Looking back at my accomplishments and how i've grown throughout my Forge Career, i realise how much time i've invested into what non-believers can easily write off as virtual legos. I feel an unsung bond with all of my fellow forgers. An amazing feeling having not spoken a word or laid eyes on all of your likely greasy faces. And that is because i imagine from all walks of life we have come to experience the same things. All the time spent staring at a screen just thinking, Or crafting together a stage only to have it never see the light of day. Concocting formulas in our heads which lead to countless sketchings and endless test lobbies. Debates, road blocks, re-scaling, sacrifising sleep to add to do just one... More.. Thing... What is it all for. why do our relentless passion fueled brains desire or even warrant the extreme amount of time we spend on such a niche hobby? And by no means am i claiming it is a waste, everbody has a reason and that is the question that i'm presenting for you today. TLDR: Seriously? You can't even handle 3 paragraphs?
I wonder how us Forgers will look back at our Forging life and what we will think. Some of us may go into game design, others into other careers. For those of us who will build actual maps in a future career, what an advantage. I feel like Forging is the most productive way to play a video game. Sometimes I think about going into designing maps as a career. Forging maps is an art. A science. A math. It's a beautiful thing that might pay off for some of us in the long run.
I You are correct sir i agree with you. Forging has many skills we can learn and apply in out lives. Somtimes we may not even know it.
I've thought about a career in video game creation, such as being a game artist, or a designer. Ultimately, I'm planning on medical school once university work is done, as I want a stable career that is in demand, as well as a chance to help relieve suffering (this stems from a long story concerning my father and an unnamed hospital [for privacy concerns]). Since I'm planning on medicine, the forge tool allows me to kind of live out that dream to designing things for a video game. I can take my ideas and aesthetic preferences and actually make maps around those. I feel that since Halo 3, forge has been the real reason I've been coming back. Not for the competition or armor per se, but to have fun and see what I can design with my own hands. So looking back on my time, even if my forge maps were never published, I still think it is every second of enjoyment and frustration well spent. I only wish we got a couple of hundred req points after spending a lot of time in forge (like in Reach.)
Forge gave Halo a new life when it was introduced in Halo 3. Despite the blocks having fixed/normal physics we still found a way to geo-merge and phase them through each other. We took a tool with limitations and found the path around them so we could make great maps and even greater custom games like Fat Kid, Jenga, Run for your Life, etc. I loved it, and had thousands of custom games played. Time has flown by since then and the forging community has come a long way and now has even greater tools compared to the previous Halo's. Yet, we still find ways to use those tools in ways the developer never expected. I have never gotten into forge seriously in the previous Halo's, I was always just forging for fun and seeing what everyone else was doing. However, this time though it is different. I actually want to bring more to the table and try to build maps that, hopefully, will play great and with a goal on getting them published. Even if I don't, I still am having tons of fun building and I look forward to seeing this tool becoming even better in the future. I also love what I am seeing from everyone else, the remakes, the amazing uses of scripts, clever use of the decal lighting trick, and such beautifully crafted maps. It just keeps on getting better, keep up the great work everyone!