Hi everybody. I've just realized that playing the same campaign over and over for years can be quite boring. It has never been a problem; up to now, I was busy updating my tagset with new textures and models, but now I think I did it, and so I can move on to new stuff. So I wanted to port a Firefight map from Reach (Airview, just to start), and I used Adjutant to rip the BSP.

Now, a little problem arose. Halo Reach seemingly doesn't use sceneries, because almost everything is BSP. And it seems that the engine of Reach follows different rules from CE, since these meshes clearly don't follow the sealed world rules.
Now, that wouldn't be much of a problem; it would just be a matter of sealing them. The problem is that many faces overlap each other, and fixing this requires a crazy amount of work, and surely much more than it's worth working on; considering how much stuff they put there, it'd be much easier to just learn modeling, texturing and mapping from 0 and just recreate the map from scratch.
Hence my question: is there a way I can have overlapping collisions in the bsp? The engine obviously can handle this (the collision of many sceneries happen to pass through the ground, after all), but I don't know if I can make it happen while building a bsp. Any suggestion?
Edited by rododoonceagain on Jun 11, 2015 at 04:31 PM

There are many many restrictions/limitations in the CE engine that will make this a difficult task. The CE engine doesn't like BSP objects colliding with themselves or protruding from each other. Everything has to follow the sealed world rules and the Reach BSPs have a much higher polycount that CE can normally handle. You could make most objects scenery and not use the smaller BSP details that'd kill your poly budget really fast.

Even with OS, this is not an easy job.

That part you just said " The engine obviously can handle it" gave me a cancer.

If you were porting halo reach to halo online then that won't be a problem.

There is no need to talk about cancer, but it can. Look at a50, for example: many rocks are half buried into the ground, so their collision model IS overlapping the bsp collision model without problem; the same thing on the BSP alone, however, generates errors. Or, for example, when you walk on a dead body: there, again, the collision models ARE overlapping (here errors pop up, because if you shoot a dead body while touching it, you will get hurt, but hey, no one cares)
Edited by rododoonceagain on Jun 11, 2015 at 04:41 PM

Good, now you will die and nobody will have to listen to you anymore.

Hate much?

Things are escalating rather quickly

Edited by rododoonceagain on Jun 11, 2015 at 04:43 PM

sir that train is doing anything but escalating

It could be, remember the "composition" campaign, port a little fragment of a HReach mission coulb be but will have a lot of limitations with out talk about graphics.

Not sure if this is the correct route but......


1. Give all the materials assigned to all the surfaces you cannot be bothered to fix a render only shader symbol in the material editior "!".

I.E 3DS MAX Mat editor


Multisub object > Shader "christines_puffy_snatch!" > Bitmap "christines_puffy_snatch.tif


2. Draw over or trace new geometry over the pre-existing mesh. (this is very much like creating collision for a scenery model)

Remember to keep the collision geo as low poly as possible but try to match the render only bsp as close as possible then assign a generic shader from the multisub object in the Mat editor but don't forget to add the render collision only shader material "@"

Honestly man, I would just use the ripped Reach BSP as reference and try to whip one up from scratch. It'll likely take less time, be higher quality, allow you more creative freedom, and play smoother in the long run.

People are still making rocket ar mods for that game. : \
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM2Sma8RJEI
Edited by Grunter on Jun 12, 2015 at 10:52 AM

People be like

> HALO CE IS OLD ENGINE, HALO CE IS OUTDATED!
> Move to a new engine
> Use the new engine to do the EXACT SAME CRAP they've been doing here.

I don't even
Edited by rododoonceagain on Jun 12, 2015 at 03:09 PM

Are you good at modeling?

I personally recommend you come up with a new environment and add a new twist onto firefight in your own unique style. Pepsi & Mooose did that with Descent, Gamma did that with Portent, and i'm doing that with Sector 09. I think it keeps things interesting with different unique signatures for each project.

I went down that route; it's not like I have any other choice. I would have gladly ripped Reach's BSP if it was possible, for the very simple reason that Bungie can model much better than what I could ever do. My hatred for modeling is so intense that I'm almost drowning in it, but it looks as though I have no other choice.

I'm thinking about something alike Installation 04 (I'm already retexturing the beacon, and I'd say it is already rather sexy, even as unfinished as it is), set at night (I DO NOT want to spend something like 3 days rendering lightmaps) and where you will be aided by troops of marines, very much Reach-style: simple and straightforward, because all that stuff in Firefight descent isn't my style at all. I still have to decide whether you will be attacked by flood or by Covies. The flood in a dark night, jumping out of the mountains and popping out of nowhere would be scary as crap, but for the covenants, I've got a couple of ideas tickling my mind...

*cough cough* banshee with searching lights *cough cough*

Edited by rododoonceagain on Jun 13, 2015 at 02:46 AM

You could just make clusters as bsp and instances as scenery.

Cluters seemingly overlap each other. And instances are... too much. Like, way too much. I will get crazy placing all these instances as sceneries.

TBH just send me the max file of the model which is giving you the problems. And I'll see if I can't get at least a little bit of it in game.