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Filed under: Fan stuff

If any of you own either the PC or PS3 versions of Unreal Tournament 3, you might enjoy downloading this Mario-inspired map made by FrontAXL. The blocky platforms will look familar to players of the original Super Mario Bros., as well as many of the background elements. It’s not an exact replica (nor is it meant to be), but the similarities are impossible to deny. Also, the PC version of the map includes music and sounds from the beloved classic.

Check out the awesome in-game video of the stage in action after the break, along with some other screens. You can also download the stage here at the UT3 forums.

[Via Boing Boing]

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Halo 3 players will get three all new multiplayer maps on December 11th 2007 as part of the Heroic Map Pack, the first in a series of downloadable content from Bungie Studios to come via Xbox Live.

It will be available for 800 Microsoft Points (that’s US$10 / €9.60 / £6.80 / CAN$12.40 / AU$13.20) on Xbox Live Marketplace, each map presents a totally different play style. Standoff’s symmetrical valley, with its entrenched bases and fields of boulders is ideal for mid-sized objective and Slayer game types, while Rat’s Nest’s vast, labyrinthine passages bring something new to the Halo multiplayer experience: an indoor vehicle paradise, strongly influenced by the Campaign mode, ideal for big team battles. Finally, Foundry is the ultimate Forge map – players can edit every single object in this voluminous industrial warehouse, place stairways, walls, bridges and tunnels to create an entirely new play space and build almost any kind of map they can think of.

Like Gears of War’s multiplayer map pack, all three maps will become available for FREE download via Xbox Live Marketplace in Spring 2008, just prior to the next wave of all new Halo 3 multiplayer maps.

The Forge also allows players to edit and customize all three maps, keeping Halo 3’s multiplayer experience fresh, exciting and evolving. In addition, ongoing updates to Halo 3’s matchmaking playlists ensure that ranked and social gameplay remains dynamic and competitive.

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Bungie has already been hard at work on new Halo 3 multiplayer maps to offer as downloadable content on the Xbox Live Marketplace. In a recent weekly update, the company talks about four of the maps that are in development. To quote:

“O.K. Corral is an asymmetrical medium-sized map and O.K. Corral had its lighting tweaked considerably. The changes shifted the sun’s position shifted, giving the entire map a warm death-at-sunset feel. The sun’s rays stream through trees and into the blown out structure that often ends up at the very epicenter of combat (assuming you’ve procured some kind of close-quarters weapon). If you haven’t got anything short range, however, there’s a variety of multi-level open air catwalks, with glorious sight-lines down long semi-protected alleyways where you can rain death from above.

Jodrell Bank, a map Frankie talked about in recent weeks, is fast becoming one of my favorite maps from our excellent smorgasbord of DLC maps. It’s a Team Slayer main course and player counts would fit swimmingly into both Social Slayer and Team Slayer hoppers and I think it might even be possible to shoehorn a few more players into the mix without overcrowding things.

Purple Reign continues to see slick revisions. The earliest iteration of the map actually had a completely different overall shape. If I sketched the cross section of the map’s floor onto a napkin it would’ve looked like a small hill, but when you played it, it wasn’t readily apparent. In the last month, the concavity was changed so that if you were staring the same napkin with the new version of it it’d look more like a gently sloping bowl. The difference in the way the map played then versus now is pretty remarkable. Subtle changes to the floor’s geometry resulted in wider lines of sight for players staring down one half of the map and an intricate and strategic mix of floor/column/ramp gameplay on the other side and all of the sneaky jumps those mechanics entail.

One of the sooner-than-later maps is a treat we’re calling Vandelay. Vandelay is structurally the simplest map we’ve ever made, yet the tools that we’re providing with the help of the Forge give the map tons of potential. That potential could be used for devising clever contraptions, unique playspaces and when paired with Player Traits could become a test bed for new ideas from both Bungie and the playerbase.
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