Forge Feedback For 343 Researcher

Dang, all these lurkers coming out of the nowhere lol. I haven't seen some of these names since the 5th day of Halo 5.

I don't have any criticism because I know there are select few that will completely blow this out of the water, I won't have to explain anything.

 

These are all P1.

• Team labeled & scripted Teleporters. We can toggle between bipeds, and 3 vehicle types, but we require the ability to precisely select which players are able to pass through using team assignments and scripting labels. We have been politely asking for this feature since Halo 3.

• Player Traits settings while in Forge mode, including the ability to make the Forge Monitor invulnerable, so we can test Jump Height and Gravity settings while building (this was available in previous games).

• Repeating what CHa0s said for visibility. "Bring back asymmetrical, round based gametypes such as 1-Flag and 1 Bomb Assault so we can have gametypes that work with our asymmetrical maps." ! ! ! ! !

• Move the map's natural soft kill zones to OUTSIDE the natural soft boundary. We very often use the natural soft walls and ceiling for player containment but are unable to adjust the position of the soft kill volume. We should be able to use the map's natural boundaries to contain flying vehicles without players seeing the 10 second warning.

• Each canvas should feature a 360x360 area where the terrain is PERFECTLY flat for 'sports' style maps. Preferably at the 0,0,0 coordinate.

• The ability to change the effective radius of sound effects using an adjustable hill or volume/distance control which represents the half-life of the sound volume (Tom will know what i mean, we discussed this before launch). Additionally, sound volume/direction could be focused and represented as light beams while selected in Forge mode.

• Many have suggested folders and the ability to link maps with their specific game variants to simplify custom game lobbies, and to ensure players are properly matching game type to map. I am suggesting we go much further than that with the ability to publish Playlists. A builder should be able to create a playlist of maps, mated to their intended game variant, and publish the Playlist for public consumption. Custom Game lobby hosts could run a lobby from start to finish without having to break momentum searching for proper map/variant combos between each game, simply by bookmarking a Playlist link. The Host should be provided with the options like: replaying the last map, skipping the next map, or starting from the top, etc. Popular Playlists could 'bubble to the top' and become another item for community features. Ideally, at the top, these playlists could be rotated into and out of Matchmaking verbatim. It would be great to take a group of friends through an old playlist (ie. Classic Throwback) without having to search for each map and variant.

Sample playlists, so you get the idea:
The current HWC finals lineup.
The current HWC FFA lineup.
Ducain's Top Ten Race Tracks.
GrifballHUB's Best of 3 Game Night (second map has Red & Blue spawns reversed)
ForgeHub's 2v2 Contest Finalists.
KeeLoker's Linear Infection Halo-een Playlist.

 

I would like to see the sounds be more customizable. Currently, you have to litter your maps with sound if you want them to be audible throughout the entire playspace. Making a visual volume, area of effect, die off ratio, and emission pattern (Cardioid, Omnidirectional, Bidirectional, Direct path, etc.) that can be toggled in Forge would make using sounds a little more bearable.

Currently, if you wanted to have the Halo music playing for the entire map then you would have to place 10+ sounds, now that's all fine and dandy but when you place them in Forge dictates what point in time they start, thus any overlapping sounds are not in sync unless you precisely time your placement of each sound. Think spawning them in with scripts or just having them all spawn at the same time would fix it? Nope.

I would be super appreciative if this was in Halo 6. Being able to use one sound for the whole map, or also using one sound for a VERY SPECIFIC place on the map would be nice. Hey, maybe even a noise muffler so you can have potentially silent rooms in a map.

Besides this, I just one up most everyone else's posts here.

 

P1 - Add a feature that allows us to delete unneeded faces on object meshes

This may be a bit of a tricky thing to implement, and it may not even be suitable for all Forge objects, but it would be a very helpful feature to have for keeping map performance solid.

P2 - Add AI and overhaul scripting to be on par with something like Doom 2016's Snapmap

Not much to say here. But just think of the possibilities if we had something like this. I know this would be a challenging thing to add to the game since they would have to implement a sort of dynamic pathing system for AI to be able to move around (as a newbie programmer, I know that would be a pain), but I think they could figure it out with some time.

