Who wants a job?

[Rob Oplawar]

Since the recruitment forum is gone, I'll post here:

I've posted a Help Wanted on Moddb for animators, and I'll pearoast that here (http://mods.moddb.com/8921/bridge-ce/help-wanted/) (what a lovely word that is).

I also need someone to make a custom HUD for me, as I have absolutely no experience in that regard. I figured here would be a better place to ask than Moddb as this is something rather specific to Halo CE and there aren't too many hce modders there.

[Gamerkd16]

Isn't this advertising? Which is against the rules...

[teh lag]

Isn't this advertising? Which is against the rules...

Good call there. CLEARLY, Rob joined this forum for the sole purpose of advertising, and contributes nothing to the community at all.







Oh wait.

Also, read the rules closer.

DO NOT REGISTER TO ADVERTISE! We hate spambots. So unless you want to get banned instantly, stow the ads until you become a known quantity in the community.

This isn't even advertising, he just wants help on his project.


Anyhow rob, an animating position intrigues me, but I'm not very confident in my abilites to actually delever a good product D:
The hud is equally interesting, but again I'm not sure how well I'd be able to do it compared to someone else.

[Tweek]

don't you think you're taking it a bit too high?

you've got a great map. don't see why you want to go that much further, and burden yourself with all the extra work and the horrors of a team like that.

[Rob Oplawar]

What, by having custom animations? Sure, it would be a lot easier for everyone if I didn't worry about effectively delivering the storyline and hell I could release the map months sooner if that were the case, but where's the fun in easy?

I understand and appreciate your concern Tweek, but I feel very strongly about the storyline of this map and I want to deliver it as epically (wow, that's really a word?) as is possible, and that means I'm going to have to face the horror of an animation and cinematics team as well as recruit and record 11 voice actors.

You've gotta know where to draw the line, but so far I haven't reached it, and I'm going to keep going until I do, to make sure this map is everything it can be.

Oh god I have a lot of work to do. *sobs*
Alrighty then, back to work.

Fun fact: I'm back up to an average of 3 hours a day on my map, in addition to my 17 credit hours of classes, and my part time job. Somebody help me? Do want animators.

[Pooky]

Since the recruitment forum is gone, I'll post here:

I've posted a Help Wanted on Moddb for animators, and I'll pearoast that here (http://mods.moddb.com/8921/bridge-ce/help-wanted/) (what a lovely word that is).

I also need someone to make a custom HUD for me, as I have absolutely no experience in that regard. I figured here would be a better place to ask than Moddb as this is something rather specific to Halo CE and there aren't too many hce modders there.

Custom content is nice, but I can't see where any of it's really necessary. Look at Half Life Episode 1 and 2. I think everyone would be very happy if you released a phenomenal single player map. I think they would be even happier if it got released sooner. Plus with stock content you don't have to worry about consistency or quality, it's all already there. So if it's going to make the map take much longer to release, and the quality of the end product is uncertain, just don't bother.

[Rob Oplawar]

Well exactly, that's why I'm doing as little custom weapons and scenery and bipeds and all that jazz as possible, and just trying to make a normal Halo map with new areas and a storyline. But I can't have the storyline without animations and voice actors.

[Pooky]

Well when you said "animations" the first thing that came to mind was FP weapon animations. I still don't get the need for a custom HUD though D:

[Rob Oplawar]

You play as an ODST in the game- that means you don't have all the fancy gizmos of Mark V armor. I'm still trying to decide what to do with the motion tracker, cause I like the motion tracker, but I've decided to keep the shield but just make it invisible. That way you have regenerating "health" before you start losing your real health. I need a custom hud to replace the shield bar with an effect that makes the edges of your screen more red the lower your shields are.

[Pooky]

So like CoD? That sounds pretty cool, I never thought of doing shields that way.

[n00b1n8R]

why not give it no shields and just regenerating health?
basically I mean give it 1 health so you'd die if somebody looked at you funny then give the shields ontop of that as your "real health".

that'd work better IMO.
also redness ftw!

and I think a radar should be do-able even for an ODST right?

[Tweek]

motion detector :eng101:

[Pooky]

why not give it no shields and just regenerating health?
basically I mean give it 1 health so you'd die if somebody looked at you funny then give the shields ontop of that as your "real health".


