343i has revealed that the Halo 4 map-making tools, better known as Forge, are in development at Austin-based studio Certain Affinity.
The developer previously worked on Crimson Alliance and announced their involvement with the Halo franchise at Rooster Teeth Expo (RTX), where they presented Forge before a live audience at the Halo 4 panel at the event.
The development of Forge appears to be well underway, and sports a fully functional, yet slightly unfinished user interface, which players can use to place objects and modify the terrain on their own maps. Users can manipulate individual objects by hovering the cursor over them, which highlights these prefabs in green to exclude them from the rest.
Players can also use the tools to duplicate objects on a map, making it simple to erect structures and place roads. Objects can even be connected to each other like magnets, making it easy for players to create set objects and join them with the rest of the map.
Certain Affinity also showed off Forge's new lighting system, which allows objects to cast shadows and have shadows cast upon them in real time. Additionally, users can also alter manipulate specific areas of the map with "Player Trait Zones" to modify the jump height, run speed, damage reduction and a variety of other attributes at these locations. A new attribute called "Grav Volume" can augment or reduce the gravity in locations in which it's set, making it possible for map creators to set up reduced- or heavy-gravity zones.
Certain Affinity expects Forge to be ready for Halo 4's release.
