Overall, very well done so far, I believe I have a few content suggestions that I would like to see added as well as some usability/QoL improvements which will be sectionalized below. Since this is my first post ever on waypoint forums, if possible, I will come back and edit the post with additional thoughts and suggestions as they come to me to eliminate additional postings on the thread.
Regarding Fundamental Object Manipulation:
PLEASE I find rotating objects with a mouse very irritating, to the point where it makes me want to give up on project initiatives all together.
I try selecting the axis I want the object to rotate on, let’s say x for example, and click and drag along the curved line that goes around the object to try and start rotating the object, but nothing happens regardless of snap increment. I also tried it by just dragging it across my screen in the intended direction (as opposed to following the line) and still nothing works most of the time.
It is literally to the point where I honestly feel I can’t rotate objects in the game. Yes, I could edit the coordinates in the object properties, but that is guess work and a massive PITA when working on large scale creations with many working pieces.
A way to edit object vertices, I know this one is asking a lot but at least this way it would allow us to customize those banked slopes to our own liking as well as the curving staircases and even goes as far as making entirely new objects (which of course would have to have basic textures because we don’t expect UNSC/Covenant/Banished art styled custom objects, it’s just not practical.)
Symmetry References:
While I know the community is brilliant and has plenty of non-visual, mathematic based solutions for creating symmetrical object duplication and alignment, I would like to see something for the non-math whizzes that allows us to quantify space visually, like a scalable grid system utilizing a increment property. I swear a previous halo game had it, and it would make quickly iterating through a creative process that much less painful and tedious.
Scripting Additions and General Object Properties:
I would like to see a node graph node which I will start referencing as (ngn) for object/player opacity. I feel like this could add a lot of additional possibilities in the gameplay loop if certain objects were invisible or at least very low opacity with a scalar for example.
In the leaked beta there was an option for vehicle-based welding and combinations node, please bring that back even if it isn’t a 100% functional for all objects.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYJQZ-7xNt4&ab_channel=Misterchief
A way to set a velocity threshold for a player to die from getting hit by an object going X speed through the environment. That way we can increase the creativity of death causing objects rather than just requiring deathballs every time. I would love to use a player made cannon ball that actually looks like a cannon ball to kill a player.
Player writable indicators for when a node graph scripting is trying to differentiate between two objects. Think like a comment in a piece of written code. This allow people to duplicate and iterate on prefabs logic without having to leave the forge session and hope someone commented how things work in the versioning comments.
A deep dive on the budget limitations associated with node graph and linked node brains. I imagine at some point there is a limit for memory reasons and to stop infinite looping structures.
That’s all for now.
P.S Covenant and Banished AI and gasp even flood as bots haha .
Add a togglable line heading down from objects while you are holding them so you can tell where they are in space, I spend a dumb amount of time trying to figure out depth perception. THIS 100% PLEASE!
This would be very handy and the optimal way of moving objects, but like stealthmonky11 said in his post, I would like toggleable line to determine where my object is in 3d space.
Glass features:
New glass shapes such as a sphere, or even better a glass material.
In the flight we could change glass color. This is a feature I find myself already missing.
Importing .mvars:
Perhaps a vetting system for this content.
Pizza/pizza accessory assets.
Turning off outlines/changing their conditions
Adjustable volume for audio emitters
Varying footstep sounds dependent on material/adjustable volume for footsteps
I would LOVE to see the ability to override and trigger events for more inputs from users in node graph. For example, override the grenade key, crouch, sprint, switch weapon, jump, reload, etc. The ability to block the default action and script your own would be incredibly powerful. Especially in vehicles.
More array/list types would be nice
The ability to modify FX with scripts would be fantastic, e.g. change the color of an effect when a user does something rather than moving one effect out and another in.
Please, for the love of all that is holy, allow FX to be disabled while forging. Hearing UNSC explosions over and over while editing is rough. Unless I’m missing something obvious here.
Overall, I love it and it’s a HUGE step in the right direction. Please keep working on it, it has so much potential.
