Hey everyone welcome back to ForgeHub, today we're going to start a new series called Creator's Spotlight, this is an interview series that any of you can be apart of, we'll be featuring mainly underdogs in this series but also will be featuring some prominent names every now and again. This series will comprise of a forgers entire career as a whole, not just one map, and will give you insight into their design process, their inspirations, and everything in between. There will always be a video and a transcript version (not exact, some elaboration and extra bits here) of the interview here on the site that way if you prefer to read you can, but if you prefer to watch and visualize we'll have flythroughs and gameplay of the maps from the creator as well. If you have any questions about this new series please let me know down in the comments and I'll answer any question about the series there!



Without further a-do let's jump right into Creator's Spotlight, take it away Bob




Badonkers Bob (B): Hi I'm Badonkers Bob, I've been a Forger since Halo 3, but it wasn't until Halo 5 where some of you may have been familiar with my maps, which are the series of Aliens maps.




Crush (C): That's awesome man, sounds like you've been here for quite some time then, if you don't mind me asking what's been a lot of your inspiration for your maps, including the Aliens maps? I've kept some eye on then for awhile and they're honestly quite the achievement.




B: Well the films were definitely a huge inspiration for creating environments in general, but the Original Aliens customgame from Halo Reach was hugely influential for the first map, after that the style that the original map's design took became a foundation when building environments and gameplay sections on future maps.




C: Awesome man! Aliens has been a very inspirational franchise for a lot of people, heck Bungie was inspired by the opening, characters, and weapons for most of Combat Evolved; even that classic Aliens map back in Reach and other linear maps that people have made and played have created great memories and inspirations to people.


My next Question is what maps are you planning to bring over to Infinite (if any)?




B: I definitely am going to be bringing maps over to infinite, however they're going to be more compact and compiled together, as the original maps were concepts I was intending for 1 map that just didn't fit into 1 map because of the budget, so what was leftover was in a since compiled together to make sequels. So I'm looking to combine some of them instead of making a myriad of episodes in similar areas.


C: That's awesome to hear that you'll be bringing some of your maps over, and yea the budget, even with all it's improvements since Forge's inception, has still contained people's ideas and still has its limitations, hopefully it can be expanded more with Infinite.


You've mentioned that you've been working on these Aliens maps for quite some time now, how long have you been working on them and how far are you into the series?




B: I've actually been working on this series for about 4 years now, I'm actually on the 10th map I believe; one of the reasons I've spent so much time on this series is as I get feedback and as the series goes on I go back to the oldest and older maps and start spicing them up and improving them as I understand more about what I'm going for in my designs and what I can do to maximize the budget even more than I already have. For the 10th map, I just have to run a few more tests on a prop to see what I can do with it, primarily to see if I can send it out an airlock haha. But some of the updates I've been doing to the older maps have made the layout and astetics look completely different as they were originally released in groups of 3 so some of them are back to back in continuity with their story; so I decided to go back and flesh them out even more to storytell with my environments and give players better experiences, even the ones that are 3+ years old I still go back to and spruce up.




C: Nice! So with your maps you try to keep the outros and intros into a nice story flow rather than just jump around in a sense?




B: In a sense, I wish I could delve into it further with more map storytelling and details, but hopefully I'll be able to really dive into that in Infinite.




C: Hopefully thats the case, obviously Infinite has a lot of potential for fractions in the community. My next Question relates to that actually, what're some of your desires/wants in the new forge?




B: I feel like an area they could expand a lot in is the Fx department and labeling/navpoints as those help players understand areas and their environments more; having water for example would open up so many doors on making maps more immersive and detailed, especially since we can also change the fx to make it look like you're underwater currently it would make sense as a upgrade and it's definitely something I want. Object scaling is another thing as doubling the size of an object or cutting it in half would open up a lot of different opportunities for how people use object within their maps, and we'll discover ne ways to use object with that, whether it be little portions of it sticking through the wall to look like something else or something completely different as that can make it look like a completely different object sometimes.




C: Yea thats always been a neat trick forgers have utilized, allowing for us to expand upon that hidden marvel of creativity. I definitely agree with you on the scaling stuff too as that would only expand on that creativity thats possible, by being able to shrink and make object larger to accommodate that creativity boost even more. The next Question I got for you is actually what advice would you give to new forgers to help them come up in their new career/hobby?




B: No matter how daunting just keep playing around with it, get some experience of just building in general, but while you're doing that and showing off your creations be sure to keep in mind and understand the different perspectives of players, of course how they interact with you map but also how they will break things or be out of balance based off certain player skill levels or lack there of. Just things like that, that way overtime as you rinse and repeat you'll be able to predict how things will work out and design and build better as a whole.




C: That's some excellent advice there actually, hopefully all you new Forgers out there will take that into account as thats one of the most important things a Forger can and some Forgers struggle with initially, whether that be with their first maps or their later maps as sometimes feedback has to be taken with a grain of salt sometimes, but thats where you have to learn to pick and choose. But overall make sure you take the feedback and accommodate for it as it'll help you improve as a Forger and your maps and their designs as a whole. My next Question Bob is actually what are some of your favorite Maps from the community?




B: Some of the creative/wacky ones were some that actually inspired me a bit but one of my favorites is actually the recreation of the classic Toilet minigame where the Lid is animated and there's a lot of astetic work put into it, Night of the Mantis is another one that's one of my favorites as it's an excellent example of scripting capability, it also looks astetically great too. I love several other maps too but not only because of scripting but because of the potential they show for atmosphere and astetics especially. I'd love to see more ridiculous things from the community, one of my ideas I've actually had is a Shrek themed map where you spawn in a swamp and there is a Piano in front of you playing the Shrek Theme and you turn around and there's a giant pixilated Shrek head behind you haha.


While I'll definitely be putting some more maps out before Infinite's Forge and will be continuing to forge in it, honestly I'm excited to see what the community will come up with and the potential for the explosion of new ideas and content the Game will provide.




C: Definitely and thats something I think we can all look forward to, especially withthe explosion of ideas that'll come from all the new equipment, weapons, and the sandbox as a whole. Thank you Bob for sitting down with me and introducing yourself to more of the community as a whole!




Creator's Spotlight has been a passion project of mine for the past 6ish months, while it didn't come out when planned I personally hope you've enjoyed this rough draft of the series and look forward to what we have to come in the future. This is a series dedicated to the community and will allow anyone to be given the spotlight as long as they work hard and catch someone's eye. Please leave any feedback or questions that you'd like us to ask in future interviews in the comments below and tell us what you thought of Creators Spotlight!


We here at ForgeHub hope you've enjoyed the start of this new series and we'll see you next time!





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-Crush​