Halo 4 - Forge 3.0 - More Advanced Map Editor?

Community General Discussion
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Halo 4 - Forge 3.0 - More Advanced

Everyone who has played FarCry 2 realizes that there map maker is nothing short of amazing - you basically build the world by adding Trees, Mountains, Hills, Roads, etc. Not only can you add one type of tree you can add several types such as willow or oak. Another Amazing aspect of FarCry’s Map maker is Texture - you can add textures to mountains and other objects that you make. Basically you do not only add objects to Forge World you build Forge World from scratch.

If you have not seen the FarCry2 Map Editor please follow this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0kWkjued8Y to the trailer of the Map Editor - you can also search YouTube for maps created by the map editor.

I think if this could somehow be dumbed down a little bit (do to gameplay problems) it would make a great feature for the upcoming Halo game - maybe even for Halo 5 as it may be to late to put it in Halo 4 or it may take to much time to build it in before the release date. I see no reason on why Halo can not have something similar to this - If you don’t like it tell me why or what I should change.

Here are just a few Idea (I will post more later and go into further detail)

Time Changing - ( You get to choose night or day, morning or afternoon )
Environment - ( You build your world, your create Mountains, Hills, Trees, Waterfalls, Rivers, Roads )
Texture Painter - ( Ability to add a set of different textures to objects )
Objects - ( Multiplayer, Drivable vehicles, Non-Drivable vehicles, Buildings, signs, etc. )
Object Tools - ( Group Select, Clone, grab, drop )
Playable Zone - ( Choose where map borders end )
Map Validation - ( Checks to make sure certain Gamemodes are playable on the map )
Map Properties - (Name Map, Size of Map, How many Players map should hold )

If you have any ideas for this more advanced map maker please do post them and if it sounds good I will add it to the Thread! If you don’t like it say why! Thanks, Remember it was just an idea…

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Sky/weather options: Clear, Partly cloudy, Cloudy, Overcast, Hazy, Rainy, Thunderstorm, Blizzard, Foggy, Space, Apocalypse (reddish orange sky)

Terrain: Grassy, Dying grass, Desert, Rocky, Snowy, Flood, Swamp, Forest

Structure types: Stock (blank objects, minimal texture, can change color), Rural (Overlook, Powerhouse), Mombasa (outskirts, turf, metropolis, etc), Jungle (Ghost Town, Sierra 117), Alexandria (exodus, new alexandria), Industrial (The Storm, Foundry, Tip of the Spear), Militia (Countdown, Pillar of Autumn (CE), Space (Orbital, Anchor 9), Covenant (s/e), Forerunner 1 (standard forerunner look), Forerunner 2 (Sanctuary, Delta Halo), Forerunner 3 (Sandtrap, Sandbox), Forerunner 4 (classic, plain forerunner look from the first two games), Flood (s/e), Natural 1 (objects made of snow and ice), Natural 2 (ordinary beige rocks), Natural 3 (whatever).

All I can really come up with for now.

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Kind of like in Photoshop, I want to be able to do these two things:

  1. Change the brightness/contrast of individual textures or an object as a whole.
    2)Change the hue (color scheme) of the object.

This would counter the greyness of Forge in Reach insanely.

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I like both of these ideas as soon as I have an update to this thread both will be included.

I like the idea of the Orange Sky - be great for infection maps
contrast and lightness idea is a great idea but could be a little harder for them to make.

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I like this. There should also be Preset worlds though, such as snowy worlds, Mountainous worlds, Desert Worlds, Forested Worlds, etc. One for each environment, and one that is blank and you can totally make yourself.

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Also, the option to Forge in space.

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Forge in Space would be amazing - and yes I planned to add the default world for each enviorment.

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We’ve been wishing for these stuff for a long time, since Halo 3. Would be awesome if they could bring all of those abilities in to the game, with the sandbox map from Halo 3. Or atleast some kind of big sand map. I mean, sandbox was awesome. It was big as hell, (if you put stuff in front of the shooting towers, guardians, of course), and you had both night and day on that map. Including three different levels, underground, ground level and the skybox. + That the skybox could be EVEN bigger and higher up if you took a teleporter out of the barriers. Which made it awesome for drop pods etc. You guys get it. :stuck_out_tongue: Sandbox was awesome, because you could build a lot of things on it, good enviroment and good feeling. There was no limits, except for the items… -_-

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We don’t want sandbox though we want to create our own world - our own enviorment. Did you watch the video? We don’t want a big map with lots of items - we want to create a map from scratch - starting with nothing but sand and rocks and then building Mountains and Roads to form a map.

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I have used Far Cry 2’s map editor.

It is indeed extremely powerful, but it is also slow, cumbersome, and tedious to use. Even the simplest operations are buried underneath unnecessarily-nested menus. In terms of usability, Forge as it exists in Halo: Reach is light-years ahead.

