I'm curious if there's any info on how these maps are laid out, how they would have been compiled, how the engine accesses them. Things like that.

We have the normal .map files sectioned off and properly documented. Is there a posting or document somewhere that has those resource maps broken down?

From a quick look at it there's not the usual header like a standard mapfile, I assumed it would at least have that to check itself. So I assume then it's either a straight stream of data, or each bitmap/sound is sectioned off.


I would guess the straight stream, I don't believe anything but the texture/sound is stored here, since all game-data is already in the tag. I assume it's just the texture/sound as it's compressed stored in a straight shot sitting at the offset listed in the tag? If anyone has any info on these resource maps it'd be greatly appreciated, thank you.

What I know is that when you compile a map it will check if you're using bitmaps that are referenced in the bitmaps.map, if the bitmap tag is the same size of the one in the bitmaps.map then it will reference the tag to the one in the bitmaps.map and not the actual map you compiled (to save space).

To rip these bitmaps you simply rip the tag from a map wich references the tag from the bitmaps.map, when hek+ is ripping the tag it will take it from the bitmaps.map.

It's the same for the sounds.

So if you want to take custom sounds/bitmaps from a Halo PC mod (like ftw), you just rip the bitmap/sound tags from the .maps wich reference them.