HaloGAF at PAX Prime 2013 – Attendance list

PAX Prime 2013:

When: August 30 – September 2, 2013
Where: Washington State Convention Center. Seattle, WA

Show Hours:
Friday 8/30 – 10 am – 2 am
Saturday 8/31 – 10 am – 2 am
Sunday 9/1 – 10 am – 2 am
Monday 9/2 – 10 am – 7 pm

Expo Hall Hours: All days 10am – 6pm

Fill out this quick form to let us know whether you’re going to PAX or not

[contact-form]

Definitely Attending:
-Tashi
-ncsuDuncan
-Hypertrooper
-Zeouterlimits
-Heckfu
-Sai-kun
-Barrow Roll

Maybe attending:
-YourExWife

Details of an official HaloGAF meetup will be posted when they’re made.

Podcast host Tashi(@Tashi0106) is joined by HaloGAF member Heckfu(@Heckfu) on a very special HaloGAF Radio. Guests include Frank O’Connor, Kevin Franklin and Andy “Bravo” Dudynsky of 343 Industries to discuss CSR, Weapon Balances and general Halo 4 topics. Recorded on April 11, 2013. (1:22:32)

Regular hosts Tashi, ncsuDuncan and Domino Theory are joined by guests Barrow Roll and Tawpgun to discuss Halo 4 playlists, Destiny and Hank Hill (1:24:46) Recorded on 3/1/13

2:26 – 26:25 (Whatchu’ Been Playin?)
26:45 – 1:04:00 (Destiny)
1:04:37 – End (Majestic Map Pack + News)

Regular hosts Tashi0106 and Domino Theory are joined by Barrow Roll, mastrbiggy, and heckfu to talk about their bathroom habits. (107 minutes. Recorded 1/16/13.)

Ghaleon has retired from Halo OP duty and it looks like kylej has taken up the mantle: Halo |OT13|

I’d like to introduce you to a new feature here on HaloGAF.com: Debriefings. With each new article I’ll ask a different HaloGAF member a few personal questions about his or her personal life and gaming habits. First up: Ramirez.

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>> Welcome to Debriefing, Ramirez! Before we get to the gaming questions I’d like to get to know the man behind the avatar.

Well, my name is Stephen, I live in a quaint little backwoods county in Kentucky. If you’ve ever watched Justified, you know the county. It’s nothing like the TV show, sorry to say. I work in retail as a manager, shit job, but it pays the bills for now. I’m currently attending school to become a person in the human services field.(social work type deal) I also have a son, who will be turning 3 on the 1st of the March, time has really flew by with him. I’ve said it countless times on GAF, but he has the lung/digestive disease known as Cystic Fibrosis. I’ve tried to use my connections on GAF to spread awareness of the disease to anyone who would listen, props to 343 for sharing the video back in May in their weekly update! Other than that, I’m a pretty normal nerd, will play just about any videogame as long as it’s good, though I have noticed as I’ve gotten older I don’t bother playing/finishing a game unless it grabs me immediately.

>> Perhaps your gaming taste has refined with age. Personally, I have trouble finishing games because I waste all of my time on gaming forums. On that note, how long have you been a member of NeoGAF? What brought you to the site?

I’ve been a member of NeoGAF since about 2000 I believe. I was here when it was simply known as GAF, and probably not but a few hundred members. I also went through the EZBoard stage before it transitioned over to NeoGAF. I’m honestly not sure how I found the site, I think just through a news link. I do know that my first actual thread was on the EZBoard forum, where I posted the first ever screens of some cancelled Retro Studio titles for the Dolphin. I was in a secret forum on the IGN boards where Matt Casamassina would drop secret info from time to time with the understanding no one would speak of it. I think I was 13 or something at the time, so of course I took it to every message board I frequented. I believe it was a picture of some vehicular battle game & Metroid Prime way before it went into first person. Needless to say it caused quite a stir on GAF at the time, Retro was on the verge of being shut down at the time, so they were already a hot topic.

