Forge Feedback For 343 Researcher

Take it away Goat.

I'll add one thing, and that would be the combination of object scaling/editing and the removal of an object limit.

Once we are able to edit objects, we can basically use "one" object or brush to fill in any space. So often when forging we need to use multiple objects to fill in cracks, make a platform a certain width, or make the underside of levels clean. This takes up soooo many unnecessary polygons. This would help performance tremendously, and it would even make the menu (which is already in Halo 5 ridiculously hard to sift through due to the hundreds of slightly differently scaled objects) much easier to use, as there would only be one "block" and then you would scale after spawning it. Oh yeah, and it means developers don't have to make all those blocks! I really don't see any downside to this so far.

I would hope the same thing would be available for Triangles, Spheres, Rings, Domes, Stairs, and anything else that gets used a lot. I'm not talking about doing away with objects, just allow us to edit them to save an incalculable amount of effort and polygons.

Our maps would become much, much lighter on the engine and allow for some truly ambitious environments, which plays into the next part.

Even without the ability to edit objects, we really shouldn't have an object limit. If a forger wants to make a map with so many polygons that the game runs at 15 frames a second... then so be it! Nobody will play that map, and that's the only consequence of this situation. However, the removal of an object limit will allow for the experienced in forge make way more in one map than we could in Halo 5. Let US find the limits of forge instead of forcing us to work around an arbitrary number.

 

P2: Sounds In Forge
1st: I Kinda Miss A Sound Effect For The Forge Monitor Like In Halo Reach Just To Add Some More Noise To Forge Because When You Die As The Forge Monitor It Scares Me Half To Death.

P4: Spectating Forge
2nd: I Don’t Know If Spectating Someone In Forge Is A Thing But That Would Be Cool If We Could Do That.

P2: Labels/Decals
3rd: Please Include Numbers 0-9 And The Whole Alphabet (its a pain trying to “forge your own letters”)

P2: Make An Undo Button
The Duplicate and delete button are pretty close together so an undo button would be great.

(Extra: Tell 343 To gimme the fire unicorn skin, olive helmet and compass rose emblem thanks)
Lol jk. but not really.

P5: Getting All Of The Armors For Machnima (Like Windows 10 Forge)
Just Kinda Of An Idea For Xbox One

P1: Make A ForgeHub Emblem For ForgeHub Members Only


But All Around With The Next Gen Graphics Of Halo 5 I’d Say For The Most Part. I Like Making Stuff For Hours On End Because That’s Fun To Me. You Can’t Rush Forging.

 

Why do we need multiple maps for forge when we can just change the skybox? They could have all the skyboxes on the same empty map. We also need blocks of water or something like that. We have all been begging for placeable water forever and I don't think it would be that difficult of a thing to do considering we already have moving objects like trees.

---merged post--


Why are you guys voting to keep an engine that has had, and still has, so many issues? I mean, i guess starting over might just add a **** ton more problems so that's pretty scary, but this game doesn't run as well as it should even on my PC. I'm thinking starting over from scratch might not be that bad of an idea. If we can get the additions like scaling objects and other big changes in the toolset with this engine, I would vote to keep it to prevent more performance issues from popping up though.

 

Reserved

 

I’ll just repeat what I’ve been saying for years: Just look to the Trials (Evolution/Fusion) editor.

It has all the simplicity of forge, but with much more features and depth.

-Actual terrain editor. Not pieces.

-Water/ice/acid/lava objects. Not only static/flat, but dynamic/falling

-Skyboxes

-Natural lighting direction/time of day

-Weather effects

-Light reflection/ambience

-Shaping/rescaling objects

-A color circle, as opposed to cycling through 100+ colors

-Return volumes

-More natural pieces


I could keep going, but like I said: Look to Trials.

 

P2 The ability to change lighting more precisley
What I mean by that is to be able to manually rotate the sun/moon/map light source via a menu or object, sometimes preset lighting doesn't provide the right angle for us

P1 All objects have all textures available for swapping
Essentially we could spawn some terrain objects and not need 3 different sets of the same object, but we could also swap the texture concrete or even glass

P4 More variety of object sets
For example more objects that would fit a Covenant theme or more objects that would fit a Forerunner structure, possibly more objects for an urban environment

P3 More sounds and music w/control
Exactly as it sounds... more sounds and music... with control of the volume, either through a boundry or in-menu volume control with the ability to set it to the entire map

P5 More Benches
More benches, nuff said

 

P1 - Object/Option Organization
There needs to be better organization of objects and options. One of the most frustrating things for new forgers is not being able to find the options or objects they're looking for. This is especially critical now, as the number of objects and options has skyrocketed. I still struggle to remember where things are sometimes, and I've spent a lot of time in Forge.

