Halo 2: Anniversary Forge

[Unease Peanut]

Halo 2: Anniversary Forge

 

 

As part of IGN first, 343i shows us how Forge will work in Halo 2 on their new 'Forge World'.

 

We will start off with a huge blank canvas, everything you see around you is part of the skybox so you can do everything you want to do. Place huge slabs of terrain to create an island to work on, go place some trees and rocks to make it look more natural. Once you go in to player mode everything will connect with eachother almost seamlessly.

 

As an example we get to see an entire map as large a Coagulation forged by one of the dev's to show us what we all can do when we get out hands on.

You'll be able to place interactive elements on the map. Like the EMP which is also featured in Coagulation, switches like we saw in Zenith and interactive doors activated by consoles like we saw in Stonetown. And yes the "Blue screen of death" appears on them when activated like in the original Zanzibar console.

 

But it doesn't stop there!

Using the consoles you can also spawn in set items in Player mode. From as small as a bridge to entire race tracks. Get creative!

 

What's also worth pointing out is that we get a glimpse of Beaver Creek that the dev's forged in.

Didn't your favourite map get remade? You can now Forge it yourself!

 

Get a look at it for yourself here:

http://www.ign.com/videos/2014/10/28/halo-2-anniversary-forge-demo-halo-the-master-chief-collection-ign-first

 

Have you already got an idea about how you're going to use the Forge?

Let us know down below!

Thank you for reading!

This post has been promoted to an article

[ONI Agent Locke]

I pre-loaded this on my Xbox One last night. Now I absolutely can't wait.

 

This is the step in Forge we needed. It's beautiful. Come Halo 5, we'll pretty much have GMod in Halo, but way more user friendly.

[rrhuntington]

I'm glad they're finally adding things we've wanted for a while. Just hoping someday we can have NPC's in forge as well.

[ONI Agent Locke]

I'm glad they're finally adding things we've wanted for a while. Just hoping someday we can have NPC's in forge as well.

Firefight with Forge has been something I've considered a possibility ever since Spartan Ops. Because that's basically what Spartan Ops was, to an extent.

[Twinreaper]

Eh not really impressed.  Lighting generation looks sloppy and the scripting stuff is old news.  We've been doing the exact same thing in Halo CE for years.  The variation i cliffs and boulders is kinda small.  Overall, not really anything innovative.  Unless they are holding out actual good add-ons for Guardians?

[Zaguroth]

Twin nitpicks too much lol.. (jk Twin ._.)

Personally, I love what they showed in that video. Now we can make a huge map with working doors, bridges, uh.. uh.. other things... Yea.. Really excited to see what I can put together once I get my hands on it lol.

Really hope they show the other 2 blank canvases. Part of me hopes they make one in space, but with better pieces than impact.. Stupid station tube things..

Edited October 29, 2014 by Zaguroth

[L3g3ndarY NovA]

Now I can make badly looking buildings on top of my own badly put-together terrain in forge! It's what I always wanted.

[ONI Agent Locke]

Eh not really impressed.  Lighting generation looks sloppy and the scripting stuff is old news.  We've been doing the exact same thing in Halo CE for years.  The variation i cliffs and boulders is kinda small.  Overall, not really anything innovative.  Unless they are holding out actual good add-ons for Guardians?

Lighting generation is greatly improved over Halo 4's Forge. Scripting in Halo CE is only on PC, and the online community for it is pretty much dead now. Not to mention, it's far more user friendly and intuitive than making a map on Halo CE.

[Twinreaper]

Lighting generation is greatly improved over Halo 4's Forge. Scripting in Halo CE is only on PC, and the online community for it is pretty much dead now. Not to mention, it's far more user friendly and intuitive than making a map on Halo CE.

 

You should probably just refrain from posting about things.  You have no idea what you are talking about.  The Halo PC community is a strong and alive as it has ever been.  ever watched CELive?  Obviously not.

 

The light generation in Halo 4 was not even on par with Halo Reach.  Saying it was improved is true in comparison to Halo 4, but not the previous title.

 

And for the record, The amount of modding that was done for Halo 2 and Halo 1 on the Xbox platform, is light years ahead of what Forge can do.  Scripting can be done quite easily on either platform, PC or Xbox.  There's a reason why serious Halo Community Content Creators all refer to Forge as Playschool Mode.

[Axilus Prime]

Twin, the only people this doesn't help are people who can actually do programming.

 

This allows those who can't to finally construct custom landscapes...and that is awesome.

