Hey everyone and welcome back to another ForgeHub Newsfeed! This week we got quite a bit of news, including some old news we thought we felt would be better suited to wait for this article. Before we jump into this News Feed we had just 1 quick announcement, Myself and some other members of staff will be attending the HCS World Championship this upcoming weekend, we'll have a recap article but if you see us there be sure to say hi and we'll have some goodies to give you (while supplies last). So be sure to say hi if you see us there! Without further ado let's jump right into this News Feed!

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Mastering the Fundamentals
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Over the last few weeks, we have received a total of 4 Forge Fundamental videos, if you haven't seen them here's a link to our other recap articles/news feeds:


Building

Scripting and Bots

Lighting and Audio, Canvases & Filesharing (This Article)

Playlist if you'd rather watch the videos:


As stated above, we have 2 more videos to cover in today's article, "Lighting and Audio" and "Canvases & File Sharing" so today is going to be quite the lengthy one, as a reminder I will have these parts sectioned out so if there is a specific portion you're looking for just going to each of the sectioned spaces.

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Lights, Camera, Action
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Lighting is a major part of Forge, especially with all the improvements we've got between Halo 5 and Forge's current iteration, with many new changes to the Forge Platform when it comes to lighting in Infinite Tyler Feddeler is the master who will be guiding us through. There are many new aspects to lighting this go round and many changed features shown in the latest video, some being basic like canvas lighting, while others giving us a new way to create our own volumetric fog with lights.



Let's start our breakdown with some of the brand new Map Option UI, as you can see there is a TON of new options allowing you to properly light, fog, and bounce your lighting as you wish, giving us the true freedom a developer gets when lighting their creations. We can now dynamically change the Sun's exact angle with these controls, even making the sun disappear completely by hiding it under the map. We're also able to change the Sun's color, the light it produces, and its intensity. I can't wait to get my eyes blinded by the minigames people will make with 100% intensity! Along with this, you have very specific directional skylight overrides which can be selected with a large pool of colors presumably given the options shown with other lighting properties! As we can also see the colors that are provided are no longer named, hopefully, this will be changed in a later update so we can know exactly what color we're applying to communicate that without co-forging compatriates!

Here are some more screenshots of how even just these few settings can change the look and feel of a map!





More UI settings were also shown to us through this video, from some dev tool-like settings allowing us to properly optimize our maps for all platforms and to assist in framerate management later in the lifespan of a project!


(Picture of Shadow Overlap)


(Picture of Light overlap)

Ok, so to break down what we can see here with the new dev tool-like settings it looks like we can see a varying range of colors with shadows cast by our light sources and also heatmaps of lights, this is shown and explained more in the video however from what I can tell this is to assist primarily in Framerate issued causing areas of maps. Lighting seems to be a major contributor to the start of possible performance issues and hopefully, this new tool setting will help us minimize all performance issues on maps once we understand it better. Only experience will allow that though, only so many ways to vocally teach, and sometimes hands-on is the best method. We can also see the ability to see individual light probes, turning this setting on will allow you to see all the probes on your map, and this can help to see where reflection volumes and other lighting techniques/lights will be best utilized on a map and allow for the best lighting possible now that we can see the exact probes. The manipulation of lighting is going to be insane!

In both the Shadow and Lighting overlap pictures you can see varying colors, the brighter an area within the overlap is, the more on the engine it will tax to render appropriately, ideally you'll want to have it on a lower red color (on the light overlap; light blue/purple on Shadow overlap) it seems to have the best performance on your map. This can be seen on each light fixture you place, whether it's invisible (Generic light) or a light that is premade that you edit (Forerunner, UNSC, etc). Lights have a new general upgrade as well, Point lights can be used how they were used back in Halo 5, however, if you want dynamic shadows to cast on players, vehicles, or objects then you'll have to use a spotlight. Spotlights can have dynamic or static shadows but are the only light type that allows for dynamic lighting to apply to shadows.


(Picture of Light Probes being shown on a map)


(Picture of custom volumetric fog emitting from a light)

Those probes can be insanely small and will ultimately help you light your map, as stated above, however, the crazy thing that we're allowed to do now is creating our own custom fog! With the power of volumetric lighting (And I presume coloring lighting) we'll be able to have our very own custom fog on our maps, allowing us to get into the nitty gritty details with our maps fog and foglights, whether that be interior spaces or outdoor! Lighting is one of the most important sections of Art for a map, with these new settings and options we truly are going to make insane-looking maps once we master the lighting system!

One last cool tidbit of information is with the power of reflection volumes we can truly make our own custom reflections, any metal texture or a metal piece will have a custom reflection if it is concealed within a player-placed reflection volume, allowing us to have truly dynamic reflections and immerse players even more.
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Listener beware, you're in for a scare
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(Map Options of Ambient Sound)

Audio this time seems very straightforward and dynamic compared to Halo 5, while back in Halo 5 we had to spawn the audio in and lower it to a specific point to limit its range it seems like we're able to now not only script audio to play in certain areas or to specific players but also audio will generate to make sure it's playing appropriately in areas with a lot of walls and other objects to make sure a sound plays how it would in real life to the player. Sorry if that was a little long-winded but it's all really really simple. Once you place your audio you can generate it and that will allow you to have proper audio in rooms and other locations on the map that you set. Speaking of areas of your map though, the entire map can have an ambient sound; primary and secondary sounds are mixing sounds you can have that will play throughout the map, while reverb will change the tone or echo of a sound. So if you want to have the map sound like outside of Halo 2's Cairo Station then you can! With this sound preview we also got to look at a project by Nitro and Mythic Fritz (Forge Councilors), here are those pictures of their lighting work on this dark forest environment!






