Does Halo 4 Forge need to be a fully featured map editor, or should it just be an improvement on the old Forge?
Here’s a quick explanation of the poll choices:
Choice 1 is where the Forger literally has complete control over every thing. Weather, terrain, lighting, as well as being able to create objects (blocks, buildings, etc) from scratch.
Choice 2 is where you have the ability to alter the terrain and weather, but is essentially like the old Forge otherwise.
Choice 3 is where you have control over weather and terrain like in choice 2, but in the form of limited presets to choose from rather than direct editing.
Choice 4 is to take the old Forge system, and add a whole bunch of new features, though not necessarily anything as extensive as weather or terrain editing (although I have given voters the choice to vote for multiple choices, so you could vote for 3&4, for example)
Choice 5 is essentially the same as choice 4, only with a few minor tweaks, as oppossed to any extensive changes or features.
Choice 6 is to simply re-use Reach’s Forge as-is.
My personal choice is choice 4.
Personally, I’d rather have improvements (albeit quite a few of them) on the current Forge system (or something along the same lines) over a true map editor (click here and here to see my wishlist; it is a long post, though, so be warned).
For one thing, it means smaller file sizes. Forge maps are currently only around 100 kb or less, so they take up very little HDD space, and they’re very fast to download. This is because the map is simply a text file that stores nothing but the location & rotation of each item, and since each item is already pre-rendered on the disc, all it needs is a simple reference to it (where otherwise the map file would need to store the object’s mesh as well as the textures).
If the map file had to include information on terrain, weather, etc they’d probably be much higher (and thus less convenient to download). If on top of that the map editor were to use user-created objects, it would also need to store the mesh for each object (each and every polygon), as well as the textures. I’d personally hate to see Forge maps go from being 100kb to 100mb (or more). That being said, if there was a way to have customizeable terrain or weather & still have simple text files in the 100s of kb, it might be a neat idea (provided it was implemented in a way that didn’t make map creation an impossibly complicated procedure).
Also, a fully-featured map editor would add a huge learning curve to it. Now, I’m sure some of you are thinking, “But adding a steep learning curve would mean less crappy maps get put out” And most likely you would be right. However, personally I still think it should be accessible to anyone who wants to make a map, rather than be exclusive. If someone wants to make a map for fun, even though it’s terrible for playing on, I say let them. The people who want to avoid the crappy maps can always join an active online forging community (Forgehub, Xforgery, etc), so that they can download only the maps that look/sound good (since those communities usually require screenshots as well as detailed descriptions). Honestly, that’s the only way to go anyway, IMO (since 90% of the maps you can download while browsing in Reach suck big time).
Finally, I like having pre-made objects to work with. I’m pretty sure if I had to create everything completely from scratch, I’d have no idea where to begin (the “too much freedom” dilemna). At least with a palette of read-made objects I have some sort of starting place. Personally, I like the way Forge can be used to rapidly build maps; it’s like digital legos.
So, I think if any features like customizeable weather or terrain are added, they should be very simple & easy to use, as well as optional. What I mean by that is that there should be default settings, or perhaps presets you could choose, so that people who don’t want to mess around with those things can still create maps. This is mainly an issue with terrain, since if it started out with zero terrain and were forced to make it all from scratch, I think it would make map creation a little too complicated (at least for my taste), so I’d prefer that such a system either start out with a default terrain, or else have terrain presets to choose from.
Anyway, what are your opinions on this?