>> Considering how beautifully Metroid Prime turned out, I can’t blame you. It’s pretty cool that you’ve stuck with NeoGAF for such a long time. Are you an active member (or lurker) of any other gaming communities?

I am not. My first ever message board was a place called The Gaming Revolution, but the board has unfortunately been taken down. Made some really good friends there, it was a very tight knit group of about 30, I basically copy/pasted every news story from GAF on to their forums for discussion, crazy kid I was!

>> (Copying content from GAF? Blasphemy! I hope I never resort to such things…)

If you joined GAF in 2000, when did you start playing Halo? What got you interested in the franchise?

I started playing Halo right when the Xbox launched, maybe a few weeks after the fact. Funny enough, I had absolutely no clue the game even existed. I was sitting at Wal-Mart to get a NGC, was 2nd in line, and the guy that was 1st in line started telling me he had done the same thing for the Xbox a few days earlier. I was such a diehard Nintendo fanboy at the time, that I really didn’t pay attention to most of his ramblings, plus I was about 15 and he was in his 30s. But he started telling me about Halo, and described how these drop ships would drop enemies off for you to fight, and it just sounded so unlike anything I had ever played at the time that I decided to get one. I went to EB Games a week or so later and traded my entire Dreamcast collection in towards one, I had enough to get the XBox & Halo with my credit. I regret trading all of my DC stuff away, but I was so addicted to Halo once I played it I didn’t care. I remember it was supposed to be a Christmas present, but I convinced my mom to just let me open it for the night, once Halo went in, it never went back under the tree. Me & my high school buds probably beat the campaign on co-op like 30 times or something, it was insane. I also remember shitting on them in MP because none of them had figured out the Pistol was a beast, haha.

>> Keep it a secret, my high school friends still don’t know my pistol tricks! As a fan of Halo from the start, which campaign has been your favorite?

My favorite campaign is without a doubt CE, I think I replayed 3 twice, but CE is probably past 50 play throughs by now, and Anny was just as much fun as the other times I had played it. None of the games have captured the sense of wonder CE had when you stepped out of that escape pod. There’s just too many memorable moments in that game, the first time “Under Cover of Night” kicks in on T&R, or when “On a Pale Horse” kicks in when you’re going across the bridge on AotCR. Marty played such a huge role for me in making the game memorable, I’d never had music effect my enjoyment of a game in such a profound way. *tips hat*

>> Music to my ears! What about multiplayer?

My favorite MP is 3, the game has a load of issues, don’t get me wrong. The BR was unreliable, the netcode wasn’t that great, and the playlists were an abomination. But for me, when it worked, it worked better than anything else I have played in the series. I never got to LAN CE, so I’m sure I missed out there. Halo 2 was filled with so much cheating that it greatly affected my love for the game looking back. 3 avoided major glitches & cheating, which was such a breath of fresh air coming from Halo 2 where you’d play a game of Terminal & be dropped down into a Warthog chaingun over & over while an Elite killed you.

More than the game itself, the community that grew out of Halo 3 on this forum was fantastic. I’m talking about the same guys getting on every night for a solid 3 years, playing & having a great time with the game 90% of the time. I’m sure we’re more cynical now, but I really don’t remember as much bitching as I hear in Reach/4 when we played 3. The thread & the game went hand in hand for me, both were such a great time in my gaming memory.

>> A tightly knit community can make ANY game fun, but it sounds like HaloGAF and Halo 3 were a something special for you. What are some of your favorite non-Halo games?

Here’s where I have weird tastes, my absolute hands down top 5 games excluding Halo would be:

Diablo 2 & WoW kind of speak for themselves, Blizzard in their prime for me. WoW has gotten less & less appealing with each expansion making it more casual, but the vanilla game, and first expansion were incredible experiences. I made friends in that game 8 years ago that I still keep in contact with today, I'm all about the social experience!

>> A solid list. Speaking of social experiences, have you ever gone to any gaming meetups or conventions?

I’ve attended PAX ’08 & PAX ’11. The plane trips, both times about killed me with anxiety, I’m not a fan of flying, at all, so it was a challenge, lol.

