Halo Infinite’s next content update and Operation arrives on July 30, and we’ve got a veritable treat for all you Forgers out there who are looking to enhance your creations with additional authentic details—from the unforgettable voice of Jeff Steitzer to the implementation of music, additional nodes for scripting, and much more!
Enter Jeff Steitzer
Unfrigginbelievable!
The beloved voice of Halo’s multiplayer announcer, Jeff Steitzer, has come to Halo Infinite’s Forge.
With the arrival of the next content update, players will have access to over 1,000 of Jeff Steitzer’s voice lines in Forge. Implementing these into your modes and experiences will add just that extra layer of authenticity, immersing you further into custom experiences that will feel like they’re dev-made—or perhaps you just want to have fun with these lines being at your disposal and go for maximum silliness!
The breadth of lines being added is quite vast—from existing Halo Infinite modes, to Medals, to game state, to experiences we expect players may want to create in Forge (such as Race, Grifball, Regicide, etc.). You may even find a few wacky lines from the recording booth that felt like they’d be fun to include, like “Extra Crispy!”
And, to allow maximum control with this new feature, you can also ensure that only the intended players or team will hear each line set up in Forge’s nodegraph:
- Play Announcer Voiceover for All Players
- Play Announcer Voiceover for Player
- Play Announcer Voiceover for Team
Find this new functionality alongside the new “Announcer Voice” custom game option (found under Match) to adjust mode communication. Do you want to increase the presence of announcer-based voice lines, or perhaps limit them to just Medals—or remove it entirely for more immersive campaign-style experiences? This is where you’ve got complete control to get it exactly how you want it.
Needs More Monk Chanting
As Forge has continued to expand in Halo Infinite, with entire campaign-style missions being (re)created by our unbelievably talented cartographers in the community, we’ve heard your desires to be able to implement music into these experiences.
Well, when you jump into Forge after the new update lands, you will find that the soundtrack from Halo Infinite’s campaign has been added with a variety of situational nodes that will help enhance your Forge creations.
To provide as much control as possible, we brought the system over exactly as it was implemented in the campaign, allowing Forgers to use scripting to plug into the same tools used by our Audio Team.
The tracks are divided into different themes, listed under audio containers. For example, you may wish to implement some Banished-themed music listed under “Banished Ambient Set A” to instill a feeling of dread, or a heroic theme for when the action picks up under “Heroic Combat Set B.” These audio containers contain a variety of different tracks that create the same mood but randomize which track plays, ensuring that the music doesn’t feel repetitive.
Try ‘em out and see what atmospheric textures you can lend to your maps and experiences!
The total list of music themes include:
- Banished
- The Endless
- Forerunner
- Monitor
- Covenant
- UNSC
- Heroic
- Special
- 8-Bit
To ensure granular control of music, the nodes have been built in with audience control in mind:
- Play Music Track for All Players
- Play Music Track for Player
- Play Music Track for Team
- Stop Music Track for All Players
- Stop Music Track for Player
- Stop Music Track for Team
And yes, the iconic Monk Chant and Warthog Run music will be included when this functionality arrives in Forge next week.
Point the Way
Nav markers, we’d be lost without ‘em!
Nav markers are UI elements that help with player “readability” for different modes. How do you know the enemy has your flag? Nav markers. How will you be able to tell that a nearby enemy has dropped skulls in the Headhunter mode? You guessed it: nav markers!
We’re giving players an unprecedented level of control over this feature to help further refine modes and experiences to help them feel more authentic. If you’re creating a Headhunter experience and you want to let players know that an enemy nearby has dropped skulls, but you don’t want to overload players’ HUDs with markers if another player was eliminated on the other side of the map, you will be able to have that level of granular control.
- Nav Marker [Global] – This will create or get a Nav Marker from a global context. This will allow Nav Markers to be modified across script brains. The existing Nav Marker node will only access markers local to the script brain.
- Negate Nav Marker Player Base Filter – Negates the filters applied to a Nav Marker using the Set Base Filter Player’s Visibility. Players that were designated to pass the filter will no longer pass. And vice versa.
- Negate Nav Marker Player Distance Filter – Negates the filters applied to a Nav Marker using the Set Distance Filter Player’s Visibility. Players that were designated to pass the filter will no longer pass. And vice versa.
- Negate Nav Marker Team Base Filter – Negates the filters applied to a Nav Marker using the Set Base Filter Team’s Visibility. Teams that were designated to pass the filter will no longer pass. And vice versa.
- Negate Nav Marker Team Distance Filter – Negates the filters applied to a Nav Marker using the Set Distance Filter Team’s Visibility. Teams that were designated to pass the filter will no longer pass. And vice versa.
- Set Base Filter Player’s Visibility – Using this node, you can control the visibility of Nav Marker’s for each individual player in the game. Input the Nav Marker and Player and decide if they should pass the visibility filter or not.
- Set Base Filter Team’s Visibility – Using this node, you can control the visibility of Nav Marker’s for each team individually. Input the Nav Marker and Team and decide if they should pass the visibility filter or not.
- Set Distance Filter Player’s Parameters – This node will define the distance at which a player can see a nav marker. Use this node alongside Set Distance Filter Player’s Visibility to enable for a player.
- Set Distance Filter Player’s Visibility – This node will enable controlling the visibility of a nav marker by distance for individual players. The distances used are define by the Set Distance Filter Player’s Parameters
- Set Distance Filter Team’s Visibility – This node will enable controlling the visibility of a nav marker by distance for teams. The distances used are define by the Set Distance Filter Team Parameters
- Set Distance Filter Team’s Parameters – This node will define the distance at which a player can see a nav marker. Use this node alongside Set Distance Filter Team’s Visibility to enable for a player.
