Anyone figured out how to bypass map size limits?

[kenney001]

I have been riding on the edge of too big a cache file for a while now, and slowly have deleted all of the global weapons, the destructable vehicles, the unused global sounds, the Wraith, and I am still on the edge.

Any tips/tricks/anything to work around this?

*edit* well i figured out a way to save about 20 meg of tag size: I compressed most of my weapon skins as 32 bit color (because its clearer). i tested ansd compressed one with color-key transparency instead and it went from 6457kb to 1245kb. I have to re-compress them all now, and alot of my level tetures also.
--Wow what a difference......105mb instead of 135 mb, time to re-add some stuff.....

still, does anyone know how to work around this?

[p0lar_bear]

There was a hacked tool that compiled big maps, but even then, Haloce.exe will throw a hissy fit, followed by an exception if the map is too big.

And 32-bit color? VERY big waste of space, my friend, as you saw. While uncompressed things tend to be more beautiful, sometimes it's better to sacrifice a bit of quality for that extra few megabytes.

So yeah, textures that do not require alpha transparency should always be compressed with DXT1 compression (color-key).

[Masterz1337]

Make sure your collision models use the lowest LOD of your model, rather than highest.

[teh lag]

^ or a new model entirely. The fewer polies, the better.