It isn't quite finished just yet, but I'd like to have someone who has a use for it try it out and stress test it for me. It's finals week and I don't have time to try every combination. I've still got to write the DXT1/3/5 compression routine, but everything else is in place.

It's faster than it was before, I've removed the limitation that prevented you from converting to certain formats, and, as a side effect of something else I'm working on, I've given it the ability to extract textures from tags.

Now, it's not exactly something new, being able to extract textures. BUT, it can extract every format and it can do it pretty dern quickly. 355MB, 1700 bitmaps, took about 20 seconds to extract and write to the disk. I've only supported extracting to DDS and TGA so far.(TGA doesn't support R5G6B5, A4R4G4B4, A8Y8, or DXT1/3/5 so those will default to DDS instead). It also extracts cubemaps and 3d textures properly and as one bitmap

I'm looking at making bitmaps into tags in the future as I improve the bitmap module that this program relies on. The bitmap module is generic enough that I'll be able to use it to manipulate any texture data given to it. As a result I'll be using it for loading and saving to and from other game texture formats. Because of that, It won't be too hard to write some extra code to take the texture from it and re-inject it into a tag once I've got that code in place.




So, anyone want to help me test it?

EDIT: Info on the old version is here.
forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=46895
Edited by MosesofEgypt on Dec 2, 2014 at 08:18 PM

So this time were going to have better texture quality just like texmod?
Edited by unkowndevelopername on Dec 2, 2014 at 08:24 PM

I will help you out. You got xfire?

It will extract textures used in detail object collection?

Yea. The only problem is that I've currently got it set to extract to the same folder the tags are in. I haven't set up it creating paths to the data folder since I literally just added it Sunday and then went straight to studying for school.

I can see that being useful :)

Absolutely. I've had Xbox formatted bitmaps supported since the old version. I've just made a lot of changes in this version to how the program works and added a few new features. The programming is much cleaner and easier to interpret than it used to be.

When I release this converter though, I'm cutting all(or at least most) the comments out and large sections of the framework that aren't used because I'm still working on it and I don't want people to use it for anything else in it's unfinished state. This is because it can be used for more than just Halo. I've written a few modules that plug into it that allow me to load Gauntlet Dark Legacy files with it. I've still got a fair amount to add though and that's why I don't want people to start trying to use the framework.
Edited by MosesofEgypt on Dec 3, 2014 at 05:51 PM

this is a good idea. about time this got a update