Post by }RG{Hawk on Apr 24, 2007 15:06:51 GMT -5
Prefix: How to create a balanced mod
There are a lot of mods that are good, and there are a lot of mods that suck. You need a balanced mod if you want it to be fun to play. Here are a few tips on how to make a balanced mod.
1: Weapons
A lot of mods have super weapons and your mod can too, but don’t make it too super. If you make it blow up the whole map then it won’t be fun to play, plus nobody likes a spawn-killer. Also make it hard to get to and have little ammo so that annoying people (what I like to call m00bs, yes m00b, not n00b. People who are so bad they are typos, unworthy of playing) won’t abuse the weapon.
2: Theme
Make a themed mod! Have fun! Go wild! But if you do don’t make random changes. If you’re making a covenant theme, don’t stick in a pelican!
3: Think about other people!
Don’t do stuff that will *iss people off!
HMT- The Basics
Let’s start with installing some plugins that will allow in-depth editing with HMT. You can get these plugins here: halopc.net/downloads/download.php?fname=./plugins.rar
When you got HMT you should have gotten a folder that has the program in it. In that folder there is a folder that says “plugins”. Copy the contents of the plugin download into that folder. Also you don’t copy the folder that you get, you copy what is in it. Just say “yes to all” when it asks you if you want to overwrite.
Now that you have the plugins lets do some basic modding! First let’s open bloodgulch by hitting the “open map” button. Browse to your halo map folder, “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo\Maps” (this is also where you put modded maps to play them). *Always make backups before modding!!! Once you’ve opened bloodgulch.map let’s make the pistol shoot warthog bullets. In the main section you’ll see a list of sections. Go to the projectile section also listed as [proj] and expand it. Then go to weapons\pistol\bullet. Now at the top you will see a box with numbers and letters in it. Beside the box you will see a button called “swap”. If we click swap the top will become a list of projectiles. Scroll down to the projectile called “vehicles\warthog\bullet” and click on it. Now it will go back to the original screen. Now on the other side of the box you will see a button called “save”. You must ALWAYS press this after changing something or your changes won’t be saved. Once you have pressed save you can close the map and play it, now your pistol will shoot warthog bullets! You can also use this to make a weapon into a different weapon. You do the same process in the weapon folder, which is [weap].
TROUBLESHOOTING:
If you are trying to make a projectile shoot a grenade you have to go to the edit screen (the screen on the right) and change the speed of the projectile to something like 10.8, otherwise the grenade will just drop.
Now let’s make low-gravity vehicles. Let’s go to the physics folder [phys], you will see a list of vehicles. Lets click on “vehicles\warthog\warthog” now we will see a bunch of variables on the edit side. If we go down the list until we see the one saying “gravity scale” lets change that to about half of what it currently is. Now we save and close the map and if we drive a warthog over a hill the warthog will fall at half it’s normal speed. You can also use this to make it so vehicles won’t fall when they go off hills, I don’t know why you would want to do this but you can.
Also to make any vehicle fly go to the vehicle tag [vehi], and in the edit section there is a box that says “type” if you want any vehicle to fly just change this section to “human plane”. I find this works best with ghosts because flying vehicles are a bit hard to fly and go upside down lots and ghosts don’t bail you out when they go upside down in the air. Save your changes then close the map and your vehicle will be able to fly.
If you ever get really, really annoyed by warthog turrets, here’s how to take them off. If we go to the bitmaps section [bitm] then we can see all the skins. Let’s go down until we see one called “levels\a10\bitmaps\cryo glass” now we copy the Meta, which is CA161C and go down until we see one called “vehicles\warthog\bitmaps\warthog chaingun” then we paste the Meta we copied over the existing Meta and save. Now the turret is gone but you can still get in the turret and fire so to fix this we go to the vehicle section and go to “vehicles\warthog\mp_warthog”. Now we go to the bottom and where it says “seats” we press the arrow beside the blank box and go to “2”. If you did this properly then the screen should reset. Now if we scroll down to the very bottom and go to where it says “Marker Name” it says “W-Gunner”. To have it impossible to enter that position we make this “xxxxxx” instead. Now we save and the warthog is completely turretless!
