I couldn’t find out how to edit my previous reply so kinda sorry about this following right after it.
Expansion on the implementation of ai
Add script nodes that can be used to give the ai idle paths to patrol or guard.
Add dropship spawning
Attribute editing via scripting to create bosses or a more challenging experience.
Ability to attach VFX to the ai for creative bosses/enemy types.
Level changing (part 2 in the case ai is seriously considered)
It would be really neat to see custom stories created by the player with the addition of ai. So, it might be a good idea to add level change triggers via script or whatever to give the illusion of a longer experience.
I assume AI may not have been added due to current limitations on the Forge version and it being a beta. I, and likely many others, sincerely hope you guys at 343i deeply consider adding AI to forge. It has been a Forger’s dream only accomplished through modding. Oh how remarkable Halo Infinite Forge would be to stand out as being the Forge with vanilla AI spawning.
My feedback is that the vehicles with boosts such as Ghost, Banshee and Wraith should have the ability to change the duration and power of the boost via the forge tool setting.
You could use the forge to give Banshee unlimited boost ability, Ghost the limited boost, wraith the powerful boost and so on I think it would be a great addition feature!
Further feedback would be the addition of Covenant Assets - I’d love to recreate some old maps, and make new ones with the classic “Covenant vs UNSC” feel, but the lack of specific Covenant Assets makes this extremely difficult.
Two other things:
More options for skyboxes would be great - I personally wanted the use the skybox from Highpower for a project, but couldn’t find any way to do so.
Grav-Lifts should have more variants, and adjustable properties like the Launchers do
First i really like forge, great job everyone! Second this are my suggestion
1- Let us rotate prefabs in scripting like you can do normally (you can rotate the prefabs manually but if you do it in scripting only 1 object rotates)
2- The hacking terminal should send the signal when the hacking is finished (RN the hacking terminal sends a signal the moment you interact with it
3- Search interface for objects and nodes (just to find nodes and props faster)
This will be fairly length but it contains pretty much all the stuff I had difficulty with during a 100+hr remake of Plaza. Not in any order, just as I remember them
The ability to round corners on square or rectangular Halo design set objects would save a mountain of time and make more visually appealing maps easier to do
An extrude ability where I can add a shape to an existing base object and extrude out would be extremely useful
Prefabs are iffy, when moving them or rotating them sometimes pieces get lost or disjointed. Using Undo/Redo is pretty much a no go
Undo/Redo when having more than 2 objects selected usually results in issues with objects skewed to odd angled
Needs an “On player jumped” and “On player weapon fired” option
A damage scalar trait added.
The combine weapon node should have the regular weapons as a secondary choice. I don’t want to use campaign variants on some
The MP variants of some items arent useful in most instancees. Maybe they have an effect on load time and performance but accidentally blocking out with an MP variant and knowing you can’t colour swap is a pain
A “Same size” option available when you have two object selected with the Parent being the first one selected. Would make adding items much easier
Others have mentioned but the Scaling snap is inconsistent. When set to 0.001 I want the tiniest movement but it regularly ignore.
Node graphs regularly crash the gameand I usually save between adding 1-2 nodes.
Building the lighting almost always crashes the game if you don’t do it near the start of a forge sessions
Should be able to select all items in the build menu and add to a stack/queue
Snap to Ceilling option for lights would be excellent
Sometimes time of day changes on your map when loading a custom. Can ruin the visual look of a map when loaded into the wrong lighting
The Snap to floor or magnets option often leave @ 0.01-0.05 gap between the floor/item
KOTH area defaults to a 0x0x0 so is confusing when adding a new zone
Moving spawns or Gameplay zones ignore the “No Clip” option and can be frustrating if you are adding after blocking out
Screenshot browser doesn’t let you go past page 1 and the screenshots on Page 1 don’t correlate to most recent so you can’t use unless it randomly appears on that page
Im sure I will have more but this should cover most of my feedback for now. I haven’t ran into any issues which prevented my map being completed but had several hard crashes and various workarounds required. Appreciate all the work the 343 has done
A couple more things now that I’ve successfully scripted something.