In ’11 Cocopjojo from 343 was kind enough to let me & Capt. Blood shack up at his house for the weekend. We ordered some McDonald’s before heading back to his house on Friday night. Needless to say I awoke in a cold sweat about 3 hours later and started puking my guts up, thankfully not waking everyone in the house, lol. I spent the rest of the weekend about as miserable as I could imagine ever being. When we went to the 343 Studios play night, I got brave and attempted to eat some pizza. Shortly after I found myself in the 343 parking lot puking in the bushes and passing out from exhaustion in Coco’s car, hah. I tried to make the best of the trip, but it was probably the worst experience of my life if I’m being honest, nothing like being 3K miles away from home, sick & alone. :P

>> Sounds rough! I’ll try to avoid the McDonald’s next time I’m in Seattle. Thankfully, you made it back alive. What are your gaming habits like at home?

I used to game any time of the day, but since my son has came into my life, you’ll pretty much only find me online from about 12 EST til about 3 EST, and then I end up running the day on about 5 hours of sleep, not a good thing! Like I said above, I’m all about the social experience, so I’ve found that now a days, unless I have a group to play with, I’ll usually just elect to sit on GAF/FB & troll.

>> You’ve certainly mastered the art! ;) Thanks for chatting with me, Stephen, I’ll see you around GAF.

No problem, I hope to learn more about our fellow community members through future debriefings!

——-
Ramirez has the right idea; this is only the first of many Debriefings. Keep an eye on your PM Inbox, HaloGAF.

If you’d like to learn more about Cystic Fibrosis and how you can get involved (or donate), be sure to go check out cff.org.

TL;DR is a regular feature highlighting quality posts (both positive and negative) from Halo-related NeoGAF threads. This entry comes from Karl2177 and covers his issues with Spartan Ops. (Originally posted in Halo |OT12| on December 4th.)

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Here’s a bunch of things that are bad about Spartan Ops, why I would not feel proud about being associated with it, and my armchair designer fixes.

1. Heavy reuse of the same environments. I understand that there is a huge time and memory constraint for having brand new environments. But there are a grand total of 9 environments. 9 environments for 50 missions. Each mission will, on average, be used 5 and a half(!) times. That’s not including the times you run through it in campaign and/or multiplayer. Now there are ways to make the environments seem different, but Spartan Ops hasn’t done that yet(and I do mean this with full offense, but I don’t think any of the mission designers at 343 are capable of doing it given the lackluster campaign encounters).

For starters, don’t choose an encounter that is linear in design. It forces only 2 options when reusing it. Ignoring another issue of Spartan Ops, the only two good missions have been the Valhalla Mantis one and the first Complex one. The first one of those two was only good because it was different from shooting a bunch of aliens and pressing a bunch of buttons. The second one was good, because there were multiple points to go to on the map, and there was more than one option of positioning. The subtle player choice improves the design by quite a bit. By using non-linear maps, it also allows you to reuse it by blocking off areas of the map or providing a different incentive to move around like a power weapon or vehicle. On the downside these two encounters are also multiplayer maps, which are going to be played more often than the campaign spaces.

2. Enemy introduction is the worst I have experienced in any FPS. This isn’t an exaggeration or hyperbole. Promethean design gives them the ability to teleport. This mechanic is an interesting idea to change the encounters, but it is used so poorly in them. It has been used as the laziest way to introduce an enemy to an encounter. I made a post earlier on about player mentality, enemy introduction, and how the player tackles a combat scenario*. If a player can see all of the variables, they have a better understanding on how to tackle the encounter and as a result, victory feels more rewarding while the mentality of death feels more like “if I just did a little bit better, I could succeed.” Prometheans teleporting in defeats the idea of a player seeing all of the variables, especially when they are teleporting in wave after wave.

For the Covenant, the returnable drop pods are poor introduction as well. It appears out of nowhere, and is gone fairly quickly. Compare these to the individual drop pods, which change the flow of the battle as well, by creating more cover for the player. Phantoms are much better when they are balanced properly. But as it stands, the main cannon on the Phantom acts as a flak cannon, preventing the player from engaging the enemy early. There is already enough of a barrier to the player when enemies are invulnerable while inside the Phantom.

