Ask a Question About Forge

Community General Discussion
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Welcome to the Community Forge Q&A Thread! Please post in this thread if:

-You have a Forge question, or an answer for a Forge question someone else has asked. This Q&A Thread is community-based: let’s help each other out!

-You know of or have a Forge resource that should be added to this original post.

To submit Forge maps to be considered for Matchmaking, use the:
Official Community Cartographer’s Thread

Official Forge Resources - Halo 4
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Game Type Label Guide

Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Forge Basics
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Spawning
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Game Type Labels

Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - KOTH, Oddball, CTF
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Dominion Setup
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Extraction
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Flood
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Ordnance Drops

Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Trait Zones, Gravity Volumes
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - Kill volumes and map ceilings
Certain Affinity’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorial - “Progressive” Extraction

Community Forge Resources - Halo 4
petetheduck’s Intro to Forge, Part 1: General Overview, Spawning Objects, Deleting Objects
petetheduck’s Intro to Forge, Part 2: Object Manipulation, Trait Zones, Gravity Volumes
petetheduck’s Intro to Forge, Part 3: Game Type Labels, Spawning
petetheduck’s Game Type Label Guide
Warholic’s Guide to Dynamic Lighting - Lighting problems? Read this!
ForgeHub’s Halo 4 Forge Tutorials Thread
The Halo Forge Epidemic Tutorials
The Halo Council’s Design/Forge Resources
Forging Halo 4

Ducain23’s guide to downloading map and game types in Halo 4

While not technically a Forge Resource, pan-cam can be useful for getting screenshots of your Forge maps from outside the invisible boundaries of a map. For example, an overview shot from high up in the sky. So,
GeneticSpartan’s Halo 4 Pan-Cam Tutorial

Forge Communities
Blueprint
Forge Cafe
Forge Hub
Halo Tracks
Reaching Perfection
XForgery
343 Industries Community Forums + The Halo Forge Epidemic Forums

Forge Channels
Team Epiphany
The Halo Forge Epidemic
Ducain23

Forge Tricks
Halo 4 Forge Quacks
Certain Affinity’s Gravity Train
Using vehicle pads as buttons
Using Extraction to emulate Halo: Reach’s Invasion
Psycho Duck’s guide to setting up One Flag CTF
Masta Hippie’s thread on using KOTH as a Race game type
THFE - Dominion Base Turrets in all game types
THFE - Vehicle pads in all game types
THFE - Floating Wraiths/Ghosts

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Warning: Maps can be overwritten.
The same “glitch” that could cause maps to be overwritten in Halo: Reach is also present in Halo 4:

The following steps will trigger an overwrite of a previously saved map:

  1. Launch Forge and create a map, saving it with a unique name and description.
  2. Open a default (built-in) map variant in Forge.
  3. Go to the start menu and select End Game.
  4. Immediately re-enter Forge without changing the map variant.
  5. Go to the start menu and select Save Map.

The map created in step 1 will now be permanently overwritten with a copy of the map loaded in step 2. It’s important to understand how this “glitch” occurs in order to avoid having it happen to you.

Basically, because Forge keeps a temporary history of your most recent Forge map, these steps cause the game to allow the ‘Save Map’ option on a map that should only have the ‘Save as New Map’ option. And so selecting ‘Save Map’ in that instance will actually overwrite whatever map had been previously saved.

So, as a general rule, NEVER use ‘Save Map’ on a new map you have never saved before, whether it is a built-in map variant or one you just downloaded–ALWAYS use ‘Save as New Map’. But it doesn’t hurt to keep backup copies of your maps just to be safe!

Forge Resources - Halo: Reach
JonnyOThan’s Required Objects Guide - Setup information for ALL gametypes
Forge Quacks - Forge quirks
Forge with Pete - Map-specific tutorials

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Quack quack

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This thread looks great! I’ll offer my help in the forge-related queries as well.

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> This thread looks great! I’ll offer my help in the forge-related queries as well.

I’ll see if I can help. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the list
It is helpful to see all forge sites in one place

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This is extremely useful being able to have all of these sites in one place, great job :slight_smile: Also, I would recommend watching TeamEpiphany’s “Halo: Reach - Epic Forge Tutorials” series on Youtube. Some of the videos provide excellent tutorials on how to build some pretty spectacular things in Forge.

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More of a question than any resources: Is there a way to create a one-way shield that interacts with just one team? EX: Red Team spawns behind it, and can move through it from both sides, while Blue Team spawns on the barrier side, and thus can not move through it. Are there any tricks that I can use to have an effect like this?