[Twinreaper]

Im not degrading the opportunitiesnthat it affords Forgers. Im simply trying to point out the negative points of this to shed some clarity.

 

Doors for instance. Doors are ok, but how many maps actually benefit from doors? Doors and the Zanzibar style gate are fine additions, but I dont see them being usefull. And they didnt say what type of clearance you need to have. By default, doors and othermachine that have an open or close funtion, rely on having a clear unobstructed path to operate. It has a function called "pause until crushed". Meaning if other geometry normally intersects with its moving path, it will stop.

 

As for the object spawning via script, the way they show it working has potential, but also severly devastating side effects. It would be different if they at least showed a placeholder graphic where interactive spawning script items would appear. The point of scripting is to add really cool effects and astetics to a map, but people playing the map, shouldnt have to guess at every turn what happens when and be able to navigate with limited frustration.

 

Again, I've never been a huge Forge fan. Most maps created through Forge tend to have a limited audience and most only cater to specific niches. I would have a much better opinion or Forge if there were more maps with overall support for all gametypes or weren't failed attempts at recreating old maps with poorly thought out and placed additions.

[Azaxx]

Im not degrading the opportunitiesnthat it affords Forgers. Im simply trying to point out the negative points of this to shed some clarity.

 

Doors for instance. Doors are ok, but how many maps actually benefit from doors? Doors and the Zanzibar style gate are fine additions, but I dont see them being usefull. And they didnt say what type of clearance you need to have. By default, doors and othermachine that have an open or close funtion, rely on having a clear unobstructed path to operate. It has a function called "pause until crushed". Meaning if other geometry normally intersects with its moving path, it will stop.

 

As for the object spawning via script, the way they show it working has potential, but also severly devastating side effects. It would be different if they at least showed a placeholder graphic where interactive spawning script items would appear. The point of scripting is to add really cool effects and astetics to a map, but people playing the map, shouldnt have to guess at every turn what happens when and be able to navigate with limited frustration.

 

Again, I've never been a huge Forge fan. Most maps created through Forge tend to have a limited audience and most only cater to specific niches. I would have a much better opinion or Forge if there were more maps with overall support for all gametypes or weren't failed attempts at recreating old maps with poorly thought out and placed additions.

One bomb Assault, One flag CTF and Infection/Flood gametypes will greatly benefit from doors and things of such kinds, especially Infection/Flood. The idea of going checkpoint to checkpoint has been around for years with forged Infection maps, but as being built on the idea of timed spawning. With doors, the immersion would be amplified by a considerable factor.

 

My problem with the object spawning script is that it is instantaneous. What I mean by that is that there is no phase transition to give it a more pretty look, objects just pop into existence which doesn't look that great. A basic idea of a good system in my mind would be how the Hard Light bridges are formed in the campaign of Halo, they slowly fade into existence and look in place, opposed to how it was shown off in the video OP provided.

[Twinreaper]

Infection was never meant to be played the way it is now. The core of what made infection great was lost after Halo 3. Everyone just keeps trying to improve and addon to it, but it fails miserably. At least thats the opinion of this older gamer.

 

Aand for what its worth, if all those things you listed really DO add to the infection immersion, then why is it that you will see NONE of that in good old Halo 1 or Halo 2? Im just curious about where that opinion and assumption stems from? Halo Reach and Halo 4 at its core in the mechanics and engine, changed infection drastically. We were forced to play it a certain way, and even with the amount of things we could subtract from the gametype, it never played the same.

[I_Make_Big_Boom]

Infection was never meant to be played the way it is now. The core of what made infection great was lost after Halo 3. Everyone just keeps trying to improve and addon to it, but it fails miserably. At least thats the opinion of this older gamer.

Aand for what its worth, if all those things you listed really DO add to the infection immersion, then why is it that you will see NONE of that in good old Halo 1 or Halo 2? Im just curious about where that opinion and assumption stems from? Halo Reach and Halo 4 at its core in the mechanics and engine, changed infection drastically. We were forced to play it a certain way, and even with the amount of things we could subtract from the gametype, it never played the same.

 

So giving players more options in Infection fails miserably? I agree initially 343i restricted use in Flood, but there are now hundreds of Flood mods that give you more than what Infection had before. Lots of potential, but you couldn't do too much or it'll cause lag. H2A kinda solves that.

 

And Forge wasn't even in the cards pre-Halo 3 right? The players never experienced something like that before (well not people who actually program and create content on PC) so at the time the highest level of immersion was what you could do in the base game. Let your imagination take care of the rest.

 

Post Halo 3 players became empowered with tools they could use to create incredible Infection content in Forge: increasing immersion.

