Very nice work. Wish there was something I could do to help. Let me know if you need any .garbage models.

If you're good with sounds, it be helpful if you could rip and port all the music and level specific sounds. That's something that hasn't even been started.

Yeah I can do that.

Alright great! If you can port over all the Chief, Miranda, Johnson, and Cortana dialoug outside of the opening cutscene, that be perfect. Then music and ambient sounds after. The first cinematic has been already handled.

It's pretty swaggalicious.

Goodbye! :)

I don't know if this has been already asked, but how far are you from releasing the first map?

They got the BSP to work.
Now,they are doing some stuff with it,like tweaking it and making it all pretty and stuff.

This will take a lot longer than it sounds, but it'll be worth it ^^

(EDIT: Ignore this post please... Sorry.)
Edited by renegade343 on Dec 27, 2012 at 02:24 PM

What the hell are you talking about?

That's what they're doing.I only mentioned the things that I know that they're doing.

Here's what I know they did/are doing:
*Making all the stuff work,like the gondolas
*Making it pretty,cause that's what you do with OS
*Recreating the encounters
*Making the BSP work like it should
*General modding duties,like debugging

I believe that they are about 20-30% complete with the map Delta Halo.
They got some of the difficult,important stuff done

And no,I'm not new at all.
Not sure if you're an old member with a new account but I joined before you did.


Edited by Dumb AI on Dec 27, 2012 at 02:18 PM

Sorry, I put the wrong quote up... That last post was supposed to be for xXR0B0STEELXx.

Yeah I know, that's what I meant by it taking a long time.

It's kay.
Sorry for being hostile to ya.

lol no it's fine, you're good. I should've been more clear, too. ^^

Yeah, I just joined today, I have been watching CMT's thread on HaloMods.com, and have fond the link to these forums.
The main reason I posted that post was so that I could get an email when a new post is submitted.

Right now everything is on hold, until we get some of the other problems in the BSPs figured. I can't improve the basic encounters set up until the ai pathfinding works properly. Kirby in the meantime has been working on cutscenes. Soon as I get the sound tags mentioned above, I can start integrating all the audio content.

If there is anyone who has some time on their hands and doesn't mind fixing errors, we certainly can use the help.

All the effort spent figuring out BSP errors could have been put into custom BSPs, just super sayan.

Anyways, normally if you can get a BSP compiled properly then it should generate the pathfinding nodes automatically, so I don't understand how you can have basic encounters already set up on BSPs, yet these don't have proper pathfinding. The only sort of pathfinding issue I've seen before was on the b40 levels that had glass placed above the basic geometry. You need to set certain flags to make sure the AI doesn't use the "gaps" to generate the pathfinding nodes. Aside from that, scenery that isn't set up properly can also cause pathfinding issues if some radius doesn't match it's size.

Well this team has no artists, and some people involved are already working on a custom map you can view a preview here http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=we7Zd4LFI7o

Halo 2 uses what is called instance geometry, they basically model the levels layout, and then place geometry that will be used multiple times throughout the map in max, almost like scenery. However, H2 allows you to have intersecting geometry without collision errors, something H1 doesn't allow. The priority has always been getting Delta Halo playable start to finish, so that we have the entire level to work with in terms of scripting, shaders, sound and population. Since we are taking this approach, much of this instance geometry causes collision errors in the BSP, which in turn effect AI pathfinding. In short, the BSPs are not compiled properly, hence our collision and pathfinding problems.

If you were making a custom map and bsps you wouldn't have to spend the time to fix things you didn't make to begin with.

You said it was already at this point:



So I'm going to go on a whim and assume you're just hyping that which is still far from deserving hype.

Anyways, just use scenery. Halo 1's engine is different from H2's, and therefore should be treated differently. Gone will be intersecting geometry, welcome back AI pathfinding.

If we were to do it all as scenery, you would get very poor optimization. Scenery is much more taxing on performance than BSP. We did initially experiment with it, and the results were pretty painful. Also, you get the damage effect clipping, which sucks for the tank run.

