Hello, HaloMaps community.

I would like to inform you all that I am starting some work on the halo scene. call me Tech for short if you wish. I'm learning a lot thru a few other members. I met one in person and we hang out a lot already, and hes got one friend in the community as well, but my buddy and his friend decided to quit. I wanted to find out why partially cause of his devotion and skill. and i also didnt want him to quit cause he taught me everything.

I wanted to learn more about the halo engine before my buddy quit modeling recently. he asked me to not talk or ask about the details regarding his leaving, hes definitely going thru a rough time, however some of the work he made is really good in my thinking. I asked him to share with me some of the things he was last working on. I don't know any of you but I wanted to say that he has talent. i'm terribly dissapointed in his choice to quit. I want to take up what he left off with. after some convincing and time he gave me some stuff.

he taught me the basics of geometry and collision. welding verts, checking for errors, importing whirls. UV map, unwrap, and all the other things in 3ds max. I learned a lot. and while my friends life is not easy he has shown me that there's a lot to the game. more than many people realize. halo mapping for me and him until recently became a good conversation piece as I have been playing halo 4 for a year and reach sense I was 15. and he met me a few months ago. he surprised me Thursday when he showed me his last map and said, that "its not fun anymore for me" and gave it to me to work on as well as his newest map, ONI sword base.

when we last talked on Thursday he decided to give me all of his content in maps and yelo files.. as well as his entire website folder "if you can figure out how to open these, and rip em apart you can continue my work for me. I am moving on."

well in his dismay and due to time constraints on Thursday before we left to take care of some errands, he included the data folder, the maps, and a folder called tags, and sapien and one other thing and after we got back he gave me an old xbox too. im hoping to do something to help him change his mind..... but i need to know more about some things.

I need to know more about the engine before I can successfully build the maps.

first of all, whats the difference between halo PC and CE? and what is the key to making it work?

secondly, what are tags? and what comprises a successful build/map?

third, how do I convert a 3-D model into a halo map?

fourth, for his comfort and ease of mind, im not going to release any of his maps unless hes okay with it, and I want to continue on the thought that he might return. but I want to show you all the work hes done, as well as add to it. how can i do so?

how can I get a map from halo format to 3-D format to edit?

any help would be appreciated. as well as a thank you for keeping this game alive.

-Tech

inb4 Sparky

Hi Tech !


Halo custom edition is a version open to any kind of modification and brings its own editing kit (HEK), you can do wathever you want with the halo ce's engine. In halo pc i'm not so sure if moding it is llegal(correct me if i'm wrong)

patience and common sense

your map will compile succesfully if:
if you don't exceed the tag limit size
if there aren't any missing references like bitmaps, sounds, effects, etc
(these are the principal ones)

you will need, plugins for 3d max, maya or blender. to export your 3d models and levels. you can guide yourself with these tutorials

you can show pictures, videos or wathever of your stuff here:
http://forum.halomaps.org/index.cfm%3Fpage=topic&topicID=30343

this is exactly the tool for that:
http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=2029
Edited by Kinnet on Jul 12, 2015 at 01:45 AM

Tutorials. Watch and read a lot of tutorials. They aid understanding tremendously.

If I live to be 100 I will NEVER understand the motivation for posts like this: "inb4" Whether intended or not they make the poster look like a small child waving his hands at the adults searching for attention.

It's most definitely intended as that's part of the joke. The nature of the post in particular, asking about tags, what they are, what they do etc reminded me quite vividly of Sparky and his project Zeus.

As much as I'd love Zeus to see the light of day I just don't think it'll happen. Then again, I'm not a fortune teller.

WOW thanks! That is a lot of useful information!
this is a lot better than i expected!

Here is one of the Yelo files he gave me. he had just finished this amount pretty much right at the end of Friday. his leaving the community Wasnt easy cause i thought that to port sword base to ce was a difficult task. i dont think its been done before.

He was working on a modified oni sword base, right before the glassing was done on the base.

http://i.imgur.com/PdvhvNd.png?1
http://i.imgur.com/cXhu79g.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/dM1StvZ.jpg?1
http://i.imgur.com/2JG6GwR.jpg?1


OOPS i left one out.
http://i.imgur.com/Zgt2nZE.jpg
Edited by TechnicalTeardown on Jul 12, 2015 at 02:48 PM

Judging from the work, that appears to be thellt. He had a huge breakdown after his mod got rejected from CE3 for quality.

For sure! thank you for this BTW. I haven't tried all of these yet! I got halo updated (i think) and I didn't know there were console commands! Ive got the Opensauce, Re-shade fx, and a hilarious strings.dll hack, due to the custom installer Thellt made for me and a few friends, as well as TEX-MOD and the GUI extractor that it was bundled with. for some reason HAC2 thingy doesn't work though it crashes on startup. so I had to delete it. Q_Q do they have a fix for that?


