After seeing the new Forge Islands canvas, I decided to make a terrain piece in Unity showing how I would have done it. I threw this together in about an hour, so it's not super pretty, but it does show how the canvas could have been done in a way that makes more sense for forger without removing any options that the actual canvas gives us.
The first 3 shots are overviews, showing how all 3 islands are in close enough proximity to feasibly connect.
This shot shows the main island, which is the one that is in the actual canvas map. The little white cylinder on it is player sized, giving a sense of scale.
This second island is loosely based off of Blood Gulch, as it is hilly but still fairly flat and easy to build on. This gives players some variation in textures and terrain for when they don't necessarily want to start with totally flat ground (such as for good warthog driving).
The last island is a bit more vertical, with a separate area that can be walked or driven up to from one side. Like Montana in Halo: Reach, this island lets players experiment with unusual geometry and allows for even more variation.
As I have said many times, I am still happy we are getting a free canvas. But I feel that these simple changes would have made the map infinitely more useful for forgers like myself.
The first 3 shots are overviews, showing how all 3 islands are in close enough proximity to feasibly connect.
This shot shows the main island, which is the one that is in the actual canvas map. The little white cylinder on it is player sized, giving a sense of scale.
This second island is loosely based off of Blood Gulch, as it is hilly but still fairly flat and easy to build on. This gives players some variation in textures and terrain for when they don't necessarily want to start with totally flat ground (such as for good warthog driving).
The last island is a bit more vertical, with a separate area that can be walked or driven up to from one side. Like Montana in Halo: Reach, this island lets players experiment with unusual geometry and allows for even more variation.
As I have said many times, I am still happy we are getting a free canvas. But I feel that these simple changes would have made the map infinitely more useful for forgers like myself.