Since Halo CEA (I think) is on the Halo Combat Evolved engine, like completely. couldn't you open the .map files in Halo Editing Kit Plus and extract BSPS, as well as models?

I've tried in the past and it hasn't worked, although I'm not sure if that's because my .map files are corrupt or not.

Thanks.

It uses the reach engine as the graphic overlay. If I am correct there should be 2 types of each map. newer engine and older engine versions

Ah. Well, there goes my dreams of taking the updated BSPS, for now.

Not the reach engine. Reach engine runs only in the multiplayer component of HCEA. The campaign uses a custom graphic engine that synchronizes with the old engine (hence why you have a slight delay when you switch between old and new, pop-in textures every now and then, etc).

Think of it like having OpenSauce running on the old engine. You would need a software/program that is capable of extracting OpenSauce stuff, to which I guess is not HEK+. I might be wrong for using this an analogy though. :/

Actually,HEK+ can handle it.
Some things like bitmaps won't work.They get corrupted.
Shader model extension information is not extracted.

Models and animations work fine,though.

I'm not sure if HEK+ can detect the new tag types.
Edited by Dumb AI on Jan 22, 2013 at 08:54 PM

I've opened the Prisoner map in hek+ (from Halo CEA) and in the output I get:
" MapVersion.0
This is not a valid map file

Failed to open map file"

I'm not an experienced person, so I'm unsure what to do.
Edited by Vergil on Jan 22, 2013 at 09:00 PM

You probably shouldn't try to do that.

HEK+ won't work with CEA.

The xbox version of halo used COMPRESSED map files :)

Maybe HMT(the xbox version) would work?
Edited by OrangeJuice on Jan 22, 2013 at 09:28 PM

This is actually a really awesome idea. But it will take a bit of fiddling. Well, a LOT of fiddling. And seeing how Masterz and them are going with Halo 2, I'm not too sure this can be done...easily...without your mind melting and spilling all over the floor.

Well,it would probably be useless to most people.

It only extracts stuff in the form of meta files and DDS files.

I don't know if it can open Xbox maps.
I've tried with Trial and CE (both didn't work).
It's made for PC maps so...

Edited by Dumb AI on Jan 22, 2013 at 11:12 PM

You have to use one of the extremely ancient versions that can use decompressed map files: A program called DOThalo is used to decompress the xbox map you want to mod, which you then mod with HMT or any of the other hard to find xbox tools, and the compress it again using DOThalo.

With halo 2 for xbox, the map also had to be recertified(a map resigner) or else halo2 wouldn't load it
Edited by OrangeJuice on Jan 22, 2013 at 11:19 PM

I doubt that the above stated program would work for CEA maps though...

why not? Isn't it the original engine bootstrapped onto another engine? I think changing the format of the underlying files means you have to make the so-called original engine unoriginal :p

I was thinking simple stuff like projectile-swap mods being transferrable to the updated graphics portion, but why not just ask 343 if they could release assets, or at least useful materials to replicate them?
Edited by OrangeJuice on Jan 22, 2013 at 11:24 PM

Well I assume upgraded stuff is merged into the map files, therefore you have to go further into modifying that DOThalo program to properly decompress the map files. Even then, I doubt the tag sources would be readable by HEK+ because, sure the map can be decompressed, but you also have to make sure that HEK+ is reading the map file from the correct offsets and stuff I don't know.

Maybe that can be Adjutant's next mission?...

Unless they already said that it wouldn't work.
Edited by Vergil on Jan 23, 2013 at 04:15 PM

I already talked to Gravemind about it, we're looking into it.

Could someone pm me one of the .map files from CEA? I'm pretty sure I know how to make things work.

EDIT: Ok, someone sent me a .map from CEA. I managed to get HEK+ to open it successful. However, HEK+ gives me an error when it tries to extract a bitmap, everything else works fine though.

I've managed to extract the .gbxmodel for the pelican, however sapien gives me an error when trying to spawn the pelican now.

Maybe someone could edit the model to make it work with Halo CE?
Edited by XboxHavic on Jan 23, 2013 at 06:54 PM

the .maps from halocea are just the old xbox .maps they have nothing new in them that you don't already have with haloce here on pc.

What you really want is the s3dpaks that holds all the stuff from the saber3d engine side of the game that holds the halo 3 and reach models that are rigged to haloce bones

Hmm, that's what I thought when I saw those files, I wasn't sure what the s stood for though.
I'll look into possibly getting the models from s3dpaks.

EDIT: Ok, so at the moment no one can really extract anything from the s3dpaks.
Edited by XboxHavic on Jan 23, 2013 at 09:49 PM

That sucks.

The map structure is way to different. You would probably sooner be able to convert halo 2 maps directly to halo 1 format before cea.

but.. we already can...

Saber3D --> s3d
See?

the campaign uses the saber3D engine, the mp maps use the reach format and can be opened using adjudiant to grab the models and textures

well, anyone want to find out definitively?

i.e. try it?

i already have the models from the mp maps (i.e. the side bases in timberlands and the pillars in hangemhigh) but the s3D files cant be touched unless you own a license to the sabre engine (basically only if you are an employee of saber)

We need to get some "connections".

xP

It wont work. The two engines likely split the tag structure, and who the hell knows what function they used to make the new models render. I think we can all say they didn't use guerrilla to do that, which will mess up opening the file in itself

Has anyone tried to contact saber. If I remember correctly, saber is one of those "professional indie developers" so if some of the halo ce community badgered them enough, they would probably be willing to liscence it for money or if they're nice, give an sdk (given microsoft isn't preventing them from liscencing the engine which is highly doutable.)

I'm sure MS has copywrited everything from the shape of the Halo ring, to the color of MC's armor

It's the teal, man!

So i got somewhere, files extracted from b30 but all the files models,textures and other stuff have no header so i gotta try and figure it out, anyways here is a photo


right click and open in a new tab to see it
Edited by clonetrooper163 on Jan 29, 2013 at 06:39 PM

If there's any way to extract MC or a BSP I'd be really happy.

I don't know if this has already been said, but a whole bunch of things from CEA has been taken from the other halo games, so you could attempt to take them from the other games that they were from, and just give them the halo CE animations.

PS, don't give me hate from this, the main reason I posted this was to follow this topic.