I like that idea... only thing about that is the plasma pistol would become an utter beast of a weapon >_>

[n00b1n8R]

then people may take grunts more seriously :P

you'd have to tone down the plasma guns to do the same damage to shields as health, but that just requires some playing around in gurilla (I think..)

[Rob Oplawar]

Here's where it gets tricky. If I don't touch the shields and health and just change the way they're displayed, I don't need to change any of the weapon damage modifiers or any of that stuff, because imo it's tweaked perfectly right in Halo 1. If I do change the shields and health then on top of everything else I'll have to do a shitload of playtesting and tweaking to get the damage modifiers right again, and idk if I want to give myself that much extra work.

[Pooky]

Here's where it gets tricky. If I don't touch the shields and health and just change the way they're displayed, I don't need to change any of the weapon damage modifiers or any of that stuff, because imo it's tweaked perfectly right in Halo 1. If I do change the shields and health then on top of everything else I'll have to do a shitload of playtesting and tweaking to get the damage modifiers right again, and idk if I want to give myself that much extra work.

Well, you could pull some cheesy shit to make it work with the storyline... like, your armour is made of an organic material that regenerates after being damaged, but plasma pistol charge shot stuns the regenerating cells and keeps that from happening for a while.

Actually, you could even replace the shield recharging and beeping sounds with some cool organic noises to make it more atmospheric.

[Huero]

Do you mind changing the actual health HUD too?
It would look odd by itself <<;

[Rob Oplawar]

tbqh I was just gonna replace the hud and change the shield sounds to equivalent "ouch" sounds, and then leave it at that without complicating things with a "why".

edit: and yeah, I want to change the health and ammo meters to make them more minimalistic, if possible.

[Pooky]

tbqh I was just gonna replace the hud and change the shield sounds to equivalent "ouch" sounds, and then leave it at that without complicating things with a "why".

edit: and yeah, I want to change the health and ammo meters to make them more minimalistic, if possible.

oh you're no fun D:

[n00b1n8R]

make then display numbers only and put all the info on 1 side of the HUD.

[Dr Nick]

You play as an ODST in the game- that means you don't have all the fancy gizmos of Mark V armor. I'm still trying to decide what to do with the motion tracker, cause I like the motion tracker, but I've decided to keep the shield but just make it invisible. That way you have regenerating "health" before you start losing your real health. I need a custom hud to replace the shield bar with an effect that makes the edges of your screen more red the lower your shields are.
Just a suggestion for the Motion Tracker, in Halo, some units have the little eye monitor thingy, why not put it up in the top-left corner of the screen?

Also sorry if my post was totally ignorant, I didn't read the whole thread...

[Sever]

Remember, this is an ODST, who has a helmet with a built-in HUD. I honestly see no need to change anything on it (other than the shield level bar) due to the fact that an ODST is of the same affiliation as a SPARTAN. Their HUD systems could have easily been produced by the same company. I recommend that you just keep it simple and only make slight modifications where necessary, Rob.

Also, if one were to do the same with a Marine, one would need to cover the FoV with a transparent (about 25&#37;) green overlay, and from there, just make the same slight modifications as the ODST HUD, and one would be set.

[Dr Nick]

Is it possible to change the colour of the HUD?

E: nvm, should've google'd it first..

[Zeph]

People are going to be playing this for fun. Too many modders try to get things to fit with continuity before they get it done. Get everything done and fun, then worry about how the HUD should look like. My advice is to just leave it alone. Use this project to show that you can take an existing set of rules, make new content to expand their use, and put it all together in a contiguous form. In reality, a motion tracker wouldn't work the same way as it does in Halo. It's a game and the motion tracker, health meter, etc. are just tools to try and bridge the gap between real life and virtual life.

[Dole]

1. Well, you could pull some cheesy shit to make it work with the storyline... like, your armour is made of an organic material that regenerates after being damaged, but plasma pistol charge shot stuns the regenerating cells and keeps that from happening for a while.

2. Actually, you could even replace the shield recharging and beeping sounds with some cool organic noises to make it more atmospheric.
1. DO NOT WANT.

2. Something like that would be cool. How about when health goes in the red and you hear your heart beating, have the game activate Environmental Audio (the EAX or whatever) to make the adrenaline rush feel more believable?

[fatso784]

Now THAT'S an idea! I often find myself feeling more threatened when a game uses the heart beating sound to reflect low health.

