Forger Fridays: Arpod

Hello everyone. Welcome to a somewhat new section of Podtacular in which we feature some awesome Forgers in the Halo Community. As is suggested by the title, the first Forger to be featured is Arpod.

These features consist of general conversation and Q&A style formats. I asked Arpod a few questions regarding his forging, so please enjoy his answers below.

Question: When did you first get into forging?

I started Forging right when Halo 3 came out and they introduced the Forge mode. I thought being able to build our own maps was an absolutely brilliant idea and ever since then I was hooked.

I’ve built maps in Forge in every single game after that. Reach, Halo 4, Halo 2 Anniversary and Halo 5.

Question: What has been your favourite Halo game to forge on so far?

I do. Halo 5 is my favourite Forge just because of the mechanics of it, what we can do with it and the objects. No two maps really look the same because there’s so much variety on what you can do with that Forge.

I love it. I think that it’s a very good start to what we’re gonna see in the next game too.

Question: What features are you hoping to see in Forge in Halo Infinite?

I know a lot of people in the Forge community would probably agree, I would absolutely love to see a terrain editor to be able to manipulate the terrain.

Even if it’s a limited one where we can raise or lower terrain, or make simply hills or something would be fantastic. That to me would truly make no two maps look the same, they’d be entirely different. You could have the terrain how you want.

As far as maybe some enhancements on some of the features we have in Halo 5, duplicating and stuff. I would love to see a mirror duplication so that if you’re making a symmetrical map, if you want a base on one side and you just wanna mirror duplicate that to the other side. That might be a little difficult to try and achieve but it would be a neat feature.

Water, Lava and more natural elements. I love forging with the natural elements. Maybe some nice broken down blocks would be some nice added features too.

Definitely the terrain editor would be fantastic, or even the ability to scale parts, like rocks or blocks or whatever. Just to have some scaling with those to make them different sizes.

Also maybe just have one forge canvas where we can alter the skybox to what we want, to snow or desert or forest. So you don’t have to go into different ones to make different maps, you can just have one canvas to then make the elements what you want.

Question: Did you do any level or map design prior to creating maps in Forge, or is it a passion that’s grew purely through Forge mode?

It’s a passion that grew from Halo. I do create for my job, so I’ve always had a passion for creating things and making things. I’ve built lego sets my whole life and still to this day build lego sets, so to have something like this where we can build levels, I just love it.

Question: In regards to creating stuff, is there a specific map that you could mention that you’ve made recently?

Yes I have. I’ve actually had a couple of community features on ForgeHub over the past couple of months. My most recent creation hasn’t been featured yet on there, but I’d like to see it go on there. It’s called Lifeforce and what it is is a floating Island map.

There’s a main island and you’ve got kinda of like veins, I’ve got the lights flashing on it so it’s kind of pumping the life force into the other islands. As you’re playing on it you feel the ambience of the pulsing of the lights. It’s a really cool immersive alien environment.

I have it set up for the slayer game modes and capture the flag, strongholds, you know the basic gamemodes, but it could be adapted really easy to play game modes like Infection.

Question: For those who want to check out maps you’ve made, where can they do so?

If you have Halo 5 you can log into the game and simply go to my gamertag which is ARPOD and you can look for my files there.

I also submit them on ForgeHub. You can find any of the maps I make on ForgeHub and there’s a download link there to download them and bookmark them.

I also post them on twitter too with the link so that anybody that’s on Twitter can access them on there also. My Twitter is @Arpod1980.

That concludes the Q&A with Arpod. A big thank you once again to Arpod for taking the time to come and talk about his incredible Forging experience.

Forger Fridays will be back soon enough with another awesome Forging guest, but until then, be sure to check out Arpods maps and give them a go.