P3 - Allow us to change player traits while Forging for quicker/easier testing

This would be very beneficial for maps made for specialized gametypes with different from default player traits, like Classic Halo settings, or Mini Games.


That's all I've got for now. I may edit this post with more stuff if anything comes to mind.

 

PLAYLIST CREATION



Similar to how we create playlists in digital music platforms such as 'Spotify', it would be great to build our own playlists of our favorite maps while playing Halo. This feature would help us organize the hundreds of maps we bookmark over time. Similar to maps, we should have the ability to set playlists to 'public' or 'private'. When a playlist is selected for a custom game lobby, matches rotations would be much faster since hosts would no longer need to search for maps in endless lists. Gametypes could be associated to map files in advance as well.

Benefits Include:

• Easily find the content you're looking for
• Link specific gametypes to maps in advance
• Reduced downtime during custom game lobbies
• Custom game hosts can allow their lobby to vote on maps similar to matchmaking
• Make your playlist more official by affiliating it with a Spartan Company
• Share your playlist with the rest of the Forge community
• Follow popular playlists that are known to have the best content available

 

-Simple primitive pieces in voxel form. No preset sizes but the ability to make a primitive any dimension you want. Similar to the way boundary sizes can be changed.

-Terrain sculpting and the ability to paint/blend the environments on.

 

Behold my wall of text and then eat it! It's on the house if you can finish it in under an hour.

Game Engine & Performance

• P1 This isn’t Forge-specific but would affect Forge; Switch over to an established engine that can handle 64/100+ players and already has lots of experts for it. While porting code, take the opportunity to restructure it and take advantage of what the new engine offers as built-in features. Try to use the new engine code by default so later you’ll get enhancements made to the new engine.
  
• P1 NEW TOOL: Show us performance measures like framerate, object or polygon count, FX load, CPU/GPU load, etc as we move around so we can tell which areas are trouble and figure out which pieces hurt performance the most. Maybe mark the spots and view direction for us or let us manually mark the spots. If necessary add this as an option for Customs instead.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Get better results for collisions, especially vehicles, maybe taking into account which piece gets hit, but applying it to the whole object. Same for welded groups, have collisions with light group pieces not result in more velocity. If possible, replace welded groups with a single rigid object for calculations and position the individual objects relative to the calculation object.

Controls & UI

• P1 UPDATE/NEW: Get rid of automatic updates for normal-physics moved objects & add Position Reset and Update Position options for selected objects. I highly recommend leaving that rectangular ghost or an object copy at the spawn location and treat it as sort of a separate entity. Add a set of coordinates and rotations for the spawn location so they can be welded, scripted, etc separately from instances. Letting us reposition the spawn location would open many doors for us.
  
• P1 NEW TOOL: Undo and maybe extend the recovery map file to be a fully usable backup save.
  
• P2 UPDATE: The positioning & rotation system is really good, but the quake has to go. Please use the same units and coordinates in Forge or use units that match. If necessary go ahead and snap objects to the coordinates that are used in Customs.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Better interfaces for properties with too many options: number pad or the system keyboard for numbers, use the PC Forge color chooser and a similar grid for location names, etc. Another approach is to use sub-menus for them.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Give us alternate object listings and maybe selectable filters: category, alphanumeric, budget/performance, size that matches any dimension, has a specific property or function, etc. Like PC Forge has, collapse categories by default and let us expand and collapse them. Or make categories of a set size and above automatically become a sub-menu.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Make sure Fixed physics objects don’t rotate or get moved while held by the player in monitor mode.
  
• P2 UPDATE: We need better representation for rotation properties because the 3 vector thing is just confusing. The 3 on screen rotation circles are good when in rotation mode, but this might help us. Try a 2-angle representation based on the positive X-axis being the object’s default forward orientation. Use a Z-axis as the 1st angle and an up/down from the XY plane for the 2nd angle. Also show an arrow pointing forward for selected objects. When we use a properties box (scripting too) to enter angles show us a representation to help us.
  
