Forge your own Spartan Ops missions?

Games Other Halo
1

I was thinking… if 343i has no plans to give us a second season of Spartan Ops, perhaps they could do the next best thing; let us create our own missions on existing Spartan Ops maps. Bear with me:

What I have in mind would be similar to forging with the Invasion gametype in Halo:Reach; but instead of just setting up objectives, you would also set up spawn points for Covenant, Prometheans, Marines, and Spartans; landing zones for Phantoms, Drop Pods, Pelicans, and so on. Place weapon crates for the UNSC, Covenant, and Forerunners; place ammo crates and objective ordnance drops.

Place enemies and allies individually or in large groups; alter the traits of an individual AI to create a boss fight if you want. Set his damage resistance and weapon damage, his behavior (aggression, hearing, sight, as in Reach’s Firefight mode) and choose his weapons and armor abilities.

You would have a wide variety of assets to create objectives from various multiplayer gametypes; naturally you’d have Covenant, UNSC, and Forerunner terminals for typical button-pressing objectives, or highlight a group (or several groups) of enemies for “neutralize all hostiles” objectives…

BUT… you would also be able to mix things up with assets from Extraction, Dominion, Ricochet, Assault, Invasion, and Territories.

Plant a bomb to destroy an obstacle instead of just pushing a button (Assault), place a beacon to recover UNSC assets and defend it until it fires (Extraction), capture a data core a deliver it to a waiting Pelican (Invasion), or pick up that mysterious, glowing skull and deliver it to a Forerunner altar to unlock its secrets (Ricochet). These are just a few examples of what you could do to make Spartan Ops the way YOU think it should be.

Maps would include existing maps with Spartan Ops, Season 1; plus a few extras from War Games…

-The Quarry
-Sniper Alley
-The Fortress
-The Refuge
-The Cauldron
<strong>-The Gate*</strong>
-Galileo Base (Complex)
-Two Giants (Ragnarok)

-Lockup
-Control
-Warrens
-Cyclone (Vortex)
-Harvester
-Apex
-Infinity

-Reactor (Meltdown)
-Aldrin Base (Shatter)
-Armstrong Base (Longbow)

*I think “The Gate” should be expanded a bit to include the Cartographer chamber beyond the main door, as well as the valley down the hill and through the pass; this map feels rather cramped to me, and I could use more to work with in Forge.

So that’s all the maps featured across all 50 episodes, in addition to 3 War Games maps newly enabled for Spartan Ops (BTW, the Spartan Ops names I came up with for Meltdown, Longbow, and Shatter are pretty much placeholders).

Some of these maps (like Lockup and Infinity) would have built-in features that you could interact with in Forge, like doorways or grav lifts; if you want doors to open and close, or have a grav lift activate only after you’ve completed an objective or pressed a button, you should be able to make it so.

Lastly, you could throw in some extra toys for us to play with (if possible); how about some of the weapons and vehicles from Spartan Assault, more or less the prequel to Spartan Ops? Let us further customize our own Spartan Ops missions with new toys like the Dual SMGs, or the Grizzly, or the Hornet. The more the merrier.

Finally, you would be able to share your custom Spartan Ops missions and gametypes with other player via the File Share; enabling Theater mode for custom missions would be helpful in that regard, to better show off your creations.

That’s all I got; post your thoughts.

NOTE: I am NOT suggesting building your own Spartan Ops maps from scratch on Forge Island, Erosion, Impact, or Ravine; I know full well that is probably beyond 343i’s technological limitations. But I think we should be able to edit existing Spartan Ops maps, ja?

2

Nobody thinks this would be a good idea…?

3

I’ll tell you a story, it’s pretty legit and it’s also pretty forgotten.

Halo 4 was planned to have a.i in forge/ways of letting the player make their own a.i for their customs, let’s say their own ‘Spartan ops.’ though, then 343i came up with the idea that why don’t they just throw that idea away and we’ll make something called Spartan Ops. I -Yoink- you not.

If you Google hard enough, into the early days of Halo 4, before it came out, you’ll find something on it. I assure you.

I was so excited for it… It was a shame they went with Spartan Ops… :expressionless:

4

Sadly, as awesome as this is… It’s not remotely possible to Forge a map and have AI function on it.

In order to get an AI to work, it must be programmed to the map. This is normally done with NAV-Mesh, which is an EXTREMELY tedious thing to do and it would be next to impossible to provide a functioning UI for it.

After all, there is a legit reason on why we couldn’t Forge on Firefight Maps in Halo Reach.

