Halo 4 Sandbox Ideas

What are everyone's ideas for some cool new sandbox features in Halo 4. Things which we have always thought would have been cool.

Some of my ideas:

Climbing- When you stand near a steep object or incline (like a tall crate or cliff) you are given a command prompt to climb the object.

Swimming- I've always thought it was the stupidest thing that you couldn't swim, and that you actually drowned in 6 feet of water. I can understand that bungie was using the water a parameter for game-play but if Halo 4 has the massive maps we expect it to they need to let Spartans swim. For example, when you walk past your head in water you stow your weapon and use both hands to swim, steering and thrusting with the left and right sticks. if you wanted to swim underwater, 343 could limit that ability by giving you only 20 seconds of air or something.

Going Prone- This really needs to be included. I mean, some people might argue that that is "to COD", but what kind of soldier never goes prone in battle. It drastically improves your sniping accuracy and is a good way to get out of the crossfire if you need to regain your shields.

Kicking- An interesting melee attack if the controls are right. Kicking would deal more damage then a standard melee and could be instituted by holding down the melee and trigger at the same time.

What does everyone think? Some new actions in Halo 4 would be nice and i would like everybody who reads this to give their opinions.

Well for me none of these are Halo features I am interested in. Halo and the Chief nor any other playable character has every had these and it would, to me, just be making Halo like some other game. I truly believe that this is not needed. Sorry, just my opinion.

What are everyone's ideas for some cool new sandbox features in Halo 4. Things which we have always thought would have been cool.

Some of my ideas:

 

Climbing- When you stand near a steep object or incline (like a tall crate or cliff) you are given a command prompt to climb the object.

 

Swimming- I've always thought it was the stupidest thing that you couldn't swim, and that you actually drowned in 6 feet of water. I can understand that bungie was using the water a parameter for game-play but if Halo 4 has the massive maps we expect it to they need to let Spartans swim. For example, when you walk past your head in water you stow your weapon and use both hands to swim, steering and thrusting with the left and right sticks. if you wanted to swim underwater, 343 could limit that ability by giving you only 20 seconds of air or something.

 

Going Prone- This really needs to be included. I mean, some people might argue that that is "to COD", but what kind of soldier never goes prone in battle. It drastically improves your sniping accuracy and is a good way to get out of the crossfire if you need to regain your shields.

 

Kicking- An interesting melee attack if the controls are right. Kicking would deal more damage then a standard melee and could be instituted by holding down the melee and trigger at the same time.

 

What does everyone think? Some new actions in Halo 4 would be nice and i would like everybody who reads this to give their opinions.

I like the kicking action. Shields in Halo 4 could maybe take 2 regular melee hits before popping, and be quicker, while a kick could pop shields instantly, and knock the enemy back further, but the animation would be longer.

Well for me none of these are Halo features I am interested in. Halo and the Chief nor any other playable character has every had these and it would, to me, just be making Halo like some other game. I truly believe that this is not needed. Sorry, just my opinion.

they should allow you to delete Trees and Islands and stuff, you, non custom made things, but when you reload it normally, it comes back up just fine. (Forge)

you shouldbe allowed to be able to stick against walls.

None of that is needed. The kicking feature, I can maybe see as a mere alternate animation for the melee that would happen at random. Swimming would be a dumb thing in multiplayer. You're supposed to be running and gunning, not swimming around. I don't see any water you can drown in in maps anyway unless it's out of bounds.

i dont think swimming would be a very easy thing for spartans to do, becuase i believe that they do weight a ton or two. i really dont see any of these things as very necessary in halo

I would be happy with just a recreation of the Halo 3 sandbox

Well swimming with half a ton of armour... probably not going to happen . But kicking would be awesome altough it will have to have a disadvantage so normal melee would not be forgotten.

Come on guys, you are interpreting the swimming to literally. I don't want the ability to swim like Michael Phelps, just the ability to get out of, or cross deep water without drowning. If Spartans can survive in space the should certainly be able to withstand 10 feet of water.

Well swimming with half a ton of armour... probably not going to happen . But kicking would be awesome altough it will have to have a disadvantage so normal melee would not be forgotten.

