Forge
MAPS
Verdict:
-Smaller but stylistic. Still contains diverse areas and allows for creative building. Inhibits us from having giant play spaces. More work and thinking involved to make a huge slayer map. Maps feel more confined (not sure if you can fly falcon/Banshee on Impact). Reach forge world had so much freedom. Can’t say for sure we’ll have the same in Halo 4.
-I believe the forge budget will never be big enough to fully build throughout a space like Reach’s forge world. So something like forge world will never hit it’s full potential on the xbox 360. This IMO is not a good enough reason to make the maps smaller. However by making a few smaller maps 343 was able to provide is with some variety. Now we don’t always have to deal with green, blue and gray. That’s huge. I believe adding different environments was the largest contributing factor to the decision of having smaller maps.
TOOLS
Verdict:
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Magnets. Great. If they didn’t have magnets that would be silly. We expected something like this. Reach offered us a better way to line up objects but it still wasn’t perfect. Hopefully it is now.
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Duplicate Object. Down right disappointing. We can only duplicate one object at a time. 343 said their main goal in forge was to allow people to build creative maps faster. Duplicate is easy to think of. Any developer could do it. Where is the group object tool? Why is their no tool allowing me to group several forges pieces into one allowing that object to act as one piece. It is really simple. If you want two of the same bases you still have to make them both from scratch.
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Group Object. Where is this? Sure, moving 30 forge pieces at once could be laggy and duplicating 30 objects at once could be laggier. However there are ways of doing this. Let’s say you wanted to duplicate an entire base you made which is made out of several forge pieces. Well, individually select each piece and assign it to a group name (bravo, charlie etc). Now any object under the same group name will move as one object, flip as one and duplicate as one. If you are duplicating more than one object, instead of moving 30 fully drawn objects at once, move them as a mere highlighted outline. Once they are duplicated then draw them fully after you have placed them. This is simple and can be done I know it. Also, check the forge budget before you duplicate more than one object. This is recursive programming.
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Should be many more new tools. If I missed one I doubt it was that important hence why I forgot about it. Group object is most important to me.
ITEMS
- There doesn’t appear to be much new in this department. In fact more items would have to be what I care about most. I’ve tried to make detailed buildings and rooms. It’s really difficult not having actual furniture and with such few decorative objects. This can’t be hard to do. Get the 3D modelling team for a full work day and just make a lot of easy-concept objects. Like a bench/lounge or more windows etc. There could be so many more items. Because 343 hasn’t shown them off I assume there are none.
BUDGET
- I don’t think the forge budget has changed by much. I saw the budget was still 10,000 in a video. It is true the objects have become cheaper but I haven’t heard of them announcing a budget increase.
What do you guys think. Has it gotten better? I only think the variety in forge world environment has gotten better, and a couple nice tools. The game mode lacks REAL tools.