My thoughts as a Forger to Players and Developer alike
I consider myself a serious forger, not a competitive one, not causal, but one who takes pride in making maps that are beautiful, and fun to play on. I love forge, the creativity, and flexibility of the parts in Reach were astounding. you could make Forerunner, Human, even Covenant themed maps if you knew how to use the parts right.
I will say that Halo 4 is a great game, and that there were some improvements introduced in H4’s forge mode.
having said that, there are some things that bug me.
-Forge parts don’t line up when using coordinates
—this is very obvious when using the coordinate grid to line up pipes, yes you can use magnets, but weren’t magnets supposed to help the coordinate system, not replace it? Personally I think magnets are fine for lining up large amounts of objects, but will never replace the coordinate grid for functionality
-The bump glitch is still here
—the problem found in Reach was that sometimes, your parts would get jostled around between save and load, this was normally combated by realigning the parts using the fine-tuning option, however, in halo 4, that option was removed, in favor of magnets. The issue is that the magnets do not account for this glitch, and so the parts continue to be misaligned.
-The forge blocks are rounded and notched
—while the parts may look good on their own, having gaps in your map makes it look sloppy and cobbled together, the only fix being to merge the two parts until the gaps are covered by another part. The problem with this is:
-Removal of the fine-tuning option
—I’ve almost never used the fine-tuning option to line up parts, what I did use it for was something far more important: getting rid of z-fighting, that annoying flicker you get when two parts have conflicting geometry. activating fine-tuning,and flicking the joystick allowed you to not only get rid of z-fighting without introducing noticeable bumps, but also allowed for a technique called “texturing”, where you could select which block texture would appear
-The new forge textures
—the textures for the forge blocks in particular look fantastic by themselves, however, when you start combining pieces, those extra details just make the design look cluttered. the fact that most (if not all) parts are now no longer symmetrical in design further adds to this sense disorder
The kicker
these are all rather small issues individually, but compounded, it makes for a very sloppy looking map, no matter how well designed the original layout was. Parts don’t line up, there are holes everywhere in the map, the textures are chaotic, and most merged parts have obvious z-fighting. parts that aren’t merged are easy to discern from the surrounding structure, making everything seem less like a structure, and more like a collection of blocks.
I have high hopes for H4, the potential is there, but I feel that the few mistakes have caused some rather serious issues. I don’t expect 343 Industries to drop everything and fix this game, but at the same token, I hope they do not ignore it simply because the game has already been sold to the purchaser. The likeliness of them actually reading this is depressingly slim and even more so to act upon it, but not for want of trying.
I don’t expect to have a totally new UNSC vehicle, or some new gun, or armor skin, I wouldn’t mind going without. I would not post this if the issue was simply me asking for some sort of customization. It is the errors in the game’s base functionality, small issues that my have been overlooked during development, small errors that may have not have shown up during beta testing, but issues all the same.
thank you for your time.
a well laid out post with constructive criticism and no major whining! am i still on the halo 4 forum?!?!?!