How to fix it? Introduce Prometheans similar to how Sentinels are introduced in previous games. Give them a doorway, path, or tube to come from. This gives the player a choke point to attempt and initially defend. Then if the enemies are too powerful for the player, he/she can fall back. For the Covenant, it comes into reworking the Phantoms and reintroducing personal drop pods, while also giving them pathways to follow. These were aspects that were good before Reach’s sandbox meddling, and if you can’t implement it properly–don’t implement it at all.

3. Make the objective more than pushing buttons. There’s something that Halo CE and Halo 3′s campaigns did right with objectives in encounters and that is the sense that there is more to an encounter than just ending it with a button. The basic combat flow is i)stop the enemy from advancing, ii)push the enemy back, iii)chop of the enemy’s head. This is shown heavily in missions like Silent Cartographer, AotCR, Sierra 117, The Ark, and many others. What this means is that at the end of an encounter, it should feel rewarding by either destroying a Brute Chieftain, a Banshee, or in general a tough opponent.

Halo 4′s design in both campaign and Spartan Ops is to go from point A to button B, and kill every enemy along the way. There isn’t a clear defense point at point A, nor is there a good sense of enemy defense at button B. It doesn’t feel rewarding sweeping around the Valhalla base killing bullet sponge enemies, just so you can unlock the ability to push a button in the base.

In Valhalla for example, a different design that would work well is to start at one base and clear the enemies at the other. The catch is to defend both bases. If one gets overrun, it’s not game over like the first mission this episode. This also works well into the focus on cooperative play. You could have two players stay back at the initial base to defend, but the trade off is that the other two players have a tougher encounter to attack. For solo players, it creates a scenario where the player goes on the offensive, but must go back on the offensive at the spawn base.

The blue lines indicate potential player movements. Include different incentives for the player to go one way over another, like a sniper, a vehicle, stealth, or a flank on the enemy. The red indicates the spawn and objective.

4. Enemy design is lackluster. This is more of a gripe with how enemies act alone and with other enemies. Knights have a multitude of issues with them. Firstly, there is no indicator to how much damage they have taken. Their shield is a faint blue that only changes when the shield is actually popped. They have animations that are difficult to distinguish and predict their next move. For example, the deploy sentry is very similar to deploy Watcher. The jump slash and the teleport slash are difficult to predict. The teleport has no clear position where they will deploy to. There isn’t a clear headshot on them. You cannot tell what weapon they are holding until they fire it. You can’t distinguish classes among Knights very well.

They all look nearly the same in game.

Watchers and Crawlers have clear design flaws as well. The only way to know if the Watcher is taking damage is if it folds up and flies away. Watchers have weapons while flying, which creates an enemy that can fire at you from any position. Compare this to the other Halo support unit, the Engineer. The Engineer has the sole purpose of support, and no offense. Watchers also generate turrets, regenerate Knights, and spawn Crawlers using the same animation. Their introduction by using slipspace ruptures is also poor. Crawlers have headboxes that are incredibly inconsistent. Both of these also disrupt the ability to defend by bypassing chokepoints, either by flying or crawling on walls. Now these are actually good designs when they come alone. It creates a different pace to an encounter, but when they come en masse the player can’t control the 360 degrees of enemy movement, while the player is limited to two dimensions.

The disintegration effect is a neat way to clear enemies from the battlefield. It introduces a level of magic when the Watchers respawn a Knight. A way to counter this adds an incentive to using the Promethean arsenal. Killing a Knight with a Promethean weapon will disintegrate them, making them unavailable to be regenerated by the Watcher. Killing them using a standard weapon means they can be regenerated by the Watcher. This also changes up the order in which you kill Prometheans depending on the weapon you have. Knights need to have a clear distinction as to what they are holding. By changing what color the weapon is or changing what side the weapon is on allows the player to see if they should approach it from a distance or get them up close.

