How to find Inspiration for a Minigame
(inspired by xAudienceofone's post on finding inspiration for maps in general)
I find that far too many experienced forgers know how to make a good competitive map, but shy away from minigame creation. I've been forging since halo 3 with a total of around 30 maps across the games. 29 are minigames. Over time I have become much more efficient at thinking of new concepts to forge. I really want the community to make more, especially those who haven't tried before. The purpose of this thread is to help forgers, new and old, to understand the thought process that goes into finding inspiration for a minigame. Even if you have made some in the past, you will likely find use in this guide for making more
There are three easy ways to think up a minigame:
1. Take one element of regular combat and focus on it
Minigame creation involves stripping all of halo down to a single basic concept, then building it back up from there. For instance, duck hunt. The creator may have thought to himself: 'what do I enjoy in halo that's fun and requires skill?'... shooting a sniper rifle. So let's build an idea out of that. cut out all the complications of other weaponry and terrain, focus on the fundamentals. so who am I shooting at? Well, an obstacle course is also fun and also requires skill, so I'll shoot at players as they progress towards me. And just like that, you've made an all time classic! This is probably the easiest way to think of a minigame. Here are some other basic combat concepts off the top of my head to get you thinking:
Splattering people in a ghost, following someone through a wall with a radar, boosting in a wraith, hunting someone with promethean vision, bouncing a frag of around a corner...
2. Play with trait zones
Trait zones are a real blessing, for the first time we can give opposing teams completely different traits outside the parameters of flood / infection. So play around on a test map in forge, maybe with a guest controller, give each team a strength and each team a weakness. for instance, stealth vs firepower (Ghostbusters), defence vs firepower (Shields up), evasion / speed vs firepower, (my map, Paranormal Pests), ease of sight vs speed (Boogeyman), firepower vs ability to hide in trees (that one's for you
) . As in the examples above, sometimes you can make the traits very unbalanced, and then resolve it by having only 1 player with said traits. You can also consider ways of tipping the balance through map structure (eg, one team may hold a castle while the other does not, or one team may be in a pit with the other firing down).
Once you've found an interesting way of setting traits against each other, you can decide which gametype you want it in: slayer, flood, 1-flag ctf? finally, brainstorm what kind of a map will work best with the teams' opposing strengths. when it comes to minigames, you will often think up the gametype before the map that you're going to put it in.
3. Find a quirk, glitch, mod, or interesting gametype option to exploit
This is how to make more complex minigames which will really stand out from the crowd. Halo 4 has lots of querks and I'd advise learning all the ins and outs of how to use trait zones and every single trait in them (as well as every gametype option for useful gametypes like flood) before getting to work on this. There are some great YouTube channels for showing glitches and quirks, namely Petetheduck's forge quacks series. Of course there are loads of channels which like to showcase mods like 0IAH and Team Epiphany. In my opinion, a really good minigame should include elements of halo that people didn't even know existed, a lot of my maps are made to include things like this (infinitely bouncing sticky grenades, ability to teleport at will, banshees that can only deal damage by destroying themselves). Once you find a quirk or mod that you believe to have potential, the rest is up to you.
Examples of quirks and glitches
A spartan laser glows in the dark when being charged, a railgun has a delay before hitting a distant target, taking an empty Spartan laser into a traitzone with 'unlimited clip' will make the laser rapid fire, a loud 'predator' sound is given out when a player turns on their promethean vision, concussion rifles send vehicles flying and it is very hard to jump properly when being shot by one, KOTH hills can be placed on all sorts of things like armor abilities or weapons to make juggernaut-like gametypes....
My favourite mods for minigames
Forklift mod (allows you to fuse vehicles and other objects together), rapid fire scorpion & wraith mod, infection mod (adds a new gametype with lots of customisation).
Write your ideas down
Most of my ideas come to me when I'm nowhere near the console (often when I'm eating breakfast for some reason
). I would advise writing down your ideas as soon as they come to you, personally I have a dedicated list on my ipod with about 55 minigames concepts atm. Some of them are just basic ideas, some are more developed but have hit a game-breaking obstacle that I'm trying to think around, a couple require gametype options that don't even exist in halo 4 (but did in Reach) which I have kept incase they may be possible in future halo games, and about 10 are developed enough that I could pick up my controller right now and build them... but I'm kinda lazy. yes, so lazy that even playing a game can feel like too much work. the point is to write every idea down so that if one hits a problem then you can focus on something else for a while and then come back to it later when you have more experience, knowledge and it helps to simply have a fresh perspective.
Sources of inspiration
There are loads of places to look for inspiration outside of halo: films, other games, arcade / board games, interesting buildings such as a school or your house, or even nature. I've had lots of ideas from watching nature documentaries as there are some strange predator/prey relationships out there, very good for inspiring flood. For example, I created a griffball style game after watching a documentary on ants. Where's the connection? It gave me the idea to have a worker loadout and a soldier loadout, where the workers have energy swords and can carry the ball whilst soldiers have grav hammers but cannot pickup the ball. An advantage of drawing ideas from outside of halo is that players enjoy a game with a bit of role play in it, they enjoy the idea of being a spider or a shark or Katniss from the hunger games. They also love playing other games in halo, which is odd when you think about it because if you wanted to play packman then wouldn't it be better to just play packman?
To finish off, remember that brainstorm question from earlier if you're really struggling for ideas,
'what element of halo do I enjoy and requires skill?'