Possible solutions:
- Option to organize them alpha-numerically.
- Search function
- Allow Forgers to customize their menu's (organize items any way they want, or at least be able to mark an item or option as a 'Favorite', and have it populate into a 'Favorites' menu.

I'm sure there are many, many other ways to skin this cat.

 

Reserved

 

Although there are many, many ideas I have in my head, I already feel like I wrote down a lot so these are some of the bigger topics I'd like to see be innovated upon.
[P2]: The Sandbox
I loved how many objects were available to the forger and I also loved the vast variety given. The only things I could really say is to keep it coming. Even though there is already so much available already, there is also still so much more that can be added. Giving us more geometrical blocks (triangles, spheres, etc.), more props, and even something as small as more overlays can really go a long way. I understand that there are some limitations but additions would be very much appreciated. Some specifics I'd like to see:
- Placeable Water: It could be something as simple as a decal that had the water animated on top
- One-Way Projectile Blockers: Team projectile blockers would be nice too (Meaning only the designated team's projectiles will pass through it)
- A Seat: I've seen this idea popping around and it would work where the seat would be invisible and a player could walk up to it and sit down where the seat is. This could be welded onto certain objects or even vehicles and allow for hundreds of possibilities.
- Glass Overlay: As I said, more overlays would be really cool but having a glass overlay would remove the need for glass pieces and allow for a larger variety of options for windows.

[P1]: Scripting
Scripting was truly a gift that many of us forger were not expecting to be so amazing when Halo's forge first launched. Since then, so much has been made already utilizing scripts and I believe there's so much more that can be done with it. Just to give a few ideas off the top of my head:
- Heal ratio that will heal designated targets (opposite of damage ratio)
- Scripts involving weapons (when weapons is fired, when weapon is reloaded, when weapon is picked up, etc.)
- Maybe involve more logic gates into scripting. Although it might be complicated to use, it could prove to be useful.
-...so um...AI?... *wink wink nudge nudge*

[P5]: Controls
Almost everyone was admittedly a bit hesitant at first to step into Halo 5's forge having to learn a whole new set of controls that were completely revamped compared to the previous iterations of forge; however, I'm pretty sure many of us can agree that they were a huge improvement. Looking back at how it used to be, the controls for Halo 5's forge are so much more intuitive and efficient. Despite this, many newcomers may be a little bit turned off by the sight of such complex and intimidating control schemes being thrown at them.
An easy solution for this could be to implement a tutorial for the player similar to the one given for PC users.
Another solution that could not only benefit newcomers, but veteran forgers as well is the ability to remap certain controls. Although I personally don't see a need for this, I'm sure some people would appreciate the flexibility.

[P2]: Forge Tools
Looking back at previous iterations of forge, it can be quite safe to say that we used to have it pretty rough back then . "Back in my day, we had to glitch the system in order to have blocks float and phase through one another." The inclusion of helpful forge tools such as magnets, duplication, and grouping made life as a forger so much easier. Seeing more of these helpful tools would be greatly appreciated. Some ideas that have been requested heavily (some by me personally...hah):
- UNDO BUTTON: Countless forgers have gone through the sad process of accidentally having their finger slip and deleting a 4 part script on an object or possibly deleted an entire group of objects you thought were locked. If us forgers were able to have a second wind and redeem ourselves with an undo button, that would be SOOO VERY MUCH appreciated. An addition (although not really necessary) to this could be a sort of "Forge History" where you can look back at all the actions being done on the map.
- Mirroring Objects: The ability to mirror an object and create a mirrored version of an object would help out greatly and allow for asymmetrical objects to be better utilized.
- Cropping Tool: I know this might be very hard to implement and maybe even impossible, but if players had the ability to crop off certain parts of an object that they did not need, it could allow more creativity to step in and see various objects in a whole new perspective...or it could also just be used to fill in that tiny hole in the corner of the room that's glaring into your soul...*ahem*...anyway, this could also help with performance of maps as many objects that are only being utilize for a small section of it could be unnecessarily taking away from the overall performance of one's map.

