Hello everyone!

I'm new around here, so hi nice to meet you ;)

I'm trying to make a custom map with elite A.I. with swords.

So far I managed to make zealot elites and stealth elites kill each other in the middle of a multiplayer map with their energy swords.

The thing is, I'd like to make the swords glow red instead of blue

And maybe make one team with red energy swords and the other team with blue energy swords.

I just really dont know how to do that.

any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Sorry if this is in the wrong forum, don't know where it belongs.

I can't help you with the color, but imo, i've seen it done before, and red looks bad on the energy sword
Edited by SilentJacket on Jan 6, 2013 at 11:40 PM

Haha

not a problem, just want to make it for fun, not trying to make a super-awesome map or anything lol

I just thought it would look cool to see 2 teams with different energy swords colors killing each other.

Theres a halo novel I once read about an ancient sangheili task force with energy red-hued swords and would like to see it on my map, thats all
Edited by Thel Moramee on Jan 7, 2013 at 12:02 AM

They are not ancient...They were seen not too long ago in the Halo universe.

2 Spartan's encountered them on a Covenant-controlled moon.

Badazz Spec-ops Elites with red swords.
Edited by Dumb AI on Jan 7, 2013 at 12:07 AM

yeah, well the ones I remember looked like marshmallow prongs covered in radioactive cotton candy.

If you are going to do it, at least make the energy sword's shape more definite.

@Dumb AI: Yeah that's what I'm talkin about, cool huh

@SilentJacket:

I'm a complete noob at modding, not trying to impress anyone, just doing it for fun

I'd like to just change the color from blue to red, anything more complex is beyond me, I'm no graphics designer or anything

Edited by Thel Moramee on Jan 7, 2013 at 12:15 AM

Find the weapon tag for the sword. It should have field leading to a .gbxmodel tag.
Open the gbxmodel, and it should reference shaders at the bottom. This is where you will find the shaders (textures and reflections and detail) for the sword.
If you just want to edit the glow, the weapon tag should have .effect tags "attached" to it. Open those up and go wild! There may be bitmaps you'll have to edit.

Open energy sword model, find which shader contains the sword bitmap, open it, hit show bitmap, drag the corners to show the full bitmap, hit print screen, go into paint.NET hit edit\past. Use select tool to select only what is inside the blue lines around the image, once you have that, hit image\crop to selected. Then effect\invert conlor(or just invert, i can't remember which it is) save as a .TIFF compile new bitmap, set shader tag to locate this bitmap, save....That's how i'd do it anyway...

You can also edit the .glow tags and the dynamic light color.

Thank you guys, your help is appreciated.

The .glow and .effect tags inside the energy sword folder have something called "color bounds", all of them are blue or white in color.

I would like to think that changing that to red would suffice, but some of you suggested to change the bitmap first, so I guess is not that easy

So such options are useless without a modded bitmap first right?

I'll give it a go



Edited by Thel Moramee on Jan 7, 2013 at 12:38 AM

Change the color of the .glow and .effect tags first. if the sword is still visible through them, then you should change the bitmap color as well.

^This. There's no use making extra work for yourself when you don't even need to. edit the .effect and .glow tags first, if the sword comes out a purple color or something, it means that the blue is mixing with it, so then you'd need to change the bitmap, which if you'd like i could do for you, just let me know which sword you're using. Lol.

The thing is, I don't want to mess with the color bounds all around because my Guerilla tends to save the changes and I can't revert them once done, otherwise I'd get a pink colored sword or something funny and then I wouldn't be able to change it lol.

I have tried deleting my edited tags and re-extracting the tags (I got my elite tags and sword from a50.map Halo PC) and they keep coming with the same settings I edited, so I haven't messed with color bounds yet for this reason.

I got another question... is it normal for swords not to glow on sapien?

Thanks again

@Grunt Eater: I tried opening the bitmap but I can't make it bigger, its just a small image there, so if you got some spare time to make one I'd be very thankful!
Edited by Thel Moramee on Jan 7, 2013 at 11:37 AM

It doesn't really look too bad.

All right, how did you do that? lol

looks awesome imo!

I have set stealth elites without active camo and zealot elites on derelict killing each other.

I'd like to stop them from doing their berseking noises though, it gets annoying after a while.. they're all like "AAaaaaargh!" all the time and my ears get bored!

any ideas?

thanks for the pic, cool!

the glow is overdone, esp. at the end of the sword, it looks like the sword is leaking

personally, I think that the energy sword looks better with minimal glow effect, confined to the shape of the sword itself, and not an "energy cloud"

Different strokes for different folks I guess

Not an expert in graphics, but I really like more the glow of the sword from halo combat evolved than Halo 2, 3 or 4

specially not halo 2, they all look made of plastic or something


Edited by Thel Moramee on Jan 7, 2013 at 12:35 PM

That's not my fault. All I did was recolor the blade in the bitmaps and recolor the glow color. I never changed anything aside from color.