The Knight teleport ability should primarily be used for defense only or for re-positioning, never for attack. Still there is no way for the player to know where the Knight will teleport to. Teleporting works in multiplayer, because the input and output of the teleporter is known(one reason why Chiron is a frustrating experience). Give a blue orb where they will teleport to, similar to how it acts after they have teleported. Also, when the Knight teleports, it gives them enough time to regen their shields. When teleporting the Knight’s shields should stop as if they taking damage. Their feedback needs to be more apparent; blue shields on the orange is a great decision, but it needs to be brighter and more obvious to how much shield is remaining. Make the head stand out more against the body. This will make headshots much more distinct.

For Watchers, give them a bit of a damaged look when they have taken damage. Give them a bit of destruction to their hover circles. Also, never give them a weapon. It has the same issue that Jetpacking in Reach(haven’t tried it in 4 yet) where the higher enemy has a clear shot on the head, while the grounded player is forced to body shot. For the Watcher spawning Crawlers, make it a clear distinction that that is what they are going to do. For example give them the binary rifle effect and have them point at the ground whre they are going to spawn them. This allows the player to preemptively throw a grenade, either distracting the Watcher to throw it back or spawn the Crawler into the grenade.

Crawlers are a bit tougher to balance. Their main intent is to have them be a zerg-y unit where their numbers will overwhelm you. They succeeded in that, but they aren’t fun. Mainly because their headbox is broken. A strange solution is to give them another point on their body where they can be one-shot. This would be a new and welcome introduction to Halo. Just for the fun of it, make it their butt, so when they flee or attack, they are vulnerable.

5. Only give enemies one hit kill weapons if they can be one hit killed by a default weapon. Knights with Binary Rifles or Incineration Cannons are not fun enemies to fight. There are a few exceptions to this, and that is if the player has advanced beyond enemies and it is the final part of an encounter. We could take an example using ODST. The last enemies in the final firefight are Fuel Rod Brutes and Hammer Chieftains. It was rewarding completing that because the firefight section ramped up to the final encounter.

Jackal snipers are a decent way of giving an enemy a one hit kill weapon, because they are vulnerable to a headshot that is given by the light on their head. On the other hand they aren’t great because the sniper is an instant kill with no travel time. Everyone remember Sniper Alley from Halo 2. Not fun. Now giving shielded enemies such as the Knights an instant travel weapon like the Binary Rifle is even worse. Grunts with Fuel Rods are slightly better than that. There is travel time to the Fuel Rods, but for some reason on Legendary, the velocity of the projectiles is doubled. This is a step backwards. Incineration Cannons are the same way.

One thing the post-beta Focus Rifle was good for was giving the AI snipers a weapon that is fair to the player while remaining challenging. Also the Plasma Launcher was a weapon that the AI could also use that the player could avoid. Both additions to the sandbox are very welcome.

6. Characters, in-game story, and dialog are comparable to what I wrote in sixth grade. Characters like Palmer have already been driven into the ground a month after release. A good character will have backstory, motivations, intentions, and a general way of doing things. Palmer has… a dudebro way of doing things and that’s about it. I guess there’s a 4chan post about Palmer’s relationship with her dad, but that’s something else completely. Her motivations to being a Spartan are unknown. Her intentions are following orders of whatever the captain barks out is fairly one-dimensional. On the other hand Roland’s intentions are clear: maintain the Infinity. His back story isn’t known, but we know he has been on the Infinity. His way of doing things is very similar to Serina. His character is one that I really love after only dealing with him for maybe two missions in campaign and some in Spartan Ops.

The in-game story… oh boy… sucks. Why should I clear this base if I know that it’s going to be attacked next week? Why am I pressing this button? Why am I blowing up this generator? How did the Covenant even get a generator here in the first place? The science team always shuts down their defenses. It doesn’t make sense. In fact none of it has made any sense. There isn’t a reason for Crimson to exist aside from cleaning up what everyone else is doing. We are the sloppy seconds of the Spartan world.

