My name is Alex, my gamertag is Woodsman907. You can call me Woodsman or Woods if you want. I’m pretty new to Forgehub, but I’ve been forging since Halo 3. I have a fairly methodical pattern when it comes to playing Halo games. I always beat the campaign on legendary first, then I go into matchmaking and play all my favorite playlists and many times as I can, until I can’t stand the game anymore. That invariably triggers my desire to explore the new Forge tool. Then I make a map with a ship on it. You can see most of my recent maps here on Forgehub. I made older less impressive ones for Halo 3 and Reach on my old profile, but I don’t remember if they made it to my file share. I’m just about ready to start a new map called Mutiny on the Fleek. I’m planning on three ships and three islands for this map. Each island will have it’s own theme and be connected to one of the ships via teleporter. So the idea is to take over the enemy island and their ship, or go for the neutral ship and island in the middle. Now here’s the tricky part. Instead of using the same kind of drivable ships I’ve seen other Forgers use, I would like to experiment with using gravity volumes. Those of you who have used gravity volumes probably know this, but for those who don’t, when an object touches two or more gravity volumes it starts to “float.” The idea is to create a grid of gravity volumes large enough for the ships to move freely around the map. Obviously there are some issues with that. For example, the more gravity volumes an object touches at once, the faster it rises. So the size of the ships and the spacing of the volumes will have to be worked out carefully in order to get the ships to “float” consistently. Another issue is figuring out how to steer the ships once they “float.” I have some thoughts on the steering. My first thought is that it would be cool to build sail ships and use gravity sliders as “wind.” It’s hard to guess if that would work or not without testing it, but what I will try to do is place a rotating object in the center of the map with gravity sliders welded to it. The object in the center, or objects as it will take several groups, will be the eye of the “storm.” That’s phase one, phase two is making a working helm. This part will have to be built into the ship. It’s kinda hard to explain. Imagine the ship is a box made of objects welded together. Inside the box is a block. Both the box and the block are on normal physics and they aren’t grouped together. On top of the box is the helm with a switch for port and a switch for starboard. The switches control the block inside the box which pushes the box to port or starboard. So that’s the overview of the stuff I’m working on now. If I can get it all to work, the rest of the map is gravy. I’m expecting the first fifty to one hundred hours to be pretty much just scripting. If anyone has any questions or ideas about the map go ahead and post them here. I’m open for discussion about anything except the name of the map. I’m not against using vehicle welding, but when I tested it, it seemed to clash with the gravity volumes for some reason. Although I only tested it with a scorpion, covenant vehicles might work better. Does anyone have any ghost prefabs that are welded to look like sharks, by any chance? If someone would like to hop on forge and help me try to get the ships to work, I would really appreciate it. This kind of project is just logistically difficult to do with only one person. If you want to help, there are a couple things to be aware of first. One thing is that I work night shifts and I live in Alaska, so scheduling might be a bit of a hassle. Sorry in advance for that. The other thing to be aware of is that I don’t plan to publish the finished map. What I plan to do is finish the map, then go through and break the whole thing down into prefabs and publish them separately. That way, no one can take credit for the whole map, and everyone who helps is responsible for publishing their own contributions. If that sounds fair to you, then message me here or on Xbox Live. Lastly, for those of you who would like to help with the map, but are unable to get on forge for some reason, you can still help by thinking up another verse or two for the map’s theme song. What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? Early in the morning! Put him in a Warthog till he’s sober, Put him in a Warthog till he’s sober, Put him in a Warthog till he’s sober, Early in the morning! Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Early in the morning! What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? Early in the morning! Shave his beard with an energy sword, Shave his beard with an energy sword, Shave his beard with an energy sword, Early in the morning! Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Early in the morning! What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? Early in the morning! Put him in the crow’s nest with an empty sniper, Put him in the crow’s nest with an empty sniper, Put him in the crow’s nest with an empty sniper, Early in the morning! Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Early in the morning! What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? Early in the morning! Heave him by the leg with a boosting banshee, Heave him by the leg with a boosting banshee, Heave him by the leg with a boosting banshee, Early in the morning! Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Early in the morning! What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? What shall we do with a drunken Spartan? Early in the morning! Put him on a mongoose with the Didact’s daughter, Put him on a mongoose with the Didact’s daughter, Put him on a mongoose with the Didact’s daughter, Early in the morning! Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Way hey, up she respawns, Early in the morning! The trick is, you think of something that can kill you in Halo, then think of a nautical way to say it.
