(Update - first release prefab is linked here. Please continue to comment on development, report bugs/glitches, in this thread) *Links to Dev Maps with Pre-installed flares also linked above ------------------------------------------- Hello, Those of you who follow my posts (all 2 of you) know I am mostly about the scripting possibilities in Forge. I like creating things people think are not possible, or haven't thought of. The thread What Armor Abilities/Equipment Would You Bring Back? Got me thinking about whether it was possible to recreate or approximate any of these items in Halo 5's Forge, using its robust scripting mechanics. That, and I had already begun work scripting a sort of Shield Drain item, currently named the "Gorn Ball", for a map by @icyhotspartin, "GORN" for the 1v1 forge contest. So, I went through the list of items on that thread, and also found this list on Halopedia, and tried to brainstorm about which one would be the easiest to create first. The flare seemed to be the easiest to execute (it wasn't), so here we are! Please weigh-in on how this is developed, because this is intended to be something YOU can put on YOUR maps. (Goal is not to make it exactly like Halo 3, but similar, and work well in Halo 5.) Credits for contributors will be listed on the published page when this is finished. Input needed on the following features/characteristics: Main Effect - one large dynamic point light w/ Sun flare type, max brightness, blinds players looking at it, bleaches out vision of a large space. Lasts 6 sec. Secondary effect - Blind those nearby (x units distance of ) main flare effect for several seconds. Likely will be a smaller flare light constantly moving to obstruct player's view. Power-up style pickup - scriptable item. Deployable anywhere on map. Player can press Interact button at any time after picking up. (Player must stabilize or stop moving briefly to press button) 30 sec respawn time (from moment deployed) Deploying player can also be tagged for blinding by the secondary effect (see above). Flare cannot be thrown, but automatically can be forced to spawn into space in front of deploying player (currently 15 units forward) This simulates a "throw" of the item. Item does not bounce, but rests where it is placed until it despawns. Nav marker "Equipment" visible by everyone. Item does not play a sound or announcement when spawned or incoming. To Do Items: (completed) program 4 secondary fx for blinding up to 4 players if within range. Each gets assigned to 1st, 2nd, 3rd or 4th closest player. despawning or reset scheme for times when player "holding" flare item either dies, quits or is disco'd before deploying. improve label cleanup scheme for players who have been tagged by either picking up flare or from being blinded by it. Please let me know how you think this deployable flare should work so that it is as close as possible to being the item you desire it to be, and we could actually see this put onto some great maps! Thanks in advance! Here is a first look at the first draft of a prototype flare after being installed on Coliseum for demonstration purposes. (out-dated prototype videos) First look - Flare Prototype! Blinding effect Video 1 Video 2
This is a pretty creative idea. I wish I had some input I could give in terms of building it, but I am rather lost with scripting. I had couple conceptual ideas from watching the video that you might be able to pull off though: What if there was a flare barrel? Like an explodable object you could shoot to trigger the sun you have there. Sort of like a distraction you could employ if it were positioned across maps. Maybe it could even be really small, like a one of those little forerunner barrels and it could be positioned on walls. If you imagined a game where they'd have a fire extinguisher on a wall, and you could shoot that to create a smokescreen. Something like that but it's a high tech device with a bright light, cause you know...it's the future. Building off the fact that the flare is a scriptable power up, could you make this effect follow the player that uses it without blinding them? Meaning you activate the power up and the light attaches to your spartan. and you become the flare. IDK if this would blind the spartan "wearing" it, but it could be an interesting variant on this. I'd be sort of like the reverse of the camo power up, instead of making you invisible it would make you painfully visible. Just some thoughts. I think you've done a good job imitating the original H3 equipment so far. It would be rad if it could be attached to an actual ball and roll like in Halo 3, but I don't know if that's possible. Props for taking on the challenge of building this!
You could use a ball object and make it so when it is thrown and lands it will hit the ground, roll a little, and then destroy itself, causing it to spawn a bright sunlight to blind players. simply give a ball a boundary and when a player leaves the boundary it triggers a wait event, then it sends a message on a power channel causing a light to move to its location as it destroys itself.
