Hey You! If you didn't see the first part we recommend reading that first before starting this part! Part 1 C: That's definitely some great advice and also some great wants, hopefully, the passion for those tools and other elements of design can rub off on people more when the game comes out and we get to sink our teeth into that juicy new Forge Content. I know that to a lot of people you may be brand new, not like new to forge but a lot of people don't know who you are at all, heck a lot of people don't know what the scripters guild is, so would you guys mind on elaborating on the purpose of the scripters Guild? P: Certainly, I'll take this one Guardian, the Scripters Guild is a group of Forgers who pride themselves on knowing the ins and outs of most of the Forge-centric scripting behaviors, we can help you with almost any scripting problem you can come up with. Guardian here has been a part of the guild for quite some time now and is a part of the mod team there with me. If anyone has any questions about the Guild please feel free to reach out to me! If you'd like to join the guild there is a link in the Forgehub trusted discord channel to our discord and we'll be happy to bring you in/talk to you. C: Awesome, thanks for sharing that Punch, that's one of the reasons I wanted to try and have you both on here is to let people know about that more, as you guys have been very useful and helpful to me so I could only imagine how useful you'd be to a newer or less experienced Forger with big ideas. It's been great to hear the lovely back and forth from you guys too to keep this interview more lively! P: No problem! G: No problem, always here to help! C: Punch do you have any remaining questions for our friend here? P: Yes, I actually do! As much as I've already known Guardian through the Scripters Guild, heck we've recently brought him onto the Mod team for the Guild, I haven't actually had a chance to see a lot of your content,I recently learned that you actually got into a lot of Minecraft stuff before you fully went into the scripting element of Halo, so, with the puzzle levels and things like that, my curiosity would be, when you are designing the mechanisms or basing off the original concept/theme of said map/device, is there somewhere you're pulling those ideas from that you iterate on? G: Hahaha Dora! P: I mean hey if it's legitimate, if it's a springing off point it almost doesn't matter how silly it is sometimes, you should see some of the Source images I use to get some of my textures haha. G: Haha, one of the sayings I have is never let the truth get in the way of a Good Joke, so I can't really take credit for those ideas because it's actually my Forge partner Bromway that helps me get those ideas and helps me get inspired (and vice versa of course) when we're Forging. But what I was alluding to with Dora actually is that in the second map of "The Temple of the Lost Souls" there's a very tough puzzle that's straight from Dora, like it's basically copy pasted, haha. P: Yeah that's hilarious and awesome, no reason to feel bad about that at all, especially if it works, it doesn't matter as long as it works. C: Just want to interject here real quick, for context for anybody that's curious. These puzzle maps he is talking about are all available in his files or bookmarks on Halo 5 on his Gamertag, "The Guardian163" these maps are playable solo, co-op, really it doesn't matter except for having a good time on them and you can do that right now without anyone else in Halo 5! G: If you are interested in trying "The Temple of The Lost Souls" puzzle maps I've made with Bromway be sure to start with the 1st map, as that'll ease you into the puzzles we've created and what you're in for with the following maps in the series. Make sure you learn how to crouch jump ;p haha! P: I actually wanted to touch on that as well because that had come up in a recent conversation of ours and that would help a lot to share here. The things considered when trying to build the user experience of each map, how to communicate clear instructions to someone when you're not there when you can't just throw a UI prompt saying "Hey Listen" pop up next to them, it's something that's difficult to replicate properly in a map's design or its aesthetical context clue, so Gaudian I was wondering if you could touch on that a little bit. G: I'll speak in Hyperbole a bit, you have to expect a newer player on a map will be "dumber" than you, this isn't saying they're intellectually lesser than you or anything than that, not by a longshot, what I mean by that statement is that the map creator and/or their friends will typically have more of a clue of what to do inherently, however, a new player coming onto your map will have absolutely no context at all, so you have to kinda nudge them in the right directions without just giving them the answers to your maps. This applies to Puzzle maps, minigames, other Asymmetric game types, heck even core maps to an extent. You want to empower the new player's discovery and their dopamine receptors for figuring out something clever, whether that be solving an Easter Egg you've cleverly hidden or your puzzle map in general, that is a powerful response to trigger inside a player's mind, especially on a map they're learning for the first time. You should, as a rule of thumb, expect your players to not get something initially, try to ease them into it and help them understand, then when they start to grasp what you're doing/getting at you gently pull the metaphorical cheese on a string to get them more intrigued and motivated to complete your challenge. C: So, in a sense, something easy to you might not be so simple to someone else who's never touched your map before, something like, "Right here you have to jump against this wall then thrust slide off this small ledge" haha, of course, over time that could be more obvious but just as a standard it's harder to grasp at first. P: I'm a broken record on this one, all the time, but it could be as simple as I'm not colorblind, but my User is. And that may be partially color blind, so they don't think to turn on a colorblind mode because they don't normally need it, something you did, was just too close and was inside the threshold of where they start to have issues. C: It would definitely be nice if Infinite had colorblind options as (Until it was updated into MCC) that's actually something I've struggled with a lot because I actually am colorblind haha. G: It's weird that you say that because me and Bromway, have been doing