[P4]: Skybox/Maps
The skyboxes available in Halo 5 are pretty nice and there is a good variety on each of the maps; however I feel like we are still limited in certain aspects.
- Time of Day: If we simply had a clock to change the time of day, it would help out immensely instead of relying on different skyboxes.
- Map Options: We do already have many options regarding weather but so much more could be done to improve it. Different weather effects such as sandstorms, blizzards, would be interesting to see.

[P3]: Prefabs
Prefabs were such a nice addition to forge and although its implementation was done well, the main issue I have with them is the organization of their files and the bugs that come along with prefabs.
- Organization: The ability to organize your prefabs possibly into custom folders could help ease the accessibility of them
- Bugs: Although you probably already are aware of the bugs with prefabs, I just wanted to bring up the issue of prefabs sometimes breaking and coming apart after interaction or through scripts. Making prefabs more reliable would entice people to start using them more often.

 

You have no idea how many times dying in forge has given me a heart attack. Lol

 

P1 - New/ Additional Objects

As with every forge iteration, I would love to see more objects introduced in the future. Some specific examples include:
-A wider array of terrain objects (assuming a terrain editor doesn't replace them)
-Spiral staircases/ramps (like the middle of Sanctuary)
-Water volumes and emitters
-More props specific to various themes (urban, Covenant, Forerunner, etc)
-A wider range of rock sizes (more small rocks would be nice)
-A wider array of trees and plants, and more variations within each style.
-More primitive shapes such as domes, spheres, rings, etc.

P1- Improved lighting and rendering

The current iteration of Forge, while incredible and a huge leap forward, still suffers from issues when there are too many objects visible at a time, or too many overlapping light sources. My hope is that a future version of forge will have systems in place to render much more realistic lighting scenarios and handle a larger amount of objects and effects on screen without the framerate dipping.

P3 - Streamlined "Canvases"

While I understand the need for canvases to exist for beginners, it would be nice if there was a blank slate "canvas" for advanced Forge users that included every skybox available in the game, as well as a time of day slider.

P4 - Terrain Painting

A feature I've always thought would be cool to have in forge is the ability to paint the terrain with various textures/colors. This would allow us to create things like trails or tire tracks on our maps. Additionally, the icing on the cake would be to use a similar tool to randomly generate vegetation arrangements (under player-set parameters) in whatever pattern you "paint" onto the ground.

P2 - Swapping Textures on Terrain

In the current version of Forge, you have to scroll through a menu to find various "themes" of terrain, and then place those objects on the map. A nice quality of life feature would be the ability to swap between those themes on a single terrain piece, rather than having to place a new object. This is already implemented with various blocks and primitive pieces, so it makes sense that other objects should share this functionality. (Again, this is all assuming we still have terrain objects rather than a terrain editor.)

P2 - Streamlined Menus

The menus in the current iteration of Forge are arguably too messy, making finding the desired objects frustrating at times. In future iterations of Forge, I would like to see a menu that is less cluttered by various categories of objects and instead see very broad categories that become more granular as you select sub-categories.

P1 - Bug Fixes

I think it goes without saying that we don't want to see the same bugs currently seen in Halo 5's Forge in future versions. I know there are probably dozens of threads about the various bugs in Forge, so I won't list them all here. However, I do hope that these bugs are addressed in future versions of the tool.

I will continue to post in this thread as/if I think of more things to add.

 

Ok, lets start.

Movement/controls:

The control and over all felling of Forge in Halo 5 is perfect. You can forge in a fast or slow speed, whichever you prefer, and they both feel fluent.

Prefabs:

They idea of prefabs is really good and I would like it to stay in Forge, however it can be glitchy and broken at times. I understand it happening on big prefabs but I would like it to be refined so that (for example) welded vehicles can respawn without being broken.

Performance:

Maps can be glitchy and crash every here and there but I know that isn’t something you can “fix” because believe me when I tell you that I know things can get out of control and there’s nothing you can do to avoid it for crashing. Apart from that the preformance is good.

Objects:

The amount of objects we have on Halo 5’s Forge is crazy. With this amount of objects we can do pretty much everything, I would like this to happen on the next Forge.

Decorative options:

All the options we have to decorate a map (from Props to coloring) are near perfect on Halo 5. The only thing I would like is a faster way to find the colors and more textures for objects (like wood, marble, etc).

Scripting:

Scripting is grate and opens windows to awesome custom games that are more creative than ever. The improvements I would give to it is a way to copy and paste scripts so that we don’t need to re write it all if we need it on another script.