Groups and labels for nodes, and a node visibility toggle. I tidy my scripts up as best I can, but these tools would make reading and tweaking scripts a LOT easier.
**More condition options in nodes.**I wanted to trigger an event on a player scoring a headshot kill, but it’s not there. Lists like that need to be fleshed out and not missing obvious entries.
Searchable object browser. I mean… come on. I hate to sound tetchy but why is this not a thing.
Objective objects. I’m scripting a mode where players need to collect items and I really wanted them to be oddball skulls. Instead, I had to make it be sandwiches. I’m not saying that’s worse, I’m just saying things like flags, oddballs, and even weapons should be available to us as dummy objects we can use as we want.
A “Copy Object/Prefab” node. This is a very basic function which is missing, and replicating it requires you to engage in ridiculous workarounds that are far too complicated. The ability to create a copy of an object, and create an object reference from it, would make many modes much easier to script.
Blocker visibility toggle. You knew it would be irritating to see everything covered in blue so you made nav-mesh visibility toggle. Same thing with area boundaries. Great. Now do the same with blockers. While you’re at it, making them scalable would be amazing.
Invisible volumes. It would be really helpful to be able to create a volume within which everything is invisible in normal play, but visible in Forge. The main purpose would be to hide objects that need to be present on a map to be used by scripts, but are a pain to hide from players, such as on Eternity. Regular game devs often do this by hiding these things out of bounds, but since we don’t have that option, this would be a nice alternative.
The work on forge has been great. The amount of items and control you give players is fantastic. Here are my issues with the new changes.
Forge is harder to use, but more expansive, so it doesn’t make much sense.
The controls are not ideal for someone who has experience of 3D software, but I will mention this later. Forge has never been ideal in comparison to the amount of control you get from a 3D package, so that would be fine if it wasn’t for how difficult forge is to use in terms of the pieces given to the community. The pieces that are given are great for kitbashing scenes together, but to make forge a casual experience, I would expect a lot more full pieces ready for the player to experiment with. As is, it seems that forge is in a weird no-mans-land, where it isn’t user friendly enough for people with knowledge of 3D to have an easy time working in it, but it is also too difficult where a beginner casual player can’t jump in and try out stuff. This problem is worsened without the ability to view and download prefabs while in a forge map and there doesn’t seem to be a way to search for pieces in the editor. Paired with the controls, the usability of Forge is unfortunately low. Between having a lot of trouble with selecting tools, difficulty using the gizmos, undo not being functional, weird rules on scaling, limited ability to customize assets, and much much more. It is really difficult to use Forge in any meaningful way for me. Which is unfortunate because it is extremely powerful and a wonderful design tool. However, the user experience and interface is possibly the worst part of Forge and makes it a frustrating experience to try and jump in a relax to make a forge map.
My main feedback is to pick a lane and work to make that the best experience possible. You have a great foundation with a user experience that makes that wonderful experience much much worse. If you are aiming towards people with 3D experience, I would recommend working on making the workflow a lot more smooth and specializing the experience for M&K users. I would give the player a lot more control over the tools or tell them why they cannot make certain changes. Also, before putting a feature into the experience, test it and ensure it works. If it doesn’t, cut it. Removing a requested feature is a lot less painful than having a feature that doesn’t work properly. If you are targeting users who are more casual, include ways for the player to build maps quicker. Allow for search and viewing of prefabs while in editor. Make the user experience a lot more simple and approachable.
There is more I could list, but I am rambling at this point. Forge is awesome, please test it and get some user researchers on it to really hammer out the issues with the workflow.