[Twinreaper]

The point is, infection is NOT what it used to be, is not as fun and nowhere near as popular as it had been. Just because you have the option to add things to a gametype, does not automatically make it better. Can we get back on topic though? Im not about to full out debate the gametypes in a thread meant to focus on the Forge additions.

[I_Make_Big_Boom]

The point is, infection is NOT what it used to be, is not as fun and nowhere near as popular as it had been. Just because you have the option to add things to a gametype, does not automatically make it better. Can we get back on topic though? Im not about to full out debate the gametypes in a thread meant to focus on the Forge additions.

 

This discussion is on topic... at least map wise, not gametype wise. The maps are the bread and butter though.

 

The amount of content 343i and Certain Affinity are giving us will surely allow us to create many great things more than what has been achieved before in Forge. I've already got soo many ideas about what I could do in H2A Forge.

[ONI Agent Locke]

You should probably just refrain from posting about things. You have no idea what you are talking about. The Halo PC community is a strong and alive as it has ever been. ever watched CELive? Obviously not.

 

The light generation in Halo 4 was not even on par with Halo Reach. Saying it was improved is true in comparison to Halo 4, but not the previous title.

 

And for the record, The amount of modding that was done for Halo 2 and Halo 1 on the Xbox platform, is light years ahead of what Forge can do. Scripting can be done quite easily on either platform, PC or Xbox. There's a reason why serious Halo Community Content Creators all refer to Forge as Playschool Mode.

Oh damn, didn't know I was talking to the Prime Minister of All Halo PC Knowledge. I apologize for my ignorance and will commit seppuku in shame.

 

The Halo PC community is NOT as strong and alive as it's ever been. I don't know who you're trying to fool, but I've played Halo PC since 2006 and even made machinima shorts with it, and the community is nowhere near as large as it was back then. I just logged on to check, and across Halo PC and Halo CE, there were only a little over 800 players. Most of them on stock maps rather than Custom Edition maps. On hce.halomaps.org, a website with which I'm quite familiar, new maps are lucky to get even a thousand downloads these days. And I've never even heard of CELive, and apparently neither has Bing or Google.

 

Halo Reach didn't have light generation. Make a map in the Coliseum and you'll see what I mean. I had a map that was almost completely boxed in, but the light went through and reflected off the geometry rather than get blocked by it, making everything look awkward. Halo 4 fixed this problem, except that players are not shadowed like Forge geometry, so if you have an entirely closed off room that's dark, the Spartan is still bright as day. Halo 2:A doesn't have this problem.

 

Yes, mods made by people who know how to manipulate the game as such are better than Forge. No one is disputing that. But anyone can use Forge, very few can hack their Xbox and put whatever they want on it. Even on PC, not everyone can model and script and code. The people that can make astounding content, but it's takes knowledge and talent not available to everyone. In Forge, you press the button, and a box spawns. You move it, place it, and it stays, and that's all there is to it, and there's no secondary program or extra knowledge required. And most importantly, it can be played by anyone, not just by hacked systems or programs. It's accessible to everyone and works well. Does it compare to full-blown modding? Of course not. But Forge doesn't need to exist in the first place, which is part of what makes it so great. Look at any other AAA game on the market, and you'll see nothing has this kind of proprietary map customization.

 

Infection was never meant to be played the way it is now. The core of what made infection great was lost after Halo 3. Everyone just keeps trying to improve and addon to it, but it fails miserably. At least thats the opinion of this older gamer.

There is no "way it was meant to be played." The whole idea of Forge, Custom Games, and user content creation in general, is to make and play whatever you want however you want. When restrictions such as those placed on Infection in Halo 4 are added, then that does defeat the purpose, but Halo Reach didn't lack anything that Halo 3 had.

[Jraw Anyo Dothomear]

I like to the forge though I'm a little disappointed there wasn't the Spector in the building options spectres are basically for person warthogs even though they're a little slower

[E-Runner]

I can verify the Halo PC community has diminished as well. I used to be my main game for many years. Nowadays it's mostly Spanish speaking noobs in multiplayer for some reason. It had remained pretty strong for years, but ya.

[xxBEASTLYBOYZxx]

Forge just keeps getting better and better! I am getting an Xbox One mostly because of this game and I'll spend a lot of time in forge

[Twam]

Just hoping someday we can have NPC's in forge as well.

 

AI wars would be fun

[depressant]

This is great!! I just hope AI can be added in future Halo games. All the upgrades in MCC are great and I'm really looking forward to them!!