be a much different place today...

[Siliconmaster]

Nice, really want to play this when it comes out. And Bobbington, the reason maps like this didn't exist 8 years ago is because it took what's left of the community this long to get our shit together and make really good stuff, after learning from all the crap we did in ages past. :P

[SirBobbington]

True, but the reason it was so difficult was that Gearbox half-assed the HEK just to get it out there and see how many people would play CE. Nobody played it because all of the original maps were junk, and all of the original maps were junk because the HEK was crap because nobody played CE. If CE was released as a patch for PC (as was originally promised) and the 3000+ players on PC at the time saw custom maps appear, there would have been enough interest to at least attract the talent necessary to develop maps like Lumoria earlier.

Heck, I remember a project that got about halfway done with the models, BSP's and voice acting to create a Reach/First Strike mod based on the novels. It was pretty much equivalent to Lumoria in scope, but it got canned when Gearbox pulled the "multiplayer-only" card. It isn't that the work was difficult by its nature, but rather that the tools provided were inadequate. I mean, look at the community built around the fully supported HL2/Source development world versus our own. I think it is the combination of the zero-fanfare release of CE, combined with Gearbox's eagerness to leave Halo in the dust in favor of Brothers in Arms.

But I guess that is a bit irrelevant 8.5 years later. It would be nice to see a full-scale revival of CE, and I hate the fact that masterpieces such as Church and Precipice will probably never see more than a few dozen active games played on them, and that Lumoria was probably released too late to get more than 100k downloads, even if every halo-related site posts about it simultaneously on Friday.

In short, I love Halo CE and everything that has been released for it, but I hate that so few people even know about it, let alone play it.

[TM_updates]

Looks like I haven't posted here in ages, but here I am, once again :-)

To Sir Bobbington, I agree with you that our timing might have been late relatively speaking, however alot of Lumoria's team members joined Halo well after the "golden age". I myself have "only" been active in this community for about 4 to 5 years.

But the HEK in its current state was a great first experience with a game engine. While it is dated in many regards, it still offers a certain user-friendlyness to its users, and I love how Sapien is set up. It's all very intuitive.

I agree with you that a revival of the CE community would be awesome, who knows this release might spark some life and interest into the community once again, I would love that to happen.

Anyways, just 4 more days left to release. Feels like an adrenaline rush, getting everything into its final state based on feedback from many betas handed out to a variety of people we chose to trust :-)
Very excited for Friday and the following days, hope you all enjoy it

[neuro]

's allright.

-Neuro

[Ki11a_FTW]

I've been with this game since Halo 2 came out, I've made countless SP maps, BSPs, etc. This is still very impressive for me to see. A complete campaign, for once. Both graphically decent and planned out correctly

Congrats TM team.