Dialogue is also bad. Eggheads. Hingeheads. Geeks. Nerds. Science team. That science allows you to exist Palmer. Without it, you might as well still be getting beaten by your 4chan created dad. So quit fucking insulting it. And Miller, they are called the Covenant. Not “the bad guys”. I just don’t understand how Palmer can go from, “if those freaks want to meet God, it’s our duty to help them along” to “the geeks want you to recover this artifact”

7. Lack of customization is disappointing. Add skulls. Add points. Simple stuff.

8. I feel like I’m getting better episodic content from a free Old Spice flash game than I am from a $60 Halo game. I seriously come back to the Old Spice game every Monday wanting to see what the new level is and what the story is. It’s all parody, but it’s great. I find myself quoting that more than I do any of the Halo 4 dialogue.

9. No incentive to stay alive. In fact there is actually incentive to die. You get ammo. And you don’t have to worry about running out of lives.

10. Spawning is awful. There have been multiple times where I am overrun by Crawlers and Knights spawning on top of me and it respawns me right where I died. I’ve shut off my Xbox multiple times because of the frustration of dying on repeat because the game decided there was only one place to spawn me in.

Another case study of Valhalla:

I’ve circled safe areas of spawning. They’re safe because the lines of sight aren’t direct to any major part of the map or they have quick access to cover. Now, it should not spawn the player anywhere within a radar’s length of an enemy. So essentially what the spawning system should do is check the spawn point closest to the player’s last death. Check if there are any enemies in the spawn zone. If yes, then move to the next closest spawn zone and reduce that zone’s weighting. If no, check if there are any OHK enemies that can target that spawn zone. If yes to that check, then move to the next closest spawn zone and reduce the weighting on the zone. If no, then finally spawn the player in. If there is a scenario where all spawn zones are not safe, choose the zone with the highest weighting.

11. Information overload and inconsistencies. This is apparent in all of the game, but Spartan Ops is one of the worst offenders of this. I don’t need to know where every single enemy is on the map. Highlighting the last few targets should be for the last few, not the last fifty. One thing done well is the damage done to certain objects like generators. Having that information is actually helpful. But on the flipside, I don’t need to see everything that is labeled an enemy, even if it is a Grunt in the turret seat of a Phantom. That type of information is useless and annoying.

It becomes inconsistent when enemies use human weapons. If you play the second Complex Spartan Ops mission, a Grunt can get on a human turret. If he is one of the last thousand enemies with a waypoint over their head, his will disappear. Then shortly after, random enemies will start losing their waypoints. No idea on the cause of it, but it was annoying as hell to track down enemies that were running into corners.
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For anyone that went through that whole thing, I commend you. I highly recommend watching the Anatomy of Halo 3 series. Here is one on design, and watching it, you’ll notice a lot of what Halo 4 did wrong. The thing with me is that I feel that 343 had the potential to fix a lot of these things before the game came out. I also feel like for future Halo games they are going to have to step it up. Making a map of Seattle and having a Grunt pick where they are going to eat isn’t a smart thing to do during crunch, especially given the game turned out.

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Original post by Karl2177 (Halo |OT12| – 12/4/2012)

If you would like to nominate a post for a future TL;DR feature, send ncsuDuncan a PM on GAF or just email him at ncsuDuncan@gmail.com.

Regular hosts Tashi0106, Domino Theory, and ncsuDuncan are joined by Havok to discuss the recently-launched Halo 4. (129 minutes. Recorded 11/20/2012.)

0:00:47 – Segment 1 (pt 1) – We talk about Oddball, Instant Respawn, AAs, and Global Ordnance.
0:34:30 – Segment 1 (pt 2) – Personal Ordnance, Precision Weapons, Arena, and Spartan Ops.
1:21:05 – Segment 2 – Discussion of Halo 4′s Campaign, Story, and the Prometheans. (SPOILERS)
1:57:06 – Segment 3 – Halo News, VGA Nominations, Playlist Updates.

TL;DR is planned to be a regular feature highlighting quality posts (both positive and negative) from Halo-related NeoGAF threads. This entry comes from FyreWulff and covers his ideas for the future of Forge. (Originally posted in Halo 4 Forge |OT| on November 27th.)

