hello all. so aside from texturing the only "gaming experience" i have is in ut3. however i have always liked halo and always like the cannon as well as the gameplay. i must give credit to TM and lumoria because before that i didnt think what i had in mind was realistically a possibility. but they pulled it off nicely. now my personal gameplay styles consist of up close, and very far away shooting. (shotty snipes basically) so i wanted to create a custom campaign mission that catered to both these styles. heres what im asking; while i realize i cant just ask people to do the work for me, i have a custom campaign mission in mind i have drawn out levels and made gameplay charts in my mind that would seem both fun and logical while remaining within the margins of cannon. but i am absoutely clueless as to how to effectively turn that into a map. so what i am requesting is a list of the tools i would need to do so (both free and not so free) any tutorials people can point me to, and if anybody is interested, direct help :) if anybody in this community is willing to support me in this endeavor i would greatly appreciate it. halo has always been a hobby and i want to be able to do more with it then i am currently able. so any help would be greatly appreciated. :)

Feel free to add me on xfire if you use it, maniac1000
You will need to get either 3ds max (i recommend max8, not max2008) or Gmax (gmax has limited tools)
You will also need the HEK.

okay i added you on xfire and im downloading both of those rn should i get the hek plus or not?

HEK+ is indeed a handy tool to have if you want to acquire tags from maps you like.
As for tutorials, I made a small simple firefight scripting tutorial when I released b40_firefight. I'll find if for you later when I have time. I also recommend Higuy's tutorial on making a simple SP level. I'll search it up later too :-)

You can also always add me on xfire for direct help, my xfire is "lodexia"
Keep it real.

i actually read both of those before i even considered gettin stuff started and also read up on bungies encouter ambitions for all of their halo's so im hoping i can nail gameplay... i could care less abt tags rite now

Oh, well...you still need tags to get started either way :P
Apparently you can download the default tagset somewhere on this site too, but I just extracted the default ones from the campaign maps and corrected any corrupt ones. Doing it like this saves bandwith too.

Good that you already read tutorials, nice cream indeed.