A disadvantage (or two) should be included in a kick animation.First off, it would probably require an animation. not as long as the one for an assassination but definitely something to tie you up in it for a split second and make you vulnerable to outside attacks. It would also be available for use in limited situations, since you need room to perform a powerful kick you would have to be at least 5 feet from your opponent and if you were closer you would simply perform a regular melee.

When I was playing Halo CEA I walked all the way to the edge of the level in about 12 feet of water...which seems realistic for a super soldier in an enclosed armored suit and helmet.

I noticed that 2. if you take the warthog in the silent cartographer you can drive out the other islands and screw around on them. One even has a secret sniper rifle.

Me and my friends think that there should be a seperate disk and instead of some huge map like "Forge World", there should be literaly a world to forge in with different climates and you can fly to a different part of the world and build cool stuff....

Of course you need a huge budget or even an unlimited budget, but I just thought it would be so cool to travel from a desert to the frozen tundra and then a rainforrest.

Me and my friends think that there should be a seperate disk and instead of some huge map like "Forge World", there should be literaly a world to forge in with different climates and you can fly to a different part of the world and build cool stuff....

 

Of course you need a huge budget or even an unlimited budget, but I just thought it would be so cool to travel from a desert to the frozen tundra and then a rainforrest.

Forge world's budget is huge enough. With a map larger than Forge World, the budget can only get smaller. An unlimited budget is impossible unless you'd like a ton of lag. In any game that features a map creator, they all have a limit. That's to prevent that lag and to prevent large consumption of memory.

Now if Halo were stored on a Holographic Versatile Disc... Forge could be twice or even three time larger, in map size, template size and budget... Microsoft needs to use that for their next Xbox...

The problem isn't the map tools themselves when it comes to budgets and map size. Understand that the limits imposed on maps in terms of size and budget is derived from what the engine itself can safely handly without memory corruption occuring.

Take the climate idea for example. Currently there is no game engine even capable of handling even a quarter of a real size in-game Halo ring. To make something like that happen would require the map mesh to be broken into sub-sections known as multiple bsp's. This technique is used to "stich" together campaign maps. The main prblem with this, is that even if they made a multiplayer map like this, you would be limited to only being able to fight or see opponents currently present within the same bsp section you are in. Multiple bsp's are not linked in a way that allows each player to interact with another one. This would cause issues of players instantly appearing insie another bsp without warning visually or by the radar.

Secondly to add to this, there is not enough ram or GPU power available to allow players to use the toolset 343i will be using, or Bungie has used in the past, on a console. The cpu threads, time and system consuption far outweighs anything the 360 can handle. Also couple that with low RAM and the GPU limits, and crashes a plenty would occur. Think about it like this. I have on my main rig an Asus EVO m488 I think.....with a Phenom II X4 oc'd to 4.1ghz and 8 gig of ram. Also running dual 9800GT's for GPU's. At a medium GUI setting, my stsem still lag spikes like crazy when throwing in a ton of crap into the CryTek 2 sandbox. Now the 360 at max is about half as powerful as my main rig according to system spec comparisons. The Reach engine and any other future itteration of it, will require a rig of comparable size to mine, and the 360 just simply annot do it.

Now for the latter part in which I will go over why custom things will never happen. Besides the fact that over 75% of the Halo poulation would be just plain lost with the toolset, ther eis the issue of having to re-compile and compile custom objects and the various animations, shaders, sounds and collisions that would go along withe them. Even simple objects like triangles or cubes would require the engine SDK to compile all relevant needed tags into a central (hlmt) tag and compile collision, physics collision, it's base weight, bounding radius, etc.... Simply put, the tools required to do it take patience and a great understanding to get anything usable out of them. That is unless everyone would be simply happy enough to play ona zillion Mario Bros remake maps.

Not to stray too off topic, but I cannot see any viable reason in terms of gameplay mechanics to include any of the OP's suggestions for inclusions into halo 4. None of the ideas have any real positive impact on the core mechanics, nor take any real advantage of them.

I think they could make it do all the objects that are not fixed have limited amounts, but things like fixed scenery do not have limits, and make it so there is no budget (so you could make a cave out of scenery rocks on forge world, with unlimited rocks that are fixed/phased, but have limits on camping stools and things that are not phased/fixed)