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What 343 Should Do To Improve Community Content Generation Going Forward

Everyone’s said their piece here and elsewhere about the downfalls and improvements of Halo 4’s Forge. MrBig’s gigantic post addressed a lot of features and tools that could be used within the current Forge system, but I’ve put some thought to it and want to make the following post/suggestion for the next step in controller-based community content creation. Of course, letting people just use the existing Halo tools will always be the best option, but within the confines of the console and controllers, there’s still plenty of room for improvement and flexibility.

With that in mind, I propose splitting map creation into two separate tools, Forge and Anvil. Diagram, courtesy of Devolution:

Forge as a level geometry editor (Halo 3 Foundry and Sandbox, Reach/4 and the STRUCTURE category) was useful for the time, but the limitations are starting to impact actual map development. What should be done is to return Forge to what it started out as in Halo 3: an easy to use object editor that players use to modify objects on existing maps. Anvil (stealing the Marathon tool name) will become the actual geometry/world editor to give map makers more power in creating their world, while making it easy for beginners to easily alter developer maps and community maps.

Anvil would be a single-player only experience. No networking or multiplayer real time tank dropping, let’s leave that over in Forge. Talk to the guys at Ubisoft about their editor, but Anvil will start as a blank slate with basic heightmap editing:

While having Terrain-style objects in 4 would be nice (grassy hills, more useful rocks, trees and such), the problem still exists that the engine treats them as added objects that it has to aggressively drop detail on / dither in and out at range. Anyone who played 4 player split in Reach on Hemorrhage remembers everything popping in and out of view. Imagine that with actual map terrain. Hell no.

This is where the base map geometry/land would be made. Editors would define the water level, the mountains and valleys, trees, and structure objects like buildings and so on. While being able to currently rip apart a map with your buddies in Forge in real time is fun, you rarely need to or want to change your map’s base geometry after you finish it.

This mode would also act like Far Cry in that you’d be able to paint grass, rocks, cliffs, and add Cave objects to make negative space out of the height map (something the Far Cry Editor supported on the original Xbox in 2004). Then you’d set the time of day, the angle the sun is at, and select a skybox, which would determine the overall ambient light on the map. Day/Noon/night/dusk would the the main options, although the FC editor and others let you fine tune what angle the sun is at.

Finally, the forger would be able to add much more lights inside of the map. Currently in 3/Reach/4 Forge, the lights are objects that are placed as objects and barely light anything. In 4, they aren’t considered in the lighting pass done on objects. And they’re not rendered in splitscreen. Waste of budget, performance, and not even consistent for appearances. Anvil lights would be used to light up the insides of buildings, caves, add athmospheric lighting and many other things you can do with lights. They would be baked into the shadowmap when the engine goes to generate it, and would not be rendered as glowing balls in gameplay. Since the engine is no longer generating light in real-time, we can have more of these points of lights in Anvil and you’d see the lighting effect in splitscreen.

You’d also set your ‘hardcoded’ world soft/hard kill zones in Anvil. For beginners, you’d add some random terrain/foliage generation and presets in the menu to start with. You could even make some presets like “Blood Gulch”, “Sidewinder”, “Containment” etc to get people started on some basic map types. After finishing your map and finalizing it, the game would bake the lighting and do some basic geometry welding / optimization. Your new map would be ready for the Forge process.

Forge would return to being a basic editor for spawns, gametype-specific objects and soft / hard kill zones and placing of any objects that move dynamically. Some structure-type objects are still available but are still the basic FW pieces for closing off / opening parts of your map for game modes and really basic map structure editing. This is where you’d do Gametype rigging, and if 343 allowed it, rigging of AI placements, movement maps and such for Firefight. Once you’d be finished, you could go back to Anvil and select your Forge variant as the “Built In” variant of your base geometry.

So say I was remaking Blood Gulch:

* Make Blood Gulch in Anvil. Save.
* Make Blood Gulch’s objects, spawns, etc in Forge. Save.
* Open Blood Gulch in Anvil, Assign Default Forge Variant -> Blood Gulch.