Now let’s start on some more advanced things. I think a good thing to start with is PMIing. It’s a important skill if you want to mod. To PMI you will need HMT. Let’s walk through PMIing a wraith into bloodgulch. Before we start we need to make two folders, one called Bloodgulch and one called VIB. First we open bloodgulch and go to tools-extract-batch extract. A new screen will open and then we select extract metadata and browse to the location of the Bloodgulch folder (say yes to extracting BSP once you’ve started). Then we go to extract-BSP/Model Sections and extract to the VIB folder. Now we open a map with a wraith in it, say b40. Now we go to the vehicle section and go to “vehicles\wraith\wraith”. In the top section beside the “Save Meta” button we see a checkbox saying “Recursive”. In the Bloodgulch folder let’s make another folder named “z wraith”. (the z is just so it’s at the bottom). Now we check the “Recursive” and click “Save Meta”. We save it into “z wraith”. Now we create another folder in the Bloodgulch folder called “offsets”. In HMT we go to tools- generate raw offset list (CSV file). We save this to offsets. Now go to tools-extract-raw model. When a new screen pops up we go to “load CSV file” in the bottom right corner. We load the file we just saved and we get a big mess in the big box. We go through the big box until we find “vehicles/wraith/wraith”. Once we find it we click on it and click extract and extract it to Bloodgulch-z wraith-vehicles-wraith. So now we have the vehicle but the model is weird so we go to tools in HMT and click on “Model de-crapper/BSP builder”. In the big box right click and go to where we just extracted the raw model. We select “wraith.mod2.meta”. Now there are three boxes below the big one. Select browse in the first box and go to your VIB folder. Select the only file that comes up and do the same with the other two. (All the files are in VIB). Once you have done that click “De-crap these models and build a new BSP chunk while we’re at it”. Once that is done go to your VIB folder and copy “bloodgulch.sbsp.meta”. Go to the bloodgulch folder and go to levels-test-bloodgulch. We paste it there and press “yes” when the notice pops up. Now in the Bloodgulch folder we make another folder called “build”. We copy all the folder except for “z wraith” into this folder. Then we copy the contents of “z wraith” into build. Press “yes to all” when the notice pops up. Now copy an original “bloodgulch.map” into the build folder. Now in HMT we go to tools-rebuild map. We browse to the original in “build” and select it. Select “yes” to the auto-fill question. Now in the bottom box we go to our build folder and go to vehicles-wraith and select ONLY wraith.mod2.meta and wraith.vehi. Now click “Build”. When it asks if any new vertices were added click “yes” and go to your VIB folder and go to bloodgulch.vertices.new and do the same with indices. When it asks to use the modified start offset click “yes”. Now it will finish rebuilding. Now make a new folder called “wraithgulch”. In your build folder there will be a file called “bloodgulch.map.rebuild.map”. Now copy that and paste it in the “wraithgulch” folder. Right click on the file and click “properties”. Go to where it says the name and shorten it to “bloodgulch.map”. Now go to HMT and go to the vehicle section and you will see vehicles/wraith/wraith. Go to the seat section and go to seat 0. At the very bottom change the name from wraith-driver to W-driver. Save it and swap a vehicle for it. Save that vehicle then play the map and that vehicle will be replaced with a wraith!
Now we’ll learn how to make destructible vehicles. Before we do anything we will have to have at least PMIed the wraith’s effects into the map. First we go into HMT and into the collision models [coll]. Then we open the vehicle that we want to edit. In the box that says “body destroyed threshold” let’s put 500. Also where it says “max body vitality” let’s put 1500. Also at the very top we see a lot of checkboxes, we have to make sure that all of them are unchecked. If we go to the bottom of the edit screen we see a box marked “materials”. We click the arrow and go to each region in turn, changing the “body damage multiplier” to 1. Now we save and go to HHT. If we go the collision model section we see a bunch of dependencies. Click on the third down and on the bottom screen we click the arrow and browse to “vehicles/wraith/effects/partial damage” and hit the swap button. After we go to the one below it and change it to “vehicles/wraith/effects/death explosion” and hit the swap button. Now if we open the map in Halo and start shooting the vehicle (it only gets damaged by vehicles) then after it is damaged past 500 it starts smoking and after 1500 it explodes! After it explodes you can’t enter it…now you can go crazy making exploding vehicles (I know how much you hate banshees).