- Clear Nav Marker Distance Filters – Clears all distance based visibility data on a given nav marker. Use this when you want to reset distance settings and apply new settings.
- Clear Nav Marker Base Filters – Clears all visibility data on a given nav marker. Use this when you want to reset distance settings and apply new settings.
- Set Nav Marker Icon – Set the icon for the default presentation type on nav markers. The new icons are as follows:
- Active Camo
- Alpha
- Attack
- Bomb
- Boss
- Bravo
- Charlie
- Dead
- Defend
- Delta
- Destroyed
- Echo
- Equipment
- Flag
- Foxtrot
- Generic
- Generic Arrow
- Grenade
- Hacking Terminal
- Kill
- KOTH
- Oddball
- Overshield
- Power Seed
- Quantum Translocator
- Vehicle
- Weapon
- Set Nav Marker Progress – Set the nav markers progress bar for the default nav marker presentation type.
- Set Nav Marker Progress Team – Set the team for the nav marker progress bar.
- Set Nav Marker Type – Set the nav marker presentation type. This will change how the marker presents itself in the game. Some nav marker functionality is only applicable to the default nav marker type. The new types are as follows:
- Multiplayer Objective
- Enemy
- Ally
- Acquiring
- Locked
- Item
- Generic Objective
- Waypoint
- Ally pulse
- Neutral
- Coop
- Arrow
- Enemy callout
- Item pad
- Location
- Set Nav Marker Message – Takes input from a Create UI Message node and applies it to a nav marker. This significantly increases the kinds of phrases that can be communicated with nav markers.
Before, players were able to string together only a single word which could make UI messages unclear or confusing—particularly for more complex custom modes. We heard your feedback and we’re giving you greater control over this feature. Communication is key!
New Text Strings & Message Templates
As you build new experiences in Forge, you may want to provide players with information in text strings that appear in the heads-up-display—things like objectives, instructions for custom minigames, and so on.
We’ve added new strings which will give you access to over 600 new words and phrases, and there is a new template node for creating messages in Forge titled “Create UI Message.” This particular node expands on the Create UI Message [A] and Create UI Message nodes by accepting 3 strings as inputs.
As noted in the previous section, this should help to reduce ambiguity and uncertainty about what to do and how to do it in custom-made modes. In addressing this major request from community feedback, players are now able to combine many different words in many different ways, as you can see in the list below:
- “[String 1] [String 2] [String 3]”
- “[String 1] [String 2]: [String 3]”
- “[String 1]: [String 2] [String 3]”
- “[String 1] the [String 2] [String 3]”
- “[String 1] at [String 2] [String 3]”
- “[String 1] while [String 2] [String 3]”
- “[String 1] during [String 2] [String 3]”
- “You [String 1] [String 2] [String 3]”
- “Enemy [String 1] [String 2] [String 3]”
- “Your team [String 1] [String 2] [String 3]”
- “Enemy team [String 1] [String 2] [String 3]”
- “[String 1]: [String 2]”
VIP Mode Nodes
Originally introduced in Halo 3, VIP is coming to Halo Infinite. In this mode, each team has a player that is designated as the VIP—the objective is to eliminate the other team’s VIP while defending your own.
New nodes have been added to Forge for the VIP mode and can be used to enhance or modify the mode’s functionality.
Nodes include:
- Get Is VIP – Input a player, and return if they are currently the VIP on their team.
- Set VIP – Set the VIP of a team.
- Clear Team VIP – Clear the VIP of any given team.
- On New VIP – Event node indicating that a new VIP has been selected.
- On VIP Killed – Event node indicating that a VIP has been killed.
Note: Use these nodes in conjunction with the Automatic VIP Selection Enabled custom game option in VIP to have full control over VIP selection.
Additional Awesomeness
Alongside all of the above, we’ve got some additional improvements coming to Forge through nodegraph scripting that will help to enhance your creations.
New Name Locations
With this update, over 500 name location volumes have been added to Forge. These name locations come from all corners of the game and will help Forgers control callouts on their maps with increased accuracy and granularity.
Armor Effects
You can now apply the mode-related armor effects from Infection and VIP to highlight or distinguish a player, as well as choose if the effect persists through respawning or if it disappears upon death.
Activate Spartan Tracking
Y’know at the end of a round in Halo Infinite’s Firefight where you will automatically send out a ping to locate any nearby weapons, vehicles, and equipment items? This has been added to the nodegraph, allowing the Forge to trigger an environment scan whenever they want in their mode.
Apply/Get Player Overshield
Also inspired by Firefight, players who are revived (and the player who did the reviving) are granted an overshield. This has also been added to the nodegraph.
Minigame Variants
We have added more variants so that players can script around them. For example, you may wish to create a BTB One-Flag minigame which features Pelican and weapon drops.
Minigame Modes
- Minigame Asymmetrical
- Minigame BTB Asymmetrical
- Minigame Competitive
- Minigame Competitive Asymmetrical
That’s a wrap for this preview of what’s to come in Forge with Halo Infinite’s next content update!
To learn more about Operation: Fleetcom, check out our other blogs:
- VIP: Learn more about Halo Infinite’s new take on VIP mode from Halo 3
- SANDBOX UPDATES: Discover all the new weapon and vehicle tuning details coming in Operation: Fleetcom