Hey everybody and welcome back to another ForgeHub Newsfeed! We have a LOT to go through today over the most recent video of Forge Fundamentals and some other stuff too involving MCC!

Without further ado, let's jump right into the news!

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SCRIPTING SCRIPTING SCRIPTING!
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A few days ago we received another Forge Fundamentals video from 343 industries, if you'd like to watch the video and missed it then here is that for ya! Otherwise, this article will summarize a lot from the video.



With this installment of Forge Fundamentals, John Junyszek was joined by Forge Lord Michael Schorr and Technical Designer Connor Kennelly, today primarily a lot of scripting info was shared, including the node graph systems and some of it's functionalities. First off we get to see a new map from the Forge Council, a member that some of you may know, Certified Champ!









The map seems to be coming along really nicely! Hopefully, we'll get to check it out ourselves once Forge is fully released to us on November 8th! Just from these screenshots and the video you can tell just how much extra detail that we can actually get from this new Forge. We're also able to see some brand new pieces that we haven't seen before, such as Wreckage pieces from (presumably) ships, Tarps that we can place, Fences, and a whole new slew of accents. It truly is amazing just how much is truly able to be done with this new iteration, hopefully, we'll see more Forge Council maps as we progress through the future Forge Fundamental videos!

Now for the heavy scripting portion, for those who don't know, scripting is a way to add logic and create events in Forge, this allows you to create things from new game modes, gameplay specific events, and moveable objects with a button press, as many of you have probably seen from the Co-Op flight. For starters this new version of scripting works slightly different to Halo 5's even on a starting level, not only has the system been overhauled, but the scripts will no longer run at all times. Scripts now only play during "Play Mode" while you can still tinker with them and run around your map in "Test Mode" without having to worry about scripts possibly messing up a portion of your map or having to worry about a script activating. Overall a good change to the tool and the scripting process!



We can also see from this section of the video that there is a "Global Log" that will tell you if your scripts were built successfully or not, allowing you to know right away if they are going to work in gameplay, rather than you having to go into custom games every single time to test out certain scripts. You can also see a unique UI pop-up, "Current Objective: Survive" this was triggered by scripts, meaning that we are going to be able to not only create a narrative with UI elements but also trigger them as we please! Can't wait to see all those unique mini-games and linear infection maps that take full advantage of this! In the video, this was triggered by a grenade throw, but you can attach this type of script to any action seemingly!

Here's a picture of how they set up this node graph for all of you who would like to replicate this in the future!



The new node graph system is seemingly an entirely new menu instead of a little box on the side of the screen like it was in Halo 5. As you can see, each part of the events and actions you can do in the node graph are named for easy manipulation and understanding, each one also comes with a set of pins. The diamonds on the side are the action pin, it allows you to hook up what runs next in a set, while the circles are points on the scripts that provide data to other scripts, such as X player dying, durations, grenade types, etc.

Some more UI goodness you can see below the Node browser, this is where you'll select any event or action that you'd want to use in your scripts, it looks like we have a lot of stuff to be able to use in this browser so hopefully, that wets the mouth of some of you scripting fiends out there!



For all of you lovers of custom weapons from Halo 5, rejoice! As the custom weapon functionality has officially returned with dedicated support for Scripting and all weapon variants! You can see a glimpse at some of the nodes required to pull this off below



Base Weapon is the frame of the gun you're holding, ammo count, and fire rate. Configuration is the variant of the weapon you want to use for the bullets that come out of the gun or effects you want to come off the sword/hammer.

Scripting is also still categorized into script brains like they were with more advanced scripting in Halo 5, however this time each script brain has its own Node Graph menu. With the new scripts we have seen so far we have seen a lot of manipulation of game mechanics, but hold onto your butts as now we jump into the juicy stuff, Juggernaut, the classic FFA mode has returned through scripting! Connor remade this mode using a ton of scripts throughout multiple different brains, each script brain holding a different context for the game to run such as general game mode settings, what happens when a player dies, who becomes the Juggernaut, etc. Including error handling, if someone leaves the game and was the Juggernaut or about to be the Juggernaut.

For those of you wondering what Doom Fruit meant when 343 was teasing it on Twitter, it's a string that Connor wanted to add for the hell of it haha, good to have that cleared up though!



Here are some more examples of other scripts that will be available and that were used to recreate Juggernaut, it seems we'll have full customization from Traits, Weapons, and in-game events with this new scripting system! There is also a lot of math and crazy numbers according to Connor that will be accessible to us when this launches, so everyone, break out those calculators and protractors!

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The Bots are Coming
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With this video we also got a brief look at how bots function on Forge maps, we got a small Juggernaut demo with the bots, and the bots seem to really be able to function in almost any scenario, even with the unique scripts being used for this mode the bots still know exactly what to do and how to do it!



The brief look at the bots we got to explain how bots understand how to play a map is through nav mesh (which is automatically generated) and nav point pieces that are placed by the player for very specific situations or hints. We also get a few settings to go along with this, one of which is a visualization setting that will show you how bots will interact with the section of the map you're looking at, the image below shows an example of that.



Now of course auto-generation isn't always perfect, so the hints that we are given and are able to use are the "nav mesh" category of pieces, these allow you to give hints from directional paths, crouch or clamber paths, and many other hints that a bot would need to properly traverse your map. Thankfully these hints seem very user-friendly and easy to use, as they are using the same boundary system that we have used in the past for strongholds and other boundry-defined scenarios and game modes. You can also define if you don't want bots to go to an area with nav mesh cutters. It's great to see us getting more internal tool-like items in Forge to really allow us to flesh out our maps even more than we could before. This is also fantastic as now we are also able to properly test out our maps without other players, allowing us to have a full version of the map playable and ready for feedback as soon as we have a layout down!




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MCC News!
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This section is going to be really short as there isn't much MCC news but it has been confirmed that MCC will no longer be receiving Microtransactions, instead, the leveling system will give you more Spartan points and you will also more than likely have more avenues down the line for Spartan points when it comes to in-game challenges (we've already got monthly challenges rotating out so I assume it's more of those)

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End Transmission
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Phew, that was a long one, I was honestly scared I'd have to split it into 2 parts, haha, but thank you, everyone, who's come out to this edition of the ForgeHub Newsfeed, hopefully, you all enjoyed it! Can't wait to Forge and Script amazing things alongside y'all!
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See y'all star side
-Crush​