Thanks for the kudos... I'll try to comment on each idea you've listed below... That is certainly a possibility, but it is very different from the existing scheme. So, I would probably not go down that route unless everyone agreed it was 10x better than being able to place it nearby. The only hickup I can foresee so far for this would be that when the player places the barrel so that someone can shoot it later, the barrel itself must travel to that spot. When this happens, it will be seen by players, even if it is really quick. The travel of the flare itself is not as big of a deal, because it is understood to be part of an effect, IMO. But, I do like the mechanics of your idea - maybe it can be used for a variant of this or for another type of item? I'll keep that in mind for later! Yes, you could effectively keep the player who deploys it from being blinded, by placing it a little over their head, and slightly behind them. It would usually not be seen, but could be. This does take us fairly far from the H3 style, however. So again, I would need to hear everyone voice that they like this better before I would deviate so much from the formula. It could be attached to a ball, but here's the problem. The GORN Ball already is a... ball. It works for that item, since you want to actually place it like a mine, hiding in a crevasse for an unsuspecting enemy to trip and activate. Any ball must be carried, and doesn't despawn when you pick it up (a picked up ball will not despawn, ever). So you'd be unable to shoot and do other maneuvers as the carrier. The Gorn ball allows you to throw, pick up, throw, pick up, and doesn't get activated until it is tripped by an enemy. But this flare needs to be activated when thrown, so the ball is really not an attractive way to deliver it to the desired location. Also, the pickup more closely resembles the fact that the H3 equip items just went into your inventory as a player when you picked it up. --- Double Post Merged, Sep 19, 2017 --- Thanks for the suggestion and interest! The ball idea works for some items, but IMO does not work for the flare unless we resolve that it should always be thrown across the map, more than the typical H3 style item which is always deployed near the player. A ball could work, but has some serious drawbacks, which I've outlined some of in the post above this one (last paragraph)
Hey thanks for the response. I was just kinda throwing ideas out there, obviously none of that is in line with the way the equipment works in Halo 3, so take 'em or leave 'em. Watching that video put me in a brainstorming mode, made me think of other new things you could build from it. That's also a good point about keeping it in your inventory...That's a big part of what makes it 'equipment' and not a power up. Are you gonna try to make a version of each piece of equipment? If you could make a bubble shield I'd bow down to your forge abilities
bubble shield has given me brain damage thinking about it... it seems either impossible, or nearly impossible to pull off and do in a convincing manner. I have one idea I may try if I get around to it. I hope to be able to do other items as well. We'll see how this one turns out, first!
Here are some new clips of how the blinding effect can stay with a tagged player for a few moments... should be sufficiently annoying as ****! Note: In the current scheme of things, a player must either stabalize or hold still for a moment before setting the flare. This may be an unavoidable quirk of any equip items that use similar mechanics. Blinding effect Video 1 Video 2 EDIT: Added poll to inquire about who should be blinded by secondary effect of flare. Please vote!
It appears there is consensus (not that it was required) that all players within close range of the flare should be blinded by its secondary effect, so that is how I will proceed. I do want to afford the player who deploys it a chance to not be hit, however. So, there will likely be a small delay before the secondary effect kicks in and starts chasing and blinding players tagged by the zone. Picture: Press "B" or whatever to activate flare, immediately thrust backwards and as you do others are being tagged by the zone to be blinded. This will introduce a little bit of skill to how it is placed. Good idea? I am also adding some items to the OP about the behavior of the effect. Namely - that there will always be a small delay before a player can press the button to place the flare. There does not seem to be a great way to avoid ever having the "B" icon from delaying when you move swiftly as in hard strafes, sprints, boosts etc. The latest videos posted show this in action, and it is not a problem in my opinion - but you will never be able to place the flare if you are moving more than just a little. You'll need to hold still for a brief moment, first.