I started blocking out my map in halo design set mp pieces, not knowing I couldn’t change the texture on them, now every time I go to replace a piece with a textured piece every design set mp piece goes black and it’s insanely difficult to see anything. The only way I can fix this is by restarting the game.
Been really enjoying the Forge so far, but have a few small gripes in terms of the Forge’s object sandbox, that could be improved with future patches:
Material Regions Perhaps more of a technical limitation than a design oversight, but materials could be greatly improved/expanded on by giving every object 3-4 (top, bottom, sides, trim) material regions that are simply toggled on/off in the object menu. This would allow for more flexibility when applying materials to objects. It would also be nice if there was an option for adjusting grime/scratches per material vs. the entire object.
Expanded Primitives The primitives/Halo Design Set objects are quite good as is, but are still lacking in a few really helpful shapes. It would be quite nice to see Spheres (Full, Half, Quarter, 1/8), Domes(Full, Half, Quarter, 1/8), Rings (Full, Half, Quarter, 1/8), Pyramids, Triangles (Equilateral, Isosceles etc.), Hexagons/Octagons. While many of these shapes are already possible using the current tool set, having a singular scalable object for them available would all forgers to cut down on a lot of unnecessary object usage.
Expanded Material Library I’m sure this one is already on the list of planned additions, but a wider variety of materials for objects would be quite nice. There are many basic materials available, but it would be nice to see more variety in Stone/Brick/Wood/Metal patterns as well as other materials that may not be in the current sandbox. Perhaps even animated materials (I.E computer/tv screen images), provided the tech could allow it.
The ability to mirror an object or objects you’re holding in Forge would be of immense use especially when creating symmetrical maps because you’d be able to grab the objects that make up one base, duplicate them, then hit mirror so you can just place the other base on the other side instead of needing to remake the other side.
This would speed up the process significantly and also help prevent slight measurement mistakes that I was just spent a few hours figuring out and correcting on a map i’ve been working on.
I would like to see a “scale to fit” feature. For example, let’s say I am trying to put a wall between a floor and a ceiling, but the wall is not tall enough to fit perfectly. To solve this problem, I start by snapping the wall to the floor. Then I open the scale to fit feature. I select Z and unselect X and Y, and apply the changes. The wall then automatically adjusts its Z coordinate and Z scale to fill the empty vertical space between itself and the next object it detects; it therefore now fills the gap perfectly.
An alternative possibility would be manual drawing of lines between magnet vertices, similar to the way connections are currently drawn between nodes on the node graph. Here’s an example: I have a floor and a high ceiling. I put down a wall and snap its bottom left magnet to the floor, on the left side. Then I draw a line from the wall’s top left magnet up to the ceiling’s left-most magnet. Then I draw a line from the wall’s top right magnet to the ceiling’s right-most magnet. Then I hit the button, and the wall automatically scales such that a connection between the aforementioned magnets is guaranteed.
Either of these two would be far superior to the hassle of manually scaling and repositioning objects that you want to use for filling a space.
On behalf of a pal trying to sleep in the Halo Discord, Leeryuncles, here’s their idea, which I’m a fan of. tl;dr: User made folders in-game for map sorting.
"Since a lot of halo forgers spent lot of time but in decent quick manner to make a lot of maps compare to 343 map making in infinite. Is it possible to make like a folder system when bookmarking maps that players made in forge? Cause I would like to keep it kinda organized with the ton of maps I’ve been bookmarking lol. Would like to make a folder for like old halo maps from previous halo titles, remake folder from another game and then just like new type map folders.
Cause there are like 100+ plus maps made in halo infinite forge whether if it’s 1v1, 2v2, 4v4, 8v8 and 16v16. Figure drop the idea thought off as I can’t wait to see infinite forges remake of the one Halo CE map that was in halo reach anniversary map pack to look in halo infinite as a banished type theme."
