First off I would like to thank kenney001 and Matooba for their posts on the forums about using debug.txt and dealing with Sapien errors - I would never have figured what these errors meant or what to do about them without your posts and the handy search button.

The Venture is a jet made by Ultimate Dragon that you can find at this link: http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?pg=3&fid=2024

The first thing you need to do after you extract the Venture tags out to the appropriate folders, is open Guerilla and load venture.model_animations

In the very first section you will see a section called Objects. You will note that the animation field is suspiciously left blank . . . select the spin animation or none, save, and you will now be able to get it to show in Sapien after you add the Venture to the vehicle pallette and make a spawn point for it.

The last step is to open Guerilla and edit your globals so that the banshee points to venture.vehicle instead and you are good to go. Compile with tool and you can then load your map and enjoy testing out this vehicle. I've found it highly manueverable but think it could pack a heavier punch to make it more on par with the banshee.

The Sapien error looked like this:

If you ever get any kind of #3157 error from Sapien, that means you either got a corrupt tag you need to replace or that a field got left empty somewhere in one of your tags. Fixing the block index would mean finding that empty field and choosing one of the drop down options.

Matooba's long list of some sapien errors is message 7 of 12 in this thread if you want to look at it: http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=5716

A tutorial that covers all the errors, or at least the most common ones, from tool, sapien, and guerilla would be really nice. I figure a lot of these are easily understood after working with the programs a long time but a handy reference with the fixes to take would be beneficial to all map makers regardless of experience.

If such a tutorial/reference already exists I would happily accept a link to it as I have yet to find one.



Edited by SGWraith on Jul 20, 2007 at 03:09 AM

Here is what I want you to try: Open Debug.txt and delete everything in the file and save. Then repeat the steps you took that gave you the error. If it happens again, go to debug.txt and the only error there should probably when the one that closed Guerilla. There may be a few other ones in there about unable to open betamaps which you can ignore for now.

Debug.txt is in your root haloce folder. Sapien and Guerilla both put their errors in it and maybe even tool does too. I may have left out a step but I can't be sure unless you get me the error you got. Let me know when you find it.

You'll probably also want to double check that you have the tags in the right places. Also, make sure to do backups of the original files.

Edited by SGWraith on Jul 20, 2007 at 09:30 AM

As long as you obey the golden rule of making backups, editing your globals should be okay. I prefer being able to change the number of vehicles later with gametypes otherwise I would learn scripting. If you can do that with scripting I stand corrected.

If you want to use globals or scripting thats up to you, Halo Rules, but you can decide that later. At any rate, getting it in game via Sapien comes first.

Open debug.txt , select everything and hit delete, save, then repeat whatever it was that gave you the error and post it here. This isn't how to fix the problem but figure out what is causing it.


Edited by SGWraith on Jul 20, 2007 at 10:31 AM
Edited by SGWraith on Jul 20, 2007 at 10:33 AM

Empty debug.txt again and try this:

Remove the Venture from your vehicle palette in sapien and save your scenario. Try fixing venture.model_animations like I explained and then reopen your scenario and try adding it again.

If opening it in guerilla gives you problems thats something I might not know how to fix. :/

What were you trying to fix if it wasn't the Venture? Is this just an error that keeps coming? Sry if I misunderstood. :/

This part means you put in a bad vehicle tag into your scenario. Take out your custom vehicles, save and see if the error comes back. Then re-add them one at a time until you figure out which one it was.


Edited by SGWraith on Jul 20, 2007 at 12:33 PM

Glad to help, have fun with your project.

I put the Venture into a test map and played against a friend of mine this evening.

We've decided that the Venture as it is now is too powerful on the fact that its so maneuverable and has such a small profile. Tanks can't track fast enough with their main guns to take it down. Banshee's can't keep up in the turning whereas the Venture can turn almost in place to do a fast 180 to bean you with a rocket if you were following it.

Just about the only vehicle that stands a chance is the chainhog and that relies on good teamwork and not letting the Venture get above you in your blindspot. The secondary fire (rocket launcher) has a 12 second reload but is still powerful because it can kill in one shot.

Halving the damage so it takes two secondary shots for a kill (like the Banshee bomb - takes 2 from full shields) would be the easier balance fix. Increasing the hitbox size or the turn radius might also make it more playable with the standard vehicles.

All in all, it was interesting to fly but it would take careful balancing to include it in a professional map.

I had modded mine to have a rocket launcher more like the rocket hog not knowing how powerful it already was, lol. You'll note that the Venture is very hard to hit without bullet spamming weapons like chainguns and the banshee doesn't stand a chance in most circumstances. You'll see with some playtesting.

Hope your project doesn't get unbalanced by including this vehicle but I say go for it. Its a really awesome vehicle as it is.