I need help because my jms files don't exist and I can't seem to find anything about it. It's there when I use Grablistener, to save a jms file, but when I try to find it for wordpad/notpad. It's gone.
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I fixed the problem, turns out it was just an issue with "administrator rights". I've gotten pretty far now, but I ran into ANOTHER error! I have "open edges". I don't know how to find or fix them, I'm using Gmax.
Edited by Goji on Aug 17, 2011 at 12:27 AM
Edited by Goji on Aug 17, 2011 at 12:36 AM
Edited by Goji on Aug 17, 2011 at 01:15 AM

1st thing to try is welding all verts at a value of 0.01
reexport and compile.

You can also import the [map name here].wrl file that gets spat out in your Halo CE directory. It's been 5 years since I last used the Gmax tools so I'm fuzzy on what the process was for doing that, but the .wrl file contains information about which faces/edges are causing your errors and will create geometry highlighting them.
Edited by teh lag on Aug 17, 2011 at 11:39 AM

Okay so I just gave up and restarted. Now it works. And I've gotten all the way to where you use sapien. But of course there's another problem. I'm missing a file that I don't think I had in the first place. "ui_tags_loaded_mainmenu_scenario_type.tag_collection"
Where can I download this?
Edited by Goji on Aug 17, 2011 at 03:42 PM

You'd need to extract it from the UI.map or dig it out somewhere in Halomaps' file archives, but that shouldn't be necessary unless you're actually trying to make a UI (main menu) map.

The problem can be solved by opening your scenario in Guerilla and making sure that the "type" field is set to multiplayer. A singleplayer or mainmenu map requires interface tags that were not provided with the stock HEK tagset.
Edited by teh lag on Aug 17, 2011 at 06:21 PM

Okay I did that. I think it worked. Now the new problem is that instead of my map. All I see is a purple screen. What's that all about?
Edited by Goji on Aug 17, 2011 at 11:37 PM

add a sky and run lightmaps.
Edited by Maniac1000 on Aug 18, 2011 at 01:10 AM

Hehe...I kind of started over again...and the Wrl thing is interesting. It lite up the new map like a christmas tree. Course I don't know how to fix the issues I see so. I'm starting over again for the 6th time! This is getting annoying. A map editing program shouldn't have so many errors/issues like this! I think I'll be sticking to forge on Reach until they come out with a program that doesn't error every 5 seconds. -_-
Here's an image of all the errors I have. How am I supposed to fix this?!

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Okay I'm back to the same purple screen. How do I add a sky/ lightmaps?Oh and I should mention that it says "cannot teleport camera to starting BSP"
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Okay so my camera was just under the level, weird...Anyways, now I'm trying to "lighten" the map and when I type "radiosity_start" The level goes completly black and three setts of numbers saying "0.00000 0.00000 0.00000" appear. What's that mean? and how to I fix it?Btw I'm new to this so you're going to have to tell me how to do it instead of just saying, "do this", tell me HOW to do it too.
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Edited by Goji on Aug 18, 2011 at 03:18 PM
Edited by Goji on Aug 18, 2011 at 03:44 PM
Edited by Goji on Jun 16, 2013 at 01:43 AM

99% of the time errors like this are due to the user doing something wrong not the program (the HEK does have a few bugs and problems but I strongly strongly strongly doubt they're what's causing you this grief because they are generally obscure and don't apply to situations like these).

You add a sky in Guerilla. Open the scenario tag and at the top of the editing window will be a field for "skies". You must then reference a .sky tag in that field (usually they are found under the "tags\skies" folder.

Once you have done this you open your scenario in Sapien and do the "radiosity_start" command (before doing that you may wish to also do "radiosity_step_count 1"; this makes the calculation update faster so it's easier to keep track of its progress). Once the numbers reach all 0s (or close enough if it takes a long time and you're tired of waiting) you do "radiosity_save"; this saves the lightmap calculation.

If you still cannot see your map or it doesn't look "right"...

-Use the middle mouse-button and WSAD/RF to move the camera around and be sure you're actually in your level
-Make sure you have faces in your map's source file that use a sky material (a sky material is just a sub-material with the name "+sky"; the game knows what to do with them. See the HEK tutorial for specifics on this though it's really quite simple).
-Make sure that the shader tags referenced by your map are, in turn, referencing bitmap tags. A newly-created shader (for example if it was created during tool's automatic prompt if a shader you reference in the map doesn't exist) will *not* automatically know which bitmaps it needs to be using, so you have to use Guerilla to point it to the .bitmap tags you have compiled.
Edited by teh lag on Aug 18, 2011 at 07:38 PM

I did the sky thing and it works! Hurray! Now the map itself is green, and foggy looking.

