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Halo |OT10| The Calm Before The Storm

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
Not looking forward to dying in anticipation while everyone is talking about Thurs and Friday.

See ya cunts on Saturday

How long will you be around on Saturday? Doing the podcast every night, welcome to join of you like.
 
I'm excited for the new Forge stuff, personally. I spent a ton of time in Forge in Reach, probably more than most, and I'm eager to get back into it and be creative.

I think the three maps have a lot of possibilities and some good unique terrain to build around as well.
 

DopeyFish

Not bitter, just unsweetened
Frankie confirmed in fincher thread gameplay trailer in vein of halo 2 trailer will come out too

Yay

Probably going to have didact voice like truth
 

GhaleonEB

Member
I'm not totally sure. I was just expecting to be blown away by Forge in Halo 4, but I guess I just set my expectations too high :lol

I like idea of having large natural pieces to work with. Such as huge hills, trees, rocks, etc. Hills would be especially awesome because we could use them to form our own terrain.

Yeah, that was my primary wish. My top two hopes for Forge in Halo 4 were:

1) "Natural" objects to shape the landscap with; grassy hill shapes, trees, etc, rather than all metal, glass and rock.

2) A way to lock pieces together, perhaps in similar fashion as the magnets: fuse them so we can move a grouping of geometry, rather than one piece at a time. So many times I've built a base, or part of one, and then had to move it - one piece at a time. We'll still need to.

This omits a wide open space to Forge in. I honestly thought that was a no-brainer.
 

Omni

Member
Anything new happen in the last 15 hours?

Plus... "Halo Waypoint services are currently being upgraded". Is this the big update that's supposed to be coming with Halo 4 or just a minor one?
 
2) A way to lock pieces together, perhaps in similar fashion as the magnets: fuse them so we can move a grouping of geometry, rather than one piece at a time. So many times I've built a base, or part of one, and then had to move it - one piece at a time. We'll still need to.

This is the main thing I'm missing still, too. I really wanted to define objects as a group and duplicate them all together.

This omits a wide open space to Forge in. I honestly thought that was a no-brainer.

You can pretty much build anywhere in space, or over that lake area. Those areas are pretty damn big. Not sure how big you were planning to need.
 

lybertyboy

Thinks the Evil Empire is just misunderstood.
Going round in Halos in here.

How was IGN?

Edit: Zeouter'd. Bawls :p

IGN was good. Filmed a segment for next week's Up at Noon and did a podcast segment that should go up closer to November. No earth shattering reveals, but some good conversations were had.
 

Ramirez

Member
If there's another HaloGAF humpday, can arrangements be made to capture it in high quality like the Exile game from PAX?

I just want some direct feed matches man... :(
 

Risen

Member
GG, But i did feel i was doing a lot of this tonight.
overdz1z.gif


Lol.

6 shotting people?
 
IGN was good. Filmed a segment for next week's Up at Noon and did a podcast segment that should go up closer to November. No earth shattering reveals, but some good conversations were had.

The latter is al I really care for in podcasts lately. There are plenty of other mediums to better encapsulate relevant gaming info.
 

Tashi

343i Lead Esports Producer
If there's another HaloGAF humpday, can arrangements be made to capture it in high quality like the Exile game from PAX?

I just want some direct feed matches man... :(

That would be nice. However, I'm not sure if there will be enough 343 members to form a decent team. I wouldn't mind switching teams and offering my backpack.
 
Hey, today turns out to be squid day.
every day is squid day :-D

Btw, based on the palette of Impact, I think it will be much more amateur friendly because of all the tunnel pieces. They will equate to the bridges and inclines of Forgeworld and just linking them together.

Not looking forward to the multitude of "Look at my awesome tunnel map!!!" :|
says the guy responsible for the incredibly linear Conquest gametype. ;-)

Yeah, that was my primary wish. My top two hopes for Forge in Halo 4 were:

1) "Natural" objects to shape the landscap with; grassy hill shapes, trees, etc, rather than all metal, glass and rock.

2) A way to lock pieces together, perhaps in similar fashion as the magnets: fuse them so we can move a grouping of geometry, rather than one piece at a time. So many times I've built a base, or part of one, and then had to move it - one piece at a time. We'll still need to.

This omits a wide open space to Forge in. I honestly thought that was a no-brainer.
I hope I get to eat some crow later once I've gotten ahold of the game, but even going in with little expectations didn't help now that I've watched those forge videos. I feel like opportunities were already missed on some pretty big things, but at the very least I hope framerate issues aren't as prevalent as they were in Reach.

You can pretty much build anywhere in space, or over that lake area. Those areas are pretty damn big. Not sure how big you were planning to need.
Big flat floors were always needed. Having to throw down pieces for flooring not only eats into budget, but adds to the monochromatic feel that we're once again getting despite the very nice looking lighting system.
 