Halo 2 also lets you designate when to render scenery based on the currently loaded BSP, and also lets you scale it in sapien. This presents it's own problems, as you need to have multiple versions of scaled scenery, and you also would have scenery rendering in locations it is not suppose to. Both can be solved via scripting, but then you run the risk of running out of object names. We do plan on doing some BSP manipulation in order to stop the scenery rendering in the distance where the player should not be seeing it, but it's certainly not something that would be propper for the entire level.

Cause this project is about taking a baby that's fully grown and stuffing it back into it's mother. And that results in Zbuffers and every other problem we run into.

unorthodox, but accurate 0.o

I haven't been on the forum but when ever i see CMT stuff its good but usually they usually seem so cocky like they are gods gift to halo like their maps are good

H2's levels didn't feature significantly more scenery than H1 did. If the BSPs are properly portaled (véry important) and you don't go crazy with scenery, then the results should be performant enough. Trust me, the difference between no portals and proper portals is massive.

I don't know what you mean with damage effect clipping, I haven't noticed scenery to cause any crazy stuff pertaining to damage. Doesn't mean whatever you mean isn't there, it just means it's not a noticeable item.

Either way, you'll have to cut some corners because you're downgrading the level to H1. If you risk running out of object names just choose the most defining ones and scale those. Nobody is expecting an exact replica.

Besides, you could also split each campaign level into multiple parts like Lumoria, if you can't fit everything into one BSP.

Hiralis' rant... actually has a really good point, though. o.o
Copy, learn, then do something new. We all know CMT's amazing at copying and touching up, and their redesigned weapons are pretty amazing...
But unless TSC-E and this H2 port can show that CMT can take a step further and do something big and original, I'm not sure how much they'd really deserve to call themselves the Custom Mapping Team.

No offense to you, Masters, TehLag or anyone else; I love your work, just... I'm worried about how this'll turn out.

He's right. Halo 2's Levels don't have as much scenery as H1's did. There was a lot of stuff built into the BSPs that halo 1 just used as scenery.

another thing to consider is AI Quality. In Halo 2, AI don't use actor_varients and whatnot, they use ".character" files and "AI Zones". AI zones basically do away with firing and move positions and give them free roam around the SBSP (which is what they're called in H2's engine). This all makes it hard to get AI into halo 2's MP... but i guess H1's ai engine would do :)

...have you guys ever seen the "climber" elite on outskirts?

Damage effects like explosions go through scenery collision. If you had a wall and someone shot a rocket or threw a grenade on one side and you were on the other, you would take damage if it was scenery, but not if it was part of the bsp.

Climber Elite?

I remember the H2 modding days, when AI zones didn't work at all in MP. Using jmad swaps or something like that to force them to run straight the entire time. Good times.

I would consider this an immediate issue. Halo 2 obviously had the 2 separated for a reason, that sure as hell means CE should too.

Oh my god! i remember that too! but then h2 guerilla (another Kornman masterpiece) came out and all of a sudden we could copy over ai zones. good times, indeed.

and the "climber elite" was in sniper alley. some of you may remember the cloaked elites that appeared there on legendary? there's a way to spawn only them and not the rest of the snipers and whatnot. you have to go over the rooftops and spawn the IWHBYD skull (one of the hardest but most fun easter eggs of all time), but don't pick it up. two cloakers have plasma rifles, one with a sword. if you can trick one of the plasma rifle elites to go down towards the end of the alley, sometimes it will just randomly climb up some invisible ladder and stay there forever. easy headshot. even after looking at the outskirts source code, i can't tell why he does such a silly thing, although it turns out the elites in H2 have an unused ladder-climbing animation.

here's a vid for those who still don't believe me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u0bqIFS6624
Edited by clonecam117 on Dec 28, 2012 at 03:44 PM

So doing the dialog right now. Couple cool things I found. One being the first Spectre encounter was suppose to happen after the bridge in delta halo, the other being that Cortana makes a comment about there being battle scars throughout the Delta Ruins.

It's like bullet holes and blood.
They magically disappear...

Oh yeah! i've found those too! i love finding hidden surprises in the game's engine. did you know the level "oracle" has spawn points set up for the Flood Juggernaut?