• P3 UPDATE: The multi-object selection is one of the terrific additions to Forge. Similarly, groups and prefabs are also well done. Thanks! Try to get rid of 64 piece limit. For performance and clarity, see if temporarily replacing the sibling geometry with ghost boxes so we see the parent clearly.
  
• P4 NEW: Keyboard and mouse support on Xbox.
  
• P4 UPDATE: Base the move mode XYZ axis arrows sizes on the screen, not the object. It might help if the colors for world coordinates show the world axes and not the view/move axes. Maybe make that a tools setting.
  
• P5 NEW TOOL: A user coordinate system would be nice, but might not be necessary if the ghost boxes work.

Object Settings & Gameplay

• The Phased physics is great so keep it!
  
• P1 UPDATE: Respawn setting allows 0 Time to instantly respawn objects or -1 to keep objects from spawning before at start. Or new Spawn At Start (Yes/No) property.
  
• P1 UPDATE: Make sure all carryable objective objects can be despawned while held and only work for the team(s) selected or everyone if set to Neutral.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Team setting works for teleporters, lifts, etc.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Multi-game mode. Add all unique sections from the other modes.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Make Team property multi-select
  
• P2 NEW PROPERTY: Exclude Teams (Yes/No)
  
• P3 NEW PROPERTY: Spawn/Despawn Chain., Number or channel, so when object spawns or despawns objects with the same ID do the same.
  
• P3 NEW PROPERTY: CaptainPunch374 & I brainstormed this one. Collision Type (Multi-select List). Determines which entities the object collides with: Map geometry, Players, Vehicles, Objectives, Weapons, Projectiles, Structures, Team, User Label, Other Objects.
  
• P3 NEW PROPERTY: Collision Type or a Collision (Yes/No) property for boundaries.
  
• P3 NEW OBJECT: Player grip object that lets players pick up welded groups using the action button.
  
• P4 NEW OPTION: Spherical Boundary (Thanks, Cap’n)
  
• P5 UPDATE: Add health and/or shields properties to each piece of multi-piece destructibles, or make them separate objects inserted as a welded group.
  
• P5 NEW PROPERTY: Show us object mass and maybe let us set it.

Content

• P1 NEW OBJECT: Repeating (stretchable) items like walls and fences
  
• P2 NEW OBJECT: Proper mechanical constraints added to welded groups: rotational axis, linear fix, ball and socket, maybe linkages, etc.
  
• P3 More small objects and decals
  
• P4 UPDATE: Terrain matching nice but make optional and switchable
  
• P4 NEW OBJECT: Surfaces. Pieces with textures, lighting, etc on one side: Terrain fill-ins, wall-mounted objects, etc.
  
• P5 NEW OBJECT: Vehicle spawn pad

Miscellaneous

• P1 NEW OPTION: Game Mode. Select which game mode to use in Forge.
  
• P3 NEW TOOLS: Stand-in spartans, teams, anything needed to test as a single player.
  
• P3 Keep Decal tricks & Weapon Pad glitch
  
• P5 Help is terrible (but maybe community could do better)

Scripting

• Scripting is great and the reason I now use Forge regularly.
  
• P1 FIX: Movement & Rotation needs to be reliable. The wobbling and missing the intended position have to go. My guess is there’s a few server-client differences causing it. 1) Objects on client Xboxes can have inappropriate velocities, even when fixed or phased. Fixed and phased objects move while a rotation script runs if you also use a velocity script. 2) Position and orientation updates from the server either don’t include the velocities or these aren’t handled correctly by the client. 3) There seems to be a smooth-object-position-update function on the client that causes the position updating of the object to be done over a few game ticks and that might cause the wobbles where an instant reset wouldn’t. The smoothing only seems to happen when the object is close enough to the update position.
  
• P1 NEW ACTION: Team Change for objects & players
  
• P1 UPDATE: Let Number variables be used for any numbers, including action & condition parameters. NEW: Common Numbers UI for any Numbers and allow channels/variables to be selected.
  
• P1 NEW: Map’s script list UI, sortable or filterable by channels, filters, conditions, actions, etc. Tree view, flow chart, etc for scripts that trigger other scripts. Let us see and edit the script number (reorder them). Copy, move, delete. Usernames for numbers, channels, etc and no set limits on their numbers.
  