Yeah, that was my primary wish. My top two hopes for Forge in Halo 4 were:

1) "Natural" objects to shape the landscap with; grassy hill shapes, trees, etc, rather than all metal, glass and rock.

The only problem I see with having a premade hill or anything like that is collision for walking and vehicles. Let's say you have a collision model that is per-poly the same as the hill mesh. Now, the steep-ness of the hill as a whole should be fine to scale or drive up. But then, what if you put it part ways into the ground, or rotate it? Now you may have a problem where you actually can't walk or drive up it.

That being said, trees would be fine, but I imagine the limit on trees would be really low, since trees(good ones at least) tend to be fairly taxing on the hardware. You have a thick bunch of planes, with opacity maps, and now lighting that should show throw those opacity maps. Trees could get out of hand.

You can pretty much build anywhere in space, or over that lake area. Those areas are pretty damn big. Not sure how big you were planning to need.

I think he was talking about a wide open space on the ground. Like how Sandbox was. Building the map in the air is fine as far as build space is concerned, but then you have to build a floor which 1.Uses up your budget, and 2. Is usually pretty ugly.
 

heckfu

Banned
If there's another HaloGAF humpday, can arrangements be made to capture it in high quality like the Exile game from PAX?

I just want some direct feed matches man... :(

I don't think they want to do that anymore.

I mean, you know, for good reason.
 

Vire

Member
What's been going on in here? I haven't seen any natural light in a while.

People complaining about lack of flat spaces in Forge.

People complaining about monochromatic structures

Excitement over David Fincher involvement.

Thursday War debates.

Talking about how handsome Frankie is.

But mainly just the first two. ;)
 
I think he was talking about a wide open space on the ground. Like how Sandbox was. Building the map in the air is fine as far as build space is concerned, but then you have to build a floor which 1.Uses up your budget, and 2. Is usually pretty ugly.

That makes sense. I didn't feel we really got one of those in Reach either, and I can definitely see why it would be really useful.



The other thing that is missing for me (besides the group duplication stuff) is making Forge DLC. I'd love to get DLC that gives us more terrains and things to deal with as well as new palettes. Maybe then we could get a big flatland zone like that, with maybe a covenant palette or (gasp) something totally different.
 

GhaleonEB

Member
You can pretty much build anywhere in space, or over that lake area. Those areas are pretty damn big. Not sure how big you were planning to need.

I've seen a few comments like this in response to my posts, so some elaboration and (hopefully) clarity is probably in order.

Generally speaking, I only build BTB maps, because that’s what I like to play. I built a total of five maps in Halo 3, maps that were polished and iterated on many times to a point where I was satisfied with them. (I'd started over a dozen, but only five made the cut, so to speak.)

I built just two maps to completion with Reach, despite the expanded tool set and dramatic increase in ease of use. As with Halo 3, I started over a dozen. I only built two to completion in Reach because while I kept coming up with map ideas, for the most part they didn't fit in with the geometry of Forge World. And to build them up in the air – as I did with one of the maps – placed serious creative limitations on the map: it meant every surface had to be flat and grey. And then in the end, the use of nothing but Forge objects as the geometry cratered the frame rate, making them unplayable in BTB HaloGAF customs, which is why I built them. Both maps were killed that way. I spent weeks working on them and one playtest killed’em dead.

One of the maps I attempted but never completed was set in the Gulch. But the terrain was uneven, and the space asymmetric, and so I kept having to change my designs to fit the geometry. And after a week of trying to get my ideas to fit in there, my original ideas were unrecognizable and I gave up in frustration.

What I wanted in Halo 4 was this: A big open flat space like the basin on Sandbox, but an open grassy meadow instead. And then 5-6 different grass-textured large objects to place to form my own hills on that space. Then I could dream up a map - symmetric or asymmetric - and make it as flat or hilly as I wanted, without the result looking like a grey metal dungeon. Toss in a range of rocks, tree objects, and the suite of additional Forge objects, and you’d be able to “accidentally” make beautiful maps, as the developer on the video said.

Right now it looks like the three Forge maps have the same set of limitations as Forge World: no big open spaces to build on. So if I dream up a BTB map, and that map does not fit in with the highly detailed geometry the map designers came up with, I have to use all Forge pieces. And then those pieces mean everything is flat and grey, which everyone hates because it's boring and ugly. And even if I manage to make a map I like, despite it being flat and grey, I run the risk of cratering the frame rate and so end up with junk in the end. (Again, this is how my work in Reach all ended.)

That's why I'm bummed out about Halo 4's Forge.
 

