This update has been absolutely amazing for my creativity. A lot of the things that I have been missing have been added and it is allowing me to express emotions I never thought I had. Plant life is a major element of any natural environment, and this update added dozens of essential items such as vines and alien fauna. These are things that bring a design to life and there are maps I have not attempted because we didn't have the things that made them feel organic and 'lived in' until now. The same goes for Barrens. This canvas and its terrain pieces are a godsend. Since day one, I have wanted rich sand pieces and I got more than I expected. Sand works for anything, whether it is a yellowish Egyptian style map, a reddish Martian map, a brownish volcanic map, a pale white beach map, or anywhere in between. And thematically, sand can blow into buildings, bury structures and exist in a variety of circumstances. This update also comes witih a slew of new sounds and effects. While I'm not keen on the fact that the list is cluttered with size variants of beams, the beams themselves also open avenues to new previously unexplored themes. Speaking of themes, the new Sangheli pieces are incredible. While it is nice to be able to replicate 343's Sangheli theme, the pieces themselves are incredibly versatile and might just become my bread and butter. I just wish we had a larger selection. If you're a script junkie, you're probably in heaven right now with all the new options available to us. FX weren't scriptable before either, so that adds a level of control to Forge that will really elevate the quality bar. I'm barely scratching the surface. It's been a week and I've made nearly a dozen different concept pieces while my mind flies off the handle. We've had a lot of good updates up to this point - textures, weather effects, increased object count, prefabs and tidal - but this is the update that really allows my art styles to shine. Now I can focus on good layouts...
It's done. But man I need more blocks to play with. If you have the sudden urge to check it out in forge it's called Court of Hearts.
Holy Crap! Emissive Overlay is a fantastic addition if used right. The '0' setting is amazing for some structures and highlight pieces. This becomes this Spawn a block and set colour to Black & Emissive=0 for a true black.
I will admit the map in the 3rd pic has been done to death. I mean, EVERYONE has that map on their xbox.