This weekend's Halo 4 event at the Rooster Teeth Expo presented a number of new details about 343i's upcoming shooter, and unveiled the Forge—Halo 4's map editor—to the public for the first time ever. Details about the Forge editor can be found here. Images below are courtesy of Halocouncil.

Halo 4 Ranking System

According to Frank O'Connor, the ranking system in Halo 4 won't be visible to other players and will only be visible to you. However, the game's matchmaking system will still take ranks into account when finding matches. There will be an experience and ranking system like Reach, but it'll be hidden to others to prevent cheating.

Halo 4 Piggyback Rides

Halo 4 displays vehicles (as icons) on the radar?

In addition to the information contained in the images above, players a chance to play around with the game's character customization tools, which lets you configure everything from emblem design and armor customization to tactical loadouts. Here's a breakdown of what it offers.

Tactical Package List

Halo 4's Tactical Package list currently offers Shielding, Firepower, Resupply, and AA (Armor Abilities) Efficiency.

Support Upgrade List

The Support Upgrades available to you include Mobility, Sensor, Ammo, and Awareness.

Emblem Design and Colors

You can choose a variety of premade clip-art to use in your Emblem, which consists of two layers: background and foreground. Further colorize the emblem with primary, secondary, and background colors.

Armor Customization

Armor can be customized along each individual body part, including forearms, shoulders, head, torso, legs, and so forth. These customizations are purely aesthetic and have no impact on gameplay. Unless you count 'looking really awesome' as a part of gameplay.

Female Spartans

Gender is now an option in Halo 4. You can now choose between male and female body types to represent your character in multiplayer.

Button Layout

Players who were worried about the button layout in Halo 4 an ease their concern as the button layout in the game's presentation at RTX was fully customizable. At the present, the game offers a variety of layouts to choose from including "Bumper Jumper", "Green Thumb", "Boxer", "SouthPaw", "Recon", and "FishStick" in addition to the "Default" setting.

Likewise, 343i says that the layouts aren't final, and as such they'll be listening to player input before they finalize it for the retail version of the game.