Anvil variants would show up in the top level menu alongside developer maps, with their Forge variants (with at least one built-in required) as a sub selection, just like in 3/Reach/4. So you’d go down the menu and see

Anchor 9 > Anchor 9*
Vortex > Vortex *
The Pit > The Pit *
Pitato
Charnel Pit
Cust Map > Cust Map *
Cust Zombies

Packages

Along with upgrades in the editing, we need upgrades in the distribution methods. While we had Bungie.net Web fileshare links and File Sets, and hopefully some Halo 4 web shares eventually, they’re still did not solve all the problems. If any of you have ever released a minigame + map combo, you’ve noticed that you always seem to have roughly half the downloads for the gametype as you do for the map. So there’s a bunch of people playing your map out there.. somehow.. in a completely useless state. I had a Gametype + Map combo on Bungie Favorites at one point called “Flytrap” and included “Sandtrap Fly” next to it in the listings when I submitted it to Urk, and still got tons of “I downloaded Sandtrap Fly, now how do I start flying”. Facepalm.

The solution is something better than File Sets: Packages. What are Packages, you might ask?

A Package is essentially an end-user method of making Map Packs like 343/Bungie can when they sell DLC. It resides as it’s own object in your File Share as a single slot.

A Package can be one of three types:

- A Gametype + Map Package
- A Map Pack Package
- A Collection

A Gametype + Map Package is slightly different but uses the same concept. You create a Gametype from the Gametype editing screen. You can then choose to “Attach Map..” and can select your Forge variant (and the Anvil variant if it’s attached to one), which will automatically create a Gametype Package for you that you can upload to your share. Someone can then download it.

So where in Halo you have the options:

Gametype:
Map :

You’ll have

Gametype:
Map :

Selecting the Package will automatically bring in the map and the gametype.

A Map Pack Package is simple. You create the package in-game. You name it, add a description and add a thumbnail. You then select maps from your local storage, hit Y, then “Add to Package”. Once your package is finished, you’ll upload it to your fileshare. This Package will now have a unique server ID. A Map Package is different in that the Package is just for maps, and these maps are always “together”. If you delete one map from the package, you delete the entire package (with a notice that you’re doing so). Remember the ID number I mentioned earlier? Packaged maps can also be updated; each time you change your Map Package and upload it again, everyone’s box with that package polls Waypoint for updates, and if they see it, they’ll download the package, delete the old version, and put the new ones in it’s place. If people want to keep a map in a Package permanently, they can Save As and make a copy.

So not only can we make proper minigames, you can also make proper map packs, and also ship updates to maps via the packaging system. Maps and gametypes can still be individually uploaded, of course. There’s already a form of bundling going on currently since Halo 3; if you play a multiplayer film, the film contains the map variant and gametype and will populate your Recent History for both with the map/variant from the film. So it’s not that far of a stretch for the engine.

A Collection is closer to the File Sets of Bungie.net but can contain any file type. Initiating this essentially just auto-queues a collection of files as a download. So someone could collect a bunch of their favorite maps and gametypes together and point people at it. The improvement over Bungie.net is that you wouldn’t have to start each file individually, and you could download it from in-game.

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Original post by Fyrewulff (Halo 4 Forge |OT| – 11/27/2012)

If you would like to nominate a post for a future TL;DR feature, send ncsuDuncan a PM on GAF or just email him at ncsuDuncan@gmail.com.

First Place: Kamikaze8
I was NOT expecting to see those two photos combined and I nearly fell out of my seat when I saw how perfect they were together.

Second Place: mudkipeffect
Brilliant idea of incorporating a NYCC HaloGAF photo into Combat Evolved. Bravo’s face always makes me laugh anyways.

Random Winner: sltpoison
We had 27 submissions from 18 different entrants. As with all of my random picks, I used Excel to keep things fair.

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Congrats to all of our winners – I’ll be contacting you via email to get your mailing address and send out those prize packages. I really wish I had enough prizes (and shipping budget) to reward everyone’s effort – I had a really hard time picking just two favorites.

Below is a gallery of all the entries. Again, I’d like to thank everyone that participated – these were all great!