Halo 3 [Beta] Mod Discussion

shade45 · Post by **shade45** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 8:03 pm

Cool Thanks

Samusaaron3 · Post by **Samusaaron3** » Wed Jun 06, 2007 9:18 pm

Tural wrote:They still use DDS formats.

Good to know.

I can't wait to do some skinning work in Halo 3. The jump in shader quality from Halo to Halo 2 made it much easier to make nice looking skins. I can only imagine how things will turn out in Halo 3.

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:23 am

we have added a hex editor to the app to help tag mapping, I think SOL did a great job

CDK908 · Post by **CDK908** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:53 am

i thought there were only 3 maps for halo 3 beta? valhalla, high ground, and snowbound. what's with deadlock?

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:58 am

iGeo wrote:Nice, take it you got it working for Vista now.

well kinda.. when I upgraded to vista it wouldent work because of the sanddock

well I think the GUI sucked without Sanddock so I figured out a way to get it ot work with Sanddock

so I changed my display settings I will release a tut with the app when it comes time

CDK908 wrote:i thought there were only 3 maps for halo 3 beta? valhalla, high ground, and snowbound. what's with deadlock?

OMG you found out that I work for bungie my cover is blown.

j/k

deadlock.map = High Ground
riverworld.map = Valhalla
snowbound.map = Snowbound

StalkingGrunt911 · Post by **StalkingGrunt911** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 10:14 am

Oh, so that's what SoL was working on. Damn he did a nice job.

Soldier of Lite · Post by **Soldier of Lite** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:34 am

Thanks. Yeah, I've been working on that for the last week or so. I think it came out pretty sweet if I do say so myself.

-Legendary- · Post by **-Legendary-** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:35 am

Sweet =)

TheOperator · Post by **TheOperator** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:46 pm

Here actualy im just gona give you the lowdown of what I know so far...

Ok so some models have multiple geometry regions, some don't.

A single region is an array of 24byte structures...
the layout for one of these structures is as follows

Code: Select all

- short, short, short (X,Y,Z Position)
- 2 Zero bytes (does nothing)
- short, short (U,V I am pretty sure those are the tex coords)
- I'm not sure what the last 12 bytes are yet, but I do know that it is two vectors each using 6 bytes (1 short/component) I think these may be bone weights.

wondering how three shorts could represent a vertex position?
Well the answer is simple, sorta...

read in the three shorts and byte swap them (duh!)
for each short do the following...

Code: Select all

short component;
float newComp;
if( component > 0 )
{
    newComp = component/32767.0 - 1.0
}
else
{
    newComp = component/32768.0 + 1.0
}

'newComp' is now your usable float!

now if you try to use this data for something like an import into your modeling app, you will see that the geometry is stretched. To fix this you multiply your positions by that regions bounding-box.

Also... You know all that alphabet text at the end of the models raw data? At first I thought it was useless garbage. But it turns out that it is the vertex indexes for a triangle-strip! Now I'm not going to explain how a triangle strip is different from just a batch of triangles, so if you don't know just google it.

And... I think thats all for now..

have fun!

Tural · Post by **Tural** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:51 pm

I don't know who you are, but I like you.

-Legendary- · Post by **-Legendary-** » Thu Jun 07, 2007 11:53 pm

Tural wrote:I don't know who you are, but I like you.

Me too.

G.I.R. · Post by **G.I.R.** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:22 am

TheOperator wrote:YAY!!!
I'm the coolest n00b on the block

Indeed. =)

TheOperator · Post by **TheOperator** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 12:25 am

Well I just found that there are multiple vertex formats...

Currently there is a the 24byte format which I showed you above
but there is also a 32byte format that is the same as the 24 but has an additional 8 bytes, so that means more stuff!

shade45 · Post by **shade45** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 7:45 am

-Legendary- wrote:
Tural wrote:I don't know who you are, but I like you.
Me too.

I think HaloMods has a new best friend

TheOperator · Post by **TheOperator** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:59 pm

YAY!!!
Removed.
There is still some work to do...

Renders of the MC variants to come!

Anthony · Post by **Anthony** » Fri Jun 08, 2007 4:48 pm

Prey wrote:1. The 'zone' tag first has a reflexive at offset 38, this points to a list of chunks each 96 bytes in length.

I didn't think I would have to correct you again but I guess I was wrong...

its not at offset 38 its at offset 0x24 aka offset 36...

darvolt · Post by **darvolt** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:15 am

ok.

I tried to extract the vertex of the assault rifle.
My obj file looks like this now:

But in milkshape it looks like a quadrat:

I worked with 32 steps:

Code: Select all

 
for(int i=0;i<5937;i++)
{
            BR.BaseStream.Position = offset + i * 32;
}

I did the same with the MC_FP... It shows a quader... again....
But two bottom vertex are missing.

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:24 am

Like stated earlier, you need to factor in the bounding box

darvolt · Post by **darvolt** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 12:26 am

Where is it stored?
And how the hell can the BB affect my quadrat

sry. i'm a noob

EDIT: I read the short values with BIG Endian. is it correct?

Prey · Post by **Prey** » Sat Jun 09, 2007 2:30 am

Anthony wrote:actually its a Int you are just reading the index which in reality it is a ID... so I guess that means your offset should be 224

you get the ID by getting the Salt which is believe is offset 0x16 inside the Raw Data chunk and performing this simple equation
Code: Select all
                
                int ident = salt;
                ident <<= 16;
                ident |= x;
where x is the index of that chunk

So you take the ID from the meta, and then scroll through all raw chunks until you find the correct chunk? Would it not be easier to just take the index like i did..?

Anthony wrote:Ever map I seem to look at it looks as if its a Int so that means your new offset should be 36

Same. I just read it as a short as it makes no difference anyway.

Anthony wrote:I took the time to write a function for H3Core (An app thats not yet released) that would output all the raw data offsets and sizes that the map references, combine them, and sort to map out the Shared.map

well here it is

http://halo-forge.net/anthony/rdm2.txt

If there should be any holes in it, it is because that data isn't referenced by any of the maps that Bungie has put out for us in this beta

Nice, heres the other maps if anyone wants:
http://www.homebrewgames.co.uk/xbox/halo3/deadlock.txt
http://www.homebrewgames.co.uk/xbox/hal ... rworld.txt
http://www.homebrewgames.co.uk/xbox/halo3/snowbound.txt

Anthony wrote:we have added a hex editor to the app to help tag mapping, I think SOL did a great job

http://eridanusleague.org/halo-forge/anthony/wow.jpg

I prefer using professionally made hex editors tbh, only because of the multitude of advanced features really. But good job anyways sol; like the colours

Anthony wrote:I didn't think I would have to correct you again but I guess I was wrong...

its not at offset 38 its at offset 0x24 aka offset 36...

Yes i was reading the chunk count as a short back then for some stupid reason

xbox7887 wrote:Like stated earlier, you need to factor in the bounding box

Which can be found at 116 in the modes meta as a reflexive, i think anyhow.

--
Obviously good work with the renders, im still mapping out the mode meta Operator; ill talk to you later when your back.