I know, when I sit down and type it all out, it does seem like a lot for just one map. There’s no way the whole map will make it into matchmaking, it’ll be too glitchy for sure. That’s the beauty of breaking down the map into prefabs. MotF isn’t a core map, it’s a sandbox map. Just a place to create quality mutiny themed assets. I learned something interesting about gravity volumes yesterday. Apparently, they affect grouped objects differently from single objects. I made a simple group so I could test out the size of the ships, and I was able to get it to float using just one gravity volume. So that's good news, for anyone following the map’s progress. It means I can use a lot fewer volumes to get the ships to work. My original plan was to fill the entire floor on Tidal with gravity volumes. But it looks like I won’t have to now. Now, hopefully all I have to do is make sure there are enough gravity volumes, and that they are spread out enough so that a ship can’t touch more than two at a time. I think it also means I can make the ships any size I want. Of course, this only solves the issue of getting the ships to float. There are still issues about getting it to stay upright, and steering it. Those mechanisms will likely have to be built into the ship itself. But at least I have enough now to begin constructing the map.
I have a lot of new updates to Mutiny on the Fleek to discuss, but before I do, I just have to talk about Monitor’s Bounty. I’m so glad that 343 decided to take their time with this game instead of trying to rush everything out at launch. I haven’t done much Forging in Halo 5 so far, but I always check waypoint for news about Forge. Every time I find lots of new treats that instantly make me think of ways to use them in my next map. That goes all the way back to the first update to Forge, when they added gravity volumes, kill balls, the original battle rifle, lockers, and even a diving suit. Needless to say, every new update has consistently improved the quality of the Forge tool, but Monitor’s Bounty blows them all out of the water. In fact, I would go as far as to say that Monitor’s Bounty is the best thing to happen to Halo since Xbox Live! My favorite new things are the joints. The new ball and socket joints are just the thing I need to make my ships work. I’ve already jumped into Forge and done some testing, the ball and sockets work much better than the rig I described in my original post. This is going to save me so many objects, not to mention so much time and effort, that now I can make a much better map. Most importantly, now my precious creativity can be better used towards a minigame instead of some new game-crashing glitch. Honestly, I spent so long a time trying to figure out how to make working ships, and now it’s as simple as deciding what they look like and doing a little playtesting. Just like how Forge should be. All you have to do to have working ships now is make a ship, then place a ball and socket somewhere in the middle of the ship. Then just weld the socket to the ship, make sure the socket is the parent object, and put that group on normal physics. I don’t recommend using gravity volumes unless you want it to spin out of control. If you want the ship to move you can script the ball to move and it should drag the socket and the ship with it. They even included joint restraints so you can adjust the range of motion of the ship. I’ll go into more detail about that when I have something ready to playtest. But don’t wait for me, it took me a year to get this far. You can make any kind of vehicle this way. I’m building ships because that’s what I need for my map. With some tweaks you could build anything, elephants, scarabs, a lich, a kraken. When you think about it, there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between Minigames and Forgeable Non-Player Characters. Sure it might not be the same NPCs from the campaign, but in a way we can build you own NPCs now. Before this update I hadn’t really given much thought to making a custom game for Mutiny on the Fleek. The only idea I, had was some variant of assault that uses the Ball as a canon ball. The idea sounds kinda cool, but I didn’t really want the game to be all about destroying the ships. Then I thought maybe some variant of capture the flag might work better with the Mutiny theme. Speaking of which, I should discuss the theme a little bit because, in this case, the