Maestro

I liked the feeling of playing the game; everything felt fluid and smooth. The graphics were a definite improvement. Mechanically, this game is amazing. But what annoyed me the most was the Didact. Every game that has an emphasis or a semblance of a plot has an antagonist. The Mario franchise has Bowser. The Megaman series has Dr. Wily; X has Sigma. These guys give you a reason to want to defeat them, even though the games they star in have just a semblance of story. Bowser kidnaps Peach, Wily tries to rule the world, Sigma... I dunno... I haven't played Megaman X. The Didact didn't. He just appeared and made both enemy factions who already shot at you stop shooting at each other and focus their fire on you, then blasted off in his Spooky Sphere. Then he zapped some folks and bit the dust in an anticlimactic boss fight. The Covenant had a bad habit of turning human worlds into glass from orbit; they killed billions. I didn't appreciate that. All the Didact did was wreck New Phoenix and a space station. Exdeath from Final Fantasy 5 was also a lame antagonist, but even he gave me more reasons to dislike him. In short, the Didact is a mustache-twirler antagonist who just appears out of nowhere and (tries to) ruin your day.

I predict a lot of people will be sporting Didact armour.

The bot issue has come up a few times, what with people wanting to make their own Spartan Ops and/or Firefight maps. The reason why bots have not been incorporated except in the form of stationary auto-turrets is simply because bots are incapable of pathfinding on their own. For example, if you manage to launch an Elite onto a high ledge but he survives the launch, he will stand there and shoot at you if you stray too close. We think it's logical to just jump down and continue on our merry way, but the Elite has no path down from said ledge. One would have to program paths for the AI to take, where they can or can't venture, which is something the average Joe cannot easily do. Bots are something a lot of people want to toy with in forge, but as Bungie said, the tech simply isn't there. I doubt 343 Industries will say anything different. :/

I'm guessing this increase in members will result in the need to upload GOR-FEST to my file share?

This world's becoming a place where we can't trust any video game studios and their baked goods at all. Valve turns cake into a lie, and now 343 Industries has made cookies false. What's next, Nintendo transforms pie into a conspiracy? Anyways, it's map time! This one is one of the first minigames I've made on Halo 4. I've tested it with friends, including forum members Razgriz Girl and AnimeAddict92, and I have tuned it up. It's a silly game, but it's a blast to play. I call it Tumble Rumble!!!! And yes, those exclamation marks helped me differentiate between all of Tumble Rumble's previous versions during development. Here's the gametype for it, aptly named Tumble Rumble. The layout of the map is simple. There's a huge hill, and you have to get the trophy at the top. But first, you spawn in a safety room. You and seven friends can spawn in this room. The safety room has windows where you can look up quite a ways. You can tell if something is coming to kill you. If only more people looked out the windows... (and yes, that's me in the screenshot) If you don't look out the window, things may not end well. The Guardians have a bad habit of spawn-killing. A stray kill ball used to be able to land on the ceiling of the safety room, although I have placed a sloped coliseum wall there to fix it. Those kill balls can get some killer air... so can the soccer balls... and the die. The gametype itself is a variant of Oddball, but all you need to do is hold the ball for one second to win a round. There are three rounds in the gametype, and is a best out of three, although you can tweak it to be a best out of nine or seven or whatever you prefer. You're equipped with a Concussion Rifle and a Gravity Hammer, which can deflect soccer balls but cannot hurt your opponents, nor can they deflect kill balls. The previous edition had golf balls, but I scrapped them in favour of more soccer balls and a die. You also have a Thruster Pack, which can save your rear if you're staring down a legion of kill balls. Triple Kill! Running Riot! Anyways, thanks for looking, and if you gave this map a try, I thank thee tenfold! These files have been deleted from my file share.

I guess I'll have to keep this in mind when I'm making something in forge! Thanks!

Changing the weapons you spawn with for a normal gametype qualifies as an Action Sack gametype according to 343. So instead of having off-the-wall objects being your objective, such as Hog Potato where your Warthog is an Oddball or Halo Chess, you can spawn with Binary Rifles in CTF and have that count as an Action Sack gametype instead. :/

Then you shall perform... uh... reasonably when Drive Master is ready to go. Well darn, it sucks to hear that you don't want to try them right now. They are a little strange since they all use Halo's engine for, a lack of better words, non-Halo-style gameplay. Maybe sometime in the future they'll warm up to you? If these got featured in matchmaking, that would make my day! Considering that pretty much every map has a special gametype tailored to it, it probably wouldn't happen for sometime. The Halo Gear Solid maps have the best chances of being featured, but that wouldn't happen simply because 343 isn't even aware of their existence or the fact that the name may end up causing Konami to slap a copyright infringement lawsuit on them; subsequently, I'd end up getting into some legal trouble as well if that were to happen. Otherwise, I bet they'd appear in Action Sack. And thanks for looking! Since I'm in another country right now, I won't be able to post a new map until sometime next week. :/

I've tried working on a collaborative map once before; the person leading the project did not have a clear idea what he wanted to build, so it ended poorly. :/ Drive Master is the only thing I could use a hand for, and that's on hiatus for the time being... but I do have some gimmicks I want to play around with. I want to try and make something that utilizes Wraiths, and make a Grifball map. But I won't be working on anything until the latter half of next week, for I am America-bound!

