Forge Item Ideas

Games Other Halo
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Edit: I know it’s a wall of text, I just had a lot of ideas and thought I would pitch them.

I just had a few ideas for forge that I thought could be great additions to the game. Now I have no idea how possible any of these would be, I’m just making some suggestions.

  1. Terrain blocks- This is my weirdest idea, but stay with me. These blocks of terrain, grass, dirt, snow, like Minecraft (just a comparison!) However when you place the block it falls apart. For example, if I took hundreds of assault rifles and drop them at the same time in a ball, they would fall apart and cover the landscape. Now imagine that, but with these blocks of terrain. You could pile them up to make a hill, you could just use them to make the map snowy rather than grass covered, etc. Now the problem would be that you might want less or more lets say snow than the default block has. You should be able to make it smaller or bigger depending on how much you want.
  2. Painting objects- Say I have a sand map, I’ve laid out the sand terrain, and it’s all perfect. Except that the building blocks are gray instead of brown (sandbox like). I would be able to look through the options for materials, and choose the color and texture basically.
  3. Weather/Time of Day Settings- This has been asked for since forge was created. People have wanted to make it night time, make it rain, make it snow, etc. This would be dynamic for map creation. Infection maps would be that much scarier in the pitch black (Hopefully with flashlights, just saying) A snow map would be made more interesting by the addition of heavy snowfall. With the addition of Terrain blocks and object painting, this would give people the ability to create a map as good as one created in a computer games map editor.
  4. Nature Objects- We saw this in Halo Reach a bit. The ability to place rocks allowed people to make their own barriers, that aren’t just giant metal walls. Trees, bushes, water (would work like terrain blocks) and other nature items would make a great addition. I could go into forge and make a jungle map, or an island surrounded by water.
  5. Scaling of objects- I don’t want walls with different measurements. There can be just one wall, I just want to be able to scale it. Very simple, rather than spending half of my budget on creating a ground, I can just create one huge metal wall and turn it horizontal. If I want to cover the whole map with sand, I can create a colossal block above the map and let it fall.
  6. Weapon/Vehicle Settings- This is a pretty cool idea I think. I think it would be awesome if I could set the speed that the mongoose drives at, or change the damage that a pistol does. Now the problem with just using a trait zone is that I may just want to change the damage of the pistol and not every weapon I am using. Imagine, tank wars, where one shot with the tank kills, but they move at super high speeds, it would be awesome!
    I think those are all the ideas I have, if you’ve got some that would be cool, list them below. Just to clarify, I know that these will probably not be included in forge. I just thought it would be cool to list them off, and see what forge could be like if they made a DLC or something that upgraded it (Now that I look back at this part, that is a good idea, DLC for improving forge, make it happen 343).
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Your “Terrain Block” idea is awesome, but technically impossible sadly. It would drain so many resources from the engine and console processor. Bonus points for creativity though.

Pretty much all of your ideas are cool, but most are either impossible or have been confirmed not to be in the game.

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> Your “Terrain Block” idea is awesome, but technically impossible sadly. It would drain so many resources from the engine and console processor. Bonus points for creativity though.

Ya, I don’t really know anything about making games or anything like that. I thought it was a good idea though.

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I just hope that the other two Forge environments are either snow or desert.

More natural objects like trees, plants, and maybe some more rocks would be fantastic.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but there are three different Forge palettes, one for each environment. So who knows what might happen.

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> I just hope that the other two Forge environments are either snow or desert.
>
> More natural objects like trees, plants, and maybe some more rocks would be fantastic.
>
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but there are three different Forge palettes, one for each environment. So who knows what might happen.

I think the two things I’d want most that would the most possible would be the painting of objects and the extra nature objects. Hopefully, the two other environments aren’t the exact same as Forge World, I’d be so mad!

