First things first I would like to assure you guys that this will take a different approach than the other pinned forge threads and such. On a specific forging website that I'm not going to advertise on this site we created a sandbox forging wishlist thread. In that thread we composed a massive list of wants and needs. We then sent it to Bungie in an email. Needless to say it had HUGE success.
I kid you not in this thread before any details of sandbox were released we emailed the suggestion of FX filters, Kill balls, Golf Balls/holes, and a floating grid for air map forging. All of these ideas were implemented. So my suggestion to the 343 industries community would be to construct our own list for H4 and email it to 343 industries. I'll start with some of my ideas. Please keep the ideas possible. I've seen a lot of awesome suggestions during my days here (forge solar system) that simply aren't reasonably possible.
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Less Restrictions on Objects
What I mean by this is that I always found it to be quite annoying how you could only use a certain number of double walls for no good reason. Why not simply have a very large budget and allow the forger to to make a map out of 600 double walls if they want. This would require a slight tweak to the budgeting system but it would, in my opinion, be a massive improvement on the system they have implemented in previous Halo games.
Additional Tools to Alter/Move Objects
Wouldn't it be cool to be able to automatically snap an object to the exact same level as another object for perfectly flat floors. Imagine being able to go into your tools tab and hit a button that instantly moves the object up or down until it "collides" with another object or map geometry. Imagine being able to duplicate an object in place so as not to have to arrange every single aspect of it again just to get it perfectly lined up.
Music Options
Imagine being able to put in every single song from the halo soundtrack, ambient life soundtracks, and flood/infection type noises to really bring out the atmosphere of your map. Additional options that I think would be pretty cool are gunfire in the distance sounds, and mortar fire sounds. Furthermore you could choose to make it apply to the entire map or just an area that can be edited similar to hills and objective zones.
Editable Skull Skulls
I personally think that it would be epic to be able to add our own forge skulls into our maps. What I mean is you add a skull in and adjust the settings in the object properties panel. This would be cool because you could potentially do cool things such as give the player a power boost... but really it would just reward the player who enjoys going above and beyond to search the map. Imagine having entire maps dedicated to skull hunting. The best of which would be incredibly exstensive and large.
Elephants
Just something that I think should definatly be included as it works wonders for objective gametypes. Imagine this gametype. There are 4 elephants on a map and two belong to each team. One for each team has a flag on it. Each elephant also works as a safe zone (Which cancels out the kill zone covering the entire map) that goes out 20 feet in each direction. Also the vehicles on the elephants act as a safe zone. The goal is to capture the flag. I know this game is just off the top of my head and probably wouldn't work too well but just imagine the possibilities that elephants would add for the forging community.
More Choice of Environmental Objects (Predalian5)
What Is meant by this is that we believe that the forging community should be given a much larger choice of environmental objects than just the rocks in Reach. Allow us to add trees of varying different shapes and sizes, allow us to add a large mountain or mound for us to use as the foundation for our maps. The variety of objects that could be included is endless.
Weather/Time/Sky Color FX Filter (Predalian5)
Wouldn't it be cool to go into your forge map and be able to edit every aspect of the worlds setting with a single FX filter. If you want to make a spooky infection map, then you just change the time setting to night and change the weather setting to violent storm (or something similar). Furthermore imagine being able to slightly alter the hue of the sky and create beautiful skylines. If this FX filter was included, then no two forge maps would ever seem the same.
Joining Objects Together (The Ninja)
This is a very good idea. Imagine the simplicity of being able to assign objects to a group the same way you do with channels for teleporters. Then you could edit an entire sniper tower up a few feet instead of having to mess up and replace every single item a few feet higher than the original. This could be used to save valuable time in forging.
Middle Ground for Objects (The Ninja)
Another very good point by The Ninja is that reach had the relatively small 5x5 flat block and the coliseum wall with almost no middle ground. When making floors the coliseum wall tended to be a little overkill, while the 5x5 block could take a long time to forge and wasted objects in the building blocks section that could otherwise have been put to good use.
Ability to Lock Vehicles/Weapons (The Ninja)
It would be cool and useful if forgers had the ability to lock vehicles and weapons to a certain team. This would make it so that forgers could create a larger and more exciting variety of maps and game-types. Maybe this could be handled via a checklist in the object properties panel.
Better Canvases (ElitelSnlp3r)
In Past Halo's the canvases have been good but they could have been better. What would be really cool is a massive skybox type building area with nothing else in it except air and a grid. The collesium was nice in Halo Reach, but wouldn't it be nice to have a very very large outdoor flat surface to work on?
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Please try to post ideas in a similar if not the same format. Thank you.