A few more ideas: -natural terrain "snapshots", ie, you move the natural terrain around until it looks how you want, then take a "snapshot" so that now, when you move it around, the texture stays the same (this is to avoid issues where you end up stuck having to incorporate for example a wet/muddy area where you wanted more grass), or some other way to give Forgers control over terrain so they can get it where they want (maybe offsetting the base texturemap) -AI (of course) -not technically a Forge idea, but the ability to organize our maps in the browser into folders -ability to package a map with a gametype (so everyone who downloads the map gets the gametype automatically) -ability to script custom messages to appear on screen (useful for minigames, or maybe a game with a narrative) -full gravity control (walk on ceiling, etc) -liquid volumes (water, lava, acid, etc) -an option for all fx to turn them on or off without needing to despawn the emitter cone, as well as an option to control how deadly the effect is (like if you wanted a harmless fire for aesthetics, or one that would do minor or slow damage), with the ability to script changes to both (turning on/off, & health drain) -lights that can have much larger areas of effect & brightness (useful if you have a large aesthetic structure to light, but don't want dozens or hundreds of lights) -option to force custom games to use the default lightmap (at least with the forge we have now, sometimes your map looks best when you first load it, before you bake lights, so it would be nice to force the pre-bake lighting) -better support for large groups that exceed 64 (especially necessary if subgroups/nested groups are added) -ability to intuitively script groups (without needing a script for each individual object, and without a complex script setup that has to first target an object, then add groups as a modifier, etc) -find & highlight (perhaps used with the master object list idea). Still too hard to find small objects. Visible boundaries helps, but it's still difficult at times to find the origin point (the skull) of a killzone, or any other very small object -better draw distances across the board -ability to lock individual values (like a particular axis for position or rotation) -ability to change more than one of the color values (primary, secondary, tertiary) for an object at one time (to save time when you want them all to be the same color, for example)
Blank Alpine and Glacier would be the best canvases in the game. Alpine Cirrus and Alpine Overcast have the best overhead lighting and Glacier has the best shadows. Why we still have preloaded terrain is completely beyond me.
3 big 3 improvements for me if I had to pick: Blank canvas with full environment control (Time of day with full Sun/moon placement, skybox selection independent of other canvas settings Full terrain design. Leave in the prefab objects as an option. Give us some sculptable terrain meshes. A.I. NPCs that can be placed, given instructions sets to follow, and as a cherry, drawing pathing routes for patrolling.
I imagine they wouldn't give us AI even if they could. Gotta buy those req packs to fight those warzone firefight critters.
All I need: -terrain/foliage overhaul. Farcry style. -Terrain pieces that can seamlessly mesh with the terrain editor. (For things like tunnels. Making those are a ***** in farcry.) -Basic geometric shapes with "width" and "length" manipulation (like hills and volumes). -textures and colors. -undo, cause I'm and idiot -grouping, prefabs, magnets -optimization. I can spawn a map wide forest in farcry with no frame drops, spawn in 20 trees in forge and the map acts as though it was dropped on its head as a child. "Hey, but these are games on completely different engines, you cant make comparisons like that!" The **** I can. One game editor is better then the other, if your not making strides to come out on top despite the engine, you're doing it wrong. Get creative. -Blank skybox creator. In other words placing the sun, changing sky color, fog, cloud, weather settings. -Terrain-block transitions, because nature does not just hit END when it comes to a road. Gravel and dirt dirty's the edge. -pathway/roads, once again similar to farcry. -AI. Mainly flood, I like making zombie stuff. -****ING ****ING **** **** ****ING **** GAME MODES AND ****ING **** **** **** ****ING **** ****Y ONE SIDED GAME MODES.
I said this in the wishlist thread and I'll say it again. Brushes. Brushes and Terrain Patches, it would solve so many geometry problems and inconsistencies.
So, when it comes to terrain editing, you all want subtractive abilities for objects? "A Subtractive Brush is a hollow, carved-out space. This is the type of Brush you would use to remove solid space, such as to create doors, windows, etc, from previously created additive Brushes. Subtractive space is the only area that players can freely move around in." Source: https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Actors/Brushes/#usesforgeometrybrushes\
Possibly, as an advanced tool, but even without a mesh editor, if we had the ability to scale objects (by altering a scale value in the object properties), and a quick and dirty way to carve objects en masse, I'd be happy with that. My thoughts for tunneling were less along the lines of removing individual vertices, and more along the lines of having a simple volume, sort of how boundaries, kill zones, etc work. They wouldn't be tied to any specific object, but rather a special object unto itself that would automatically cut away the parts of *any* objects that intersect it (ideally, with a simple way to exclude objects from being cut). I'm not even suggesting being able to make crazy shaped volumes; even just the simple rectangle & cylinder shapes we have now. These suggestions for scaling & tunneling wouldn't even complicate the UI a great deal (it would certainly add complications engine-wise, but wouldn't add any real complexity to the UI). Scaling would be as simple as having a scale value (in percentage form) in the object properties, and possibly a separate value for scaling the 3 axis (x, y, z), and that's it. Tunneling (my version, anyway) would involve going into the object pallete & spawning in a tunnel volume object. Set the size and shape (shape being a choice between cylinder & box, just like any other volume), place it, and any objects that intersect the volume are cut away. Take that idea one small step further, and you could add a special a-z channel in the properties for the tunnel volume. All other objects would have a tunnel volume property, such that the only objects the tunnel volume would affect would be those objects on the same channel. That would add more control over tunneling without adding any real complexity.
an independent object vs texture scale would be good too... if you scale object larger, be able to choose whether you also want to scale the texture. AND that give you all the ability to separately scale texture if you think it needs it.