So one of the most popular things about Reach was Forge World.
Halo 4 brought out 3 smaller Forge Canvases - Ravine, Erosion and Impact with a later DLC (Forge Island).
My question is what would you rather have, another giant Forge world type canvas or several smaller ones like Halo 4?
I say giant ones, cause I’ll admit Halo 4 was poorly made for its forge maps, but hopefully they are keeping their words and making what me want most.
Why not both?
The problem with giant maps like forge world is that if I’m building a small map designed for competitive 4v4, loading the entirety of the forge world just to use 10% of it is not only dumb, but can actually cause frame rate issues.
On the other hand, if I want to build a huge vehicle war map, I need the space, and obviously a more casual map doesnt care about frame rate issues as much.
Both in my opinion honestly is the best bet, or maybe just one giant world, but you can make it so only certain parts of it load. But that could lead to alot of glitches.
> Why not both?
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> The problem with giant maps like forge world is that if I’m building a small map designed for competitive 4v4, loading the entirety of the forge world just to use 10% of it is not only dumb, but can actually cause frame rate issues.
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> On the other hand, if I want to build a huge vehicle war map, I need the space, and obviously a more casual map doesnt care about frame rate issues as much.
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> Both in my opinion honestly is the best bet, or maybe just one giant world, but you can make it so only certain parts of it load. But that could lead to alot of glitches.
A vehicle map doesn’t really need the size of Forge World to function well (heck it is best not to spread the action out too much).
I think the Skybox maps 343i are implementing in Halo 2A are a good idea, as you said, less unnecessary loading of polygons and textures the player never sees anyway.
I’d say one large Forge Canvas so that Forgers can have plenty of space to create. I liked Forge World because it allowed you to choose where you wanted to build (a canyon, an island, a hanger, a flat-ish area above the hanger, etc.).
I got the most enjoyment out of getting my friends together and building bases on Forge World.
I’m going with Giant canvas, with skybox areas.
> I’d say one large Forge Canvas so that Forgers can have plenty of space to create. I liked Forge World because it allowed you to choose where you wanted to build (a canyon, an island, a hanger, a flat-ish area above the hanger, etc.).
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> I got the most enjoyment out of getting my friends together and building bases on Forge World.
Yeah but again, the game still loads the information of the area around that Canyon, Island and Hangar.
It’s better for load time and file size if you kept it to separate maps/canvasses.
The only use I see for a map like Forge World would be for huge Race maps but it is not directly a necessity to make Race fun.
The problem with the Halo 4 Forge maps wasn’t their size, it was the presence of so many distinctive, pre made, unalterable elements. Of the original three I’d say Ravine was the worst offender. That big empty Forerunner structure was always present. At least with Erosion you had different areas.
What they did offer is differing environments, something Reach lacked. I hope Halo 5 can bring forward the best of all the Forge offerings thus far.
How about a big map that encompasses many different environments that can also be loaded one by one to decrease lag?
> How about a big map that encompasses many different environments that can also be loaded one by one to decrease lag?
The problem is that it would still be a trade off (disc space over loading-resource usage).
If you have 1 big map, you have a case of loading an unnecessary amount of information.
If you have 1 big map with 4 smaller ones cut out of that 1 big map, you have a case of extra disc space for what is essentially the same thing .
If you have 4 smaller maps, you just don’t have a big one.
If you’re talking about loading only part of the map from that 1 big map, 343i must first find a way to make it work and could end up being ugly (not to mention that you still have to find a way to tell the game to differentiate between what part of the map it has to use).
Forge World was never fully utilized to begin with in MM nor do we need a map that big.
I honestly wish people would ditch the “Bigger is better” mentality and think of it from multiple standpoints, big maps like Forge World served few purposes to begin with, aside from showing of with what was capable in the Reach engine.
Big canvass because Halo Reach’s Forge World was a great evolution in Forge. However, 343 Industries needs to fix Forge before all this, especially the lag time in between being a Spartan and a Monitor.
Both, neither, I could not care less. Without a means to submit maps to a community playlist, there is really no point to Forge.
Forge is single handedly the greatest untapped resource Halo has, which could completely set itself apart from other FPS games. Yet for years, with all that potential, both Bungie and 343i continue to ignore this goldmine.
What forge needs more then anything is the infrastructure for players to create, submit, and be matchmade into community created content. We need a playlist dedicated to community made maps, a streamlined system to submit maps to that playlist, and a player-review process so matchmaking can prioritize good content over bad.
There has been some pathetic semblance of this being done in the past, but it was an arduous manual process and it received little support. We need genuine infrastructure to actually showcase community content in a matchmaking system.
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> Big canvass because Halo Reach’s Forge World was a great evolution in Forge. However, 343 Industries needs to fix Forge before all this, especially the lag time in between being a Spartan and a Monitor.
That was due to Halo 4s dynamic lighting, if you place a block as a monitor it is ridiculously white until you generate the lighting by heading into your spartan in which case the light will affect it accordingly (shadows on one part, more lighter at the other).
Honestly, I’d rather have a couple skyboxes rather than large or small Forge canvases. With the skybox map, you choose what skybox you want, be it rainy/stormy, snowing/blizzard, clear skies, overcast, upper atmosphere, outerspace, or perhaps even an empty underground cavern. That still counts as a skybox. The only difference is that it has physical walls, just no actual terrain.
How about a few large forge canvases?
Why not a texture chooser for the ground (sand, snow, grass, mud, whatever), a skybox chooser, and then the usual palette of bridges, roads, walls, etc? It’s the most flexibility you could have, and there’s no need for a “world” or even a set group of maps.
Bungie nailed this, once. Myth was a real time tactical game (my all time favorite, ever. of all time.) but it’s relevant here because it came two editors - Fear and Loathing. One was for creating custom units and sounds, the other for maps. They were stupendously versatile, enabling for an incredible variety of possibilities. I don’t know if there are XB1 or networking restrictions for such maps in Guardians, but if Bungie could do it for Myth in the dial-up days, surely it must be in the realm of possibility today.
We need an actual map editor and a custom games browser. Enough of this frustratingly limited Forge business.
> We need an actual map editor and a custom games browser. Enough of this frustratingly limited Forge business.
Sigh, here we go again.
Think of what a map editor has over an object editor. Just brainstorm why from a designer perspective an object editor has pros over the map editor.
> > We need an actual map editor and a custom games browser. Enough of this frustratingly limited Forge business.
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> Sigh, here we go again.
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> Think of what a map editor has over an object editor. Just brainstorm why from a designer perspective an object editor has pros over the map editor.
An object editor that allows:
is a map editor that uses object editing as the interface. Less convenient for a map design company, but infinitely more convenient for folks like us.
Object editors can have capabilities that approach map editor capabilities. Most of the infrastructure already exists in H4 Forge.
Take a note out of Ubisofts book, give us a full map editor, something that puts Farcry to shame.