• P1 UPDATE: Make sure absolute values set by Move, Rotate and Velocity aren’t altered by game mechanics or execute those actions last.
  
• P1 UPDATE: Damage Ratio. Add healing (or allow negative damage). Let us select shields, health or both. Make sure Damage Ratio causes explosives, vehicles, etc to explode and that Despawn does not. ADD OPTION: Relative (Yes/No) for Health Below to detect an amount of damage taken at once.
  
• P1 NEW OPTION: Ignore option for any grouped properties like coordinates, colors, etc
  
• P1 UPDATE: Let us add scripts to all objects and deal with the consequences
  
• P1 UPDATE: Inventory [add/include/exclude] mod to give us access to player inventory. Easier access to players and player info. Access to player actions like kills, damage, etc
  
• P2 UPDATE: Action Targeting for despawned objects and players along with new Despawned [in/exclude] mods.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Add options for -1 (off) and 0 (immediate, default, etc) to settings when it enhances them: Move & Rotate 0.00 time, Respawn 0/-1 (instant respawn, no spawn at start or respawn), etc.
  
• P2 NEW PROPERTY: Object Targeting (same as Action Targeting) for conditions, especially Boundary Check.
  
• P2 NEW CONDITION & ACTION: Activated and Stopped conditions plus Activate and Stop actions added to weapons, vehicles, etc with player as ACTIVATOR.
  
• P2 UPDATE: Access to entity coordinates and rotations
  
• P3 UPDATE: Let us add scripts to the map, maybe switch to all global scripts and the ability to attach them to multiple objects. No set limit for the map or objects, go with a collection.
  
• P3 NEW PROPERTY: Local (Yes/No) for Rotation Offset.
  
• P3 NEW PROPERTY: Relative (Yes/No) for Velocity Set. Adds to current values.
  
• P4 NEW OBJECTS: Preset scripted objects or new objects with the functionality built in: linkable travel paths or destination points, timers, number displays, rotate-to-face targets, player followers that snap onto positions relative to a player, scoring volumes, objective objects, etc
  
• P4 NEW PROPERTY: Determines which objects are used (switches, weapons, vehicles, turrets, ball, flag, etc) when the player is near multiple usable items. Or a separate editable list of usable items on the map that can be ordered. UPDATE: Switch Interactive to work with these objects too.
  
• P4 NEW ACTION: Rotation Velocity Set, with XYZ, Local, and Relative (Yes/No)
  
• P4 NEW CONDITION: If/And/Or that allow testing for all script conditions
  
• P5 NEW: Ability to lock specific properties, conditions or actions so they either can’t be changed or only limited values can be entered. Makes prefabs act more like templates with only the relevant properties being editable.
  
• P5 NEW ACTION: Weapon Pad Change. Change up all the weapon settings.
  
• P5 UPDATE: Allow Objects to be added to multiple groups

 

WORKFLOW:
Create a “Favorites” section where we can place our most commonly used pieces. This will reduce the amount of time required to find the pieces we use most. I tend to build out and brainstorm map designs using only a handful of pieces. These are what I consider my primary building blocks which I will replace and refine later.

NATURAL

• Modular Cave Pieces would be a great addition the natural pallet as this is the most performance efficient way to construct them while being the hardest to create with the current natural rock set. Having a premade asset for this would increase workflow speeds as well as have a better performance rate.

 

COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT:

Community Favorite Forge Polls

• Forge polls would make the community feel as if they are participating to help make the creation of forge a better tool. Instead of generalizing assumptions for what the community would like to see in future forge updates, ask them directly and collect data to allow us to help you make more informed decisions based on feedback.

• The community could be asked to submit photos of their favorite campaign assets. 343 reviews the photos and composes a list of the top 10 viable campaign assets to bring into forge. Community gets to vote on top 10 assets by clicking and dragging into a top 3 position.

Additional skybox selections would really excite forgers as this is first step to theming their map. New skyboxes can be pulled from current and upcoming Halo 5 Arena maps to make them more reasonable in regards to production.