5

> Sadly, as awesome as this is… It’s not remotely possible to Forge a map and have AI function on it.
>
> In order to get an AI to work, it must be programmed to the map. This is normally done with NAV-Mesh, which is an EXTREMELY tedious thing to do and it would be next to impossible to provide a functioning UI for it.
>
> After all, there is a legit reason on why we couldn’t Forge on Firefight Maps in Halo Reach.

^^ This.

They would have to make it really accessible, such as spawn a squad and have key places allowed to be spawned and go to, basically forge will have to hold your hand for you to do it.

Kinda like how they held the lower skilled’s hands’ for multiplayer-- sorry…

So it would have to be like they done it in Spartan ops, but simplified and scaled down into forge, which even if they could, I bet Microsoft wouldn’t allow a title update for. v.v

6

IDK. It looks possible, but the AI might not work as well without proper programmers and coding to make an entire OP.

7

Although I wouldn’t want this for Halo 4, I would love to see it make its appearance in Halo 5. I do want to be able to create your own Spartan ops missions in forge, on maps such as forge island, or Halo 5’s Forge World and hopefully all of the multiplayer maps. It should be simple, AI traits to add and edit, and the objective should be 1 of the options, Offense (infiltrate a base, blow up a base with a bomb, kill all the enemies etc) Defense (defend an objective, kill as many enemies as you can before the timer runs out etc) or a mix. The AI options should be very similar as well, adding 1 of 3 choices. The character is very up close, or offensive (ex your editing an elite zealot with energy sword, you choose the offensive option, the elite now will be very up close, and will try to charge at you with the sword) defensively (ex you choose the defensive option for an elite with the carbine, a circle appears around the elite, with the elite in the middle, you can choose how big or small that circle is, and that circle is the area the elite or other AI will defend, you should also be able to choose the shape of the object (ex square, rectangle etc)) or a mix of both. I think the AI should be good enough in Halo 5 to support these simple options, and would give Halo 5 a huge replayability. Just look at what fans did with forge and custom games, I am sure the community could do the same with this.

8

> Sadly, as awesome as this is… It’s not remotely possible to Forge a map and have AI function on it.
>
> In order to get an AI to work, it must be programmed to the map. This is normally done with NAV-Mesh, which is an EXTREMELY tedious thing to do and it would be next to impossible to provide a functioning UI for it.
>
> After all, there is a legit reason on why we couldn’t Forge on Firefight Maps in Halo Reach.

I didn’t say anything about forging brand-new maps; read the OP again. Bungie said a long time ago that we couldn’t Forge our own Firefight maps for that very reason.

What I’m suggesting is forging on EXISTING Spartan Ops maps (Lockup, Apex, etc.) which already have AI programmed into them. Get it?

9

All this about AIs not being possible in forge is a load of Bull. Far Cry 3 does it perfectly well. What makes Halo 5, a NEXT-GEN GAME, unable to do something that a game from the current generation already does??? Nothing.

Even so, I’d sooner that they just gave us a season 2. Why name something ‘season 1’ if you don’t plan on a second season?

10

Dude, AI has a tendency of being a lot more complex than “spawn and do -Yoink-.” Lots of reasons why those kinds of mods on PC that have uniquely coded AI and whatnot are actually rather impressive.

This is completely beyond the capabilities of Halo 4’s engine, or even a console-based engine in general.

11

> All this about AIs not being possible in forge is a load of Bull. Far Cry 3 does it perfectly well. What makes Halo 5, a NEXT-GEN GAME, unable to do something that a game from the current generation already does??? Nothing.
>
> Even so, I’d sooner that they just gave us a season 2. Why name something ‘season 1’ if you don’t plan on a second season?

That’s where I got the idea from, actually…

Far Cry 3’s single-player sandbox mode was kind of a disappointment; since you can’t actually place that many AI, and you can’t really play your map as you would in single-player.

But if they can get that sort of thing to work on a player-created map, should 343i be able to do the same for an already-made map with AI already programmed into it? Not to mention I’ve heard that Halo has easily the best AI in all of video games(in other words, better than Far Cry 3), I don’t know if that’s changed in recent years…

12

> Dude, AI has a tendency of being a lot more complex than “spawn and do Yoink!.” Lots of reasons why those kinds of mods on PC that have uniquely coded AI and whatnot are actually rather impressive.
>
> This is completely beyond the capabilities of Halo 4’s engine, or even a console-based engine in general.

Yes but what about Next Gen? I am pretty sure Next Gen would be able to handle it. Farcry 3 was able to do this, so I think Halo 5 can. It would add a massive replayability factor and could end up becoming the next forge!

13

That’d be cool. I’d rather them focus on making campaign or theater/scoring for campaign, though.

14

> That’d be cool. I’d rather them focus on making campaign or theater/scoring for campaign, though.