[ima_from_America]

Or make bullet time when the "regenerating" health goes down, that'd be so cool.

[Pooky]

I often find myself feeling more threatened when a game uses the heart beating sound to reflect low health.

Halo has a heart beating sound when you have low health <_<

[Rob Oplawar]

Well you guys, I saw some nice ideas here, so I decided to try them out. I made a continuous script that checks your shields and health and acts accordingly- in this case, it only makes your screen blur but I could conceivably add more effects in the future.

The script runs once every second, and it's really hard for me to tell on my machine but it's possible that one frame every second slows down a bit as a result of the script.

So, since I'm such a nice guy, here's the script I wrote:



(script continuous healthblur
(begin

;first, calculate the amount the screen should be blurred- there are some
;things to note:
;first, if your shields are greater than or equal to 0.7 vitality, there
;will be no blur
;second, after your shield vitality drops below 0.7, the blur depends on
;both shield AND health vitality.
;third, just as a note, the maximum blur amount is with 0 shields and 0
;health (basically, when you're dead) and the amount is 15 * 2 * 0.7 * 1.5
;which is 31.5
(set health_blur
(* 15.0
(* 2.0 (max 0.0 (- 0.7 (unit_get_shield playerunit) ) ) )
(- 1.5 (unit_get_health playerunit ) )
)
)

;if the amount of blur has changed, apply this change
(if (!= prev_health_blur health_blur)

(begin
;the first argument is the number of passes, the second is the
;blur type, the third is the starting blur, the fourth is the
;ending blur, and the fifth is the number of seconds of transition
(cinematic_screen_effect_set_convolution 1 2
prev_health_blur health_blur 1)
(set prev_health_blur health_blur)
)

)

;wait one second, then repeat
(sleep 30)
)
)

playerunit is a global initialized inside the startup main by:
(set playerunit (unit (list_get (players) 0)))

edit: oh, and to initialize the cinematic screen blur effect, you have to include this line at the point when you want the effect to become active:
(cinematic_screen_effect_start 1)
and use false instead of true once you want to disable it.

And I commented it just for you =)
Scripts are horrendously inefficient, and I'd love to optimize this to allow me to have more enemies/polygons/explosions/etc, so if you have any tips for optimizing this, chime in.

edit: Ok, here's a youtube video of the effect.
Problem is, youtube compressed the fuck heck (gotta watch my language) out of it, so it's kinda hard to tell when it's blurred from when it's not blurred.
Oh, and the textures are not final, there's a placeholder door in there that broke so its collision model opens but the render model doesn't, the ai is blind because of a bit of a scripting glitch (unrelated), and there's a ton of custom scenery that still needs to be created and placed.
grwKihjjj_c

[n00b1n8R]

heart beating, have the game activate Environmental Audio (the EAX or whatever) to make the adrenaline rush feel more believable?

the heart beating is allready in halo (though if it were louder that'd be cool)


Or make bullet time when the "regenerating" health goes down, that'd be so cool.

certainly not to the rate of "bullet time", but a barely noticeable decrease (and enough to make a difference) would be cool, especially with the regenerating health.


Armour? Shields? You guys are fucking pussies. Play through the Silent Cartographer as a Marine with no HUD, no crosshair, thirdperson on, and improved Covenant AI.

God, kids these days...

is that a PC mod or a CE map? either way do you have a link?

[Tweek]

blah blah + video

actually, i find the blur on the video quite visible. i can see why some people could find it hard to see, but it was pretty obvious to me. looks pretty cool.

[MNC]

That looks great.

[Pooky]

grwKihjjj_c

If you put that effect together with some time slowdown and increasingly loud heart beating as your health gets lower, it would be THE shit.


Of course it would have to only apply when your shield is down or it would just get annoying.


is that a PC mod or a CE map? either way do you have a link?

It's a PC mod he made, link is on halomods somewhere.

[Rob Oplawar]

OK, in lieu of creating yet another thread, I'm just gonna post my questions here, and hopefully someone will respond.


