Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of Creators Spotlight! Sorry for the delay on this one, I've had to take care of some personal stuff and these take a lot of time to produce, without further ado lets jump right into this episode!

(Video will also be posted here once it's up on the channel)

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Crush (C): Hey everybody and welcome back to another episode of Creators Spotlight! Today we are joined by a General Trex an MCC Forger who's been around in the community for quite some time. Introduce yourself General Trex!

General Trex (T): Hey guys, my name is General TrexI have been around since the good old Halo 2 days, I started Forging with Halo 3, but you know, I was a kid then and all my stuff sucked. Uh, yeah, I came back, and I have been playing Halo, you know, on and off over the years, played a lot of Halo 5 and tried out that forge, but it didn't really take to it. It wasn't until the resurgence of MCC on PC that it really you know, became a big time for just doing it all the time so that is where we are at now. Infinite’s Forge is around the corner, I cannot wait to see what that will bring and allow us to do!

C: So you have been in the community for quite some time then, in that case?

When you say you like, came back to forge with MCC PC, did you completely stop Forging on Halo 5 and completely stop forging in general? Or did you like, did you like kind of forge here and there and then just like kind of merge back over with MCC PC?

T: Yeah, so I would say that, you know, I've been forging stuff just for me and my friends, like, forever. Uh, in Halo 5it was it was a completely different experience, the forge, which took a lot of learning, and with MCC there's something that is like, it's simple. But like with MCC’s Forge, like on Forge World for Reach, for example, you can fly around the map and see that mountain and say, “OK, I can picture a map there, I'm going to go start to working on that”, where as in Halo 5 it's a lot more open-ended and unless you've got a community of people you know thinking and working together, that just really wasn't my thing to just come up with open-ended ideas like that.

C: OK, yeah, I didn't understand that. So, like you said, you've been like Forging with friends or for friends and stuff, I mean, a lot of us did that back in Forge at the start. Do you stilll forge for friends like you did back in the day? When would you consider your start to forging more professionally? Are you still doing that now or did you only do that back in the daywhen like you maybe didn't take forge as seriously as you did now do now? Like what would you say would be the moment when you like started making maps not only for your friends, but for you or for like the general community or more like in depth maps, I guess the way to put that?

T: Yeah definitely, I would say that it started with MCC PC, like, I remember I have made, you know, some, well, a lot of silly zombie maps, you know, back in the Halo 3 and Reach days, even some flood stuff in Halo 4, but it was never something that ever took off. Until more recently, and I still make you know, I do not really make competitive maps in the sense of like a 4v4 or a btb I like to forge invasion. Now, typically if you load up the custom game browser, you hop in an invasion match there is Sabers and nose gun Falcons flying around, and it is madness. That is not the type of invasion that I like to forge. I like to make 6v6, you know, balanced, competitively balanced invasion.

C: The Classic stuff, kinda, yeah.



T :And there's a there's a community of us that sort of came together with the launch of Reach on PC that's started to, like, revive the competitive invasion scene. And we have been working on that since 2018 and you know, there is probably about 30 maps made by 20 or so forgers and four of those, I believe, are mine.

C: That is sick, man! I have actually been in some of those lobbies with you guys and like, yeah, you guys have actually made a lot of really good and interesting maps. Typically I am not the biggest reach fan personally haha, but I definitely have a good time playing with you guys whenever those lobbies are going on. So you guys have been doing that for the last three or four years now in that case.?

T: Yeah, it would be 4 years.

C: I mean, in that case, like sounds like quite the pool of very, very what is the word I am looking for here? Well tested I guess is what I will say for now as Icannotthink of the other word, but it sounds like some really well tested and fun maps in that case, then.I mean, I've played on a lot of them, of course, but it sounds like you guys have definitely put in a lot of work into curating that map pool.

