It's been over a year since I've messed with Halo CE... I was around in May of '07 to start with. For some reason, I then vanished from August '07 until roughly August of '08, but never really did anything when I came back. Stuck around until October, then vanished again... Now, it's January of '09, and... I'm back, again.

Unfortunately, with two types of amnesia affecting me at once, even if it's not severe, I've /completely/ forgotten almost everything I knew about HEK... I had to toy around with various videos, one of which someone sent me so I would be able to fix my map on my own back in '07... Finally, I remembered how to use Tool to create bitmaps and the .scenario files. I also /finally/ know how to fix open edges, something I didn't know before, nor had the patience to sit still long enough to watch a video and mimic it's every detail (something I'm good at now; mimicking)...

So what I'm asking is, because both my 80 GB and 40 GB have less than 2 GB of free space total (between both drives), I need a reminder on some of the basic things to know for Tool, Sapien, and Guerilla. I believe with some little reminders on the commands for Tool, how to make shaders in Guerilla (my main standstill), and such, I should be able to retrieve all of those memories on my own...

Being that I want to get at least something done before I turn 18, and before I get a job and hardly have any time to work on it anymore, I could use what little assistance anyone can offer. Hopefully this time, I won't disappear again and forget everything I know. I have a bad habit of doing that...


So, at this very moment, all I need is to remember how to create Shaders in Guerilla. ... And then how to run Radiosity/Lightmaps in Tool. And when I'm supposed to run Radiosity/Lightmaps in the first place. Please? <3

I'm really NOT an expert, but I think I can answer this to the best of my abilities. You can create shaders in Guerilla by opening it, File, New, shader (Shader_environment, model, plasma..etc) and then inserting your own image into the appropriate slot.

You can run radiosity in tool, but I don't, usually..maybe that's why all my maps are completely dark whenever I play them?? >>
I was told somewhere you could just run radiosity in Sapien, which is the ~ to bring up the halo( and then radiosity_quality 0 , then radiosity_start and radiosity_save.

I know about Guerilla to a partial extent. I remember that to make shaders for the bitmaps, you create a new shader_model, and you have to check "Simple Parameterization", set the material type, choose the Base Map, Multipurpose Map, and Detail Map, as well as set the numbers... etcetera.

Unfortunately, I can't remember what was what. I don't know what to set for which maps; I believe "Base Map" was the actual .bitmap you use, whereas the others were usually ones in the SP maps that you were to use for detail... I don't remember anything else.


As for radiosity/lightmaps, it was something like "tool lightmaps levels\(level)\(scenario) (bsp) 0 0.1 1" or something like that... But I'm not entirely sure, so I do want confirmation on that.



And, sheesh. I was 14 when I started messing with CE, and 15 when I joined these forums. Now I'm not far from being 18. Where have the years gone?


Edit:

The main reason I want to get back into this, is because Halo CE was the best modding community for any game that I'd found, that I could actually support on my computer for the longest time. Now, I could probably get some much more upgraded game, even H2V if I wanted to, but I enjoyed the community here so much more than I could ever get with another game.

I'm more of a tagger than a modeler, which is disappointing since I've forgotten everything I knew about HEK, but still know 3DS Max since I messed around with it when I was bored (just as I do with Photoshop)... I'd gone so far as to merging weapons and creating my own, even making a needler with epic fiery spikes. ;; Now, I couldn't even remove the charge feature from a Plasma Pistol if I tried.
Edited by MF Boom on Jan 30, 2009 at 07:18 AM

Well, my MSN is mikey9111@hotmail.com so if you wanna add me.. i don't know THAT much but my friend does.

Alright; I already added you, but figured I'd acknowledge it on here as well.

If I find the solutions on my own, I'll update this thread... But I don't count on it. D:


Edit:

Ha. I did figure it out...

Shader_environment tag; Base Map = your bitmap, Primary Detail = detail in B30, Secondary Detail (optional) = bitmap in A30... And you /don't/ check Simple Parameterization. Not sure what I was thinking. All of the 0's for detail are set to 25 usually, but can be tweaked if necessary...
Edited by MF Boom on Jan 30, 2009 at 07:58 AM

Edit:

Whoooa, wait, what? So I got all that down, then tried to compile my map... When suddenly, I got annihilated by thousands of "couldn't update edge" errors. Any clue what that means? I know what open edges, denegerate triangles, coplanar surfaces, and such are... Not this one.
Edited by MF Boom on Jan 30, 2009 at 08:31 AM