Hey Forgers, what is your Wish List for Forge in Halo 5?
In the coming weeks I will be looking to create a series dedicated to that very topic. I have my own ideas to put forward, but no Forger is an island; your suggestions could ensure that series is of maximum benefit to the Forge community.
Pour your heart out. I will read all your replies.
I think a big feature that I’d like to see in Halo 5 is picking a theme for objects. Covenant-Forerunner-Unsc could easily be the 3 basic textures. Of course, we could definitely go beyond that. There could be sub categories for each texture. Such as UNSC: Wartorn, UNSC: Brick, UNSC: Default (The normal UNSC style seen throughout the game). And of course, for forerunner pieces, changing the colors of the lights would be cool.
Other than that, I’d say to include all features from Reach and 4, and to have a higher item limit.
For starters, bring back some of the Halo Reach forge features, like zooming in when you are the monitor and a lot of other stuff. But what I would really like to see in Halo 5 Forge is climate change.
I think the Halo Xbox One forum may be a better place for this topic, just given that Community Creations gets almost no activity.
Anyway, on to the topic.
So when asking around the community, it seems that the vast majority of people who were opposed to forge maps in matchmaking were opposed to them for the simple matter that they looked terrible. And really, who can blame them? We can do our best to make them look pretty and clean, but other than that we’re very limited in what we can do aesthetically. The main point is that theme suffers tremendously. With that in mind, I propose my suggestions.
1. Better Block and/or Texture system.
One of the biggest problems with Halo 4’s forge system was the blocks. Not because they were bad, but because between curved edges that left gaping holes in the map and textures that rarely fit together well, it was difficult to create a map with visual appeal. So in the next forge system I’d like to see better blocks in place. Less rounded edges, and hopefully a wider variety and selection to chose from.
I’d also like to see an increase in scenery pieces, as well as having them impacted by dynamic lighting. These sorts of items can be huge for setting the theme and tone of the map, so an array of anything from Human, Covenant and forerunner would be extremely beneficial.
Lastly, texture system where you can select different texture styles would also be welcome. Again, being able to select between even preset textures (be it human, covenant or forerunner [as well as things like Urban, city and ship specifics]) would serve to vastly improve map variety and theme. This (combined with a better block system) would allow us to create visually appealing and hopefully convincing themed maps.
On top of this feature, being able to create and import our own textures would be amazing, but obviously not necessary.
2. Theme, Lighting and Environment settings.
So I suppose you can see the theme here (pun intended) and that is of course, themed maps. Well, that is of course probably the biggest lacking aspect of Halos forge, so that’s why I’m pushing on it.
Anyway, I’ll start by saying Dynamic lighting was a great feature… up until you want to build an indoor map. With only a grand total of 4 lights available, indoor maps tend to look pretty terrible by the end of things. And while you can always just place a nice looking skylight, you then run the risk of framerate loss which is never fun (because glass). While the xbox one shouldn’t have that problem, I still think this is important to note.
We need a better way to have indoor lighting. Being able to set the light levels inside individual rooms would really take the drag off of trying to make a nice looking indoor setting. This could be accomplished similar to trait zones, with dynamic “Environment Zones” that allow you to set the lighting of a specific area (among other things, which I’ll get to shortly). Preferably this would come in two ways, basic lighting levels (so no direct point of light, think of it like the Blue Room in Guardian) or Point light, which would hopefully cast dynamic shadows like dynamic lighting does.
Now, with these environment zones we would also be able to set things like fog, or label an area as “indoors” (which again, is part of something I’ll get to in a minute) or outdoors. Any number of environment options that would let us customize how a room looked would be great, even if I have nothing more specific to add.
And lastly, Environment settings. Had to see this one coming from a mile away, but the ability to set things like time of day, weather and other various environment stuff would of course be huge for theme. This point has been driven to death so many times it’s not really worth expanding on, so I’ll really just leave it at that, however I’m going to tie in Environment Zones one last time. With the ability to set weather, we’ll need a way to set it so that it doesn’t rain/snow through blocks and break immersion of indoor areas. Rather than have it so that the engine has to think about block hitboxes and whatnot with the rain, setting indoor areas with environment zones would make it so that no weather effects would happen in whatever area it happened to be placed.
So, that’s about it. The point I’m really trying to drive home is that we need better aesthetic options over probably everything else. They are what brings life to the map and what really grabs peoples attention.
First draft is up, looking for more feedback. There was one post here just 30 minutes ago I haven’t had a chance to dig through yet.
> First draft is up, looking for more feedback. There was one post here just 30 minutes ago I haven’t had a chance to dig through yet.
Hey there Pete,
I’ve actually composed my ideas in the feedback area of your website recently so if you happen to find it, there are my ideas…
In summary to what you will read there…
Ai scripting
New options for custom weapons, vehicles and skins/models of players
Make-your-own Cutscene ability.
Ability to remove or mute the Forge Monitor sounds
and some more which I forgot about…sorry!
But I would like to bring these videos to your attention
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPoo7lZcqVY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZRo1FH_vnLE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30gn6d53rwQ
these are made by some guys who you might know…
As a new suggestion man…
How about Custom Games Browsing?
As such, you would select a test option on a map and attach a following gametype to it via the start menu.
This will add a separate option for users to browse for Custom Games.
In selecting the test option, you can also right down rules and specifics in the description.
Now when players enter ‘custom games’ they can choose if they wish to browse for custom games.
Upon hovering over the custom game options, they see the specifics and can select to join by the x button.
Also, after a player has played a map, he/she can wish to rate the map. Higher ranked maps will appear in the filters for searching such as in Halo Waypoint.
Next, I feel that they should redo ‘Bungie’s Favourites’, renaming it to 343i’s Favourites, which will do all actions it did before, including spotlighting high ranked maps.
Taking StarCraft 2 as an example, they give players a fantastic possibility to do good games justice!
Now that I’ve ended that, how about changing the player’s points of view?
This should range in between 1st, 3rd, Sidescroller, etc for more interesting and unique maps.
Base building blocks need to be just that; Basic. Not overcomplicated bright white UNSC detailed blocks. The neutral grey of reach was almost universally usable for any environment, but tell me, when was the last time you saw a bright white building? Too much detail can be a bad thing, as it forces a block to fill only a specific role, rather than being a utility piece.
As far as actual improvements rather than fixes for things that should already work, weather and time effect would be nice, as would particle effects. There’s a lot of other stuff, but it’s a start. Also, I agree with pretty much everything Pokephile and Byf have said on the matter.
And for the love of god, please fix infection…what that entails is detailed in my last few posts in that review thread.
> Base building blocks need to be just that; Basic. Not overcomplicated bright white UNSC detailed blocks. The neutral grey of reach was almost universally usable for any environment, but tell me, when was the last time you saw a bright white building? Too much detail can be a bad thing, as it forces a block to fill only a specific role, rather than being a utility piece.
>
> As far as actual improvements rather than fixes for things that should already work, weather and time effect would be nice, as would particle effects. There’s a lot of other stuff, but it’s a start. Also, I agree with pretty much everything Pokephile and Byf have said on the matter.
>
> And for the love of god, please fix infection…what that entails is detailed in my last few posts in that review thread.
I also agree with this post as well. The details on Halo 4’s objects, I believe that they put too much stress on the automatic lighting, causing the lighting glitch currently within Halo 4.
Thanks to everyone that made suggestions! I think the list has shaped up pretty well–there were a lot of great suggestions that I never would have thought of on my own. I’m going to leave the suggestion box open through the end of the month. As of April 1 I’ll consider the list final. I can always add to it in the future, of course.