CA did the ones for the Defiant Map Pack and Anniversary. Bungie made the Noble Map Pack. And to the other guy Ridgeline and Tempest weren't forge maps, they were competitive maps with forge options on them. Big Difference. In this case gameplay came first. Whether or not they played well is open to interpretation, but they were not designed with forge in mind at the foremost. And I know I've said this a thousand times but Unless you were planning to make a map that is entirely terrain based and basically just parts but down on terrain (aka Hemorrhage) you can still do everything you could in Reach + some with the terrain. Hills are good, they give you something to work with and act as LOS blockers. If there were no hills you would use blocks to build artificial ones. This forge is different, you can't do all the same stuff with it in the same ways, but you can also do new stuff, and the maps I have seen so far look a lot better than Reach maps, play damn well too.
I like Erosion the most, mainly because of its range of areas you can forge on for such a small map and the pallete seems alright personally and I have already made a map on Erosion. Impact has got space, but it is too uneven in terms of terrain (not flat enough) and I don't really see a point in the building and some of the structures and base objects. Ravine is easily the nicest looking, but I don't like the lack of grassy area or area around the cliffs or in the ravine, annoyingly because you can't go to the very bottom of the map (near the water). I have also noticed that I can get any buildings to phase into the ground on the phased setting, everytime I tried putting the structure into the ground, it just rises back out again! >( Overall, we need to have a large central map again like forge world but with multiple environment or weather effects.
I think the maps are pretty good, though I do wish the kill boundaries were less strict. I simply don't see the point of having them at all, truth be told. Perhaps way out on the fringes or when you get too close to geometry that is either made of cards or has no collision, but other than that there is really no reason to have these barriers. The maps undoubtedly look better than they did in Reach, though it is apparent that people are still exploring the best spots for neat lighting. Compare Psychoduck's new map preview to the Narrows remake- The spot Psycho picked on Impact makes his map look like it's built from Megablocks for whatever reason, while the Narrows remake benefits heavily from Ravine's great lighting (which also gives players natural orientation). Other spots on Impact do not give the aforementioned effect. It'll be interesting to see the neat ways people use the lighting as we get better acquainted with the new(ish) Forge.
I have the lighting glitch right now on an erosion map i am making. I dontknow how to fix it and the map is only 75% done. Anyone got any ideas? Overall not impressed with the lighting system.
Platform Problem I've spent some time trying, but cannot come up with good reason that many of the incline and platform objects have been altered to make them slightly wider. I'm mainly referring to the bridges and ramps that were 2.0 units wide to match the module of the building blocks. Now they are 2.0 units wide plus the width of the integrated railings. What was great about Reach was that most of the building blocks, platforms and inclines were all sized to the same module. This allowed for most of the objects to be used interchangeably throughout the maps regardless of what pallet they were from. Now, platforms only match other platform modules and can create awkward transitions to building block objects. If they thought widening the platform pieces would be great due to the extra maneuvering space, they neglected to consider the pain they would cause those trying to use them to construct maps. I honestly wonder how many forge maps were created by the person who made the decision to widen the platform pieces. Other than the platform objects issue and the loss of the fine movement ability, I've been relatively happy with the new forge. Oh, and I also miss having the pillar area of Forge world. It was nice to have an area like this so you could have a smaller map that wasn't simply floating in the air.
Erosion has Reach lighting anyway, don't let the generator confuse you. Just keep on forging, the only way to fix it is to reduce object count and you wont get pretty lighting.
Since when does Erosion have reach lighting? Forge placed objects on that map can receive and cast shadows and that was the whole premise of the new lighting system.
Imho, some of the Erosion objects remind me of Alien vs. Predator. Meanwhile Impact and Ravine remind me very much of Mass Effect. Lolol Definitely agree on the hate for rounded edges. Also wish the colosseum walls fit better with the windows.
I can see someone doing a mario map and all on erosion, with the pipes and teleporters and stuff :O [br][/br]Edited by merge: LMAO Halo 4 Forging Madness Episode 2: For Science! - YouTube
Personally, I'm irked that none of the maps let you get near the water to any degree. Before I stopped playing Reach I had been working on a map themed like a sewer (pipes and wading through water), and I was hoping to make it here instead. I was rather disappointed when I experienced kill zones before I could get to it.
The Grifball court in Erosion looks like a good place for a Hang 'Em High remake. Anybody already working on one like that?
This is due to the way the new lighting engine works. They must have tried to get it to work with the water, but it was probably outside the limits of the game engine and what resources they had available to make it work. Lighting is one of the hardest things to program into a game as you have to account for loads of different variables. It's a shame but I never really liked maps that used water, it was cool for about 3 weeks, then it just became another thing every map had in it somewhere.
is it just me or does the lighting glitch not seem to affect the map at all? I have lost lighting on my narrows map (goes straight into player mode) but all the peices are fine. There are shadows where they are meant to be and all the peices look nice and crisp. It also has perfect lighting and shadows in custom games. Maybe ive just gotten lucky but the lack of dynamic lighting has had no effect on the map.
Unfortunately Forging in there looks like ass. The poop brown pieces look awful in contrast to the clean, metallic Grifball court.
This. It's a shame, I was looking foward to forging in there. I wish they made the inside match the textures of the pieces or vice versa. And I agree with whoever says that Ravine should've used a Forerunner pallet instead of the UNSC pallet.
The incline/ramp station corridor pieces are the ones that slightly don't line up with the other pieces. They're a hair shorter than they should be. They should be the same length as the level station corridor pieces but the incline/ramp station corridor pieces are slightly shorter length-wise. Its not a big problem though. I still had extremely little trouble making a pretty cool space station map. Its kind of like a hybrid of Orbital and Foundation.