After using Forge Scripting here are some suggestions I have:
Documentation
Some documentation is better than nothing…
Create new object instances
Currently we can only create object items and manipulate them by statically reference to them. It would be incredible to create new instances of object/prefabs,
Traits
The traits are very fun but being able to apply trait to weapons (instead of players) would probably unlock to make Forge role/Hero based custom games. Example: Make a custom Sentinel Beam that instead of doing damage, it increases the health of your teammates and reduces movement speed of enemies.
In overall this new mode has been amazing and I hope it keep involving. Great job!
*Providing a more 3D software-like control scheme and experience, even if just for PC users, would go a long way in the user experience.
*Having the ability to move individual vertices of an object could provide tons of flexibility. Sometimes I want to be able to fill in an odd space, or along an odd plane, and having to use multiple objects is a pain.
*Someone else may have mentioned this previously, but some type of system to allow custom 3D models would be absolutely fantastic. Even if we were required to use in-game textures it would add so much!
*Some type of terrain mesh system. Maybe a few specific brushes to allow us the ability to ‘sculpt’ on these terrain meshes even.
Being 117th reply I feel honored and hopefully fortunate enough to receive an audience for my serious concern for a bug in forge.
I created a map (selected copyright protection on said map after making new copy)
Going on to put 100hours into a standoff remake on the extra version; or copy of said map
I delete original map that was copyright protected
With the copy map, and me as the original creator I am unable to save an additional copy, and when I try to remove copyright protection checkmark I get an error that the (call failed)
I have yet to lose my map but this will prevent me from making copy backups just in case; and variants of standoff in the future; or new game modes for specific map varients
The ability to make a grouped set of pieces, their textures blend in the same or a set direction. Blending the texture so that it appears as one single constructs instead of some metal pieces facing angled when turning pieces and z-fighting for which swatch takes priority. If possible, maybe a solution.
I wish the canvas sky boxes were exactly as they are, except with no Halo rings. Then we could go to the map settings and choose a skybox layer option which could add something like a Halo ring to any skybox. The following is a list of ideas for what could selected by such a “skybox layer” option.
Alpha Halo (H:CE)
Beta Halo (H2/H2A)
Zeta Halo (Infinite)
The Ark
Earth’s moon
*Reach’s rings
Sangheilios moons
Banished cruisers
Covenant cruisers
High Charity
The Infinity
The Spirit of Fire
A UNSC Halcyon class cruiser
A UNSC Frigate
Created ships
A Guardian hovering
1 or more city skylines; 1 with a space elevator, 1 without, and 1 on fire for example.
With the ability to toggle this at will, the use case of each and every canvas will be multiplied by the number of options available., and the specific map quality will be very heavily improved. We could, for example, put Sidewinder on the Alpha Halo specifically, or rebuild New Mombasa streets with Earth’s moon in the sky.
If 2 such layers were available in the map’s settings menu, like a foreground and midground player (while the canvas provides the background) then we could layer a burning city on top of Earth’s moon, or High Charity on top of the Beta Halo, or the Alpha Halo on top of the Ark, each to recreate specific locations and times in the series history. But we could also create new unique locations and events as desired, like High Charity with deployed cruisers above Sangheilios.
Some might even be animated, though this blows the scope up pretty substantially, such as the following.
Human vs Covenant ships with banshees and falcons in a dogfight like on Reach
2 that look like the world is being glassed far away; 1 with Banished cruisers and 1 with Covenant
A Guardian scanning down at the planet on the horizon
4 like Covenant, Banished, UNSC, and Created ships deploying troops to the area like an active invasion with a separate UNSC ODST drop variant in addition to one like a Pelican deployment.
Anyway, this comment could get a hell of a lot longer as this is just brainstorming ideas.
I will add at the end here that just being able to put any map on an intact Halo ring, the Ark, or the damaged Zeta ring would be badass. Everything else is extra. Placing High Charity, the Infinity, or the Spirit of Fire in the sky would also be on my priority list out of these if you guys can’t budget to produce more than like 6 of these.
