Just wondering how it works. With guns like the assault rifle.
Edited by spartan314 on May 27, 2011 at 01:57 AM

Do you mean the ammo numbers on the assault rifle or the meter on the actual heads up display?

ammo counters on the assault rifle, battle rifle, etc.
Edited by spartan314 on May 27, 2011 at 06:19 PM

Take a look at this thread: http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=37206

What about for the numeral bitmaps? Do I have to make my own or are there some out there?

There might be some out there for download, but otherwise you have to make it yourself. That link should vaguely explain how you do it.

Ok, but I don't understand the concept of how you make the counter go down as you fire.

I have never actually tried this, but look at weapons\assault rifle\fp\shaders\numbers.shader_transparent_chicago. Just copy this and if you create your own number bitmap, link it in this shader. Then say you want a weapon which holds a different number than the default assault rifle's 60 rounds. To do this I think you simply just need to change the value in "numeric counter limit" to whatever you want (ie. if you were making a Halo 3 style assault rifle you would set this to 32), but you also should make your maximum rounds loaded in the .weapon tag the same as the numeric counter limit.

Ok, I think I'm getting this.

Do I need to do anything to the model?
(How can I ensure the numbers to go where I want them to?)

I think you just need to have the numbers shader on two adjacent planes if your max ammo has 2 digits. Try importing the assault rifle gbxmodel in gmax/3ds and looking what is there.

As I said before I have never actually done this, but you can figure out pretty much anything but just analyzing the stock tags once you have an understanding of how they work.

Ok, so I'm trying to get the counter on a dmr to work.
I copied the battle rifle's number_plate.bitmap and put it on my dmr.
Then the battle rifle's number_plate shader, and set the numeral thing to 15.
I recompile the map, but it still doesn't work.

Any idea why?

In your dmr.weapon tag under functions A out should be set to what ever the assault rifle's A out function is set to.

Aha! Ok, it worked, but the bitmaps were messed up. They were upside down and went from 22, 11, 00, 99, 88, 77, 66, 55, 44, 33, 22, 11, and 00 before reloading.

I am not sure what will fix it, but what did you do when you set up the number planes in the model?

I added the .tif like a regular bitmap.
Compiled.
Then replaced the bitmap with the battle rifle number plate bitmaps.
Then replaced the shader with the battle rifle number plate shader.
Added the functions to the .weapon.
Compiled.

^^
Pretty much what I did.

I mean what material did you set on the the two planes you made for the ammo display? Is it the same for both?

EDIT: I just noticed that you said they were upside down. You just need to flip the UVW coordinates upside down.
Edited by Forum Ninjas on May 27, 2011 at 10:22 PM


EDIT:I also just figured something out. If you open up the assault rifle fp gbxmodel, and look at shaders at the bottom, you will notice that there are two shaders entitled "numbers", but one has a permutation of 0 while the other is 1. The two planes should have the different permutations respectively. This must be to tell the game which is digit one and which is two in the counter. However I have never heard of shader permutations, thus I do not know how to set it up. Perhaps try making two materials (but give them both the name of the numbers shader) and give each plane a different one. Try that, but I can't guarantee that it will work.
Edited by Ro0ster on May 27, 2011 at 10:37 PM

Yeah I saw the shader permutations. Going to try and copy it even though I have no idea what it does. XP

And where are the uvw coordinates?

Select the model of the plane and under Modifier List to the right (defaultly) and select "Unwrap UVW." then click Edit and select everything. Then mirror it vertically. In gmax the button looks like 2 turquoise triangles with a red line in the middle, I am not sure what it looks like in 3ds if that's what your using. Also if the red line is vertical you want to click and hold the button till a dropdown appears then select the one with the horizontal red line(which actually mirrors it vertically).

Well, I copied the shader permutations idea with 0 and 1, but nothing changed so idk...
ok i'm going to try and fix the upside down bitmaps.

E: Well, I tried to fix the bitmaps, but when I used bluestreak to get the jms, it was alot smaller than usual. I got it ingame, just to find half of the model had disappeared.

E2: I fixed the model. Used Max7's Blitzkreig instead of Max 10's Bluestreak. I think Bluestreak did something wrong to my model but whatever. It's fixed now. Now how do I get those shaders to work properly...
Edited by spartan314 on Jun 3, 2011 at 06:03 AM