Hello All... and a few questions too

[jeffro11]

Hello all, I've read through a few of the posts on here and the quality of work on here is for the most part fantastic. I have some questions about using this SDK. I'm used to the Unreal, Source, Lithech engine and this is VERY different, but in a good way. Onto the questions...

1) From what I gather it is not possible to make your own models (static meshes/.scenery)?
2) The texture thing has been bugging me. Im used to seeing a list of all the extracted textures. All I have is a folder called forerunner... is this ALL the textures I have to work with from this game? Wheres the rock/grass textures?

Please don't think that I'm a "n00b" as I've been doing game design for a living for a few years now. Any help or a nudge in the right direction would be GREAT!

Thanks,
Jeff

[beele]

Hello all, I've read through a few of the posts on here and the quality of work on here is for the most part fantastic. I have some questions about using this SDK. I'm used to the Unreal, Source, Lithech engine and this is VERY different, but in a good way. Onto the questions...

1) From what I gather it is not possible to make your own models (static meshes/.scenery)?
2) The texture thing has been bugging me. Im used to seeing a list of all the extracted textures. All I have is a folder called forerunner... is this ALL the textures I have to work with from this game? Wheres the rock/grass textures?

Please don't think that I'm a "n00b" as I've been doing game design for a living for a few years now. Any help or a nudge in the right direction would be GREAT!

Thanks,
Jeff

1) It's not yet possible to make your own models (There was I though a program to convert halo 1 scenery to halo 2 vista)
2) Thats all the textures that come with the EK, but kornman00 released all the textures from the game (campaign and multi-player), http://www.h2vista.net/forums/showthread.php?t=3879

I hope you can get started with this.

[Tweek]

1) From what I gather it is not possible to make your own models (static meshes/.scenery)?

yeah that's right, you're pretty much limited to level geometry ONLY.

no weapons/vehicles/scenery/devices/effects/bipeds/anything else

[jeffro11]

Great! Thanks for the replies... although its somewhat disheartening that we were only given that VERY few amount of textures to work with. Thanks for that link to all the textures, Kornman00 has yet to dissapoint, many thanks!

Please tell me about this Halo1 to Halo2 gbxmodel converter. Is it worth fighting over or should I just ignore it? Or try to use it when the map is done?

And just my luck... Rapidshare isn't serving any files right now...So no shaders for me

Once again Thanks

[Roostervier]

Also, with those textures, make sure that the ones you are going to use DO NOT have the UNUSED flag checked.

[jeffro11]

Well I've taken the plunge and started experimenting with shaders and bitmaps, and alpha maps. So far all is well, one thing that took a while was the alpha flags on the new bitmap tags, I thought at first everything was imported as 32-bit, but I guess i was wrong. Heres my first test of a tree from HaloCE, its just bsp since the gbx upgrader didnt seem to work for me, kept getting an error about byte51 is invalid or something or rather.

Now I have some more questions regarding sizing. From what I understand the Chief is approximately 95 units high? What should the width or areas be for him to fit? What should the height of stairs be?

Once again, thank you for all your help so far.

[Con]

Stairs only need to look like they're correctly proportioned. In Halo, invisible ramps are used over the stairs.

[UXB]

These may be of some use:
Halo 2 Vista Size reference blocks (MAX)
Title: Halo 2 Vista Size reference blocks (MAX)
Description: The height and width info you need from the height of a crouching Spartan to the path width of a tank for level design

Other information may be found below:
Halo 2 Vista Maps
Halo 2 Vista Utilities
Halo 2 Vista Tutorials
3D Model Files
Halo 2 Vista Tags
Halo 2 Vista Bitmaps
Halo 2 Vista Shaders
Misc. Halo 2 Vista Files
Official Bungie H2V Files

Website http://h2v.halomaps.org/