Canvas:

The grate variety of canvases on the Halo 5 Forge is grate, the only criticism I have is on Dephts that the lighting can be weird inside structures.

My own personal additions:

If I were to add something to Forge it would probably be water or scriptable A.I, and a theater mode for Forge.

Thanks for reading and sorry for any miss spelled word or grammatical error!

Lets keep making Forge better!

 

Never forge near fire...

 

*Reserved*

 

I've probably spent over a thousand hours in forge, so I think I have a decent undersanding of its good and bad qualities. To answer the question: Yes, I do like forge. But it has so many loose ends that need to be tied up in future iterations. So many that I feel it brought down the entire editor. For this reason I voted indifferent. When I first read the question I wanted to vote no, because I instantly thought of all of the problems the editor gives me. Then I realized what the question was really asking, so I adjusted my answer.

If you were to ask me if I want to see this exact same editor in the next halo, only with more assets, I would say absolutely no. There are just too many restrictions to justify the reuse of it. It was good 2.5 years ago when it was compaired to Halo Reach's editor and Halo 4's editor, but it will not hold up in the future.

I'll do my best to keep my expectations and requests realistic.
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P1 - Efficiency

This is the big one by far. I will go over a few key points.


1) Lighting System - The light bake system in Halo 5 is extremely hard to work around and work with. Of my last 3 maps, I have spent over 50% of my time just trying to bring the lighting percentage down just so the quality of my shadows are better and the performance in-game is smoother. These issues make me, and I assume many other people, extremely frustrated to the point of quitting out of forge for days or even weeks.


I’m not sure if you are familiar with the term "Chromaboxing" but that is when the forger places there entire map inside of a box made of the Chroma pieces. They then go into object properties and turn off light backing. What this does is it completely removes any effects the light bake system might have on these maps. When players feel the need to completely throw out the lighting system we currently have in place, we know we have a problem. And this is no small sample size, I would bet money that the majority of the best looking maps currently are ones that have been chromaboxed.


2) Object Efficiency - there are microscopic details on almost all of the assets we have access to. These useless (often times intrusive) polygons are destroying any chance of a maps ability to run with a reasonable frame rate.


So how do we fix this? Allow us to trim an object. Let the forger remove any unused or unwanted polygons on the asset. There is no reason for these objects to be wasted especially when we are so limited as it currently is.


P2 - Hard Limits

Some people would say they want the object counters and percentages removed entirely. Personally, I think they should just have the hard limits removed. I have 2 good reasons for this:

1) The object counter lets me gauge my progress on my map. I like to know if I am working as efficiently as I had been on previous projects.

2) This caters to the new people just starting forge out while also not effecting or holding back the more experienced people.

Even in Halo 5 there are a few maps that could go over the 1600 object threshold, but they are stopped dead in there tracks at 1600. No reason why that hard limit should be in place.

P3 - Object and Texture Scaling

This one is very simple - allow us to modify the scale on the 3 axis. Also allow us to adjust the scale of a texture.

P4 - Color and Texture

What if I want to have a tree with blue leaves on a hill of red sand? I would have to look to some other editor because this isn't possible in the current version of forge. allow us to adjust the color of an object on a spectrum. do not limit us to the ~100 colors we have now on only a select number of assets. Let me color my plants and terrain! Let me color anything!

to make this more accessable to new players, maybe we could have a couple dozen prepicked colors readily available to us. You could even give the forger the ability to over-write these select colors if they wish to stick to a set color pallet for there map! This gives ever forger, new and experienced, options that cater to their needs.

We need more textures. Right now we have a handful, and they aren't even particularly good at making a realistic scene. My favorite to use is the concrete texture. This is because it's the least noticable and doesn't make my structures look like they have a vinyl sticker texture slapped on them.

P5 - Canvas

Let us start on just 1 map. This map starts as a blank file with an empty skybox. The player should be allowed access to all of the skyboxes in the game. Yes all of them, even if they are not a full 360°. Even if the horizon is messed up, leave that up to the forger to pick weather he wants to use it or not. I can think of several skyboxes in the campaign of Halo 5 that I wish I could use. The cloudy sky on the mission Evacuation where we exit crumbling space elevator comes to mind.