Regarding the CE3 thing, I don't even think I want to know what happened in all details.. He seemed pretty upset when I asked him about that just now. lol. I an hoping to ask him later once hes calmed down about it. hes usually not so irritable. hes a good guy from my experiences with him... maybe give it a few days or so. XD all I know is that he has helped me out in my modeling, and its sad cause he says hes done with making content for the community. but hes happy to teach me at least. though I am not at all at par with any of you guys yet. was it the Sword Base mod? cause I thought that mod was great coming from the perspective of having played Reach a lot. and I loved Sword Base. I liked Thellt's HUD idea for the map. I kindof want to see his HUD completed. but i don't think id get that chance on my own... :\
Edited by TechnicalTeardown on Jul 12, 2015 at 04:16 PM

He simply got rejected from CE3. It happens. CE3 isn't a show where everyone gets in, you need to be approved. I can't help it if he took one rejection so seriously. We always encourage people to fix up their work and resubmit.
Edited by MatthewDratt on Jul 12, 2015 at 05:21 PM

@thellt, during the ce3 firefight:
*Tough Luck on*
*Iron on*
*Tilt on*
*later*
*No Lives Left!*
*Game Over!*

(Just Kidding but in all seriousness)


================================================
\\the game can always be restarted I guess....//
// insert coin and continue! dont quit! \\
================================================



:)

/@Thellt

Couple more questions.....

Sorry if this is too much typing. I am working on (sorta) logging everything down too, for learning perposes. I am slightly OCD about how I do things online sometimes. :)

Do you think its possible for me to learn in a group environment?
How do you all communicate aside from the forums?

to start out I want to improve the map that I showed you all to learn with as well as to possibly help Thellt to not give up on his Reach Campaign... hes got a good idea..

couple issues right off the bat unfortunately:

I finally figured out how to open HEK+ I have to run it in Admin, and Compatibility Mode Aero disabled. but I am confused currently. how do I successfully get the stuff from a map? I tried to extract the scenario but I keep getting errors with bitmaps, and when I try to open it in sapien.... It closes immediately..

In Guerrilla I get "couldn't read x bytes from <shader name here.shader_model>: this tag is corrupted." for a lot of Shader_Models'

As well as the level is not loading in Sapien. It crashes on load.
I read on the forums about the debug and I got the same error message as some people are saying.. Something about "time elapsed parsec" or something. But I need to set affinity? As you might expect, I am totally new at this engine other than playing it.

how do I use the Opensauce?

Recently I tried making a box map. I do 3d modeling in school but it seems like.... It seems as though tool is just that - a tool. <-(LOL) and I must not be using it correctly XD

I need to ask him more questions too, it seems, cause I dont want to bug you all either. :P

His typing is significantly better than Thelts.

Have fun

If you are interested in joining a group environment, there are plenty of mapping teams to join, given that you actually have a decent amount of skill. polyonymous

Part 1|-------------------

Tool isn't a GUI-based compiler. You must run it through command line. If you already know about this, skip down to Part 2.

First, press Win+R and type

cmd

Then hit Enter.

It should bring you to a command line window like this:



After that, type in the following: (You may need to change this if your install directory isn't default)

cd "c:\program files (x86)\microsoft games\halo custom edition"

Hit enter. If done correctly, your command prompt should now display this: (My install path is custom)



Now you will be able to use Tool. To see a list of valid commands, their syntax and what they do simply type

tool

and hit Enter.

Part 2|-------------------------------

In your case the appropriate command is

tool structure <path to .scenario_structure_bsp> <name of scenario>

Ex. - tool structure warmaster\maps\tutorial tutorial

It's important to note here that much like other compiling operations with tool, structure assumes the path of the data folder. This is where your exported .jms will go.

However, once the bsp is compiled and has been appropriately edited in Sapien, the command

tool build-cache-file <scenario name> 

Ex. - tool build-cache-file warmaster\maps\tutorial\tutorial

will assume the directory of tags. Basically, all your raw, uncompiled assets are in data, and everything that is going into the map is in tags. It's important to remember this when you are compiling maps as it may be a bit confusing at first.

Hope I was of some help.

Edited by War Master V on Jul 13, 2015 at 12:35 AM

He's getting the attention of the wrong person then. Sparky will probably try to kidnap and murder him.

/derail attempt

Hey war master v maybe stop the crap posting and log onto Skype more often.

TOO LONG DID NOT READ BUT STILL GOT THE GENERAL GIST OF THINGS.

Meh for tuts. > https://www.youtube.com/user/HaloVideoTutorials/videos

So the plan I guess is to get him to add you, make out that you really like him and want to help him out with his project, then slip the old "hey show me your files maybe we can get some where with this", & then run off with the data and pour everything into a danger canyon mod and crucially claim it as your own.

Makes sense.



Edited by SS Flanker on Jul 13, 2015 at 08:04 AM
Edited by SS Flanker on Jul 13, 2015 at 08:07 AM

Correct unless you are already. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfDZ_OoMQLI

Skype is for nubs

i lold