T: Yeah, one thing I will say, so, like, about invasion, and why I like forging invasion so much is twofold. Uhm one...my first experience with Halo was playing Halo 2 at a friend's house and I was just so fascinated by the arbiter and his story. You know, ever since playable elites were introduced, that was always my go to. And of course when 343 took over, they sort of did away with playable elites. So when all of a sudden people are playing, Reach again. And there's playable elites and invasion I am like, man, I need to get back into this. And the other thing that is really cool about invasion is if you make a competitive map, a 4v4 map, you know? Maybe it's like an abandoned facility or a base or something, but there's not a lot of you know, like lore to the map. If that makes sense? But like invasion maps, the gameplay tells a storyItisalmost like you broughtthe campaign experience and put it in multiplayer, and that is something I feel like Halo has not captured since Reach

C: Well, I definitely say like there's some other game modes that have like released or have been like worked with that do similar things like linear infection definitely does that too, butdefinitely not as much as like invasion can in a way, I can definitely agree there. When it comes to other modes that you forged, like you said you did some like stuff with Halo 3's, like just some like fun like zombie mini games or whatever back in the day. Have you liked forged any other maps like whether it be like btb style or like 4v4, infection, one flag, etc?

T: So I've made a I did make a one flagMap in the Halo 3 on Avalanchethere was like a some sort of MCC forge contest that was not anything too special. But I have made a couple of infection maps that I really like I have tried to make an infection map based off of the Aliens movie but like, basically in every single Halo that's ever come out and I think.

C: Nice like like inside the Salako or on l LV-426?

T: So actually, yeah, yeah, LV426, I have a map on reach called Hadley's Hope that is actually built on ridgeline out of bounds. And it has got a really nice skybox and it has got a lot of fun map elements where itis set up that there is the infected spawning in ventilation Staffs above and below you, and only one survivor has a radar so you have to work together with the survivors to know, OK, they are above us, they are coming from the left, they are coming from the right, they are all around us. Ah! haha

C: Nice, nice, well, I still have not seen that from you, so I definitely need to see that 'cause I am a big Aliens fan. I'm really hoping that the next movie they make will come out sooner rather than later since Covenant came out in like 2019, I think, yeah, 2018.

T: 2018, Yep, four years, yeah, I love the Aliens franchise.

C: Same, and it's actually quite uh... I do not know what the word is again, 'cause my sick brain (I was under the weather during this interview) is not really working right now, butitiskind of interesting too 'cause, I mean, like, Halo Combat Evolved, took a lot of inspiration from Aliens not only from like the just the intro and like some of the characters in general, but also like just like how everything plays out with like revealing things and all that like CE took a lot of inspiration from that. So it is really cool that a lot of people that I've actually interviewed on here have actually said something about Aliens at some point or mentioned it is like a cool inspiration.So it is kind of nice or neat to see that as like a through line, I guess that everyone kind of has, or a lot of people do, at least. Uhm but yeah, so like when it comes to like, inspirations for your invasion maps or like inspiration for other maps that you are doing, of course you just said Aliens. What are some other inspirations that you have had?

T: Something that I sort of like a personal challenge to myself, so we have so many invasion maps that, you know, this community of Forgers are making and you know, they are all on forge world, so you know each map is different and is really fun to play, but they all can sometimes start to blend together or feel the same 'cause it's always using the same pallet, the same blocks on Forge World. So something that I have found myself doing is trying to make invasion maps on other dev canvases. So I have a map called battle for new Mombasa that is on Breakneck in Reach, which not many people know, but Breakneck actually got a Thorage update as well as Forge World. Not many people like will load up Breakneck and like see the Forge menu to even notice that and uhm, Itis kind of its kind of crazy how, you know, Headlong was like one of my favorite maps from Halo 2 back in the day just that whole, that whole attack him on Mombassa just really left a big impression on me. So when I saw, they added a Headlong remake to Reach back, you know, whatever it was 2011, “I was like, oh man this is sick I totally want to make an invasion map here”, but there really was not a lot of good tools to do that. And then MCC comes out on PC and there is a Thorage update for breakneck, and now all of a sudden you have got one-way Shields, which are like so integral for invasion. There was no one-way Shields originally on Breakneck, and so it is kind of bonkers at the map plays as well as It does that. It's almost like, the map does like a 180 where like phase one is facing one way and then you capture phase one and and your turn around and go the other way and you would think that would not work in invasion but it does because I think what helps it work is that phase two is bomb which will slow down. The phase progression is you cannot just go from capping phase one and immediately invade or jump into the phase two area, you have to go back and get the bomb, and there is some there is some fun gimmicks on that map there is some, uh, some surprises that you'll see when you show the gameplay. Another map I've made is, again these non Forge World maps on the map Ridgeline the remake of Timberland from Halo CE, that also got a small storage update, and even from the 2011 it always had good forge objects but the problem was you would hit that hard object limit from back in the day, you know and so that was not that even increased with the reach PC, so I was able to use some of the tools available to PC players to give myself infinite budget and completely carve up that forest and make a really compelling invasion map.