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Fixed that, only need to save the radiosity. Next problem is that the ground bitmap thing isn't there, it's just a white marshmellow, my grass didn't show up. How do I fix that?

Here's what it looks like

Edited by Goji on Aug 18, 2011 at 11:50 PM
Edited by Goji on Jun 16, 2013 at 01:44 AM

To quote my earlier post:



The HEK doesn't magically know which bitmaps are being used by your ground material or how you want them to be displayed. As a result, you have to manually specify this information in the shader tag that represents how your ground is drawn on the screen.

To do this:

-Open the shader tag (it is probably a shader_environment) with the name of your ground material
-Fill in the reference(s) in the "diffuse properties" with the .bitmap tag(s) for your ground
[see the section labeled "environment shader type" for an explanation of how the detail maps can be blended in should you choose to include some]

If you have not compiled .bitmap tags from the bitmaps that you want to use, you do that with the "bitmaps" tool command which has very simple usage:

"tool.exe bitmaps [bitmap directory inside of data folder]"

For example: .tif source files stored in "data\levels\test\mymap\bitmaps"
Tool command: "tool.exe bitmaps levels\test\mymap\bitmaps"
Possible output:


Once you've run the command tool should output information about what was processed; if it outputs nothing be sure you've entered the correct directory and didn't do something silly like include "data" in the command's directory or forget to put quotes around a directory with spaces.

Also make sure that your source bitmap data adhere to Halo's bitmap requirements: unless you're doing special stuff (which you're not in this case) bitmap source data must be saved in .tif form and have power-of-two dimensions (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048, etc).

Once you've compiled the .bitmap tags you can reference them in your ground shader and all should be well.
Edited by teh lag on Aug 19, 2011 at 12:07 AM

Where do I find "shader_enviroment"??

What program do I use to open?
"To do this:

-Open the shader tag (it is probably a shader_environment) with the name of your ground material"
Edited by Goji on Aug 19, 2011 at 06:59 PM

Use Guerilla. Browse around your "tags" folder and it subdirectories to find a .shader_environment tag with the same name as the material your ground uses. For example if in Gmax your ground's material is called "testmap_ground" then you want to look for "testmap_ground.shader_environment".

There is no shader tag for the tif I'm using..I'm using the detail grass from the a30 level(which ever one that is). Where can I get tif files with shader tags to replace this one??

I think you misunderstood me.

What is the name of the *material* that you're using applying on your ground? Not the .tif file, the name of the material in Gmax. That's the shader you need to be looking for (it definitely exists somewhere in your tags otherwise the map wouldn't have been able to get this far).

To answer your question: you don't need to get them anywhere, you cn make them yourself by compiling the .tif data into .bitmap tags (as I described earlier) and making shader_environment tags that use those .bitmaps (as I also described earlier).

Material? Uhm...It's edible mesh? and how do I do that compiling thing? And how do I make shader_environment tag?

No - by "material" I mean the thing in Gmax where you define the textures and such.

It's been too long since I used Gmax to know if there's an exact equivalent, but this is what I mean in 3ds: (picture from the HEK tutorial)



See the list of things in area "9"? That's what I mean. I don't mean the name of the .tif, I mean the name of the "material" in which you referenced the .tif in Gmax.

As for compiling bitmaps, I described how to do that in detail a few posts ago:



As for shader_environments: if you end up having to make a new one you do it in Guerilla (literally just do file -> new and select shader_environment from the drop-down list) but like I've been saying, there is already a shader_environment being used by your level by virtue of the fact that it made it past the tool structure stage.
Edited by teh lag on Aug 19, 2011 at 09:21 PM

Btw how did you get 3d max? isn't that like five thousand dollars?

Also, I have an MSN account, I think it'd be easier to communicate instead of using forums.
Edited by Goji on Aug 19, 2011 at 09:43 PM
Edited by Goji on Aug 19, 2011 at 09:44 PM
Edited by Goji on Aug 19, 2011 at 09:49 PM
Edited by Goji on Jun 16, 2013 at 01:44 AM

I don't have MSN but I can usually be found on AIM when I'm not out or asleep - my SN is 'radumachedon'. If all else fails we can take this to PMs.

Also you can get 3ds for free by registering as a student with Autodesk.
Edited by teh lag on Aug 19, 2011 at 10:11 PM

New error. But nothing to bad, It's not letting me add certain items into the game that I downloaded from the site, including one made by you. Here's the picture
Edited by Goji on Aug 20, 2011 at 02:40 AM
Edited by Goji on Jun 16, 2013 at 01:45 AM