Forge with FC2’s capabilities would be an amazing thing indeed – if it were still easy and quick to use.

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It also needs to be simple to use. a further improved coordinate editor and a more flexible rotation snap. a simple menu and (dare i say it?) options for firefight.

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Might want to add on that we should be able to place a loadout camera and label it “Map_Picture.” It would be the image that is displayed in the lobby.

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It’s a shame as someone said, we have been wishing and praying for this stuff since 3… Ok they gave us a good one in 3, but it was too basic, but people pushed it to the limit creating things not even Bungie could imagine; then in Reach we got the next level up an incredible canvas at our disposal and the real building blocks and tools required to create levels, with many of the forge requests met, with rotation ‘snaps’ merging and fixed positioning…

However our request for a map editor is so huge and would go against one thing Microsoft thrives off; making money from map packs. If they gave us a map editor/creator, people would never buy the maps; look at what people of the community create; some maps, are better than Bungies!

With all the necessary tools it would pave the way for a strong online community; but would go against the buying of map packs… less of course 343 could bring out something else, for example campaign missions or new parts for maps.

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> Also, the option to Forge in space.

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As a competitive MLG player, I think I speak for our whole community when I say one of the most basic and important things to us is texture and appearance of objects. If there were options added to Forge that would allow people to completely change the skin/texture of objects, that would make an enormous impact on the competitive level.

If forge editors would be allowed to simply change the skin/color of an object so that it doesn’t look exactly like all of the other objects of the same kind, it would allow people to be able to instantly recognize exactly where they (or someone else) are located on a map, and it would make it much easier to call out locations of enemy players in the middle of matches and respond to those call outs. And in competitive gaming, knowing exactly where your opponents and teammates are located on the map is crucial to success.

Texture is also very important to us as well. If there was an option that would allow forgers to simply add a “smooth barrier” or something like along those lines that we could use to put over little nooks and crannies built into maps, it would make the world of difference to us. One reason that a lot of competitive players preferred Halo: CE and Halo 2 compared to Halo 3 and Halo: Reach is the maps. Of course it’s nice to see how far map designers can take their graphics engines and technological capabilities, but for competitive play, it ruins the map. We need maps that are small to mid-sized (like most of the maps in H2/H3) that don’t have too much going on in the map. Take Lockout for example. Most competitive Halo 2 players LOVED that map, however, in Halo 3 those same people HATED Blackout. Reason being - the texture of the map. Bungie added a lot of random pipes/walls/corners and other things simply for visual pleasure. While this may be nice for the casual player, it really hinders a maps potential competitively. That’s why I would love the simple option of being able to add invisible barriers over top of pieces of maps that stick out and break the smooth flow of the surrounding walls/floors/etc.

Basically, if you could take a room with a bunch of jagged walls that were built into the map, and add invisible barriers over top of that so that the room seems “square” if you were to try and shoot or nade off of the walls, that would be the type of barrier customization we would LOVE to have.

I just hope someone from 343 sees this and really takes it to heart. The competitive gaming culture of Halo is ever growing and expanding and we only want to help make Halo the best it can be.

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I honestly think that there should be a real map editor like the ones for Halo Custom Edition/Halo 2 for Vista has. It would be really cool to play maps that are 100% user created with nearly complete freedom. Let’s face it even LittleBigPlanet’s level editor can do better than Forge. The PS3 version of Unreal Tournament 3 allowed this so why does Microsoft not want to allow user created content. I can understand some doing an exploit and modding their system being a problem but maybe they do a system where you have to upload the map to Halo Waypoint or Halo 4’s site and get the map must be approved and then you can download map like you would on Bungie.net and put it in your File Share. I love the user created maps for Halo 2 (PC) and I really hope that this feature will be put in to Halo 4.

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There would be WAY to many maps to be approved. I do agree how ever a really level editor would be AMAZING.

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Map editors like Far Cry 2s will never be available in Halo until they stop using the Halo engine. Mesh manipulation is not possible in the Halo engine, and is the reason they didn’t include a terrain editor in Reach (Ferrex confirmed this sometime back in the day).

Abandon the Halo engine, and we’ll see something like this. But we won’t see it in Halo 4…Because they’re using that god-awful engine again.

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I wanna see full phasing ability. In Reach, some objects arent phasable or wont phase through certain floors on different maps. I want every map to be able to have every object to be able to be phased. Plus more destructable objects such as pallets since they didnt appear on forge world. I have made entire lists of things i wanted for Halo: Reach forge. Most of it didnt make it. Give me a minute to re-post the list here.


I know that the important things on the list were already created but this list also includes some things that would be interesting.

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> I wanna see full phasing ability. In Reach, some objects arent phasable or wont phase through certain floors on different maps. I want every map to be able to have every object to be able to be phased.

This would be an excellent idea, if the objects also had a toggle to determine whether they are movable or not. (Since the only way to make an object fully phase-able is to make it not be a movable object.)