HaloMods "Classic" Read-only Archive

Ok, I have been looking around here and at halo skins, as well as reading through Forges tutorials again, and can't find the answer to a question I have, although I'm sure someone here can help me out .

SO, lets go over what I know.
1) I know how to find idents
2) I know that they are different from map to map
3) I know (well, not sure on this one) that they point to a file somewhere in the cache
4) Well, I think I know more, but I'm drawing a blank, it's late....

Anyways, I want to know what to do if I need to inject a file, say an effect, from another map. I know how to inject it and fix the reflexives if there are any, but how do I make it so that the ident points to that file?

I'm not sure if this makes any sense to anyone, but I will gladly explain my problem more in-depth if anyone can help, and please tell me if I'm even remotely on the right track . Thanks in advance

hehe i was workin alone friday and taught myself all about this stuff in about 4 hours:


idents work like this...
-there is a tag or a double tag like this mtib or mtibmtib (reverse pairs, u get bitm which is bitmaps)
-then its followed by 8 bytes which i dunno what they do but im sure they mean somethin
-then the next 4 bytes is the ident... u reverse pairs and search in bolls offset list to figure out what it is!

edit: and if u inject, say an effect, you have to do the above for the map it used to be in, find the new map's equivalent (u might have to inject into one and use its ident offset, cant inject bitmap meta so find as close as possible and use that ident offset), and make sure the dependancies r also edited to point at the right stuff

Well, maybee I should have been more specific on what I know. I got all that on the tag class, and the next 4 bytes are the file name offset, then there are always 4 bytes of 0's for some reason, then the ident, swap the endian look in hme outputs blah blah blah.

I don't have trouble with all of that, but that only works if you are importing something for which all of the idents (or dependancies, whatever) are already in the map. My problem is that I want to import more idents (mostly effects) from another level, but I don't know how to make the new idents. I know that you have to do something with the index to tell the game what identifier is what, but I'm not sure exactly what to do. Sorry if his doesn't make any sense, I'll try to clarify it more if it doesn't.

Basically, I could inject the new files that I want to use over existing ones and use their idents, but then everything that used that file would be changed and messed up . I want to inject new files, and make their own idents, if that is possible, and tell the game to use those. I'm not sure if thats the way you do it, but I think if one of them ppl like Dmauro or Iron Forge read this, they will get what I mean. You might even be able to help me raz0r, you prolly misunderstood my first post. I have a thread on this at HS too, go check that out if you have a chance. It's in the xbox modding forum, same thread name. Thanks for the input tho

EDIT: Ok, now that I read your edit, after I posted , lol, it seems that you don't know how to inject new idents and use those? . I see what you are saying though, for example inject one effect over another, like I said in the last part of my post, but I'm pretty sure you can inject new ones over different types of meta, but maybe not. I guess I could find some ident/depenancy files to over write if I really need to, but I would rather not.