• For example, in Halo 2 Anniversary, multiplayer map “Zenith” was stripped of all multiplayer assets and was converted into the forge canvas called “Skyward”.

FORGE POLL CONCEPT:


A more advanced system to vote for forge DLC content would greatly increase accuracy for results. In the example above, users are given 10 choices to select from with their top 3 choices being submitted in order.

 

Highly functional modular prefabs such as doors, windows and short corridors with Forerunner, Covenant and Human themes.


image source: Paul Richards Forge Concept Art

 

OBJECT CREATION
VERTEX EDITING​

REFLEX
(20.10 minutes from start)​

​

 

NAME LOCATIONS
Currently, naming locations on our map is an extremely tedious task as none of it is in alphabetical order and requires users to constantly scroll through seemingly endless options without providing any customization. Users should be able to select each word individually with a total of 1 word minimum or 2 words maximum. Below is a concept to incorporate this for the user interface.

This will eliminate a lot of repetition and unnecessary overlap while provide more ways for users to customize the locations on their maps. Having repeating options for 'BLUE' and 'RED': Tower, Bend, Hut, Street, etc. is excessive. I think 'Oscar's House', 'Bat Ledge' and 'Flank Steak' are funny but I think we need a more practical system instead.

Suggested Options For New System:

Name 1 Options (69):

• Color: Red, Blue, Green, Purple, Yellow, Orange, Pink, Gold, Black...
• Position: Top, Mid, Bottom, Center, Main, Side, Left, Right, Over, Under, High, Low, Inside, Outside, Open, Closed, Back, Front, Initial...
• Size: Large, Big, Small, Huge, Tiny, Thick, Thin, Slim, Wide, Narrow, Long, Short,
• Description: Crashed, Dark, Broken, Hot, Cold, Death, Safe, Danger, Toxic, Smoke, Dusty, Misty, Cloudy, Wet, Dry, Floating, Hanging, Sneaky, Training...
• Material: Grass, Metal, Wood, Rock, Tree, Sand, Water, Acid, Lava, Fire ...

Name 2 Options (110):

• Weapon: Rockets, Snipe, Carbine, Nades, Laser, Pistol, Sword, Hammer, Turret, Cannon, Tank, Overshield...
• Nature: Tree, Bush, Stump, Hill, Slope, Rock, Cliff, Canal, Canyon, Overhang, Cave, Tunnel, Puddle, Fountain, Spring, Hole, Sewer, Waterfall, Puddle, Lands, Forest, ...
• Objective: Flag, Objective, Spawn, Ball, Goal, Security, Entrance, Exit, Station, Terminal, Command
• Geometry: Base, Bridge, Box, Platform, Rail, Ramp, Pit, Attic, Stairs, Street, Hut, SnipeHut, Hall, Outpost, Post, Alcove, Den, Room, Basement, Tower, Pillar, Trench, Column, Square, Landing, Stage, Window, Theater, Square, Shaft, Piston, Pocket, Hatch, Ledge, Dropdown, Lift, Passage, House, Storage, Belt, Circle, Wheel, Ring, Spiral,
• Props: Truck, Train, Radio, Fence, Car, Garbage, Dumpster, Computer, Lights, Cargo, Crate, Container, Crane, Pipe, Sewer, Cage, Satellite, Asteroid, Tire, Bonfire, Ship, Boat, Battleship, Hologram, Shield,
• Number: One, Two, Three

Schedule a recording session...this is going to require some more Spartan Chatter! If the words are recorded separately and then played together there are only 180 sound bites needed for this. If the words need to be spoken and recorded together for better fluidity and realism then it will require an actor to say 7,590 phrases. Totally doable

 

P0 Unbreakable Forge When Updating Game
This is my highest priority, please have a solid, finished Forge Mode at launch. Having bits and pieces break with every update is just infuriating. Having to constantly update maps, scripts, welds, prefabs, settings etc after each update is discouraging and just not fun.