That’s all for now…all the basics! Enjoy making some mods!
There are a lot of mods that are good, and there are a lot of mods that suck. You need a balanced mod if you want it to be fun to play. Here are a few tips on how to make a balanced mod.
1: Weapons
A lot of mods have super weapons and your mod can too, but don’t make it too super. If you make it blow up the whole map then it won’t be fun to play, plus nobody likes a spawn-killer. Also make it hard to get to and have little ammo so that annoying people (what I like to call m00bs, yes m00b, not n00b. People who are so bad they are typos, unworthy of playing) won’t abuse the weapon.
2: Theme
Make a themed mod! Have fun! Go wild! But if you do don’t make random changes. If you’re making a covenant theme, don’t stick in a pelican!
3: Think about other people!
Don’t do stuff that will *iss people off!
HMT- The Basics
Let’s start with installing some plugins that will allow in-depth editing with HMT. You can get these plugins here: halopc.net/downloads/download.php?fname=./plugins.rar
When you got HMT you should have gotten a folder that has the program in it. In that folder there is a folder that says “plugins”. Copy the contents of the plugin download into that folder. Also you don’t copy the folder that you get, you copy what is in it. Just say “yes to all” when it asks you if you want to overwrite.
Now that you have the plugins lets do some basic modding! First let’s open bloodgulch by hitting the “open map” button. Browse to your halo map folder, “C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo\Maps” (this is also where you put modded maps to play them). *Always make backups before modding!!! Once you’ve opened bloodgulch.map let’s make the pistol shoot warthog bullets. In the main section you’ll see a list of sections. Go to the projectile section also listed as [proj] and expand it. Then go to weapons\pistol\bullet. Now at the top you will see a box with numbers and letters in it. Beside the box you will see a button called “swap”. If we click swap the top will become a list of projectiles. Scroll down to the projectile called “vehicles\warthog\bullet” and click on it. Now it will go back to the original screen. Now on the other side of the box you will see a button called “save”. You must ALWAYS press this after changing something or your changes won’t be saved. Once you have pressed save you can close the map and play it, now your pistol will shoot warthog bullets! You can also use this to make a weapon into a different weapon. You do the same process in the weapon folder, which is [weap].
TROUBLESHOOTING:
If you are trying to make a projectile shoot a grenade you have to go to the edit screen (the screen on the right) and change the speed of the projectile to something like 10.8, otherwise the grenade will just drop.
Now let’s make low-gravity vehicles. Let’s go to the physics folder [phys], you will see a list of vehicles. Lets click on “vehicles\warthog\warthog” now we will see a bunch of variables on the edit side. If we go down the list until we see the one saying “gravity scale” lets change that to about half of what it currently is. Now we save and close the map and if we drive a warthog over a hill the warthog will fall at half it’s normal speed. You can also use this to make it so vehicles won’t fall when they go off hills, I don’t know why you would want to do this but you can.
Also to make any vehicle fly go to the vehicle tag [vehi], and in the edit section there is a box that says “type” if you want any vehicle to fly just change this section to “human plane”. I find this works best with ghosts because flying vehicles are a bit hard to fly and go upside down lots and ghosts don’t bail you out when they go upside down in the air. Save your changes then close the map and your vehicle will be able to fly.
If you ever get really, really annoyed by warthog turrets, here’s how to take them off. If we go to the bitmaps section [bitm] then we can see all the skins. Let’s go down until we see one called “levels\a10\bitmaps\cryo glass” now we copy the Meta, which is CA161C and go down until we see one called “vehicles\warthog\bitmaps\warthog chaingun” then we paste the Meta we copied over the existing Meta and save. Now the turret is gone but you can still get in the turret and fire so to fix this we go to the vehicle section and go to “vehicles\warthog\mp_warthog”. Now we go to the bottom and where it says “seats” we press the arrow beside the blank box and go to “2”. If you did this properly then the screen should reset. Now if we scroll down to the very bottom and go to where it says “Marker Name” it says “W-Gunner”. To have it impossible to enter that position we make this “xxxxxx” instead. Now we save and the warthog is completely turretless!