EDIT: Updated update > All is well, and the below challenges have all been solved! This will be put into a pre-fab and published tonight, along with at least one Dev map with the flare added (Coliseum, most likely - maybe others?) Update: I've made considerable progress over the past few days, but have also run into some new snags. Some snags have been untangled, but one or two remain. Hopefully, I'll be able to work through the trouble and get something posted for people to test out within the next couple days! Spoiler: For those interested The hangup comes from needing a solid way to instruct the four individual blinding effects to chase certain players. Each of four chasing blinding effects needs to choose, lock on to, and then chase a target. So each effect needs to have differing logic about who/what to target. We have a Move action Target Setting for "Nearest" but that is an "include", which means it restricts a list of objects/players to target to only those that are the "nearest". What I really need, is a value called "Nearest X Exclude" and have it exclude the X number of objects closest. This would be valuable because, for the 2nd 3rd and 4th effect, it needs to select among the top 2 3 or 4 closest targets, but also exclude the ones before it. Effect #2 needs to select among the closest 2, but exclude the closest one, since effect #1 is already moving to target it. In this case, ideally, the modifier for the Target setting could be "Nearest Include 2", and another modifier to further modify the list, such as "Nearest Exclude 1". This would leave only the 2nd closest target for the effect #2. Instead, because we do not have that option, I am going through hours and hours of testing finding a better solution. I have one, but for some reason something is not doing what it is expected to do, and things aren't quite right yet. Spoiler: Solution being pursued Each Effect chaser is released on a staggered timing scheme so that each preceding one has had time to reach its "nearest" target, and tag it with two labels. One indicating that object has already been targeted in the general sense, and one telling it specifically which effect should chase it. (we are favoring using more labels vs more arguments in this case). Each consecutive effect is being released only if the count of targets is great enough, and then, because, in the case of Effect #2, Effect #1 has already targeted and tagged its closest target, it can then safely assume that the closest target that isn't already tagged, is okay to tag. Then, #3 and #4 are released at the same interval. It turns out that the really tricky part is instructing each effect to move to the target for tagging, and then once that is complete, to start chasing it at the distance "local" that would obstruct the view of the player. So, I am using two brains per effect (8 total), with one turning on and instructing the initial tagging to take place, and the other to turn on and do the obstruction/chasing part. The remaining challenges center around getting those two brains to appear and disappear when they are supposed to. Currently, I cannot figure out why they are not doing what they are being told to do! The logic puzzle has gotten fairly complex at this point, so if your brain isn't fresh or you're distracted, it takes hours to find something wrong! This should get done "soon", though. Stay tuned!
So, I decided to revamp this thing a bit, even though it was working as was. Funny story, I was sitting thinking about how I would justify to another scripter/forger how this got so complex, and in my head "well.. yada yada yada and this and that" and then it hit me. There IS a much more simple, elegant, efficient, inexpensive, and blatantly obvious solution to the problem of how to determine which blinded player should get which chasing secondary Fx. Long story short, I saved the existing version as "Mark II" and started on "Mark III". I implemented all of the changes necessary, as far as I can tell. It works, but it doesn't. There are channels not being turned off and it is causing subsequent "runs" of the sequence to be broken. Got so tired I couldn't stay awake (again)... had to quit for another day. Spoiler: For those interested the big change was to move away from the aforementioned scheme, which was to first send each chasing effect to the closest player that has not yet been tagged with a disqualifying label, each on its own time delay, and then switch a channel and start instructing the effect to chase the player in a manner that would blind him/her. Instead, the new scheme, which I admit should have been blatantly obvious to me previously, and failing to see has caused many additional hours of work, simply uses each light to spawn when instructed, then itself reach out and label the closest target and immediately begin the blinding/chase. Each subsequent light still gets staggered time delays so that Fx 2-4 give the preceding Fx a chance to do its labeling. This works on the same workaround of getting around the fact that we don't have the "Select Nearest (exclude)" modifier. It just accomplishes it in a much more clean way. But, as I originally stated, it has something broken and it just doesn't make sense (yet). Hopefully tonight will be the night!
