Building your own stuff

[lazyfireball00]

I think that HALO4 should alow you to build something and then group them together and set options on them to make them a gun, or vehicle, or guardian tower, etc. and that you can put them in your file share.

I also think that you should be able to change the terrain like starting with a blank map with no objects or hills,moutains,vallys, etc. =)

[shred1894]

Maybe for like some sandbox level editor system, but that would be better for on a pc for making the levels like that (like a map developer program). Like have a special map maker that you can get for pc, have it pre-loaded with all the halo 4 multiplayer maps, and then have it where you can build maps that are more in depth making than in forge, but have forge as well.

 

It would be sweet to make your own maps with custom forge menus and custom weapons and stuff, like so you don't have to mod your xbox for modded maps (no more hacked games and illegal junk)

[Twinreaper]

The Xbox 360 alone would not be capable of pulling off the tasks of editing terrain, or even maps and tags in general by itself. Unfortunatly the hardware would not be able to handle the requirements to run the virtualizations or the developer tools. Those items would have to be specifically for the PC, and use a migration style connection protocol to allow the uploading of maps. But given the hackability of Microsoft products already and the mods of the console itself, it would be a huge security issue to allow users direct access to uplaoding maps to the HDD. The best we could hope for, would be allowing the end user to upload any custom created map to a special "Marketplace" style Halo section, so you can browse available maps. Also on top of that, when the user uploads a map, it could be placed in the users download que automatically.

[lazyfireball00]

Well what about making your own vehicles and stuff like that?

[Ardent Prayer]

Something like minecraft but not as blocky

[Twinreaper]

Creating anything from scratch is complicated. even getting simple non-static scenery or objects require a working knowledge of nodes, markers, parent/sibling relations and much more. Vehicles themselves are the most complicated item to create besides a complete fluid biped. Vehicles require permutations for every damage possible as well as many other tag relationships. A console based editing system is not capable of nor is resource friendly enough to compensate the amount of data needed to create, rig and compile a vehicle let alone a simple weapon in terms of Halo.

 

Someone eralier today asked me a simple question. Why is it that Pariah, an Xbox 1 game, allowed players to create terrain from within the game itself? The answer is pretty obvious but i will elaborate, which will also help you to understand why these things are not going to happen on a console, especially for Halo.

 

Pariah used a modified version of the Unreal Engine, and a modified version of havok 5.12 I believe. The format used by Pariah for the map editor was left open ended...meaning that the compiled dtat file for the map itself was not locked to a format due to having it compiled. This map thus allowed the user, to alter geometry by in real time simply updating vetices and faces on the fly. The collision for this was altered open ended as well, as the game updated collision edges, faces and vertices in conjuction with the mesh. Now simple number writing of this type on an engine like Unreal's Quake, is simple enough and resource friendly enough to allow a wide margin of other things to be done at the same time, hence why the game had similar properties to Forge. But because of hardware restraints...mostly memory, the palette and editing was severly limited and only able to be done on a pre-set single map....again, similar to forge.

 

Halo uses the Blam! engine. This particular engine uses a format called a BSP (Binary Space partition). A BSP is a closed compiled format that is created as a result of "Tool", compressing and changing the proprietary ".ass" file format. All collision and mesh data is compiled into a single BSp and as such, because a compressed locked file format once it is compiled. Because of the way BSP's and the .map structure is written, a map handler is required to decompress, interpret and list .map file data into a readbale usable "meta table" or "Tag list". This is one reason as to why there can be no open ended geometry editing in Halo.

 

The second problem in editing terrain in Halo, comes in the form of lighting. All BSP's, usually before they can be loaded, must go thru a rasterizing process, to display lighting on terrain and other world objects. This lighting process is done after a terrain in an editopr has been processed into a BSP standalone, and is then loaded by Toola gain, and lit properly. The lighting process alone for world geometry or BSp is heavy, and usually requires at least 2 gig or more RAM alone just to house temporary lighting data. The particular lighting used in Reach's Blam! variant uses per-pixel lighting for objects that don't reside by nature, inside the BSP. That is to say that the per-pixel lighting is used by objects like bipeds, crates, scenery, etc... This is why we see realtime shadows on most or all objects in the game.