theme informs the gameplay. Most maps with ships that I find are Pirate themed. I understand why, Piracy is thrilling and dramatic, and it’s one of the few things Halo lacks which makes it an interesting challenge when Forging. The first ship map that I made was Pirate themed. That was back in Halo 3, in Halo 4 I set out to make another Pirate themed map. I changed the theme about half way through from Pirate to Mutiny for a few reasons. The most important of which is, while an individual can commit an act of piracy and therefore be a pirate, a mutiny is always an act of teamwork. Also, piracy is by definition a crime, however a mutiny can sometimes be justified. I’m not saying that one theme is better than the other. I think there’s enough room in Halo for everyone’s ideas. I’m just clarifying the difference as I see it for the purpose of my map. Anyway, those are just my personal reasons for changing themes, there were also a lot of technical factors. I didn’t have the budget to make more than one ship, and also because I decided to make a five base Dominion map with two bases on the ship. After that, in Halo 2 Anniversary, I still didn’t have the budget for multiple ships because I also wanted to make an island. So I ended up making one really big ship and I tried to infuse the Mutiny theme by using scripting. I focused on scripting things that required more than one player to do. For example the switch to spawn/despawn a vehicle would be in one place, and the switch to “launch” the vehicle would be right next to the location where the vehicle spawns. The whole idea was to use the scripting to encourage the players to work together. One problem that I've always had with Matchmaking is the gametypes don't offer very much room for teamwork. I'm not talking about things like team shooting, call outs, sticking close to your teammates to clear out a base, etc. To me, these things are not really teamwork. These are just the kinds of things that more experienced players will start to do anyway. The problem is, with the way the games are set up, you have a choice between communication and fire power. Almost anything you need a teammate for, you could do by yourself if you have a power weapon. It’s understandable for matchmaking because the odds of finding teamwork in a game full of strangers are practically zero. That is what has me so excited about the Custom Games Browser, because now we have the liberty to make maps that don’t necessarily fit into matchmaking. Here is what I have planned so far for the Mutiny on the Fleek minigame. Keep in mind these are just my initial thoughts, there are still hundreds of hours of building and playtesting to be done. But one thing I’ve learned from doing heavily scripted maps in the past, is that it’s best to work out the scripting first and build you map around that. If you build the map first, you may find yourself needing to make disappointing compromises one way or another. Mutiny on the Fleek will have three islands, and each island will be linked to a ship via teleporter. There is a flag on each ship and a flag of each island, making six total flags. Both teams will have two flags, and there will be two neutral flags. The object is to remove the enemy’s flags from their base and/or ship and plant your flag there for, let’s say, thirty seconds to capture and/or commandeer it and earn points. Once you have control of a base or ship, you can remove your flag or add another flag. If you remove your flag, you can use it somewhere else on the map. If you add another flag, your team won’t earn points any faster, but it will fortify your base or ship. So it’s kinda like Stockpile meets Dominion, but with a twist. Players can use scripted cannons to sink the ships and thereby remove up to half the bases from the board. Like I said, there is plenty of work still to do. The final minigame might end up being very different from what I described above. Since there is so much scripting to work out, I think I will start by doing a rudimentary remake of Mutineer, my previous map. I probably won't finish the practice map. I'm only going to spend one hundred hours on it, which should be plenty of time to get the scripting figured out. After the first hundred hours I’ll stop working on that map and get started on Mutiny on the Fleek. That’s all I have for now, hopefully next time I make a post I’ll have some screenshots to share. Thank you for reading!
