Halo Maps Forum

I don't know, but I downloaded the map and tried it, and now I want to know how they work so well. Let's find out!

EDIT: Wow. I'm lost. I extracted the map and extracted the bsp and have it in max. Here's what I found.

1: The energy shield that you see is scenery. It has no collision. It uses a shader originally used in some halo 2 telleport shield. That shader is a "shader_transparent_plasma", material type "metal (thick)"

3: There are no netgame telleporters anywhere.

4: The only trigger volume is the death plane below the level.

5: There is an invisible shader used in the bsp that covers the shield areas. It uses the invisible c10_inv bitmap, and has the "decal" flag checked. It's a "Shader_transparent_chicago", material type "Force Field". (That might be important) Since the scenery that you see has no collision, I would guess this is what's used for collision.

6: There are only 4 shaders total, 2 metal shaders from "cairo" (I'm guessing they are copies of halo 2 shaders), the glass for the bottom (a10's "cryo glass" (2 sided)), and that invisible shader ("inv_plasma").

7: By all rights, the map should not follow the sealed world rules. The invisible plasma formes a closed pyramidish object, normals facing out, and the metal shaders follow the sealed world rules by themselves, however, the geometry of the glass, invisible plasma, and glass does not line up. The invisible plasma is embedded in the matel geometry, and the glass surfaces are just sitting there, not ligning up with anything.

8: I don't know why you are able to walk on top of the structures. If you try to place scenery or bipeds on the top, you'll find that only part of the cieling is collidable. Also, the sides are not collidable, but stuff collides with something right behind them. In game you'll find that grenades and projectiles sometimes don't collide with the metal surfaces, and sometimes do collide with the shield. I've even fallen through the metal floor of one of the structures. It's as if one of the metal shaders used on the outside is render only, but the other, used for the floor and the little cross shaped place on the top, does have collision. However, that wouldn't follow the sealed world rules. I have no idea how the collision of this level works.

9: There are no 2 sided materials. Not even the invisible plasma. However, the "cryo glass" shader is 2 sided. There are 2 glass surfaces, normals facing outward opposite eachother, one a little bit above the other. I don't know why he didn't just use one surface. It should have worked since the shader itself is 2 sided. He wouldn't need to make the material 2 sided.

10: In edit poly, once everything is welded, the only border is the edges of the 2 glass surfaces.

Taking all this into account, my guess is that only the invisible plasma material had collision. The metals and glass might have been render only. The collision you experiance in game is only from the invisible plasma shader. However, this still doesn't explain why you can walk on the cieling and outside sides and not fall halfway through it or why those energy barriers are one way.

More updates coming. Man i want to message the creators. I'm stumped. Can anyone find the profiles of "Lopez" or "Inferno"? I can't. I would guess that Inferno is the mastermind behind the collision and one way force field though. He made DMT-Boken-Indigo and Single Player DMT-Air. Lopez has only made 2 maps, Array, and Anomely, both space maps.

Edited by Vick Jr on Dec 25, 2008 at 08:13 PM
Edited by Vick Jr on Dec 25, 2008 at 08:34 PM
Edited by Vick Jr on Dec 25, 2008 at 08:44 PM
Edited by Vick Jr on Dec 25, 2008 at 09:16 PM
Edited by Vick Jr on Dec 25, 2008 at 09:39 PM