First off, I was playin around with some bipeds, trying to give them shields, and the next time I opened my map in Sapien it printed this error on the screen:
### ERROR incompatible bitmap type in shader
it prints that 7 times, then says too many errors, printing to debug.txt.
... it does this about once every ten seconds.
It doesn't seem to affect my map in any way at all (I can't find any messed up bitmaps anywhere) but it's FUCKING ANNOYING. I can't go on like this... it's very distracting while I'm trying to place objects in Sapien.
In debug.txt right before the error, it says
10.28.07 21:41:24 local player 0, weapon (0x0), deleted unexpectedly
, then is just generates that above error message hundreds of times per second, and it keeps doing that until I quit Sapien, and it's spamming the hell out of my debug.txt.
Any suggestions, short of resetting my tag set or restarting on the scenario?
edit: oh btw, I immediately reverted back to the way I had it before the error, but it's still there. >.<
e: nvm, nvm, I just fail at reverting. It was just some shitty placeholder battle rifle (read: piece of shit) I got from who knows where back when I was a nub. It is gone now.

On that note, I need a battle rifle...


On to my next question. Now, I'm getting fairly annoyed here. I have asked this question at least a dozen times, the majority of the time on this forum, and I always get the same almost but not quite helpful answer, and then decide it's not important and I'll figure it out later. But now I really need to know, now that I'm getting into the beta versions of each BSP.
How
the fuck
do you specify which sky to use for a particular BSP? Please, since I've asked 12 times I'm obviously retarded, so I need a very comprehensive step by step here.
When I first tried I added new sky references to the scenario file in Guerilla, and made the sky references in the same order as their respective bsps, so that 0.scenario_sky_reference_block corresponded to the first bsp I added, and 1.scenario_sky_reference_block corresponded to the second bsp, etc. This did not work- all my bsps still used 0.scenario_sky_reference_block.
So I asked. Repeatedly. Over and over again "please tell me specifically how." Every time I asked the only thing anybody ever told me was "just add another sky reference in the skies area in the scenario tag in guerilla." I fucking know that! Then what do I do?!

Ahem, sorry. I'm just getting so tired of this problem. I know the answer is staring me in the face, and has been since MY VERY FIRST POST ON THIS FORUM, but I still can't figure it out for some reason, so somebody please help me.

e: Oh also, I've searched google, and I get the same exact answer. I tried to search this forum, but wondiferous vbulletin won't let me search for anything with fewer than four letters. WTF is wrong with searching for sky?! I mean, google will let you search for A!

[Boba]

i give good blow jobs i can help

[Choking Victim]

^ no joke ;).

anywho, Rob, about your sky problem. While researching scripts, i stumbled across a way to literally merge scenarios together, i believe thats what bungie did for levels with two bsps. Heres how its done, make two seperate scenarios, one with one bsp/sky, and another with the other bsp/sky. Then you open one of the scenarios and go to the child scenarios section, click add and browse for your other scenario with the second bsp/sky. Now compile that scenario that you just added a child to into a cache file, and the scenarios will become merged (if you try extracting the scenario with hek+, then you'll find that everything in the two scenarios was merged to one). I'm not entirely sure, but i believe that this is how its done.

[Rob Oplawar]

I think you're on to something there. However, I tried it that way and it didn't work- nothing from the child scenario came into the parent.

I also tried creating a blank scenario, that both of the other scenarios were children of, but that new one won't even load in Sapien (prolly because it has no bsp).

If I can get that to work though it would be tremendously helpful because I could then have one person place encounters and scenery on one bsp while somebody else does that for another, and then merge them together.

Did you ever get this to work? Oh wait, you said it merges in the cache file- but perhaps in the scenario file it's still not "merged"? Brb, I'm gonna go ingame and see if anything happened.

edit: nope. hmmmmmm *scratches beard* btw, did you know I have a beard now? Yeah, I think I'm gonna shave it off though. It itches.

[Choking Victim]

hmm, if that didn't work, then i dunno. That was only a guess anyway, but it is something i've been meaning to share with the community. It's got to be useful for something. Anyway, looking at the bsp tags of bungies maps i didn't see any values to change for which sky to referance, its possible that its a shader name in max that needs to be changed, i remember lightning saying how to do it some time ago. i think he said make one named +sky and one named +sky0 or something like that

[Rob Oplawar]

I was afraid Contact Harvest was going to totally screw up my storyline, but this (http://www.bungie.net/News/content.aspx?type=topnews&cid=12911) actually does my map a world of good. That pretty much settles all of my concerns over the ODST style armor. BRB, I'm gonna go order the book from Amazon. Here's to hopin' the rest of the book does as much good for my map as the prologue!

