Post any discussion regarding the three forge environments here. This will keep discussion more organized and help prevent multiple threads flooding the Halo 4 Forge Discussion Forum. I'll start. So whats the deal with everyone saying Erosion is a bad map to forge on? I did a little test on all 3 of the maps this morning and in my opinion, the objects colors look the best on Erosion. They're a greenish/brown/grey color which looks very UNSC. On Impact and Ravine they're color is a white/beige which looks fugly IMO. Plus, on Ravine the objects are so shiny. As far as free forging space, Ravine is out of the question. There's barely any room to forge around the outside of it. Impact probably has the most free space, but Erosion isn't too far from it. I know one thing people are saying is that the lighting is too dark on Erosion. Well when I made a test room that was built over the lagoon, I went into player mode and everything looked fine; I could see everything clearly. Another issue is the apparent dynamic lighting glitch that happens after spending 6,000 dollars. Well I spawned a bunch of random objects and spent well over 6,000 and didn't notice a difference, but then again there were never any shadows to begin with. Regarding the dynamic lighting glitch, does it just remove shadows or does it make the whole map darker too? If it just removes shadows then I'm fine with it cause my maps will mostly be indoors anyways so there won't be any shadows to begin with.
I haven't had the lighting glitch yet. Guess I'm just getting lucky. Here's my appraisal: 1. Ravine I've been building my first BTB map on this simply because it reminds me of a mixture of the original Blood Gulch and Sidewinder. I don't particularly mind the object textures, though I wish you had a choice because the UNSC skin in the Forerunner area looks like pimples on an a$#hole. I'm never. Ever. Going to build in there until they add more texture packs. Ever. But Ravine does have some other things going for it. You can build surprisingly low around the cliffsides, as well as down in the ravine. I'm think most Lockout, Caged, Guardian remakes are probably going to dwell in this area. (Also, just checked out that Narrows remake. Damn sweet) So there IS some space to work with, just not much vanilla flat space. (Like the Sanctuary plateau on Reach Forge-World) 2. Impact Besides the SUPER SHARP SHADOW LIGHTING, I absolutely adore this map. The sheer space (no pun intended) it offers me sends ideas cascading into my brain, from derelict ships/satellites, to building a FFA arena in the provided building, to a BTB map on the larger asteroid. It's definitely got a lot of possibility. Unfortunately, it's also really hard on the eyes if you don't watch your lighting angle. I spent an hour building a pretty cool ship only to find I couldn't see crap because I had built it at a 90 degree angle to the light source. Also, why do <Light> objects NOT cast light? They just kind of dimly glow. That's a big source of annoyance for that map. 3. Ravine. My BIG issue with Ravine is the organic section is very static. The built-in aspects will severely limit the variety of maps you can build in the ground section. That said, I'm excited to see what people can do under the overhang of the lake. That's by FAR and away the coolest spot on the 3 H4 Forge maps.
Really my only main issue is that every terrain in the forge worlds seem to be very limiting. They're packed full of 'stuff' that Makes you have to build around the terrain a certain way. But until the file share is working, i can't help but get this 'why bother' attitude in the middle of forging my maps Dx
I had that Erosion lighting glitch on a map i made recently, lowered the budget to about 3800-4500 and it came back. I'm not sure if I care to leave it that way on account of there being hardly any change from the no lighting version i had. Still, i think it makes the map just a bit darker and some slight changes, especially with natural geometry. Impact so far is proving far better to forge on, though i do love those grimy Erosion pieces.
There are no lighting effects so far on Theater. That literally RUINED dynamic lighting for me, because that's the only place I'd actually CARE about dynamic lighting for videos.
The lighting glitch puts a giant shadow over almost all pieces while putting others in full light. The shadow also moves around as you walk around in player mode and overall it looks horribly glitchy. As for the maps, So far I like them all a good deal. The Erosion pieces do look a little dirty but I see that as more of a tool than a hinderance. I'm building my first map on Impact and making full use of the terrain, which I've been planning the design around instead of trying to force something sketched out on paper to fit there. Looking around Impact I'm fairly satisfied with the spaaaaaaaaace we are given, haven't spent a lot of time on the others but from what I've seen other people do I'm pretty optimistic. We already have some awesome custom nights going on forged maps and overall I'm stoked to see what else we can do over the next few years.
There are too many things to list that frustrate me. One big one is that the only pieces that match their environment is Impact. Ravine pieces don't match the forerunner building, and the grimy rusty pieces of Erosion don't match the griffball court. I look at this and I can't help but ask "What the hell was 343 thinking?"
The parts on Erosion may not match the grifball court, but they do match the rest of the map outside, so I think that would have been what they were thinking. Same situation with Ravine, the parts all look really good when not on the forerunner area, and when they are there you can still make a pretty cool hybrid look or make it seem like human integrated forerunner.
The things that bug me most are: 1. object textures - specifically on Ravine. They're a horrendous 'dirty porcelain' colour ... not very appealing at all. 2. shape of the objects. They're meant to be squares etc, but the rounded edges and horrible skins ruin it completely. 3. not giving you forerunner objects.
Human integrated forerunner? This may work if you weren't building bases that would be established there, not just placed randomly by the derpiest construction workers of the UNSC
I tend to agree with this. Ravine should have been exclusively forerunner palettes to match the forerunner structure that makes up half the canvas. Impact is fine to remain UNSC exclusively. Erosion could use a combination of both.