Problem: Players having a trait which disables the ability to pick up weapons also disables the ability for them to receive weapons from Give new Weapon script executions.
Fix: Override pick-up trait permissions when using Give new weapon script nodes.
Problem: Magnets are not sufficient to snap decals to surfaces. Most objects have a snap point inside, so the decal just disappears.
Fix: Snap decals to vertexes instead of whatever arbitrary magnet point you set them at.
I would really like a way to scale and rotate the texture/material on a surface. I also would PLEASE like to be able to set vehicles to “phased” so making vehicle prefabs (like in Halo 5) is easier to do. Right now, with the way prefabs and dynamic items work (some items lose their ability to have the material changed when set to dynamic, as well not being able to mass change a prefabs physics set, which were both things you could do in 5), (and vehicles unable to phase) that is something that is either very difficult to pull off, or requires exploits to pull off. I would love prefab vehicles to reach Halo 5 levels of ease.
Could you please expand the String options. I understand not wanting to give us free reign on messages splashed to players, but there are some obvious terms missing that are making it difficult for me to use at the moment. For example, I’d like to Splash a dead teammate’s respawn timer to players with the message “ Seconds Until [Player] Respawns” but none of these words are possible, and the respawn timer isn’t even directly callable.
Thanks for the openness to feedback and the already amazing forge tools you’ve provided.
Please optimize/add more optimization settings to the PC. This is something that will improve the overall Forge experience for everyone making and playing. If optimization improvements are already being made with new updates, please detail us on them. ------ Also THANKS FOR THIS DOPE FORGE!!
Feature I would like: musics of Halo Infinite as an audio item like in the Forge of Halo 5 (and actually something better, the ability to select tracks rotating during the game like in Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64).
I’ve been using Forge since launch, I think every day and I love it! But that not to say that there is some frustration while I’ve been using it and I have some feedback, what I like and what I think needs to get improved on.
The Controls
Controler: I thought the controls was pretty clunky at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly and I like it now. But I think it’s not snappy enough, I can’t switch between rotating, moving and scaling quickly. I need to release both RT and LT to reset it and then I can select the tool I want to use. I should be able to hold/release RT or LT to toggle between move, rotate scale. That will increase our workflow. And I would like to move an object(s) up and down even slower when I need to.
Mouse and Keyboard (MKB): I don’t like it. I don’t think that you should be flying around just like how you do with a controller. I think you should be moving and looking around just like how you do in a 3D modelling software, like Blender or Maya on MKB. I think it needs a complete overhaul, it should function just like in Blender or Maya. Moving, rotating and scaling objects using shortcuts like G for moving, S for scaling and R for rotating (and then click X: Y: Z to be more specific and hold Shift to exclude that axis), or simply using the Gizmos and etc.
Magnets
I like this iteration of it, I think it’s looks better and its visuals better where it going to snap to compare to the other versions. But it doesn’t work all the time, it sometimes works when the selected object is intersecting the object that I want to snap on, or other times if the camera is intersecting another object. It’s weird
And I think we should be able to snap to a vertex while scaling too, not just moving.
Textures
All textures look amazing, but it needs some improvements. On some objects/areas they can look low res. Now I’m using Low for texture quality, but for some objects/areas do look low res compared to others.
It would nice to be able to scale and move the textures as well, so we can align the textures easier to other objects. Scratch and Grime looks stretched when scaling objects and have the option to add Scratch and Grime for each color Region would be nice to have.
More color options, I’ve noticed that Lights have more options for colors compared to other objects. And the Color Spread keeps reseting in Custom Games, so for example I can’t use the color Red as an Emission color.
A color wheel would be nice to have as well and be able to save colors.
Biomes
I’m currently creating a Forerunner map in a desert environment, the issue I’m having is that the terrain objects have rocks on it, I would like to have the option to only have sand for my terrain objects. So right now, I’ve placed a Date Palm on the rocky part of the terrain because I had to if I want to maintain the symmetry for my map. Or I need to move the whole map just to fix that problem. I tried to use a terrain piece that I can customize, but it doesn’t look near to how sand looks like.
