Think about it:
The Infinity is a 3km ship that can recreate any environment. Now take that context into forge. Assuming there will be (dear god dont scrap it along with firefight) then one can assume a greater forge pallete that just Forerunner?
I was really excited when I saw Reach’s new forge back when it was coming out and everything but, I tire of the forerunner standard metal we have and just some of the rocks. I mean include that of course but, a wide selection of different environments and there objects would really be awesome. Like different natural things, human eng, covie eng, forerunner types of builds and textures. I’m really hoping they come through with forge on this one.
Like I said a few moments ago on an identical thread:
> Does this mean a proper sandbox map creator with skybox customization, terrain editing, weather and light controls, ambient sounds, water customization, and more? 
as long as its not just laggy gray maps im fine…
> Like I said a few moments ago on an identical thread:
>
>
>
> > Does this mean a proper sandbox map creator with skybox customization, terrain editing, weather and light controls, ambient sounds, water customization, and more?
I hope so, I really do.
343 will not do something like that. besides 343 suppports the forge and machinima community they are not stupid enough to remove such a amazing feature like forge.
Well 343 did say that we wouldn’t be disappointed by the future of Forge so we can rule out them removing the feature.
Forge will most likely be implemented in some way or another, but I’ll warn you all now of the dangers involved with getting your hopes up.
Editable terrain and multiple environments would be very nice features, but I doubt that 343i have the expertise to pull it off, even assuming the game could support them. And here’s the technical explanation as to why something like this can’t be pulled off under the current Halo engine (Megalo V4, I believe):
The way a Halo map works is by storing everything it needs within the file. Texture maps for the environment, model data for the scenery, even light mapping data. Absolutely everything that map needs to function will be included in the .map file. With that in mind, some assets shared across all maps will be stored as a sort of ‘shortcut’ to another file, ‘shared.map’, to cut down on raw file size. After all, why have each .map file crammed to the brim if you can cross-reference to another file and save space?
Regardless. Each .map file contains what it needs in order to work properly. Forge World clocks in at 126Mb all considered (physics models, texture maps, models, the whole shabang) - and that’s simply for ONE environment (the Forerunner trope). Consider then how large the file size would begin to increase if each surface, each item, were to have another two or three different skins (assuming, for instance, you could simply re-skin a 2x2 block with Forerunner, Covenant or UNSC texture maps, alpha channels and such).
Put simply: multiple environments for the same map will take up too much space and put too much of a strain on load times.
Good point, I can’t see massive integral innovations happening for Halo 4 due to the limit of the polygon count but we will see some magic none the less; Halo 5 will probably be the spotlight of forge revelations.
Hmm but they are using an adapted Reach engine, so who knows what they changed other than the visuals, and plus it was confirmed that lighting and shading will be in real time, so they may have gotten around that issue
I reckon it will be some new tools, nothing to fancy or the xbox 360 wont handle it, probs different textures and shapes, maybe a clean up of the old version, and a few new things/enviroments, space would be nice
> Think about it:
>
> The Infinity is a 3km ship that can recreate any environment. Now take that context into forge. Assuming there will be (dear god dont scrap it along with firefight) then one can assume a greater forge pallete that just Forerunner?
Actually, one can assume a full-on terrain editor. Don’t take this as a confirmation, though.
> > Think about it:
> >
> > The Infinity is a 3km ship that can recreate any environment. Now take that context into forge. Assuming there will be (dear god dont scrap it along with firefight) then one can assume a greater forge pallete that just Forerunner?
>
> Actually, one can assume a full-on terrain editor. Don’t take this as a confirmation, though.
I’d imagine that would be in reservation for Halo 5 on the 720 but I have no doubts.
yh the 360 has it is wont be able to run such things, we need an upgrade
> Actually, one can assume a full-on terrain editor. Don’t take this as a confirmation, though.
See my above post. Halo 4 works off of a very heavily-modified Megalo engine - in order to have a fully-featured terrain editor you’d need to re-program Forge from the ground up. And if we’re talking about maps that have the size and scope of Forge World, you’re going to run into some memory issues fairly quickly even considering new techniques such as impostoring and redundancy.
Terrain editing is something to be relegated to the next iteration of the Halo engine, and to the next generation of consoles. Right now Halo just doesn’t have the capability.
> yh the 360 has it is wont be able to run such things, we need an upgrade
I don’t know why they just don’t chase after the developers of the Euclideon Unlimited Detail Engine for Halo 5 considering it can run on a console of those capabilities and its only flaw is not being able to be developed for multiple consoles at once which is not a problem at all.
On a more cynical note, if the community could create whatever they wanted, 343 wouldn’t make any money on DLC.
> On a more cynical note, if the community could create whatever they wanted, 343 wouldn’t make any money on DLC.
But the game would be more popular and would therefore derive more money because of more buyers. There is quite a few people that don’t play multiplayer that much and stick to mostly forge and custom games.
> > On a more cynical note, if the community could create whatever they wanted, 343 wouldn’t make any money on DLC.
>
> But the game would be more popular and would therefore derive more money because of more buyers. There is quite a few people that don’t play multiplayer that much and stick to mostly forge and custom games.
I know what you mean, but I doubt that if the Forge was more like it was in past Halos, and not an elaborate tool-kit, the sales would change that much. I can’t see many people not buying the game just because Forge isn’t how they wanted it.
> I was really excited when I saw Reach’s new forge back when it was coming out and everything but, I tire of the forerunner standard metal we have and just some of the rocks. I mean include that of course but, a wide selection of different environments and there objects would really be awesome. Like different natural things, human eng, covie eng, forerunner types of builds and textures. I’m really hoping they come through with forge on this one.
Yeah, I agree. Halo 3 had many different maps and environments with loads of different forge pallets. Reach only had that dull and boring metal grey forge items. They really need to work on this because forge and custom games are what make for great replay value. Well that’s judging from Halo 3 - One million users online, three years after release and most people played custom games and I have to say, I’d rather play Halo 3 custom games any day over Reach’s because Reach’s just made bad maps. The forge tools were great but the items didn’t make for good maps.