Opinions on Halo Reach Forge

So far i'm loving forge, i've spent pretty much 2 evenings of gaming just playing around making interesting structures. I've never used Halo3 Forge so not sure how different it is, i would however kill to have an undo button or even a confirmation pop up when deleting as i keep deleting stuff in error (I refuse to accept this as user error lol!)

 

I like Forge 2.0 much better. Phased objects make manipulation of these objects so much easier. Using the snap tool and coordinated makes lining up pieces so much better as well.

As someone else said just because it is easier to make maps doesn't mean it doesn't take skill. There were many maps I wanted to make in Forge 1.0 but I would get frustrated at the extreme amount of time it would take to do the things I had pictured in my head, in addition, budget constraints also made some things impossible. Sure there are going to be people who throw crappy maps together, but there will be also be more people able to make great maps due to it taking less time.

Are there some issues? For me rotating pieces in snap mode can take multiple times to get it right. The bumper buttons for adjusting piece height is a little bit of a pain but I've gotten way better at using coordinated to make changes that can't be made with the bumpers and nudging. Sometimes when trying to forge inside areas you get glitched into the ground and killed. These things add a little bit of time to your map making but when you consider how much easier it is to do everything else you really have to appreciate how much better Forge 2.0 is.

 

Has anyone mentioned anything about gametypes?

I mean Forge 2.0 is wonderful.
I love it.

But has anyone realized the true potential in being able to manipulate gametype scenarios?

Go mess around for a bit.
You'll be amazed.

 

well i can't believe nobody has talked about the other blatant flaws in forge 2.0.
we have 2 lights. TWO LIGHTS for the ENTIRE of forgeworld!!! jesus, and scenery you have ridiculously small numbers of objects,
and for those gawping at the $10,000 budget limit, well that was bungie being oh so sneaky by just making EVERY object cost more!
and i hate the buggy autosnap, how you will set the angle then edit the co-ordinates and BLAM the object auto rotates randomly...why?! ok put back into place, and set co ordinates again...BLAM. this happens like 33 times then it just behaves randomly.
oh and fine tuning?? i WOULD like it if it was really fine precise tuning, but its only to one decimal point, and you can move objects finer than that manually, so you get the scenario where two objects dont line up with the coordinate edit system so i have to move them together manually, and dont get me started on how frustrating that is if its vertically since its how long you hold down the RB button for that sets the height!

what else?
oh yeh, teleporters, well yes they're actually great apart from phallic shaped and they allow all sorts of editing and customisation, oh i cant wait to see what shield doors do,,,
nothing. small medium and large. no other options, no only let humans/vehicles/air/heavy through, it's all preset, and wierdly too!
a shield door will now let people go through.
let warthogs and other land vehicles go through
but stops air...
how is this useful to me?! so much for a hanger with a shield!

object snapping is still buggy ffor identical objects,
2 walls both set to 90* both next to each other, but a few millimetres height difference?
ah and rotation...jesus rotation.... now if you dont find this incredably frustrating then i can tell you you havent been using forge enough or precisely enough.
if i want to angle an object a little bit when its precisely facing an axis, fine! but say i rotate a bit first...to make a curve, well then trying to rotate the object will stick it at a funny angle, because instead of rotating around the objects axis, bungie decided forge would rotate objects about the MAPS axis... >_<
this brings sheer guesswork and headaches trying to figure out how to exactly inverse an objects angle, normally it gets down to, urm, so if thats 28 then isnt the opposite 90 take away 28? no? oh ok i dont know why that didnt working I'll just do it by eye and get it closeish.

matchmaking maps all look the same, mlg/competitative maps? the same coloured futuristic bridges and tunells etc etc etc again,m there cant be any great deal of variation when you have to make an enclosed MLG map.

prebuilt objects make maps too easy to make! now this isnt forge 1.0 snobbishness, this is annoyance at seeing a map, thinking hey this looks pretty good this guy must be skilled, then realising it's just a bunch of bprebuilt objects strewn together that anyone could make ¬_¬

oh and did anyone else play the campaign, check out the forklift and cars and think omg that'll make a sweet human town zombie map yeh! oh wait they're not in forge?

oh and small objects? you have the column. thats it, the next smallest is 1x1 flat, and thats much bigger than a column.

try doing something advanced in the new forge, make a circle (well polygon really) out of 5x5 flats, ya know, place one flat, next at 15, then 30, then 45 and keep going till they meet at the top. it will not look neat, there will be different spaced gaps or merges between the flats nomatter how much coordinate editing you do, to get it right you have to mess about manually.

and am i the only one who expected more from forge? yes it's better, it's neater to do things and more user friendly, but what happened to making switches? destructable grav lifts and palletes? my dreams of actual 'press x to' switches that could be linked to doors? and didnt you hate ALL of the limits placed EVERYWHERE? boundries everywhere, you can't go too near the waterfall, or rocks down low, or too high above the rock shelf or etc etc etc, it just makes it seem far more closed in than it should be regardless of how big the area we can use is.

invasion gametypes, im almost sure this was added in as a user controlled feature at the last second because it seems very user unfriendly, with menus such as fireteam spawn being controlled by a button that usually controlls what round things spawn on instead of having a unique button...and this is beforre you count in the things like making sure something isnt set to never spawn and not spawn at start, i mean come on, didn't halo 3 have protection there so that sort of thing didnt happen?

now i know when halo 3 first started, forge was rubbish, it took a dlc map pack to open up forge's potential, so i held out hope for the noble map pack, that hope was quickly banished with the mini copy of forgeworld we got.
and did you check out what the designers said on the bungie podcast?
oh yeh forgeworld is perfect so we're just releasing new content from now on, no more polish needed... aarrrghhhh

 

The new Forge is awesome but i don't like how people don't see a difference between "Forging" and "Forging on Forgeworld". There are also other good Forge Maps(Not only Forge World and Tempest) like Boardwalk, Powerhouse and Breakpoint which also have more Scenery. I just hate how people say "There are no Pallets in Halo: Reach's Forge". No. Try out the other maps. They are cool.

 

This, its just soooo much fun to forge. In halo 3 my favorite time was spawns and weapons and everything BUT the geometry, now I often forget important things like the camera or the objectives just to focus more on design and aesthetics. It feels so natural, and keeps getting better the more I use it.

Even though like, a mere third of my ideas actually ferment.

 

I love forge. So much.

The improvement over Halo 3 forge is incredible, albeit the gametype options dont fit like they used to.

However, there is one major problem. 2 lights. I know about Framerate drop and all the other problems that could be caused with more lights, but why else did we only get 2?

I would happily swap out some of the other effects for more lighting.

 

So after being around, forging here and there, and seeing people come and go, I've come to a conclusion similar to vyctoriouz's above statement. It's incredible difficult to use the objects EXACTLY as you want to, the textures and the shapes are like a cage that must be conformed to, lest your map end up in bits of ugly pieces. I still like forge, not so much the objects, but the tool itself. I'll continue to forge, and await Reach's equivalent to Sandbox, whereas Forge World is Foundry. (Tempest being Avalanche...?)

Also, to elderbury's above comment. I was about to take it, and rip it into little bits and pieces, laughing at your ignorance of many of the issues you stated. Then I realized, it isn't worth it, since you'll probably never see this comment as it is.