Frostbite
Frostbite is a Trinket Wars map developed by Jahhur. It's one of the most popular maps of said game mode and it's recognizable by it's cold atmosphere.
Stats
- Map file: tw_frostbite (formerly hg_frostbite)
- Mode: Trinket Wars
- Author: Jahhur
- Release Date: Beta 2.1 (July 2008)
- Theme: Ruins (medieval)
- Pick-ups: Food (x_), Armor (x_), and Ammo (x_)
- Stage Hazards: cliff, bottomless pit
Overview
Frostbite has three major areas: the fortress' garrison, the dining room and the destroyed balcony. The garrison is the map's most well known location, known for being the only location in open air. The garrison has two floors; the upper floor has direct access to the dining room while the lower floor has the battlements, where players can fall down to certain death if pushed back or kicked out. Inbetween the floors there's a staircase and an entrance for the balcony. The back side of the balcony has a tight wooden path, followed by a rocky cave. The dining room is the only area in the map with no stage hazards, although the torches can drain health. Most of it's props serve as platforms for jumping and evading attacks. A big wall separates the dining room from a wide corridor that leads to both the rocky cave and the balcony. The balcony, while it's not the place where most players go, it's notable for it's unconvenient wreckage, being a place often used to perform special attacks or kicking players to their own death.
Presentation
Players often compare Frostbite's visuals to Cathedral. Not only both maps were built by the same person but also some textures are shared. The cold look of the map fits under it's location, over a mountain range, and the dense fog at the bottom proves how abnormaly huge the structure is. The small amount of snow and ice from the winter makes no harm, and fortunately for unexperienced players there are no strong winds to push them out of the edges, but the constant action inside the fortress can lead to several falls. The indoor lightning is minimal but enough for players to see what's on their sight.
History
Frostbite was the first map to be built from scratch for the then-new Holy Grail mode. Although it's layout and presentation was for the most part unaltered to this day, several minor changes and lightning and optimization improvements were made. The earliest release of the map had no global lightning, therefore the darker areas weren't dark at all, and because of that the textures were shown in their raw appearance. The cave path between the dining room and the garrison had a different material and different footstep sounds were made when a player stepped in, despite having the same texture that is used today. The garrison was less wider than in the current version. During the time the map supported the Holy Grail mode the item in question spawned in the dining room's table. The map's latest update included a handful of optimizations and the inclusion of new props, like lion statues, for the sake of decorating the garrison, although it can be extremely useful for sniping, in another point of view. The map's loading screen was also updated in the same patch.
Trivia
- A bug in Frostbite made keg kills invalid in Holy Grail mode. As a pirate carrying the grail and with two or three kills in the counter remaining, a keg is light up and thrown to a group of people. If the keg killed more than four people with it's explosion, the counter wouldn't approve the kills. Despite that the achievements “Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch” and “Keg Whore” are unlocked. With the introduction of Trinket Wars it's very likely that the bug got fixed.