**Updated OP to include links to Prefab page.** Please continue to post comments, suggestions, report bugs/glitches etc. in this thread Your participation will encourage me to make more items such as these! Here are some screenshots, taken in a 4k rendering of Halo 5 Forge: PC, downsampled to 1080. Look at the amazing detail! Halo 5_ Forge 10_1_2017 1_24_36 PM by Ex_Stream _Tuna, on Flickr Halo 5_ Forge 10_1_2017 2_11_51 PM by Ex_Stream _Tuna, on Flickr Halo 5_ Forge 10_1_2017 2_15_53 PM by Ex_Stream _Tuna, on Flickr Halo 5_ Forge 10_1_2017 2_15_49 PM by Ex_Stream _Tuna, on Flickr Halo 5_ Forge 10_1_2017 1_31_31 PM by Ex_Stream _Tuna, on Flickr
I haven't been following too closely but saw your latest video. I like the idea of deployable interactives, but your flare seems a little off. To me the point of a flashbang is to blind your opponents, why does yours also affect the person deploying the flare? Are you trying to recreate a flashbang? If so, instead of the flare dropped in the middle of the room with the secondary ball I'd prefer to see something like this: -No long lasting sunflare where deployable was activated, maybe just a burst -Instead of a little floating ball, make that a larger sunburst to actually blind and not just annoy -Set the ball to only appear for enemies of the activator, or everyone minus the activator, within a set volume around the point of activation I think I'm just not understanding the point behind the secondary floating ball. And I'm too lazy right now to catch up on my reading. Huge kudos to figuring out all the scripting.
Thanks for the feedback. The primary goal is to get this pretty close to the Halo 3 style flare item (but not absolute), which was a short duration, general blinding effect with each player getting a bit of a blinded effect if they were close when it went off. However, since there is nothing like a whitewash filter or stackable ones, there isn't a great way to blind a player without something like a smaller flare. It can certainly be tweaked to be a little bigger so that it blind the player more. But trust me, at current levels it not only annoys but causes more chance for errors and mistakes in tight situations, just to have that small flare trying to get in your aiming sights all the time. I will certainly take the point of making it bigger into consideration. The side-effect of a larger flare though, is that it will have more of its own general blinding effect that makes it hard for others to target them. IMO, they shouldn't receive a sort of camo from being tagged. Targets are set to everyone, because I put a poll up (had them take it down) about who should be targeted by that secondary flare (smaller one), and it was unanimous over a few days that everyone thought you should also be blinded when placing one, and not just enemies. But it is definitely good to hear a differing opinion. I initially thought you shouldn't blind yourself, but it's a sort of risk/reward thing I guess. I think Halo 3 had this too. As far as whether the light ball appears for one group and not another, there is no way that I know of to make something other than a nav point, visible to only certain players. Flashbang is a neat idea, though! I experimented with a strobe effect, that I worried would actually injure someone, so I changed it to a flare But damn, the strobe is annoying as heck, and could be made into a sort of flashbang. We don't really have good BANGS though...
Ahh ok you're going for the H3 flare. This makes more sense then. If you go after the flashbang, you should try utilizing screen effects for the players hit by the flash. Then they are the only ones affected and enemies aren't hindered when targeting them.
I made a primitive bubble shield, but I don't know how to do scripting. http://xboxdvr.com/gamer/LimyStatue102/video/37935679
Fascinating. I have an idea for a deployable cover shield ,but I'm unsure what you're doing there with that contraption which is making it actually bounce stuff off, but letting you pass through. A bunch of invis blockers or something? that becomes untenable for moving it around the map, likely, but you definitely have this off to a good start! I have also wondered if using boundaries like you've done would be a good visual, and it seems like it's not half bad! Let's keep discussing... maybe we can make this happen?
It is invisible blockers, the boundaries are only a very few pieces, the rest is a primitive block as the primary piece to keep the coordinates for the items and a bunch of invisible blockers. Unfortunately is uses a ton of pieces for the blockers as there is no way to cut that down. You could search the prefab file for "bubbleshield" (all one word) and it will come up. Perhaps it's possible to script it to pick up and deploy? I am thinking that if it wobbled or rolled on a block, perhaps a sewer cap as the base when it deploys would stabilize it? Also I don't know if you can use invisible blockers a deployable item?