For as long as I can remember, our "primitve" sections have been riddled with unnecessary detail, and for just as long we have put up with it. I would have never thought to write something like this before halo 5, but for the first time forge will see support past release. I would like to propose a system of a 5/6 sided polygon section. This would consist of extremely basic blocks such as rectangles, squares, triangles and trapezoids. This section would inherit the name "primitives" and the current section could be renamed. The primitives would have their own object limit, and due to the low polygon count, we could probably have 5 thousand or more. Imagine what we could do with that many objects? I probably don't have to tell you how immersive and ridiculously cool maps would get. This system opens up infinite possibilities while requiring little effort from 343. In the end, the polygon count is what effects performance the most.
Not exactly. Extremely small beveled edgeds would help for z fighting. But essentially yes, let's get the primitives down to at max 20 polygons. Some use upwards of 100, possibly 200. Its quite wasteful and I can't for the life of me figure out why the continually do this.
Well, no. The pieces could look identical to what they do now, that's just the textures. It's the polygons that would be simplified, so all the miniscule divets and cracks in the primitive pieces wouldn't be there.
I think the object limit is not about rendering, but about storage space. Regardless, I would rather just see the current primitives made more primitive than have a whole new palette.
I just don't know why the primitives have the notch outs & those cursed stripes that aren't even symmetric. The stripes would be ok if we could give them the same color & metalic-ness (?) as the initial piece & they would match but NO!
Because 343 Industries (abbreviated to 343i) is an American video game developer located in Redmond, Washington. Named after the Halo character 343 Guilty Spark, the company was established in 2009 by Microsoft Studios to oversee the development of the Halo science fiction media franchise following a split between Microsoft and Bungie in 2007. Halo 4 was the first title released by 343 Industries in which they played a lead development role. Upcoming releases from the company include Halo Wars 2 in 2016.
Good lord the worst thing about primitives are the ones that have half of an edge rounded and half of the same edge square. It seems like they are scared of releasing a true set of primitives.
No, each individual Forge map doesn’t contain the models/textures of the blocks. E: messed up quote formatting
Just put together a video about how to work around unwanted textures. Most of you probably know this stuff already, but it might be helpful for newer forgers.
While the details can help break up the boring looking objects I think I've spent more time trying to cover up holes and details than I have trying to use them to my advantage. Considering how there are rarely performance issues on Halo 5 Forge maps I don't think it's too crazy to allow people to add their own detail instead of forcing them to used detailed primitives.
I see there is one vote towards detailed primitives. Whoever that is needs to leave....now. Just kidding, but really, wtf. Please just give us clean pieces. For once. Please. We have literally been dealing with this since Halo 3. Anyone remember way back to the Foundry days when someone discovered that turning the box upside down was much more clean than the top?
I've always believed since the beginning of forge that the basic building blocks were too detailed. I even did a little bit of research into some of the Reach blocks to see just how ridiculous it was, since I was frustrated with the framerate drops and the extremely low budget. I recreated this piece in 3ds Max to get a rough idea of how many triangles it was made up of. I came to conservative estimate just over 200 triangles. The one you see in the image above is not my recreation, but the actual model ripped from the .map file, and the actual triangle count is listed on the top left (I'm not kidding, the triangle count is actually 1,044). It seems logical to me that any six sided "primitives" should not be made up of more than the minimum 12 triangles that is required to make a six sided block. There should be a set of generic textures (concrete, road, diamond plate, forerunner floor, etc...) that you can swap through in the object properties, and have an option in the object properties to have the UV coordinates offset by world coordinates, in the same way that the terrain flats currently work. That way, you can make long, continuous walls consisting of multiple pieces without any texture seams, and you can disable it to make angled walls without stretched textures. All the detail should be used for things like trim pieces. I made a quick and dirty mockup to demonstrate what I think would have been a much much better way to approach the design of the pieces.