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Canvases for the masses
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In this week's Forge Fundamental video we got some news on the canvases launching with Forge along with other news, this section will be covering the canvases







These are the 6 Forge canvases that we'll be able to play around with and Forge on once the tool releases, these canvases all look beautiful and almost meet all community requests that we've been asking for for years! Especially the last one, finally a canvas where we aren't limited in any way by skybox, terrain, or too low of a floor or ceiling, this is truly a special occasion. While we still await a canvas similar to Tidal from Halo 5 or a Snow canvas these will surely suffice for the time being and give a vast amount of options for us to create our maps with! What's your favorite canvas? Share it with us in the comments below!

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Sharing is Caring
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We are getting a fileshare system on the Launch of Forge! This is huge, we haven't had a proper fileshare system launch with Forge since Halo 4, and this will truly allow us to share to our heart's content. As you can see here the community tab has been updated, with" My bookmarks" and "My Files" on the side, with a more conventional filesharing system in 4 major squares on the right. Prefabs have a dedicated tab this time, allowing people to find numerous amount of prefabs at the touch of a button. Recommended is meant to be the equivalent of "343 Favorites", allowing a constant flow of developer-recommended game modes and maps to be at your fingertips in moments! Popular maps and modes are, as they say, popular modes and maps that will cycle with time, based on community reception to said creation. There is also one smaller box at the bottom, "Browse All" which as it implies, allows a user to search for anything, whether that's just going through each page or searching for key phrases, tags, or users.


(Example of what the content browser will look like, similar to Halo 5 with a 3x3 - 4x4 grid presumably)


As we can see the browser has been updated from Halo 5, from the old options and customization options being present to allow a proper sharing method & promotion, to a brand new setting, managing collaborators and copy protection!

Copy protection works as it sounds, this will be a general setting that prevents others from stealing your projects or claiming to be the owner, alongside the copy protection we're also getting an accreditation system that will be in the "Credits" tab, this tab will show anyone who has been on the map at any point it was saved and can not be changed. So be sure to lock your games if you want to be the only one in the credits, as there's no way to change it once a player is on that list!

Collaborators can be set by the map owner and allow for people you select to edit, save, and view the map in Forge, allowing you to co-forge without even having to be on. With all these new Co-Forge friendly settings there of course should be something to prevent a change or allow you to go back if necessary right? Well, fret not! We now have a version history!



This version history is huge! Not only for Co-Forging, but also for solo forgers, ever wanted to go back to an old version of the map you may have liked better? Fret not you can! As long as you lock that version of the map it will be there forever; if you fail to lock the version then it will be automatically deleted (if it's not the latest version) after 30 days. With this version history, you can also publish whichever version you want without having to have 10 different files for each version. Another great quality of life change is the ability to add notes to each version, allowing you to know exactly what was done on each version of the map or what each version contains! These do have to be manually put, same as a lock or a publish, but they will stay as long as the file is locked or the file hasn't expired!
These new features are great for all Forgers, hopefully, we'll all be able to use this to the fullest extent and Co-Forge to our heart's content with these new features! Fair warning as well that copied maps do NOT contain other versions of the map, they will start at version 1 and go on as you save from them.

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Honorable mentions
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A popular request that came out after the lighting video was the request to have the ability to turn off player outlines with a custom game setting or script, Michael Schorr (Forge Lord) and the team have heard this request loud and clear and are planning on possibly implementing this feature at some point, hopefully, sooner rather than later for some killer spooky maps!

Halo Infinite is also getting some new achievements with the Winter Update, these span from Co-Op specific to achievements that require specific actions taking place on a boss or enemy, so be on the lookout for those if you're an achievement hunter!

Halo Waypoint also recently received a Post Game Carnage Report feature for Halo Infinite, allowing you to finally view your previous matches online.

MCC also received some updates to challenges, awarding more spartan points than before, as well as the exchange being updated to harbor more unlocks per week.
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End Transmission
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Thanks everyone for joining me for this installment of the ForgeHub News Feed! I thought it'd be a lot better if this was compacted into 1 article rather than multiple, hopefully, you all agree! As a reminder, if you're going to HCS World Championship this upcoming weekend don't be afraid to say hi, get those free goodies before they're gone haha! This was the final Forge Fundamental video article, we here at ForgeHub are ready to kick into High Gear with content production and you'll see that in the coming weeks! From the Saturday lobbies starting back up on November 12th, to the next installment of Creators Spotlight, to new Forge Tutorial videos soon being pumped out we hope you're all just as excited as we are! See you all soon for the latest episode of Creators Spotlight on the 25th!
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See Y'all star side!
-Crush
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