Don't worry about it. With this racetrack I'm working on, everyone will be on equal ground so long as you're decent at driving a Ghost. But I digress that this track, called Drive Master, will not be released for some time.

Unfortunately, I do not have another map to present today... ...KIDDING! I do have a map to present! It's about time, eh?! I spent about eight hours on this today! In two previous skirmishes, the members of the Alpha Halo Gear Brotherhood have taken significant losses, with two of their major facilities being captured. Now, their main facility has been located; take it down at all costs. This is it: finish the fight. In other words, this is Halo Gear Solid 3. I planned on having an underwater segment and having two islands connected to each other, but before I knew it, I used up a lot of the budget. So one island it is. Just like its predecessors, it uses the Halo Gear Solid gametype. And this is where ~$1500 of the budget went... I think. The crane isn't just for show; it's the only way for the red team to get down to the pier via teleporter. It also has some goodies. I always wanted to make a Halo Gear Solid map on Forge Island, but its lack of natural terrain to utilize made things a bit tough. Eventually I came up with the idea of using the edges of the islands. Even then, things got a bit iffy. I nearly used every single rock available. This is one side of the cliffside route. As per Halo Gear Solid standards, there are multiple paths for the blue team to take to infiltrate the red team's base; of course, the extraction point can only be reached by the blue team. Since this is the primary base of the Brotherhood, it is the toughest one to infiltrate. Not only does the blue team have to traverse rocks... This is the dark side of Citadel Island. ...they have to climb to the top of this tower. The pier has three Ghosts for the red team to use, which means they can drive them up and down the stairs... so the blue team had better watch themselves. Their citadel is heavily guarded. The blue team's trek to the tower top will take them to the Inner Sanctum, which is located in the inner sanctum of the middle island... in other words, inside the island. There's a boggy effect on the floor, and thanks to a well-placed grid, you can walk on water without being a prominent religious figure. If you make it to the end, you will be greeted with a catwalk leading to the Brotherhood's servers, and the end of the Halo Gear saga. The Inner Sanctum is riddled with lines of sight and prevents bullets from ricocheting. This time around, there are jump pads. Instead of previous maps where a player would suddenly have a speed boost effect which enables them to jump higher, there is a capture plate to signal where they can jump higher. Although I could not change the colour of the capture plate, most of them have a 1x1 block with the team colour they work for. As this is the toughest Halo Gear Solid map I've made, I should warn you that your observational and platforming skills will be put to the test. If you are on the blue team, look carefully before you leap. The land punishes the slightest miscalculation with a plunge into the drink. Halo Gear Solid 3 is not for the faint of heart, especially the European Extreme edition. I'd recommend playing the previous Halo Gear Solid maps first. The first one tests your jumping skills if you go to jail, while the second one tests your stealth skills within a base. This one combines both and turns the difficulty dial to 11 out of 10, while European Extreme turns it to 12... and yes, the difficulty dial is a logarithmic scale, with 12 being equal to ten 11's. For comparison, my racetrack I'm working on is at a 20, which makes it 1,000,000,000x tougher than Halo Gear Solid 3: European Extreme. Anyways, thanks for looking, and if you gave this map a try, my gratitude is also logarithmic, so it'll also be tenfold! Heh, math. This map has been deleted from my file share.

I've got my own map display thread up; just keep posting screenshots of your maps, with links to your file share, and slowly but surely people will notice and say "hey, this guy's good at forging".

The unicycle Mongoose- Unigoose?- is the result of a glitch I saw a video of and replicated. It would make for an interesting racetrack gimmick, as driving around with only one wheel made me spin in circles of varying radii, but cannot be saved in its unicycle form.

Thanks! Hopefully I'll be able to release another map soon; but, as I've mentioned before, there are a few issues cropping up with gameplay. One's ridiculously difficult, another one is broken, and the final one- the map with the tower- is under construction.

the Sergeant Smithson... jon... son.

Unfortunately I do not have a new map ready yet, but here are some teasers of what I'm making. What is this map going to be? And then there's this map which has been causing me some trouble simply because of a respawn issue. Bombs away! Scared of heights? I hope not! Where'd I go? That's pretty high... I think the height on that platform is +100.0.