Lake Hot Pursuit
- Platform:Halo Infinite Forge
- Genre:Racing, Cops & Robbers
- Solo Project
Hot Pursuit map - main road around the lake with subroutes in the center connecting various islets and shores. Unfortunately no terrain tool in Forge, so all built from individual Halo assets, terrain and rock pieces.
"Lake Hot Pursuit" is based on a mix between the original Need for Speed Hot Pursuit mode and its Halo recreations over the years. The project began as a simple "I'll show you how to do this properly" after experiencing the existing variants in Halo Infinite. One thing led to another, which eventually ended up becoming a feature-complete mode played by thousands since its creation.
The map received 300 bookmarks and 500 plays at a 4.7 rating within the first week of beta testing - as of April 1st 2024, five months following its release, it stands at over 15,712 lobby play counts, 4,000 bookmarks and 4.5/5* rating over 260 votes. The development process was publicly documented within the Forgehub Discord's WIP section. As of April 2024, the map was "unlocked" for other users to fork, study and iterate upon for their own versions.
Gameplay
The objective is for cops to chase, and ultimately catch, robbers in order to arrest them. Doing so can be accomplished by either running them off the road into the lake, boxing them in and hijacking them to arrest them, or leaving them stranded to the 10 second death timer. Robbers who are arrested change sides - otherwise must survive for a set amount of time.
The main differing factor between what I would consider to be the most feature-complete Hot Pursuit mode ever made for Halo and its predecessors, is that it specifically goes out of its way to limit gameplay to vehicles only while also giving a little bit of space for on-foot transitions between vehicle grabs. Past variants also strictly rely on pushing robbers off the road, whereas my version also allows cops to directly interact with the robbers by pulling them out of their vehicles and arresting them manually.
I ensured advantages on both sides depending on which part of the terrain they drive on, whether it be the tight spaces favouring the robbers' mongooses or the cop's superior top speed on straight lines. The map has multiple intersecting sections which reward skilled navigation.
Gallery
Scripting
After a few different scripting and game mode iterations, a heavy modification of the new infection game mode was opted for. Multiple scripts were set up in order achieve the very specific vision I had for the Hot Pursuit game mode. Round grace giving a small time cushion for robbers to get ready and depart, forcing players to remain in vehicles, allowing cops to arrest robbers through manual hijacking over their vehicles, player traits etc. All can be seen within the scripting album which follows.