I have started working on the practice map: Mutineer MOTF ALPHA. I started on Tidal since this is a remake of Mutineer Basic and Tidal is closest to the original Awash canvas. I can’t decide if I want to do Mutiny on the Fleek using the Tidal or Depths canvas. I know I want the ships to sink, but if I do the map on Depths then I can add a sunken ships element to the Minigame. I think I can make it so that when a ship sinks you can’t use it to get points anymore. So the ship would still be there, and you could use it for the teleporter or to get an extra flag. What makes me hesitate is that I don’t know what to do about the surface of the water. I can use a boundary to remove the underwater effect, but that isn’t the same as lowering the water level. The boundaries are better for making interior spaces. I’ll reconsider using Depths when I find of a solution that’s better than using a bunch of chromas. In the meantime, the practice map is coming along nicely. I figured I’d start this map the same way I started the last one. Which is the lava pit at the center of the island. I find, when working on big maps, it is best to start at the middle and work my way out. You can always make the exterior bigger, but it is much more difficult to add space on the inside. The original version of Mutineer had sixteen killballs in the lava pit, this time I used twenty five so there would be one killball in the center. That makes it easier to place as a group; a group which is available as a prefab under the title Mutiny Killball Field. For those tough ground-pound-in stains. After That was done, I was thinking about ways to make the lava pit more interesting, so I built another prefab called Mutiny Killball Cloud 00. For those times when just one killball isn’t enough. I took an invisible killball and welded six killball classic jrs to the magnets on the outside of it. Then I welded an advanced ball and socket cage into the center of the invisible killball. The results are pretty satisfying so far. The way to use the Killball Cloud is you spawn in a ball joint first, then drop the Mutiny Killball Cloud 00 prefab. Make sure you place the Killball Cloud over the ball joint using coordinates and NOT magnets. There are magnets in the center of the invisible killball that can lock onto the ball joint. What you end up with is a cluster of small killballs that will float in the air and spin on their own axis. Right now the lava pit for the practice map is made of six groups. I am using four Killball Clouds attached to a group the has four advanced ball joints which are themselves welded to another cage. I have videos to assist my clumsy description, but what all this has accomplished is that the four Killball Clouds will each rotate on their own axis at the same time that they are orbiting around a central ball and socket joint. I’m calling it a Killball Cluster, sorry I couldn’t come up with a name that doesn’t sound like a fighting move from an anime. I use the Killball Cluster to make it look like there are little killballs bubbling up inside the Killball Field. What I’m working on now is some kind of scripted catalyst to get the whole thing going. I’m thinking, when you throw something or someone down there, it will spawn some gravity volumes. I do intend to also have a few classic killballs floating around in the lava pit as well. I’m planning to set something up so that every once in awhile one killball will pop out and roll down a lava river. Then that will trigger something else to happen, something so amazing I don’t even know what it is yet!
...well I don't know about all that but if you want better looking water than chromas you can achieve a good effect using lights and decals.
Yeah, that could work. I've seen people use that trick before and it looks really good. It's going to take a lot of them to cover the whole map. Maybe it would be easier on the light budget if I scripted them to only spawn when the ships are nearby. There's still lots of time to think about it. I don't really have to worry about it yet. The practice map doesn't need it so I'll have to think about it again when I'm ready to start the real map. Even if it turns out to be too much for the game to handle, I can still use the decals on a smaller scale on the islands. It could be used as a visual key to make a distinction between the "fresh water" and "salt water" areas on the map.
I have a couple new things to report. I made a prefab of the Killball Cluster, which is just an advanced cage centered ten units above four advanced ball joints placed in a 60 unit square. You can use it for anything, but I made a video of how to use it to make the Killball Cluster. I also made a video of the prototype doompit for Mutineer MOTF ALPHA. For those of you who have never built a doompit before, it’s just a modified death pit. The difference is, anybody could fall into a death pit by mistake, but no intelligent player would ever (other than for scientific purposes) be caught anywhere near a doompit. Now that I know the gravity volumes work well as a catalyst, I have to find size volumes plus the right rotation scripting to get the Killball Cluster moving just right. Then I can finally move on to another part of the Island. Last time I did the lava first and then built the cone of the volcano. This time I think I’ll go straight to the underside of the island. Funny story, I was talking to Stardriver about ways to lower the water level on Depths, and out of nowhere he goes “Can’t you just make it so that the island is slowly sinking below the waterline to a point in the middle of the match and then raise back up to where it was by the end of the match?” So the scripting for tides should be simple enough. So the next step is to redesign the “low tide” area.