A few days ago, 343 Industries revealed that Season 5: Reckoning, the next free content update for the Xbox-PC sci-fi shooter Halo Infinite, would drop on October 17. Among the additions will be some new features for the game's maps editor Forge. For the first time in the editor's history, the upcoming update will allow map makers to insert AI enemies into their creations.
In a post on the Xbox Wire site, 343 Industries’ Forge Lead Designer Michael Schorr states that when they decided to put in AI character support in Forge, their inspiration was to make PvE style maps like in Horde or Firefight mode. However, he adds that map makes can also used the new AI toolkit to create more single player-like experiences:
You could make a twisting hallway and around every corner have AI spawn in front of you, and in order to progress you need to kill them. But there’s a lot of cool things you can do; MOBA things you can do. One of our engineers here prototyped a tower defense game with the AI. So, there’s a lot of flexibility in these tools.
The Forge AI Toolkit has been in development for 18 months, according to the article. 343 Industries created an API wrapper that interfaced with the tools to make things easier for map makers to put in AI enemies.
The Halo Waypoint site has a lot more technical info on the new Forge AI Tookit. Here's a quick list of its features:
- Campaign AI character units (43 variants)
- How they deploy on map (Spawn, Drop Pod, or Phantom)
- The weapons they spawn with
- Guide their movement path
- Difficulty level
- Behavior modifiers
- Nodegraph scripting logic
- Allegiance (will they fight with you or against you)
In addition to the AI Tookit, the Forge update will get some additional content for map makers. They include over 100 Banished-themed objects and over 100 new winter objects. There are also some new lighting improvements, some specific improvements for the PC version and more.
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