An inquiry of game engine capability.

For the first time in Halo history, the Champion’s Bundle DLC will have something other than maps. This being weapon skins and new armors. I’m sure you knew this though.

It’d be silly to think that 343i didn’t make a /proper/ way to allow this to be so. As in, the patching in of new weapon skins and armors is probably rather straight forward. More so than past Halo games, anyway. The reason why things were never added into a map after release in past games is because of a game engine limitation. You’d have to re download the entire map if the devs so wanted to add a new item to the map. If a new armor or weapon were added globally, it’d require the re downloading all of the game’s maps.

With this game’s shallow online population, it’d be crazy for 343i to make everyone re download all of multiplayer.

So…

I’m going off on a limb and saying, that in a nutshell, the engine and flexibility of Halo 4 is greater than past Halos to the extent that, in layman’s terms, you just download the new weapon skins and armors. Nothing else to it.

If THAT is the case, then perhaps objects in maps other than weapons and armors can be altered and replaced with such ease (on the end-user experience, anyway)?

It’s a known issue that several Forge objects have issues with them. The things that come to immediate recollection for me are magnets on, I think, struts? And the power and explosion radius of fusion coils on base maps do not match the visual effect at all.

It would be nice if the issues with Forge objects could be rectified via the same method weapon skins and armors are being patched in. If they can add something globally without a huge download now, it’s not crazy to think they can delete something and replace it also.

Lastly, it would be fantastic for Forgers to have access to EVERY Forge object on EVERY map. I don’t see a reason why /not to have this. It’s one of the things I was disheartened with at launch, also. Why not let the user Forge to their heart’s content on any map? Just because 343i may not be able to see the feasibility of Forging on non-Forge canvass maps, does not mean the player can’t do something mind blowing.

So this means that even canvass specific Forge items can be cross pollinated with other canvasses also. Would Erosion’s brown perhaps looks ugly on Forge Island? Probably. But that’d be player generated content, not anything professionally done. Players can be dumb, so let them be dumb.

The idea above, dependent on the data size of Forge objects, may be a large download. It doesn’t need to be a required title update. It could be an optional download.

As someone that forges from time to time, it would be great if they fixed the collision on some Forge pieces, too. Off the top of my head, the Tower 3 has broken collision that eats bullets and makes it impossible to use for Lockout remakes due to this.

I’m also curious how 343 is pulling this off. I’m willing to put my money on redownloading the War Games section of the game due to it being separate, but we just can’t know for sure.

I think they have simply added the ability for map containers to reference objects outside of their container. These objects will be supplied in the TU.

The alternative is retroactively appending the objects to each container file.

I while back on another thread I had mentioned a possible mechanic for this.
Before starting a match, the game takes all the files needed from a “files pool”. That way, updating all the maps just to add a few new files is not necessary.

> As someone that forges from time to time, it would be great if they fixed the collision on some Forge pieces, too. Off the top of my head, the Tower 3 has broken collision that eats bullets and makes it impossible to use for Lockout remakes due to this.
>
> I’m also curious how 343 is pulling this off. I’m willing to put my money on redownloading the War Games section of the game due to it being separate, but we just can’t know for sure.

I just can’t help but feel like that redownloading War Games in it’s entirety would cause the online population to plummet even further. Even installing War Games took awhile. DOWNLOADING it? Even on my connection, that’s something I’d stall with for a bit.

I seriously hope it won’t be that.

> > As someone that forges from time to time, it would be great if they fixed the collision on some Forge pieces, too. Off the top of my head, the Tower 3 has broken collision that eats bullets and makes it impossible to use for Lockout remakes due to this.
> >
> > I’m also curious how 343 is pulling this off. I’m willing to put my money on redownloading the War Games section of the game due to it being separate, but we just can’t know for sure.
>
> I just can’t help but feel like that redownloading War Games in it’s entirety would cause the online population to plummet even further. Even installing War Games took awhile. DOWNLOADING it? Even on my connection, that’s something I’d stall with for a bit.
>
>
> I seriously hope it won’t be that.

It will not be. It will just be a larger than usual Title Update. Hence two armour mods being available after the update is applied.