C: Nice and I'm sure like the updates that recently came out with their most recent update, like duplication for Reach and likeNAV markers and all that type of stuff being added in for Reach’s forge and I don't remember if they said Halo 3 forge was I added to that as well, but I'm pretty sure it was just Reach. But I'm sure a lot of that also has helped you in like creating maps more recently and stuff too, and probably will for any other future maps that you make as well.

T: Yeah! The uh, when you go, to forge reach and then maybe you take a break to go forward, you know, Halo 4 or Halo 2 anniversary, you got that object duplication, man, it, it hurts going back to Reach.

C: Haha, Having to Scroll down that menu every single time just to get one piece, you better know what piece you want 'cause once you spawn that, that's what you got unless you delete it and go get another piece.


T: Yeah it'd be nice if we got this four years ago, that is for sure haha.

C: Oh, 100%. But I mean, hey, at least we got it. It could have never come, but it did. So when it comes to projects that you are working on currently, what, what, what has been like a big push for you? Or even just like like more maps you are making at the moment or what you are wanting to make in the future? Like what? What are your current forging plans?

T: I mentioned how you know I will always prefer playable elites, and I have always wished that343 would bring back the invasion game mode, you know, for other Halos. Well again with MCC on PC people have been getting into creating mod tools and mods for the game and there's sort of two categories of mods. There are map mods which you know the average player can't play unless they download a map and replace a file on their computer. And then there are game type mods, which do not exist for Halo 3'causeHalo 3does not have a robust game type scripting language, but for reach onward all the way through infinite, the game typing can play a huge partin how you Forge the map and also the things you can even do in a map. So this game typing community which is headed up by a guy called GamerGotten had just been taking off in the past year and this they have come up with things that you would never have thought were possible before. For example, Gamer Gotten created a mode for Reach that has A.I Zombies that track the player down and attack them and it works for Xbox players, It's a game type, you can forge a map for it. All you gotta do is download off his file share. So yeah, I have incorporated that into a couple of older infection maps of mine but something else Gamer Gotten has done is he has created a tool to modify Halo 2 anniversary game types. So that tool did not exist before, and so I was working with Trusty Snooze, which made many people may know from a mythic Slayer mythic infection back in the day from, you know, 2011. Trusty Snooze has been making game types for as long as I've been Forging and we are sort of putting our heads together and creating invasion for Halo 2 anniversary which is the most modern forge on MCC that also has playable elites.

C: Nice! That is actually really sick. I have actually played the AI zombies minigame that you are talking about a few times some people like made remakes of CoD zombie maps and stuff, and even if it's not full blown remakes of those maps, they are still pretty cool. And then, like I have seen some other maps as well with the H2A invasion. I think you showed me one and my friend Kyle showed me one, a lot of that stuff is actually coming pretty far along 'cause the only thing that I ever actually learned about game type modding or anything like that was everyone kind of played Halo chess back in the day on Reach, like when that was featured by Rooster Teeth and Bungie and stuff like that and some of the other mods that were like very minor mods, but they were still like putting the matchmaking, but where I really got into the game type modding stuff, or or at least when I started recognizing it a lot more, was actually Halo 4 withAbandonedCashew’s flood stuff. Butitisreally sick to see thatGamer Gotten is still pushing that boundary for everybody, so you guys can have even more stuff to work with and more stuff to play around with in the MCC forge.

T: Yeah, I will give you a little trade secret. This just happened, I believe yesterday that a GamerGotten got and figured out for Reach how to do vehicle welding, just like Halo 5, the objects have collision, you can stand on them, walk on them. Somebody already made an elephant. So that's coming down the pipeline and down the road in the next couple weeks. You might see some more crazy stuff at MCC.


This was Part 1 of a 4 part article
Part 2​