In the depths of the Arabian Peninsula lies uncharted territory for Spartan One One Seven. Legend says, “the sun is the bath of the Arabs.” Can your armor withstand the blistering heat? Or will you fall to your knees mesmerized by your own mirage?

Gate of Yemen is the first map designed exclusively for Mental Stamina’s Battle Royale. Make sure to download the game mode for the best experience. The map is NOT set up for team slayer. For more information about Battle Royal, including videos featuring their favorite forge maps, visit their YouTube page.

16 player Free For All

The score to win: Unlimited.

10-minute time limit with a 2-minute overtime duration.

Zero suicide penalty.

Primary weapon: battle rifle.

Secondary weapon: magnum.

No splinter grenades

3-second respawn.

Time to max sprint speed: 200%

You can also sprint and reload at the same time.

Battle Royale is a game mode that has been around for a while now, with a growing crowd of regular players. You might have seen the game type pop up in the customs browser and wondered what it is. I first learned about the game type through Mental Stamina’s YouTube videos. Eventually we got in touch, and Diefullah asked me if I could make a map exclusively for the game type, based on a real life location in Sana’a, Yemen.

Battle Royale has always been played on a variety of forge maps, including new designs from the Forgehub community as well as remakes of classic Halo maps. Though their roster included many fabulous maps, none of these maps were designed for 16 player FFA, so the experience could sometimes be way too crowded and the spawn killing was definitely a thing. Some of the maps they were playing on were originally forged for 2v2 gameplay, so the most obvious problem was that they were simply too small.

I went through a number of block outs trying to figure out exactly how to "make it bigger” and what that really meant. At one point I had a layout that was like 4 smaller maps connected in the middle, one that had many vertical layers, one that was highly segmented…there were a lot of different ideas. In the end, the one that worked the best was sort of boneheadedly simple - I designed a map that would work for 2v2, and scaled the whole map up significantly.

The larger size plays into the extended range of the BR starts, and since the play areas are larger, players are less likely to spawn on top of each other. If they do spawn in the same area, there is a little more time to react. In addition, I overloaded the map with around 150 spawns.

An early drawing of the layout for Gate of Yemen.

The biggest challenge by far was managing my objects and budgets. The city of Sana'a has some beautiful architecture in real life, a lot of which would be incredibly costly to build realistically in forge. Plus with 16 players I didn't want to stray into bad frame rate territory. So I made the decision to keep it more simple visually and keep the focus on gameplay.

Gate of Yemen also features a glitched Rain of Oblivion / DMR weapon pad. This is a prefab I made a few patches ago, which you can't be made anymore now that the Rain of Oblivion is in a different row in the menus. It is not fully automatic but it fires as fast as you can mash the trigger and it has no scope. You can download the prefab for this weapon here if you want to use it on your own maps.

It's a very strong weapon at medium range, but the lack of a scope means you have to be precise at long range. If you really wanna go on a rampage, I suggest picking up the Speed Boost near the fountain and crossing the map to grab this weapon.

The other two power weapons are classic - rockets and sniper. There's also an OS near the middle of the map, a speed boost between rockets and sniper and camo on the top of the gate. I've included a number of REQ variants in the lower level pickups for variety and the Tier 2 weapons are on 1 minute timers so there's plenty to go around for everyone.

WEAPON SET"

Weapon Pads

End of the Line Sniper, SPNKR, DMR

Power Ups

Overshield, Camo, Speed Boost

Tier 2 Weapons

Shotgun and Grenade Launcher

Tier 1 weapons

assault rifles x2

SMG x2

halo 2 br

silenced br

laser br

halo 1 pistol x2

tactical magnum

gunfighter magnum z2

only a few grenades

----

That's it! If you've made it this far, you may posses the mental stamina needed to climb to the top of Battle Royale. Here's the download link for the game mode again in case you missed it.

Many thanks to DIefullah / Mental Stamina for the videos. If you like the map, please bookmark it so you can keep current as it is updated.