Gray Man

Banned
I've seen a few comments like this in response to my posts, so some elaboration and (hopefully) clarity is probably in order.

Generally speaking, I only build BTB maps, because that’s what I like to play. I built a total of five maps in Halo 3, maps that were polished and iterated on many times to a point where I was satisfied with them. (I'd started over a dozen, but only five made the cut, so to speak.)

I built just two maps to completion with Reach, despite the expanded tool set and dramatic increase in ease of use. As with Halo 3, I started over a dozen. I only built two to completion in Reach because while I kept coming up with map ideas, for the most part they didn't fit in with the geometry of Forge World. And to build them up in the air – as I did with one of the maps – placed serious creative limitations on the map: it meant every surface had to be flat and grey. And then in the end, the use of nothing but Forge objects as the geometry cratered the frame rate, making them unplayable in BTB HaloGAF customs, which is why I built them. Both maps were killed that way. I spent weeks working on them and one playtest killed’em dead.

One of the maps I attempted but never completed was set in the Gulch. But the terrain was uneven, and the space asymmetric, and so I kept having to change my designs to fit the geometry. And after a week of trying to get my ideas to fit in there, my original ideas were unrecognizable and I gave up in frustration.

What I wanted in Halo 4 was this: A big open flat space like the basin on Sandbox, but an open grassy meadow instead. And then 5-6 different grass-textured large objects to place to form my own hills on that space. Then I could dream up a map - symmetric or asymmetric - and make it as flat or hilly as I wanted, without the result looking like a grey metal dungeon. Toss in a range of rocks, tree objects, and the suite of additional Forge objects, and you’d be able to “accidentally” make beautiful maps, as the developer on the video said.

Right now it looks like the three Forge maps have the same set of limitations as Forge World: no big open spaces to build on. So if I dream up a BTB map, and that map does not fit in with the highly detailed geometry the map designers came up with, I have to use all Forge pieces. And then those pieces mean everything is flat and grey, which everyone hates because it's boring and ugly. And even if I manage to make a map I like, despite it being flat and grey, I run the risk of cratering the frame rate and so end up with junk in the end. (Again, this is how my work in Reach all ended.)

That's why I'm bummed out about Halo 4's Forge.

Hopefully you will come up with some great ideas besides the fact. It is interesting that they don't have any large scale Flat Landscapes for a Big Team Battle setting, however the options provided seem interesting enough. Perhaps the Space/Asteroid setting will allow for some interesting and new ideas. That erosion map seems interesting with the space with all of the water, and Ravine seems like it has a lot of potential as well, given that Forerunner structure. I'm inclined to believe we might get a new forge environment with DLC at some point as well.
 
I've seen a few comments like this in response to my posts, so some elaboration and (hopefully) clarity is probably in order.

...

That's why I'm bummed out about Halo 4's Forge.

That all makes total sense, and thanks for clarifying. Personally I don't generally build BTB maps so I don't miss it, so this bit of context helps a lot. And it is a shame. I too would love to get more "natural" elements that we could phase together to make really interesting looking maps, and it is a shame that we seem to mostly be getting more of just the basics.

I think with Reach I ended up making maps a bit of the reverse way I did in 3 -- instead of building from "Scratch" I would spend a long time looking around the map and looking for the natural advantages in a spot that matched the kind of map I wanted to do, and then built around that. But that is obviously really limiting and it also gives you that sense that your maps are somewhat artificially being limited.

I'm still amped for it and it's one of the main reasons I want the game, and I'm partly just trying not to get myself down on it because I know I'll end up having a lot of fun. But yeah, not having a Sandbox alternative this long into it is a bummer, to be sure. Or not even having a "Floor" specialty object that could be scaled in the x and z directions so you could have a big, one-piece floor.
 
ok yeah Ill make the ot for halo 4 no problem

"new Halo game is out. No small maps, 5-shot BRs, ugly helmets, no dedis, we don't even know the ranking system, the biggest improvement to Forge in 3 years is shadows, AAs are back and multiplied times 3, RIP Halo/Free EazyB/Hire Juices"
 
Thursday War minor spoilers:

So the reference to nano-machines modifying Naomi's armour to the point where it was new to her really bothered me. I think the whole nano machine thing is cheap - I would prefer a terminal showing Cortana spending the 3 years aboard FuD designing schematics and improving Chiefs armour using the tools on the ship. Why do nano-machines have to be a thing? Why would Spartan 2's have nanomachines that modified their armour beyond recognition. Wtf.

Really bothers me how weird Naomi's armour looks - based on the book I presume that's her on the cover. What the hell happened to her armour - what the hell happened to the classic helmet? Before reading the book I presumed that was a Spartan 4.

Its a pretty insignificant thing in isolation, but is just part of the wider philosophy which I dont like.
 
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