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> More of a question than any resources: Is there a way to create a one-way shield that interacts with just one team? EX: Red Team spawns behind it, and can move through it from both sides, while Blue Team spawns on the barrier side, and thus can not move through it. Are there any tricks that I can use to have an effect like this?

Our first question!

No, there isn’t a way to make a one-way shield only affect one team. But if you give more details about what you’re trying to build, there may be other alternatives.

For example, you could make the one-way shield knee-high and make it so only red team can jump over it. You could do this by setting base player traits’ jump height to 0%, but put custom power ups on all of the red team spawns, with custom power up traits’ jump height as 100%. You would then put a normal shield door to fill in the gap above the one-way shield.

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> > More of a question than any resources: Is there a way to create a one-way shield that interacts with just one team? EX: Red Team spawns behind it, and can move through it from both sides, while Blue Team spawns on the barrier side, and thus can not move through it. Are there any tricks that I can use to have an effect like this?
>
> Our first question!
>
> No, there isn’t a way to make a one-way shield only affect one team. But if you give more details about what you’re trying to build, there may be other alternatives.
>
> For example, you could make the one-way shield knee-high and make it so only red team can jump over it. You could do this by setting base player traits’ jump height to 0%, but put custom power ups on all of the red team spawns, with custom power up traits’ jump height as 100%. You would then put a normal shield door to fill in the gap above the one-way shield.

Thanks, this may work. I am trying to create a spawn area in which players are safe until they leave, but can get back in later on if they need to.

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More a question then a resource, I know I sound blunt, but for a map I’ve decided to build if it will work, which it does in forge, but not slayer in custom games, is the gfx balls…

So, I set up one for 15 seconds, another for 10 seconds, and the third for 5 seconds. And I let them drop in the water. In forge, that makes them flash in and out to normal, and the the gfx chosen. But when saved and went to slayer, it don’t do it. Do I have to make it slayer only in advanced settings or is it possible to make it work without messing with those settings?

Second Question:

About like the above, I wanted my sender nodes to flash in out and timed intervals, one at 10 seconds and another at 30, but one never happened and the other one was constant, what did I do wrong?

Reason: You go through one teleporter and get transported to other spot, and then the 10 sec. one flashes on the 30 second spot and you get transfered to a different place, hence choose timing.

Third: I can do vehicle drops in any gametype but I can’t get the golfballs to do it? Why?

Sorry if in wrong place, but seriously would like answers to these questions…

Gametypes I want functioned on:
Slayer, Race, and Infection…

For resources, I’m sorry I don’t got any and I think you have all of them down…Well, maybe you should put your website up there, as those video’s are extrmeley useful. Especially when you explain things…The www.idleduck.com one, as I had to use it to watch your forge with pete as I install and un-install 3 times of silverlight and still says I need to install it when I did.

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> More a question then a resource, I know I sound blunt, but for a map I’ve decided to build if it will work, which it does in forge, but not slayer in custom games, is the gfx balls…
>
> So, I set up one for 15 seconds, another for 10 seconds, and the third for 5 seconds. And I let them drop in the water. In forge, that makes them flash in and out to normal, and the the gfx chosen. But when saved and went to slayer, it don’t do it. Do I have to make it slayer only in advanced settings or is it possible to make it work without messing with those settings?

What’s happening is the FX balls don’t exist in custom games, only in Forge. You’ve found a clever way of forcing Forge to delete them during a Forge session, causing them to then respawn–that’s why it’s flashing. But in an actual custom game, the FX ball isn’t there to be deleted. There’s no way to get the same behavior to occur outside of Forge.

> Second Question:
>
> About like the above, I wanted my sender nodes to flash in out and timed intervals, one at 10 seconds and another at 30, but one never happened and the other one was constant, what did I do wrong?
>
> Reason: You go through one teleporter and get transported to other spot, and then the 10 sec. one flashes on the 30 second spot and you get transfered to a different place, hence choose timing.

The only way to delete a teleporter during a custom game is to use the Halo Ball gametype and the skee_ball_object game type label. There are a lot of problems with using Halo Ball, like the fact that you would be scoring points every time the teleporter is deleted and that skee_ball_object is glitched anyway, making it pretty useless except in very specific instances. I do not recommend using Halo Ball to accomplish what you’re trying to do.

