Necrubis and Paradox Forgers

Okay so first off, if you haven't noticed already, I've posted a new link under affliates to "Paradox Forgers" Blog, which was created by Gamer720 and myself as a website for the Halo 3 puzzle community. There we will post the best puzzle maps (YEE MAN IZ BAK, BuddhaCrane, and T3CHH800 have all joined), and keep viewers informed of anything of interest going on in the puzzle community. And yes, this was all inspired and revolves around that puzzle map we're all working on together (which there has been talk about creating a part two, but nothing official yet..)

Check out Paradox Forgers Here

In other news, I've got a real nice treat for you guys. I've finished Necrubis and it turned out awesome! The gameplay and asthetics came out as best as I had hoped and I have to say that it is my personal favourite out of al the infection maps I've built so far! So without further ado here it is:


Necrubis - City of the Dead

Necr comes from the Greek word "Necro" which means dead.

Ubis is derived from the latin word "Urbis" meaning city.

The City of the Dead- Necrubis was once a thriving, well-liked underground city known for its beautiful architecture and rich structures of gold and stone. Complete with a mall, tower, gas station, weapons shop, convience store and residential area, Necrubis was fastly becoming popular. The city was built underground to protect it's inhabitants from the dual suns that scorch the planet's surface above, but it's location led to it's downfall as the local water supply became contaminated with an infectuos virus which rendered it's victims with insanity and bloodlust. Quickly the city became abandoned as the outbreak of the the virus overan the citizens with fear. You are part of the group that got left behind- will you beable to survive until evac arrives for you, will you beable to kill off all the infected completely, or will you perish in the effort?

Horror flick fans, your ultimate map has arrived. Much of my inspiration for this urban-themed map came from the greatest zombie movies out there- "Dawn of the Dead" (2004 version), and "28 Days Later". I recreated the mall where they take refuge in "Dawn of the Dead" and also recreated the tower from 28 Days Later where the survivors meet the father and daughter and there's a barricade of shopping carts at the bottom of the staircase.

Another great and unique feature about this map is that almost all the weapons are located in the weapons shop.

Now before you think "Oh great this map is just going to be a major campfest with everbody in the armory", this layout actually prevents camping. How? Well, first off, the weapons shop is a horrible place to camp- the zombies can easily enter it through multiple ways. The best places to make your stand will probably be in the mall or the tower. So what does this mean? It means that you and your friends will have to go on "Ammo Runs" where a group or you will have to run down the street, covering eachother's backs to get to the weapons shop and grab some quality weapons.

The "Ammo Run"

The only other weapons on the map are an assualt rifle and a magnum located in the mall's security room, and those won't help much. There is some useful equipment in the mall and tower such as radar jammers, flares, and deployable covers but they can only delay your doom.

There are two ways you can win as a human- you can try and wait out the time limit or you can commit a zombie genocide by killing as many zombies as you can possibly handle.

In the "Pandemic" gametype the zombies have a limited amount of lives (8) but the amount is relatively high, so you'll have to kill a LOT of zombies to win. Your best bet would be to try and kill of the infection before it spread too much, but that's hard to do, and with each human the zombies infect, you'll have to kill 7 more... Also there is no waypoint over the last man's head but instead the alpha zombies have an enhanced 10m radar, so they'll have to work together and scour the map, and when they get close they'll beable to "sniff" him out. The zombies aren't pushovers either, they may not have shields, but they have a decent damage resistance so it'll take multiple body shots to take them down, but true to the movies, a well-placed headshot, even with the magnum, will stop them in their tracks.

A special thanks goes out to all those who helped me playtest the map and gametype (way too many names to mention). Thanks to you guys we managed to hone the gameplay to perfection. The gameplay is very fair for both sides, and games usually end up being extremely exciting where it gets down to the last man within the final 30 seconds of the game. Both the humans and the zombies have an equal chance of winning.

I also used many of the default Sandbox items to forge this map, and while it was much more work for me to interlock them, the result is that I finished the map a good ways under the object limit and so games with large amounts of people don't have problems with lag (for those that don't know the default items take up much less memory than those spawned).

In the final playtest I had a full party of 16 people play this map for 2 hours straight, and after every game people were still asking to play it again.

I also went through the trouble of preparing this map for EVERY gametype! The only problem is that all the weapons will still spawn in the armory so you may prefer to change the gametype so that no weapons spawn on the map. But I will say that we played some epic games of multiflag, king of the hill, and oddball on this map.

There are tons of cool and interesting places so the gameplay is a unique experience every time.

Forging 101:
>Interlocking
>Geomerging
>Spawn timed events

Alright, enough babble, here are the pictures:


Overview of the city


Residential area, and Weapons Shop


The 28 Days Later Tower


The Dawn of The Dead Mall (After 60 seconds the front windows and entrance get boarded up and the only way in is through the roof)


The Zombie House (after 30 seconds a block will spawn and the teleporters will block allowing the zombies to escape)


The Gas Station (After 3 minutes a warthog will spawn in the garage)


The front counter and toilet stalls inside the Gas Station


The Convience Store located at the street intersection


Red Street


Blue Street


Action Pictures

The Warthog may allow you to survive for a decent amount of time, but only if you have a gunner...

The indoor balcony of the Gold Complex


Rooftop Confrontation


It is possible to get onto every single rooftop by more ways than one


The zombies have infiltrated the tower!

Download Necrubis Here

Download Pandemic Here

Enjoy, and stay tuned for the preview video of the puzzle map and the machinima of the above map!

-Mander