 

Creating a standalone editing tool for a console is not only extremely resource hungry, but requires an advanced user knowledge that almost 80% of the general community would not be easily trained to know. To break it down simply, here is a list of things a console editor would need...

 

1. A working console environment compiled version of

a. Sapien (object, spawn, scenery, etc placing application)

b. Guerilla (tag editing tool)

c. Tool.exe (tag compiling command line)

 

2. 4 to 6 gig of available physical RAM

 

3. Standalone or console compiled 3d application (similar to Tiger/Destiny or 3dsMax)

 

4. A standard keyboard and mouse fro hotkey use and to be able to use all commands or functions of said previous program.

 

Now for Sapien alone, at least 2 gig's of RAM would have to be dedicated to load and display properly, all the map's contents as defines by the "scenario" file, which for those who don't know.... is the core of the map file. It has the complete library of the map files properties and every object that is used by that map file. Guerilla, can create blank tags and edit the compiled tags of anything used in the game. Tool itself is the most taxing of the applications. As it has the job of compiling and interchanging formats between raw and closed files.

 

We have all used a 3d app at one time or another, like 3DSMax or Blender. Those programs alone are not free, and must be purchased or licensed. Even if it were possible to get those or a proprietary 3d app loaded and compiled into a console environment, the performance and functions of the app would be very limited. I do realize that getting a keyboard and mouse for the Xbox is simple, but using the applications for creating anything in Halo takes a lot of work. Even creating something as miniscule as a hill or cave, can easily turn into a broken, non-compiling bsp or worse...a 2 to three hour venture.

 

The main question one needs to ask himself is this... |Is it worth to compromise and stifle creative design by using a console for Halo edtiting, or is better to release a HEK on a PC platform, to allow complete and total creative freedom"? In my eyes, the answer is simple.....PC. For anyone interested in learning more about what it really takes to create things for Halo, you should all try ouot the HEK's for halo 2 and Halo 1. Once you have, only then will you begin to realize how much dedication and work is invloved in doing such a thing. Editing a map to be 343i or even Bungie quality will take months or even years of editing. Hell, even making a half-assed friends only fun map can take weeks to a moth.

 

I hope I was able to help some of you understand why things are the way they are. Thanks for reading.

[lazyfireball00]

That was a mouth full.

But can't Halo 4 use a Unreal Engine like Pariah?

Because I want to make epic maps from scratch.

[Twinreaper]

Unreal fails graphically and does not have a wide range of options in terms of tag creation. The editing and developing of assets on the Unreal engine is mostly command line and script/xml. Besides which, it would not make much sense using a 3rd party engine on a 1st party title. As I have posted before about this....it would much more sense to allow PC users to create and share maps that are compiled to be compatable between a PC and console version. Halo is really the only FPS franchise that has yet to realize the brilliance and need to release a PC and console version of there titles simultaniously.

[lazyfireball00]

FPS?

All I want is to be able to make your terrain and make your vehicles and stuff like that.

[Turokman5896]

pc fanboy? jk, but dude... maps from scratch dont really make sense to me... why do we need it?

[lazyfireball00]

I'm not a PC fan boy lol I just want it so you make your own forge objects in a menu called forge object creator and you have like these parts like engines and weapons and body chasises and wheels.

[popje]

The Xbox 360 alone would not be capable of pulling off the tasks of editing terrain, or even maps and tags in general by itself. Unfortunatly the hardware would not be able to handle the requirements to run the virtualizations or the developer tools. Those items would have to be specifically for the PC, and use a migration style connection protocol to allow the uploading of maps. But given the hackability of Microsoft products already and the mods of the console itself, it would be a huge security issue to allow users direct access to uplaoding maps to the HDD. The best we could hope for, would be allowing the end user to upload any custom created map to a special "Marketplace" style Halo section, so you can browse available maps. Also on top of that, when the user uploads a map, it could be placed in the users download que automatically.

 

what ? far cry was on the first xbox and had a awesome terrain editor