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  1. Terrain blocks- reminded me of “from dust” but it would completely tank the engine and the framerate. maybe H5 or 6 or whenever the nextbox comes out
  2. Painting objects- really enjoy this idea, could make an actual colored base, not just the lights like in reach. if they can have filters, why not this?
  3. Weather/Time of Day Settings- I’ve been asking for this since halo 3, really good seeing I’m not the only one
  4. Nature Objects- more!
  5. Scaling of objects- would make forging a lot easier, but limit it to structures
  6. Weapon/Vehicle Settings- maybe just in mode settings or player trait zones

Overall very good ideas! would love to see at least #2,3,and 4

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> Your “Terrain Block” idea is awesome, but technically impossible sadly. It would drain so many resources from the engine and console processor. Bonus points for creativity though.

Actually Justin, you’re wrong about that, mostly. Crysis’s Cry engine kind of had something like this, but, on the 360, it would more or less melt the CPU.
On the PC tho, you could kind of get away with falling rocks, as long as they’re about the size of your head, or larger.

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I agree with your ideas, however, here is some feedback:

1.) Although I’d love this, I don’t think it’d be compatible with forge as we know it.
2.) So different skins/textures in ‘item properties’? That’d be awesome. I’ve always wanted this!
3.) Great, but it was confirmed out of forge.
4.) Totally agree!
5.) A little too complicated for forge. It’s goal is to stay simple, yet, offer tonnes of great map-making features.
6.) I agree. But don’t know how it’d be implemented properly.

Now, here’re some of my ideas for forge:

1.) I hope the falcon has passengers seats as well as the gunner and pilots seats; I’ve suggested this idea for custom games, matchmaking and forge many times before:

I think in falcons, you should be able to go into the item properties and edit:
Turret type: Grenade launcher/Standard turret.
Number of passengers: 0/1/2/3.
Pilot turret: On/Off.

This’d be a suitable replacement for a Pelican and’d do the same job, mass transportation.

2.) Doors. Automatic doors, doors that you have to push a button, to open, hangar doors, etc.

We need doors in Halo’s forge and custom games.

They’re all my ideas for now. :stuck_out_tongue:

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On Doors and automatic doors, this is exactly why I went looking for a thread like this. Past Halo maps have often had interactivity, switches, gates, etc. It would be a
great feature to be able to flip a switch (or something) that then alters the state or spawn of a different piece. Indicating which pieces are effected would be based on a ‘channel’ system like the teleporters have been. It could vary from a simple spawned on/off toggle with an option to make reversible or not. Ultimately it would be nice of course to have pieces that are gates or moving themselves.

The menu would have something like this in the switch
S Channel: 0/1/2/3/…/9
Spawn: on/off (For gates, it doesn’t change the spawn, just like gates on/off state)
Reversible: on/off
Reset Timer: 5/15/30/45/60/90/etc

And all objects would have one line added
S Channel: 0/1/2/3/…/9

Most of this functionality likely already exists in the software, the channel system is used, and despawning objects upon a condition had been established with the invasion gates label. But they would have to make a piece to act as the switch/button.

This way forgers making maps could create a variety of new mechanisms. Just for starters they could remake the unreversible gate on Zanzibar, the resetting gates on Containment, and the activating teleporter from Relic to name a few.

On the other ideas,

1)There goes the frame rate.
2)Not so sure about painting blocks, but more distinct colors would be nice.
3)I’d like Day/Night settings as well, but its not a huge priority for me.
4)In regard to other ideas here, I would definitely love to see some more natural pieces, especially trees, grass, foliage, rocks that aren’t so oddly shaped for their names (That’s a flat rock? Really?)
5) This is likely problematic with textures, and poses the question, what dimensionality of scaling did you want, 1, 2, or 3?
6)Weapons having their own individual settings may pose a problem for playing a map with a different gametype, but that could also be solved by allowing or disallowing weapon settings in the gametype.

I Would also like those options for the falcon or other vehicles, when the models and content are already a finished resource, why not give users the option?