Cross biomes, for example: can’t use sand from Arid on the Institute canvas, and vice versa. We had that option in Halo 5.
The TI terrain version should have an option to cycle between each biome and have the option to remove/add extra detail like visible rocks, dirt etc.
More rocks, most rocks are Halo 5 assets.
More canvases: Snow, Lava, Ocean without a floor (Let us make our own) and a Cave canvas.
Water assets (I know it’s coming)
More trees, bushes, flowers and let us select color. (Most Flora objects wont render for me)
Extra
More glass options and shapes: cylinder, ring, etc. Let us select the opacity, color and textures.
Covenant theme/round shaped object.
Banished theme objects.
More Forerunner objects and FXs.
Object Modifiers, for example an Array modifier.
Falling rocks/sand/dust FX (I think we had it in Halo 5)
More dynamic objects from other factions like Banished and Forerunner etc.
Rotation resets when undoing.
Scale multiple objects.
Add a thumbnail for our maps on PC.
Add tags for the objects so these objects can automatically be sorted in our Folders.
Let us select multiple objects at once in Folder menu by selecting where to start and then hold Shift and click where to end, every object between the frist and last will be selected.
More invisible Blocker shapes.
Nav Mesh won’t bake on invisible Blockers.
Let us tell the bots where the power positions are.
Machine Learning for the bots? If possible, so they learn how to play the maps better
Let us select the exact number of magazines/energy/charges for our sandbox. Not using percent.
More holograms.
Rock textures tend not to render properly (They get a black shiny texture and that seems to affect the lightings when building/baking)
That’s all I can come up with at the moment, you’ve made an incredible job!
It feels like a beta but it’s still really good, the most frustrating part is baking the Lighting because it takes a lot of time, and the game keeps crashing. And the lighting tends to get dark after the first playtest in Custom Games, the workaround is to back out and back into Custom Game menu.
Would be nice if you could add an “On Player Damaged” event listener node. I’d like a clean way to make it so that when zombies are shot their movement speed goes down slightly for a short period of time. Like in Combat Arms with slowdown/knockback against zombies.
We removed the requirement for clean data on publish but didn’t have time to change those descriptions; you should be able to publish maps with dirty data. There is an issue where sometimes map descriptions can prevent publishing; I suggest shortening or re-doing the description to see if that will unblock you.
I think my strongest request/feedback would be to have a few “less structured,” or classic h3/reach style man-cannons and grav lifts.
While i love the idea of being able to precisely control the landing point for “serious” maps, for things like racing maps, or rocket race/mongoose jousting style maps, the current array of launchers have several undesired effects:
the “ramp” style launchers kill your speed and “grab” you to force you into the predetermined launch speed/arc of the launcher.
you can’t hit the launchers at a “wrong” angle and launch in a different height/direction; it always grabs you and launches you at the same speed/neight to the same landing spot. Again, it’s fantastic for “serious” gameplay maps where consistency is desired, but when trying to make silly maps, it’d be really nice to have the old-school style launchers as an option (the same, or similar functionality as in H3 or Reach)…
3 [suggestion rather than a problem]) it would be nice if they could either stack strength like they used to (by placing them on top of one another) or if it could just have an impulse strength setting in the object properties.
similarly, the current Banished Gravity Lift’s “grab” strength is way too strong; even at full throttle, a mongoose running over one will be immobilized, then launched straight vertically, and get stuck bobbing until someone blows it up. Used to be some sick air to be had with grav-lifts, but now it’s more of a grav-trap.
any other feedback i have has been already hit up by other forgers, or is way too specific a “me” problem to bother calling it “feedback.” having a blast learning how all the new stuff works!
I’d like the ability to apply “arcability” to an object.
Let me explain. The shock weapons can hit certain objects in the environment and zap nearby enemies. I think this is a really cool perk, but many times, the maps don’t offer a good change to take advantage of this. Many items can’t arc damage and the few that can often have to be placed on the ground (it’s very hard to hit a pancake shaped target )
I think it would be cool to turn a normal block into something that can conduct electricity. Maybe even a new game mode could emerge from this.
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