Ravine - Has a lot more room that I had expected it to. I also feel that some very interesting maps could be made by integrating the canyon as a wall or even as a roof in some areas. My only real complaint on the map is the lack of actual grass that we can use to forge on. It just feels to small and lacking for my usual way of forging and I will have to do major adjustments to my forging to compensate. Impact - The shadows are so dark that I just instantly gave up on making my map because the lower levels suffered intensely from the lack of lighting. I am thinking it may have had to do with the particular location I forged in but I have to experiment more before I am sure.
343 Was never really good at making Forge Maps, remember Tempest from Reach? Too many hills, no flat land or open enough space to do anything on that map. I think there was only 2 good maps made on Tempest. Ridgeland also on Reach you couldn't do anything on that map due to hills and trees. With that being said...all 3 maps are good. However... Ravine should have been matching Forerunner textures in the Forerunner section and too many hills on the grass (as usual, again Tempest and Ridgeland disease). Impact - the textures of the forge objects fit this map for an asteroid/moon base art style. Erosion - the forge object textures only fit outside the grifball area...so like mentioned, Erosion should have had a combination of both Forefunner metal textures and the current ones in use. Other than that they did a good job but those are some big issues. I don't see them ever fixing these problems. However, I can see them patching/fixing the dynamic light glitch on Erosion and the Theater lighting glitch. I would really appreciate a texture fix or texture/forge heavy DLC...but I don't see it happening P.S. It was too hard to forge anything on the High Noon remake map on Reach DLC also... so I am inclined to believe 343 just doesn't know how to make a good forge map like Bungie. They just don't seem to realize that you need some flat terrain in there somewhere and you can't flood the map so much, to the point where there is no room for creativity or to change the map. It's like those old Reach maps were no different than trying to forge on a regular vanilla map using forge pieces. [br][/br]Edited by merge: I also think for people who like to make Big Team maps, we are out of luck. Erosion and Ravine are too small...and Impact it "may be" possible if you can somehow connect both asteroids or build a larger terrain add-on with forge pieces. But, both asteroids are too small by themselves for 2 big teams and vehicles.
RAVINE: I am actually using that canyon/ravine to make a map right now. Should be done soon and I'll share it up for you all to see. For those going "down under" to forge there, be careful of the lower limit of the map. I set out to go as lows as you can go and set pieces where when you walk on them you do not get the soft kill countdown. This worked, and I got pretty far into the level before placing some respawn points.... at -34.9 on a lot of pieces, the player might not have been below the soft kill, but the respawn points and other things where the item is selected from a flat surface at its base... IS below the soft kill and placing a respawn or initial spawn causes to to sit on the floor piece for a moment THEN DISAPPEARS. If you get that occurance, it is because your pieces is just a tiny bit too low. I only had to raise my pieces +.1, but it was a pain because I had to make a lot of other things line up again. IMPACT: You mentioned a lack of lighting. I haven't gotten very far w/ creating anything there, but the lighting is sufficient if you use the directly lit area from the Super Nova (is what I think it is) and the flood lights. There is a lot of light there so that area might work better for you. Your lower levels could have some windows which point out toward that light and keep yoru lower levels lit. Good luck.
So far I'm liking Ravine and Impact the most. The bubble of usable sky is quite large on Ravine, I don't know why some people are saying it doesn't have space. We're just gonna have to get creative with the existing terrain and expand it. There's some cool lighting down below the cliff on the dark side, and I'm actually a fan of the human palette. The busier, asymmetric textures make it much easier to mix and match different pieces in one area without things looking derpy. It all just blends together. Impact is just pretty much awesome. I'm a big fan of the map-specific objects (notably the silos) and there's tons and tons of space. The new rock textures are great as well, they blend in really nicely. My only quibble is that the object origins for the large pieces are dumb and it makes them more difficult to work with.
One thing that I dislike about all the maps is the lack of flat, open space for building. It feels like every five feet there is a hill or some other rise, making it almost impossible to execute several ideas I had.. More specifics on the three maps are below: Ravine: I like the look of this map, and I've got some ideas for making Bunker-like maps, extending below into the canyon or around the sides of the map. However, the fact that the buildings look like porcelain in sunlight and stick out like a sore thumb in the Forerunner building kinda make me not want to Forge on this map. I think having the ability to change the textures of the buildings/pieces on this map from Human to Forerunner would greatly diminish the significance of the above points. The other part of this map I dislike is the ground outside the Forerunner building. It isn't flat enough, in my opinion, to make a large base where the floor isn't clipping halfway into the ground or floating five feet in the air. Erosion: This map is one of my favorite maps in Halo 4, to be honest. The terrain outside the Grifball map is, in my opinion, beautiful and very pleasing to the eye, and the Grifball Court itself provides a very nice place to Forge a BTB or CTF map. On the flip side of the coin, I think the building's paint scheme looks a little off inside the Grifball court, although that is easily negated by simply making a Coliseum Wall Floor to build on outside the Court. Impact: A great map for forging on, I think Impact would be great for a derelict ship or satellite map, although one must be careful to not block out the light source when making your station. However, forging on the Asteroids themselves is a little tougher. On the asteroid with the Pre-built base, I've found that the Station Corridor and Airlock pieces are troublesome to fit in the gaps, making an enclosed space a tougher thing to make. On the other asteroid, a lack of flat space crushed my dreams of a Dominion map, as there would either be rocks clipping through the floor, or a station four or five feet of the ground.
One thing which annoys me about impact is how the spacestation parts never seem to line up. Unless you have a perfectly symmetrical space station... Which still for some reason leaves a small gap in some places...