You might want to think about blocking the receiver nodes with fusion coils and destroying the fusion coils with landmines that fall next to them at specific intervals. Depending on how you build your map, this method might work.

> Third: I can do vehicle drops in any gametype but I can’t get the golfballs to do it? Why?
>
> Sorry if in wrong place, but seriously would like answers to these questions…
>
> Gametypes I want functioned on:
> Slayer, Race, and Infection…

I’m not sure what you’re asking here–could you clarify?

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First Reply: Thank you, I feel soo stupid now, realizing that it don’t exist except in forge thats why it don’t work, figures…Stupid stupid me…Darn, it would be so fun to play around the map with the colors changing…lol…

Second, I don’t really want to delete it, more it falls on top of the other one, then the bottom goes in the water, maybe that would work? Hmm, okay, experimentation works…thanks…

3rd: I’ve seen those maps where thos golfballs, I think one is called toilet and golfballs keep falling and respawning faster and faster. Well, I figured I got the vehicles to do that as long as they fell in the water or blew up. But when I do it with golfballs, they don’t keep coming back fast…

But you’ve helped me more then enough now, thank you soo very much…

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> 3rd: I’ve seen those maps where thos golfballs, I think one is called toilet and golfballs keep falling and respawning faster and faster. Well, I figured I got the vehicles to do that as long as they fell in the water or blew up. But when I do it with golfballs, they don’t keep coming back fast…

Oh okay, I understand now. What’s happening is water destroys the vehicles, but water doesn’t destroy golf balls. If you use Halo Ball like the toilet map does, you can use a kill boundary (soft or hard) to reset the golf balls. It only resets Halo Ball golf balls, though–not the 10 golf balls you can spawn from the Toy category.

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Finally, @ Pete the duck:

Gotcha, I understand now.

I got the gfx ball, only one, cannot do more, to somehow exist in gameplay and allow me to shoot the fusion coil and it will flash out and become normal for x amount of time and then spawn again when the 30 seconds are up again. Maybe you’d know why…

Also, I got it to work on 2 of my maps, ole halloween 2 and Pumpkin Wars…

Both are available to look at it…

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I’ve added a Halo 4 Forge Resources section to the top of the thread that should get you guys started with the new game types and new features in Forge!

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Is there a way to incrementally move objects without editing the coordinates? Reach allowed us to hold down the left thumbstick which made move objects very slowly yet that feature has been removed? Wtf? :[

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> Is there a way to incrementally move objects without editing the coordinates? Reach allowed us to hold down the left thumbstick which made move objects very slowly yet that feature has been removed? Wtf? :[

Yes, that feature has been removed. You can try dropping the object just after you flick the thumb stick, but really there’s no equivalent feature in Halo 4.

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> I’ve added a Halo 4 Forge Resources section to the top of the thread that should get you guys started with the new game types and new features in Forge!

Pete, I have gone through your tutorials on spawning, but it doesn’t answer my questions.

  1. Why do I spawn outside my respawn zone?

  2. What does the new Anti Weak zone do?

  3. How much does the spawn engine work similar to that of Reach?

Do you work for 343i? If not, can someone at 343i provide official information on how the spawn engine works and why we are seeing the Respawn Zone become out weighted by enemy proximity? What is the cause of that? Is the enemy proximity the new uber negative weight? If so, do they combine? If not what is happening to make this behavior manifest during game play?

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> > I’ve added a Halo 4 Forge Resources section to the top of the thread that should get you guys started with the new game types and new features in Forge!
>
> Pete, I have gone through your tutorials on spawning, but it doesn’t answer my questions.
>
> 1. Why do I spawn outside my respawn zone?

Initial reports suggest respawn zones are no longer as ‘hard’ as they were in Reach. They are now just really heavily weighted for your team. Not 100% confirmed on this yet though, we’ve only had the game for a couple of days.

> 2. What does the new Anti Weak zone do?

Spawns inside an anti-weak are roughly equivalent to a recent death on those spawns. This allows you to set up a “main” spawn area, then some less common spawns elsewhere to control your map flow. Players standing near a Anti Weak’d spawn will overcome it and make their teammate spawn there.

> 3. How much does the spawn engine work similar to that of Reach?

Very similar. They apparently jumped the priorities a bit, but in rough order of weight, it’s Explosives (rocket, grenade), Enemy Area Influence, and Death that affect spawns, with Line of Sight considered in weights depending on the weapon behind held while the spawns are being looked at. If you’re spawning on spawns outside your spawn zones, you don’t have enough spawns.