I want campaign scoring as well back for Halo 5, but I doubt that’s a “Hard Thing” to do for a game. I would also like see a lot of things be fixed and return to Halo 5 such as Custom Games, Duel Wielding and a Theater mode for Spops and Campaign, but on top of that, I would like to see them not only add new things that people have been asking for Halo 5, such as a spectator mode and a massive team battle mode (32vs32), we also need 343i to innovate for Halo 5, we need them to add something to the game that has NEVER been seen before in a video game, and I mean NEVER.

15

Many times I’ve wanted to do that.

16

> That’d be cool. I’d rather them focus on making campaign or theater/scoring for campaign, though.

Is that really a hard thing to fix? I’m still wondering why they don’t have it in Halo 4, seeing as it worked perfectly in Halo:Reach…

17

> > Dude, AI has a tendency of being a lot more complex than “spawn and do Yoink!.” Lots of reasons why those kinds of mods on PC that have uniquely coded AI and whatnot are actually rather impressive.
> >
> > This is completely beyond the capabilities of Halo 4’s engine, or even a console-based engine in general.
>
> <mark>Yes but what about Next Gen? I am pretty sure Next Gen would be able to handle it.</mark> Farcry 3 was able to do this, so I think Halo 5 can. It would add a massive replayability factor and could end up becoming the next forge!

It doesn’t work like that. Hardware and software upgrades aren’t going to change the fact that you’ll have to program the AI’s and create their path-finding yourself.

Can you imagine typing in strings of code and laying out NAV-Meshes with a Console Controller? Do you know how NAV-Mesh works? It’s like covering AN ENTIRE CITY in thin strands of tape, it’s more tedious than functional… It’s also very easy to make mistakes with it, so many TVs will be broken in frustration if people had to do this with only a Console Controller.

18

Im betting that season 2 spartan ops will not happen until halo 5

19

> > > Dude, AI has a tendency of being a lot more complex than “spawn and do Yoink!.” Lots of reasons why those kinds of mods on PC that have uniquely coded AI and whatnot are actually rather impressive.
> > >
> > > This is completely beyond the capabilities of Halo 4’s engine, or even a console-based engine in general.
> >
> > <mark>Yes but what about Next Gen? I am pretty sure Next Gen would be able to handle it.</mark> Farcry 3 was able to do this, so I think Halo 5 can. It would add a massive replayability factor and could end up becoming the next forge!
>
> It doesn’t work like that. Hardware and software upgrades aren’t going to change the fact that you’ll <mark>have to program the AI’s and create their path-finding yourself[/h].</mark>
> <mark>Can you imagine typing in strings of code and laying out NAV-Meshes with a Console Controller? Do you know how NAV-Mesh works? It’s like covering AN ENTIRE CITY in thin strands of tape, it’s more tedious than functional… It’s also very easy to make mistakes with it, so many TVs will be broken in frustration if people had to do this with only a Console Controller.</mark>
> <mark>
[/quote]
Not if the developers have already done it for us. Must I repeat myself? I am NOT suggesting that we should be able to build our Spartan Ops maps in Forge completely from scratch. I am suggesting that we be allowed to edit existing Spartan Ops maps from Season 1 by placing objectives, enemy spawn, landing zones for dropships and drop, things of that nature.</mark>
> <mark>I think it’s plausible. Rather than teach the AI to recognize and navigate a player-created map, they’d only have to recognize player-created objectives.</mark>
> <mark>I think that if I place a “Defend” marker on a Spartan Ops map like, say… “The Quarry” (Episode 1, Chapter 1) and a Landing Zone for a Phantom on the other side of the map, the enemies should be able to move from one end of this already-made map to the other, and attack the objective I’ve been set to defend.</mark>
> <mark>I’m no expert on computer programming, but the theory seems sound to me… what I would need is for someone from 343i; better yet someone who has worked the development of Spartan Ops missions, to tell us whether this is plausible or not and why.</mark>
> <mark>We already know that we can’t build Firefight/Spartan Ops maps from scratch on maps such as Forge Island; Bungie already described in detail why this is not possible. It probably won’t change for many more years, decades even. But… nobody ever asked if we could at least edit an already-made Firefight/Spartan Ops map.</mark>

20

I’ve had this idea ages ago but I never developed or posted it because I knew it’s not feasible and it probably won’t happen even in next-gen Halo. I don’t even understand why they worked on Spartan Ops if it ended up like this. The time used for it could have been used to make the multiplayer better, such as adding new maps, but it seems that two unfinished things are better than a polished one, right? The same goes for Forge and Theater. The only reason I ever played Spartan Ops was for XP boosting.
I support your idea, and always thought something like this would be very cool, but I doubt it will be accomplished in the next Halo title.