P1 Primitive and Detail Pieces
Primitive pieces are the easiest pieces to work with as they are not as inconsistent as the detailed pieces. The detailed pieces became somewhat obsolete when the detailed pieces were introduced. The only reason they are still used is because we don't have the same dimensions in Primitive. Kind of silly to be honest. I would suggest instead of adding every possible combination of sizes to just let us enter the size in a prompt and generating a simple piece out of it.

P1 Sphere Pieces
I find the restriction of not having spheres quite crucial. Having to make a semi-sphere roof out of many ring pieces is not an efficient solution.

P1 Welding
One of my least favorite things in Forge is z-fighting when two surfaces are aligned with each other resulting in the surfaces flashing as they fight while rendering. The solution to z-fighting of pulling or pushing one piece by a pixel is also really unsatisfying as then you generally have to choose a favorite side. It would be nice if you could weld primitive pieces after they are overlapping and then turning them into a single piece, keeping only one instance of the overlapping surfaces and deleting the rest.

P1 Water / Liquid
This one has been mentioned MANY times. Placing water blocks would be perfect so that we have flexibility for forging above and bellow a water surface. We have seen many tricks over the years to recreate water, lava, toxic waste, etc, but it just never looks believable.

P1 Forge Canvas
Please, 1 canvas where we can apply a backdrop. Porting a whole map from one file to another is a huge pain in the butt. Also the light source should be adjustable so we don't have to rotate the whole map because one team is being blinded.

P1 Custom Lobbies​

Player count should not be able to be higher then the total amount of supported players. The extra players should be added automatically to a queue in spectator mode and only be added to the player count once a spot opens. There is also the troublesome bug that causes the menus to freeze between games.​

P2 Scripting
Scripting has been a huge struggle with me as it is not intuitive. Having multiple script brains is confusing and not efficient when trying to review code. It would be nice to have the option to have ONE script brain/console to handle all the scripting. Creating our own labels would be nice as well instead of being limited to A-Z.

Collision detection should be added as the 'Boundary Check' condition doesn't seem to work for this when dealing with non-player objects. I also believe detection only works currently if the center of the object is within the boundary or if the whole object is within the boundary.

P3 Natural Vegetation Pieces
There should be more of a variety when it comes to trees, bushes and flowers. We have many rock pieces allowing us to make formations that are not recognizable, which is nice, but with vegetation it is very restrictive as we only have 3 or 4 tree types per theme. It gets tiresome seeming the same tree 30+ times on a map and restricts creating unique environments. Some more vegetation pieces would be welcomed.

P5 Random Map Generator
There is just so many great maps out there that never get traction because they are being devoured by the mass amount of content we create. It would be nice to have some kind of verification system where a group of people/judges deem the map complete and it gets tossed in a 'completed community map' pool. Players can then boot up a Custom Game, the game would determine the game mode selected and player count and pick a random map out of the pool. Kind of like matchmaking but with an unlimited amount of community created maps and game modes.

There is more but my hands are tired...to be continued!

 

P1 - Editor and Scripting DOCUMENTATION from 343

What is the most important aspect to any piece of software or programming language? Well, being able to ****ing use it! And how do you that? Oh, right, DOCUMENTATION. DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION, DOCUMENTATION!!!

Skip to page 33 of this manual: http://marathon.bungie.org/story/manuals/Marathon-Infinity-Manual.pdf
Notice how right off the bat it gives you definitions of what everything is, and tells you what does work and what doesn't?

Halo 5's forge is great, but the vague and sometimes comic-but-not-helpful descriptions at the bottom of the object list don't make them any easier to use. How does Halo 5's spawn system work? Why do random decimal errors appear when I duplicate, move, or rotate an object? Instead of having the community try and reverse engineer all of this stuff, 343 could release documentation for Forge to answer a lot of question and as a guide to becoming a better forger.

 

If you waste one of your 10 choices on invincible monitor mode you are bad and should be ashamed.

 

I'd prefer that my friend that gets bored to not grief me. Also, What about forge permissions? Only allow the host to modify and save a map if they so choose?

 

Where was the option for "forge should be cut"? Does my opinion not matter?

 

Yeah it'd be a nice feature but is in no way a priority over those other options

 

I'm surprised you didn't put documentation as one of the preset options in the survey.