(inspired by xAudienceofone's post on finding inspiration for maps in general)
I find that far too many experienced forgers know how to make a good competitive map, but shy away from minigame creation. I've been forging since halo 3 with a total of around 30 maps across the games. 29 are minigames. Over time I have become much more efficient at thinking of new concepts to forge. I really want the community to make more, especially those who haven't tried before. The purpose of this thread is to help forgers, new and old, to understand the thought process that goes into finding inspiration for a minigame. Even if you have made some in the past, you will likely find use in this guide for making more
There are three easy ways to think up a minigame:
1. Take one element of regular combat and focus on it
Minigame creation involves stripping all of halo down to a single basic concept, then building it back up from there. For instance, duck hunt. The creator may have thought to himself: 'what do I enjoy in halo that's fun and requires skill?'... shooting a sniper rifle. So let's build an idea out of that. cut out all the complications of other weaponry and terrain, focus on the fundamentals. so who am I shooting at? Well, an obstacle course is also fun and also requires skill, so I'll shoot at players as they progress towards me. And just like that, you've made an all time classic! This is probably the easiest way to think of a minigame. Here are some other basic combat concepts off the top of my head to get you thinking:
Splattering people in a ghost, following someone through a wall with a radar, boosting in a wraith, hunting someone with promethean vision, bouncing a frag of around a corner...
2. Play with trait zones
Trait zones are a real blessing, for the first time we can give opposing teams completely different traits outside the parameters of flood / infection. So play around on a test map in forge, maybe with a guest controller, give each team a strength and each team a weakness. for instance, stealth vs firepower (Ghostbusters), defence vs firepower (Shields up), evasion / speed vs firepower, (my map, Paranormal Pests), ease of sight vs speed (Boogeyman), firepower vs ability to hide in trees (that one's for you
) . As in the examples above, sometimes you can make the traits very unbalanced, and then resolve it by having only 1 player with said traits. You can also consider ways of tipping the balance through map structure (eg, one team may hold a castle while the other does not, or one team may be in a pit with the other firing down).Once you've found an interesting way of setting traits against each other, you can decide which gametype you want it in: slayer, flood, 1-flag ctf? finally, brainstorm what kind of a map will work best with the teams' opposing strengths. when it comes to minigames, you will often think up the gametype before the map that you're going to put it in.
3. Find a quirk, glitch, mod, or interesting gametype option to exploit
This is how to make more complex minigames which will really stand out from the crowd. Halo 4 has lots of querks and I'd advise learning all the ins and outs of how to use trait zones and every single trait in them (as well as every gametype option for useful gametypes like flood) before getting to work on this. There are some great YouTube channels for showing glitches and quirks, namely Petetheduck's forge quacks series. Of course there are loads of channels which like to showcase mods like 0IAH and Team Epiphany. In my opinion, a really good minigame should include elements of halo that people didn't even know existed, a lot of my maps are made to include things like this (infinitely bouncing sticky grenades, ability to teleport at will, banshees that can only deal damage by destroying themselves). Once you find a quirk or mod that you believe to have potential, the rest is up to you.
Examples of quirks and glitches
A spartan laser glows in the dark when being charged, a railgun has a delay before hitting a distant target, taking an empty Spartan laser into a traitzone with 'unlimited clip' will make the laser rapid fire, a loud 'predator' sound is given out when a player turns on their promethean vision, concussion rifles send vehicles flying and it is very hard to jump properly when being shot by one, KOTH hills can be placed on all sorts of things like armor abilities or weapons to make juggernaut-like gametypes....
My favourite mods for minigames
Forklift mod (allows you to fuse vehicles and other objects together), rapid fire scorpion & wraith mod, infection mod (adds a new gametype with lots of customisation).
Write your ideas down
Most of my ideas come to me when I'm nowhere near the console (often when I'm eating breakfast for some reason
). I would advise writing down your ideas as soon as they come to you, personally I have a dedicated list on my ipod with about 55 minigames concepts atm. Some of them are just basic ideas, some are more developed but have hit a game-breaking obstacle that I'm trying to think around, a couple require gametype options that don't even exist in halo 4 (but did in Reach) which I have kept incase they may be possible in future halo games, and about 10 are developed enough that I could pick up my controller right now and build them... but I'm kinda lazy. yes, so lazy that even playing a game can feel like too much work. the point is to write every idea down so that if one hits a problem then you can focus on something else for a while and then come back to it later when you have more experience, knowledge and it helps to simply have a fresh perspective.Sources of inspiration
There are loads of places to look for inspiration outside of halo: films, other games, arcade / board games, interesting buildings such as a school or your house, or even nature. I've had lots of ideas from watching nature documentaries as there are some strange predator/prey relationships out there, very good for inspiring flood. For example, I created a griffball style game after watching a documentary on ants. Where's the connection? It gave me the idea to have a worker loadout and a soldier loadout, where the workers have energy swords and can carry the ball whilst soldiers have grav hammers but cannot pickup the ball. An advantage of drawing ideas from outside of halo is that players enjoy a game with a bit of role play in it, they enjoy the idea of being a spider or a shark or Katniss from the hunger games. They also love playing other games in halo, which is odd when you think about it because if you wanted to play packman then wouldn't it be better to just play packman?
To finish off, remember that brainstorm question from earlier if you're really struggling for ideas,
'what element of halo do I enjoy and requires skill?'