Additionally, allow the player to adjust the skybox rotation and lighting source independently. Or even allow them to toggle between moving them together or sepparate.
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final notes:

P1 & P2 are equally important to me. P3, P4, & P5 are also equally important relative to themselves, but segnificantly less important than P1 & P2. If this whole rating system ignored whole numbers I would put them in order as: 1/ 1.1 / 2 / 2.1 / 2.2

I think the UI and controles are great and do not want them to change. I do however think the menu need to to be sorted (why are they not already sorted alphabetically..?) and much easier to navigate than it currently is. Maybe even implement a search function.

I personally have not used the scripting functions enough, so I will not comment on them. There are other people in this thread that can give you better insight.

 

P1: Terrain Editor/Skybox editor
This is something that is so important on so many levels. The terrain pieces were all just perfect in the worst way. The problem that destroys the immersion these objects should provide is the simple fact that nature is perfected by its imperfection. Having to use multiples of these in order to avoid bumps, holes, etc. hurt this idea (which was great on paper) immensely. Farcry's terrain editor should be taken as inspiration for the possibilities.

Having the capability to pull the terrain around and shade/paint it in such a way that you can make your own diverse settings and worlds would add to the immersion of what we find in the campaigns or beyond. One main thing that is difficult to see is the lines dividing the terrain pieces. The grass in H5 was all but unusable because of how horribly it affected the drop in framerate. The trees and bushes were wonderful, but very difficult to create any kind of jungle type theme.

Creating our own skybox or having many options for the background would be wonderful!!! Part of the immersion of being inside a map is what isn't part of a map! Many forgers have added lots of pieces in order to have an immersive backdrop. However, if they don't, seeing the same area of a particular skybox on so many maps really hurts the overall quality. We want these maps to feel less forged if we can make it that way and seeing these backdrops over and over again hurts longevity.

P2: Object scaling and menu options/controls
So giving more options to all of the pieces would be great, one thing found in doing scaled remakes was the geometry that is in most old school maps... required the pieces we did not have. The layouts required in most cases a massive overload of extra pieces to get the exact fit that you wanted. Remakes aside, this happens when trying to button up your maps and sacrifices being made to preserve your piece count and/or help against frame rate dips. Maybe have areas of the piece that you can "grab" and pull, that would be fun, otherwise adding values to fill would be great too.

Anyone who has spent any amount of time in forge gets lost in the menu at times. "Where was that piece?" Add a search function and set favorites. Having pieces only render on one side and making the other parts of it invisible may help with what needs to render. So much of our piece usage sticks out of the map where players don't see it, walls only need 1 side in many cases instead of rendering 6 sides. I also have those moments where I am quietly forging and listening to music in the background and then KABOOM!!!!!! Dear god my forge monitor just exploded and destroyed my ears and pants.

P3: Scripting consistency
I watched too many forgers get frustrated and move on from Halo forge due to the inconsistent breaking of scripting with updates or otherwise. This really killed a lot of potential great mini-games for Halo 5 which were HUGE for this iteration of Halo, creating your own game within a game is nothing short of amazing and has been a great thing for the longevity of the game. Having simple scripting and complex scripting would be excellent to have as well, some people including me do not grasp the depth of the current scripting and can do minimal stuff with it. I would love to have some simple scripts that are just cut and dry, which would be great for new forgers as well.

P4: The forever asked for A.I.
The ability to use A.I. would create limitless opportunities for creators. Being able to create your own campaign and added interactions would be amazing. From simply having covenant that break into your map halfway into a slayer match to creating your own Destiny type strike or Halo campaign type mission... Wonderful. Not to mention what it would do for the customs browser!

P5: Things from past Halo games
If I make a remake of Sandtrap, then let it be a remake of Sandtrap. I can have H3 settings, with a Brute Chopper, H3 weapons, etc. The outcry for classic is more than notable and being able to mix if you wanted is so welcome! The way some of the vehicles worked before could be desired for certain race maps, etc. Customs are a huge part of extending the game and having a fully functional customs lobby and browser with many, many gametypes and options at the launch of the game would bring in more forgers/maps/games for the forge/customs community.

 

I think forge should be cut.

 

P1 - Map Optimization

Regardless of what else is added to Forge, far too many otherwise great maps have suffered from frame rate drops and other performance issues. As we build maps, we tend to merge objects through one another, to the point where a lot of the geometry being rendered is hidden from view. I would be extremely grateful for a feature which, could for example, let me save a copy of a map (which cannot be edited), where any unseen geometry, surfaces and textures are deleted.