Now let’s start on some more advanced things. I think a good thing to start with is PMIing. It’s a important skill if you want to mod. To PMI you will need HMT. Let’s walk through PMIing a wraith into bloodgulch. Before we start we need to make two folders, one called Bloodgulch and one called VIB. First we open bloodgulch and go to tools-extract-batch extract. A new screen will open and then we select extract metadata and browse to the location of the Bloodgulch folder (say yes to extracting BSP once you’ve started). Then we go to extract-BSP/Model Sections and extract to the VIB folder. Now we open a map with a wraith in it, say b40. Now we go to the vehicle section and go to “vehicles\wraith\wraith”. In the top section beside the “Save Meta” button we see a checkbox saying “Recursive”. In the Bloodgulch folder let’s make another folder named “z wraith”. (the z is just so it’s at the bottom). Now we check the “Recursive” and click “Save Meta”. We save it into “z wraith”. Now we create another folder in the Bloodgulch folder called “offsets”. In HMT we go to tools- generate raw offset list (CSV file). We save this to offsets. Now go to tools-extract-raw model. When a new screen pops up we go to “load CSV file” in the bottom right corner. We load the file we just saved and we get a big mess in the big box. We go through the big box until we find “vehicles/wraith/wraith”. Once we find it we click on it and click extract and extract it to Bloodgulch-z wraith-vehicles-wraith. So now we have the vehicle but the model is weird so we go to tools in HMT and click on “Model de-crapper/BSP builder”. In the big box right click and go to where we just extracted the raw model. We select “wraith.mod2.meta”. Now there are three boxes below the big one. Select browse in the first box and go to your VIB folder. Select the only file that comes up and do the same with the other two. (All the files are in VIB). Once you have done that click “De-crap these models and build a new BSP chunk while we’re at it”. Once that is done go to your VIB folder and copy “bloodgulch.sbsp.meta”. Go to the bloodgulch folder and go to levels-test-bloodgulch. We paste it there and press “yes” when the notice pops up. Now in the Bloodgulch folder we make another folder called “build”. We copy all the folder except for “z wraith” into this folder. Then we copy the contents of “z wraith” into build. Press “yes to all” when the notice pops up. Now copy an original “bloodgulch.map” into the build folder. Now in HMT we go to tools-rebuild map. We browse to the original in “build” and select it. Select “yes” to the auto-fill question. Now in the bottom box we go to our build folder and go to vehicles-wraith and select ONLY wraith.mod2.meta and wraith.vehi. Now click “Build”. When it asks if any new vertices were added click “yes” and go to your VIB folder and go to bloodgulch.vertices.new and do the same with indices. When it asks to use the modified start offset click “yes”. Now it will finish rebuilding. Now make a new folder called “wraithgulch”. In your build folder there will be a file called “bloodgulch.map.rebuild.map”. Now copy that and paste it in the “wraithgulch” folder. Right click on the file and click “properties”. Go to where it says the name and shorten it to “bloodgulch.map”. Now go to HMT and go to the vehicle section and you will see vehicles/wraith/wraith. Go to the seat section and go to seat 0. At the very bottom change the name from wraith-driver to W-driver. Save it and swap a vehicle for it. Save that vehicle then play the map and that vehicle will be replaced with a wraith!
Now we’ll learn how to make destructible vehicles. Before we do anything we will have to have at least PMIed the wraith’s effects into the map. First we go into HMT and into the collision models [coll]. Then we open the vehicle that we want to edit. In the box that says “body destroyed threshold” let’s put 500. Also where it says “max body vitality” let’s put 1500. Also at the very top we see a lot of checkboxes, we have to make sure that all of them are unchecked. If we go to the bottom of the edit screen we see a box marked “materials”. We click the arrow and go to each region in turn, changing the “body damage multiplier” to 1. Now we save and go to HHT. If we go the collision model section we see a bunch of dependencies. Click on the third down and on the bottom screen we click the arrow and browse to “vehicles/wraith/effects/partial damage” and hit the swap button. After we go to the one below it and change it to “vehicles/wraith/effects/death explosion” and hit the swap button. Now if we open the map in Halo and start shooting the vehicle (it only gets damaged by vehicles) then after it is damaged past 500 it starts smoking and after 1500 it explodes! After it explodes you can’t enter it…now you can go crazy making exploding vehicles (I know how much you hate banshees).
That’s all for now…all the basics! Enjoy making some mods!