On another note, methinks it would be neat if my map featured that MAC gun. I wonder if anyone would like the job?

[Dole]

Considering we play as an ODST, will we have a tertiary weapon (combat knives, considering they're a part of the armor)?


the heart beating is allready in halo (though if it were louder that'd be cool)
I'm aware of that goofy nugget, thus why I said "when you hear your heart beating activate the EAX automatically".
People really need to learn to read thoroughly...


If you put that effect together with some time slowdown and increasingly loud heart beating as your health gets lower, it would be THE shit.
^^^^^^^^^^^

And EAX audio (or whatever it's called). Please?

I've got another idea for audio -- when you are on the sure verge of death (one bar in vitality), have the audio instantaneously go through a sharp, curt jump in pitch of all audio that will peak, ring out for a few seconds, and slowly subside and level out to normal after a while. (to mimic the certain cases in which your ears ring when you're violently and unexpectedly jostled)

Or an even better idea would be to use that for immediate-proximity grenade explosions, subsequently followed by the EAX reverberations, or something like that.

[ima_from_America]

If there is a knife, it better kill a hunter with 1 hit to the back.

[ima_from_America]

Hey, why stop at jackhammers? An ODST with a chainsaw would be even better!

[MNC]

Is there a way for halo to be fooled in thinking you have EAX Audio? Isn't it hardcoded?

[Rob Oplawar]

The time slow down is easy, but complicated non-linear time-dependent relationships between health and audio effects would be a lot trickier. I can get away with this script because it is a strictly linear sort of thing. I'll look into it though. As for teritary weapons, I'm not sure if I want to mess with Halo's mechanics that much.

[Rob Oplawar]

DOUBLEPOST

why does a stupid argument over a flamehog (read: dumb idea) get 20 pages while a real discussion about real gameplay mechanics that may or may not make it into my real mod only gets 5?

Oh, I see how it is. I'm just the annoying cousin who you guys have to put up with and tell me encouraging things while you really talk about how much I suck me behind my back. You hate my map. ='(
/wrists
Fine, I'll just stop working on it right now, since nobody cares.


... back on topic, i'm not sure I like the time slow down thing, because all the animation frame rates slow down and it either looks really crappy or the slow down is barely noticeable at all while the framerate drop still looks crappy.

Any suggestions for how to do the audio effects? Can it be done, even? I can think of how to set up a cool sounding sound environment for it, to make everything sound distant and muffled, but idk if it could be applied dynamically.

[n00b1n8R]

fanboys don't care about good gameplay :p
<3 you :^D

the time slowdown would probably work well with the regenerating health. that way it's not on at all times (which would get rather annoying while looking for a healthpack). then it could happen with the bluryness ok right?

or perhaps you could take a page out of FEAR's book and have a metre to use (like the flashlight). though that would probably kill it. stratch that idea.

[MNC]

Yeah, well, game_speed is the only slowdown thing. What value did you use?

[Rob Oplawar]

Come on, I know there are a few people on these forums who know. Can somebody please help me get the right skybox applied to the right bsp?

[Rob Oplawar]

k, I'm gonna keep bumping this until I get a straight answer (or until it gets locked or I get bant) because I need help! Please, somebody help me out here! Your name will appear in the Special Thanks part of the credits if you can help me get these skies working.

I'm a retard. I can't figure this out on my own. Someone here knows. Halp Please!

[teh lag]

IIRC you just put a number after the shader name in 3ds - for example, sky1, sky2, etc. You can also change sky indexes manually in guerilla/kornman00's guerilla in the bsp tag.

[Masterz1337]

If you still need a HUD man PM me.

[Rob Oplawar]

ty, lag! now, see, was that so hard? Everybody kept telling me guerilla, guerilla, guerilla. nobody ever said anything about a max material. how was I supposed to know?
keep in mind I haven't tried it yet. if i try it and it doesn't work, i think it will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and i will finally and completely go insane.

[Choking Victim]

hmm, if that didn't work, then i dunno. That was only a guess anyway, but it is something i've been meaning to share with the community. It's got to be useful for something. Anyway, looking at the bsp tags of bungies maps i didn't see any values to change for which sky to referance, its possible that its a shader name in max that needs to be changed, i remember lightning saying how to do it some time ago. i think he said make one named +sky and one named +sky0 or something like that
yea, no one mentioned it once rob :(

[Rob Oplawar]

:suicide: