After seeing the new Forge Islands canvas, I decided to make a terrain piece in Unity showing how I would have done it. I threw this together in about an hour, so it's not super pretty, but it does show how the canvas could have been done in a way that makes more sense for forgers without removing any options that the actual canvas gives us. The first 3 shots are overviews, showing how all 3 islands are in close enough proximity to feasibly connect. This shot shows the main island, which is the one that is in the actual canvas map. The little white cylinder on it is player sized, giving a sense of scale. This second island is loosely based off of Blood Gulch, as it is hilly but still fairly flat and easy to build on. This gives players some variation in textures and terrain for when they don't necessarily want to start with totally flat ground (such as for good warthog driving). The last island is a bit more vertical, with a separate area that can be walked or driven up to from one side. Like Montana in Halo: Reach, this island lets players experiment with unusual geometry and allows for even more variation. As I have said many times, I am still happy we are getting a free canvas. But I feel that these simple changes would have made the map infinitely more useful for forgers.
And I would have liked it more that way. But, just as you state above.. I am still very happy, very grateful for this. I can't complain, its great.
I was thinking yesterday when I saw the new Forge map, when I asked for flat terrain... I didn't actually mean 100% flat, lol.... I don't think most people did. Just more flat than Certain Affinity's overly hilly maps as they go a little berserk on hills every time. And if it's not overly hilly (like Impact asteroid)... the terrain is on a slant that is just as bad (if not worse).
Giving us the option to manipulate natural ground or even create whole new landscapes, would solve so much if not everything. Look at Far Cry 3.
I know that I wanted perfectly flat ground. Too many times some of my projects have been screwed over by uneven terrain. Anyway, I really like what your interpretation. However, if we can make our own hills in Halo 5, I'd want everything to be completely flat so there won't be any barriers to my ideas. Hopefully Halo 5 forge will deliver.
Yeah. If we'd also have the ability to edit the skins of the terrain, as well as put in some weather effects (I'm not asking for huge out-of-the-box stuff, just little casual things like a rainy or snowy vision), it would be a great step towards Forge 3.0 as how we'd want it to be.
I do think your interpretation would be better for forging but like others have said, I'm happy 343i is listening to complaints and at least trying to do things about it even if it isn't 100% of what I might consider worth doing
I am happy they are listening as well, but I think in this case they tried too hard to give the community exactly what they asked for. I've heard a few people say how when they said "flat" they didn't mean they wanted everything entirely flat, just more open and less full of obstacles. While some flat was definitely good, they should have realized that 3 flat islands didn't make sense, and that while the community was clambering for "flat," they actually wanted a mix of flat and flat-ish ground that is easy to build off of. Too much giving the community exactly what they asked for instead of interpreting what would actually be best for the community.
I don't think that's fair and it's looking at this new map the wrong way. I said this in the other thread, the reason they showed off a hang em high remake was to demonstrate an entire map can be made without natural terrain interference. The space is almost a completely blank slate to make whatever people want. If people want natural height variation and flat space impact and ravine are workable for this.
I suppose so, though Ravine and Impact both have their own problems with restricting the player. If Ravine was just rolling hills with no giant Forerunner building, then there'd be no problem with this being flat. As of now, we must choose between exclusively flat terrain, or hilly but very restricted terrain. One island being hilly would have been the perfect middle ground, allowing for forgers to design around natural hills without worrying about giant buildings or cliff walls going up and blocking their design. The blank slate feature is great, don't get me wrong, but I just see a lot of lost potential here.
Makes me think of Montaska... But nice idea... perhaps before Halo 5 some of us should present some ideas like this and detail WHY the features are present, including things like "why the thick, lush green grass - so that we can have a deep green floor!" [br][/br]Edited by merge: When we heard Forge Island, I was expecting Forge Island, not Forge Rocks. I mean how difficult is it to create a chain of flat islands just above water level and make one of them mostly flat through out?
I just had this idea... People have been asking for Weather FX orbs since Halo 3's Sandbox, but what if it worked like traitzones? It'd fix indoor raining and stuff on maps as long as the author didn't put them in the buildings and in a sewer sort of map you could put local spots of dripping water with the rain effect... :O
I think people should think back to Foundry and Sandbox more often. Both of those maps had a completely flat floor and that didn't stop people Forging some pretty amazing creations. It was only when Bungie spoiled us with Forgeworld that people started asking for basically anything. I'm grateful for Forge Island. It's a step in the right direction and I have high hopes for the future of the Halo franchise, with regards to Forge.
Because we realized Forge could be so much more and had so much potential. Plus games got to evolve, new features need to be added (and not removed). Forgeworld was a feature like that, just like precision editing and zooming in in forge mode. People expected Halo 4 to be a major improvement over Reach's forge, and it was, in some ways. They added magnets (awesome), locking (very useful), duplicating (saves time), deleting per category/everyting in one go (also useful) among other things. The major problem was the fact that we also lost tons of features for no apparent reason. What's the reasoning behind removing the zoom in forge mode? Why did they remove precision editing? And is it just me, or were there a lot more gametypes/gametype settings in 2, 3 or Reach than in 4? See, that's why people are still asking 343 to add more stuff to Halo 4, because they expect new things to compensate for the features we lost, even though they're nothing alike. P.S. It's really late here, or early I guess, and I'm heading to bed. This post may make no sense because I'm too tired to explain properly, so I'll just leave this here before I go:
A flat floor doesn't stop players from designing, it is very good for some designs. Some amount of flat, plain flooring should have always been in the game. But there are things that could have been done to increase the options we had. That is what we are talking about, the loss of potential designs we could have made based on a decision that offers us far fewer advantages. Ok, I'm tired at this point. I think I'm going to just go forge. I actually will be able to make my next map much more easily because of the new canvas. I'm grateful for that, it creates a lot of opportunity. I also see all the maps I can't make in Halo 4 that, for a fleeting moment, I thought maybe would be possible with Forge Island. I suppose there is nothing we can do to change that now though. At this point the argument is about burnt out and it is just getting muddled. Things could be better, this disappoints some of us, we'll keep it in mind. But until there comes a time we can do anything about it, all we can do is forge. On that note, I'm going to go plan a map.
You misunderstood completely. Of course amazing creations will be made on Forge Island. I'm not spoiled or ungrateful just because I say the terrain could have been done more realistic while keeping it mostly flat. Essentially these are 3 upside-down giant tin cup islands. Fine... I like the map... I will use it... could have been done better though. Maps went from way too many hills to zero hills, lol... I find it kind of funny.
I sort of agree with both sides on this one. I'm very happy we're getting Forge Island, but a little more terrain in it would've been nicer than just three plateaus (they're not really islands). Regardless, I'm still contempt with what they gave us, I'm sure we'll all find a way around it.