Modacity Forging Guild (Name TBD)

[Siliconmaster]

I thought this should get its own thread so that we stop sidetracking the general Reach discussion thread.

The proposed idea is some sort of Modacity Forging Team that would work together to make forge maps in Halo Reach. Not only is there a lot of interest, but this could provide a nice way for Modacity to actually make Halo content again.

Note: English Mobster was also making a thread, so he should get credit too. <3

Proposed names:
HEK (Halo Editing Kids)
The Operators
Modacity Forging Guild
The Foxtrotters
Forge Collective
Fall of Forge
Sgt Forge's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Don't Forge Me Bro
Fucking Space LEGO's: How Do They Work?
Gruesome Phasing Accident
Set It and Forge Get It
Forgers Crystals
LeVar Burton
Forgy McForgington
Forge Forge Forge Forge (Fourge)
Halcyon
La Forge
The Phasers

Discuss.

Theoretical members: name- XBL tag
ejburke- Echo Ten
Kornman00
Siliconmaster- Br0nto
English Mobster- a Mudkip army
Mr. Big- avp DRAGON
annihilation
DarkHalo003- DarkHalo003
Saggy- SaggDog7
Teltaur- Teltaur
Darqeness- Darqeness
vistea- Red vistea
Rob Oplawar
Arteen
BobtheGreatII
t3hm00kz
rentafence
paladin
Gwunty- CLS_GRUNT
Sanctus- AvalonGuardian
.Wolf™- TheExodios
rentafence- rentafence5
MrBig- Mr Kwatz
CabooseJr- Shirayuki Jr
Necr0matic- Necr0matic

[Kornman00]

Personally, right now I can only see myself being able to only help in the playability testing area and polishing existing geometry areas (ie, fine tuning object placements so the actual geometry cats can go mass out other parts of maps). My time spent in Forge for H3 wasn't all too much so I'll need some more time, especially with the new tools, to really get savvy with contributing in any other way.

[Futzy]

I've got some plans drawn out based off the halo campaign maps. I've been playing through all the games and made a draft of some of the areas that would be good for multiplayer. I'll scan in some that have good potential.
Also, xbl is avp DRAGON. We should add tags to the names. I have silver right now and am waiting for reach to renew and will be changing my name then.

[Siliconmaster]

I agree with you Korn- any team would have to take time to get to know the new tools first. Even those of us that used Forge in H3 a lot aren't going to immediately be able to use all the new goodies Bungie is giving us. Better to mess around for a while and be able to really use everything we can than to start right up and barely scratch the surface. Still, some basic planning is good in advance.

I'm all for any element of forging, be it structural, gametypes, weapons placement, or testing. Weapons placement I'm still a little rough on- I'm even going to need some help on that for my HCE projects. Still, I can do a decent first draft, so to speak.

[English Mobster]

I could go about designing and building a few of these maps.
XBL gamertag: a Mudkip army ('twas a joke gamertag I made a while ago, too lazy to get the money up to change).

[Kornman00]

Remember that there can only be 8 people in Forge together at a time. There could also potentially be a lot of passing the map around between people because of this; you'd have to make sure not to edit your share of work until the map comes back to you.

Even with 8 people on a team in a squad you can break it down as:
* 1 Producer
* 3 Geometry placers (or 2 if it is a small map)
* 2 Object placers
* 2 Decorators

And since they're all pretty much doing their job at the same time, work flows a lot faster. After the first build of the geometry gets massed out then the game type specialists can come in and do their magic, assuming they're not actually one of the geometry, object, etc guys.

[ejburke]

I was thinking more of a loose confederation, rather than a Borg Collective. We could make ourselves available to help test and offer feedback, but as far as taking advantage of the networking capabilities of Forge, I don't think we should try to force anything. There are harsh lessons about "design by committee" and "too many chefs in the kitchen" that would make it counterproductive in many cases.

The initial idea was that we could be affiliated, but still be individuals. If somebody ever wondered what the maker of an old CE map was up to in Forge, he could find out and also check out other maps he might be interested in. To that end, I think we should be proactive and seek out the old names and faces. If they happen to be making Reach content, we post it. They wouldn't have to voluntarily join up or commit to anything.

But, we would need particapation in test labs from active members to make sure our "brand" means something and that people can trust it. All of my CE maps had one or two test runs before release, when they were at a point where I couldn't change anything from a gameplay perspective. It'll be nice to be able to properly iterate on a design, instead of just hoping it works.

[Teltaur]

Well, I know I've been going through concepts for a Hang 'em High/Tombstone remake, but chances are most Halo 1/2/3 remakes are going to be spammed to hell and back, so it'd be more worth the effort to just avoid vanilla Halo remakes altogether.

I'd be more likely to take on geometry or something similar, as I've always seemed to suck at getting spawn points in Halo 3 to flow decently. GT's the same as my username.


EDIT: And, I was a long-time member of Bungie's Atlas system, where Forgers would submit their maps for Shishka to consider for use in Matchmaking (most Bungie vs. The World and 7 On The 7th maps came from it). Many of those systems would work well for a group like this, where before a map could even be considered, it had to pass a certain amount of tests for general use, have at least 3 full playtests, and plenty of other things that normal mappers would have usually missed in the creation process. I could always get a full list of what Shishka considered mandatory for a Forge map to be fully 'playable' if you want me to.

[Siliconmaster]

A confederation would also be a good idea- no reason we can't do both. The overall concept would be that any Modacity member making a forge map that wanted to participate could submit theirs under the Modacity name. In addition, any groups that wanted to work together specifically on one map could do that as well. Either way, our group name would gain some weight.

[Arteen]

At the very least, this would be good for playtesting each others' creations. I can't really see multiple people Forging at the same time working out, though.