our best to tread that line with colors very well, as we have friends that are colorblind so we want to make things as accessible s possible for them and anyone else who plays the maps. Light pollution from volumetric lighting and shapes can also help to alleviate those issues. Not to mention, sometimes just as a basis, you can associate things with a shape easier than you can a color sometimes depending on a situation. P: Colorblind mode typically doesn't even work for me. C: Haha, my friend Squally DaBeanz one day hopped into Forge with me because he and another friend of mine were curious and they just spawned blocks in and started switching colors, kinda testing me on what I could see and what looked like another color too closely, and found out that, not only am I multi-color colorblind (Not just conventional green Blue, or Red Yellow) but actually that I can't see certain shades appropriately, like sometimes 1 color for them is a completely different color for me even though its just a slight shade change and they were astonished by that, so seeing that you guys and some other forgers I've talked to have been trying to incorporate ways to combat that and making the maps accessible in other ways to colorblind individuals has actually been really helpful and eye opening in a lot of ways. For context, Grass is Orange to me... lol P: For me, some of the sniper glints in Infinite have actually thrown me off, I know that they're different, I've seen all the images for them, but when I only see it in a split second, my brain just doesn't register anything different or distinguishing factor from any of them other than the obvious blue shock rifle one. C: Same here honestly, it's really hard to tell for someone deficient in color recognition. G: There are some good design principles that may help some people work around those too, first of all, I was one of those players, we thought something was super easy, and in the end, I still couldn't do it, so while I couldn't do it, I just spawned a rocket launcher and had fun killing Bromway until he helped me understand it a bit better, sometimes you just have t have fun haha, but seriously though when designing around stuff like that it's really tricky because you're treading a very fine line and Bromway and I have sometimes smashed our heads trying to figure out the best way to do things on our Puzzle maps based off those accessibility areas, like previously mentioned with the shapes instead of colors or alongside colors. But the point is it's tough. C: Guardian let me ask you, as we've kinda just danced around scripting a bit, but I'm curious, what got you into scripting/what helped you get into it? Was there like a video you watched or did you just play around with it orrrr? G: First a half joke, DON'T, haha, I don't recommend learning Halo 5's version of scripting, especially this late into the game's life cycle, not only is the Scripters Guild here to help you with that to the best of our ability, but it's so confusing sometimes that sometimes you have to just step away to fully understand it. That's what the Guild is here for, is to help others get their scripting dreams complete and this will still be the case in Infinite too. It takes a while to fully understand and grasp the scripting system, building bad habits can hurt you while you're learning and it's quicker and arguably better if you allow us to help you understand it while also helping you build your scripting dream. Finding some examples of how people are doing something can be very helpful too. I'm not trying to be discouraging with that either, as there are many things that I am not personally good at, whether it's aesthetics or just being able to finish things, if you already have some general idea of what you want to do, do it and ask for help, the medium of game design and game development is all about collaboration, something you may not be able to do the best someone may be able to help you make it look and function better overall and that will save you any headaches of learning exact scripting mechanics or wasting time. Don't learn to script just because you have to, do it because you want to, because it's a lot of headaches that will burn you out. You're going to have to learn to enjoy it, because if you don't have the curiosity and the drive to make stuff work, then there are going to be a lot of headaches trying to understand how things work. If you want to do it, just start but I'd recommend reaching out to someone in the Guild instead to make it simpler. Ask for help either way though just so that people can help you get into it easier. C: Well alright Gentlemen, we've been slowly running out of time for this interview/podcast here so Punch is there anything else you'd like to say to Guardian? P: Nope I covered most of what I wanted to discuss with my questions! C: Awesome, how about you Guardian, is there anything you'd like to say to the audience? G: I want to thank everyone who came out here to listen to this episode with me as the character of interest, I also wanted to thank everyone in the scripters Guild who's helped me understand things smoother. I also want to thank my longtime Co-Forge buddy Bromway, we've been doing this for a while and I can't wait to continue our grind making our maps in Infinite! I'll reiterate the most important points here, if you want to make something, just start. even if it becomes the worst thing ever on purpose still release it and work on improving through feedback and sheer willpower and you'll improve. As nothing is ever perfect, there's always something you can edit and change. You have a right to make a bad map, you have a right to make mistakes, and you have a right to improve, that just all comes with time, so don't give up! C: Alright gentleman well thank you for joining me today! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Thank you to everyone who came out and read all of this, I know it's quite a lot but we're sure glad that you all are seemingly enjoying this form of content. If you have anyone you think should be featured in Creators Spotlight or any feedback for us please leave it down in the comments below of either our video or here on the site! We've been concocting some new things under the hood that we will be starting soon and also continuing our new tradition of weekly community-voted custom game nights. A reminder that those are hosted every Saturday at 9:30pm EST and are voted on in our announcement page on our discord! Until next time, Your Friendly Neighborhood Writer - Crush