Halo 2 Vista and Halo CE Shader database?

[Lightning]

I've been tossing this idea around, and I think I'm going to go through it, however I would like your opinion on this.

What I plan on doing is making a section on XCE's site that has various shaders available for download for both CE and H2V. With the requests of shaders for H2V becoming more and more common, I think this would be a wonderful idea.

What would be posted would be a screenshot/animated image of the shader, a download of the link, and any instructions that are specific to the shader.

Imagine a site where you can find completely customized shaders specific to a certain style or look. That's what I'm going for.


So, good idea, or bad?

[et_cg]

Ahh, this idea is great. You know what I'd love to see for that effort, is a readme file per each shader, so it fully explains what each thing does. Or perhaps a major glossary, or help file in general, so people can download a database, and search for how it works in a help file.

That way, there'd be documentation on how to build, create, and modify the base set of examples.

If that seems too daunting of a task, I could be of assistance.

[Kornman00]

When is XCE going to finish any of its maps?

[UXB]

The Halo Maps website will also host shader and bitmap packs or any game assets for making maps. We have the bandwidth. Since I don't make maps I just need some advice on setting up the section names and basic descriptions for how people should/shouldn't use them.

Right now the few that we have are lumped in the "Halo 2 Vista tags" section. Should I make seperate sections for Shaders and bitmaps? Advice and ideas is desired.

[et_cg]

Right now the few that we have are lumped in the "Halo 2 Vista tags" section. Should I make seperate sections for Shaders and bitmaps? Advice and ideas is desired.

As for the Shaders and Bitmaps, yes, I think it would be a better idea to set those off in a different category. Mainly because that's what the kit is centered around, getting your shaders/bitmaps right to give the scenario bsp and any instanced geometry the feel of a good map. With a general database/references that people build up, it would probably be smart to just section them off.

[fatso784]

The Halo Maps website will also host shader and bitmap packs or any game assets for making maps. We have the bandwidth. Since I don't make maps I just need some advice on setting up the section names and basic descriptions for how people should/shouldn't use them.

Right now the few that we have are lumped in the "Halo 2 Vista tags" section. Should I make seperate sections for Shaders and bitmaps? Advice and ideas is desired.

Yes as shaders and bitmaps focus on textures, and differ from other tags considerably. I have went to halomaps.org many times in search of shaders, and find next to nothing. I think this is a great idea, and its a shame no one thought of this earlier...

[Lightning]

We have the bandwidthWe have the bandwidth

As do we. :P



Right now the few that we have are lumped in the "Halo 2 Vista tags" section. Should I make seperate sections for Shaders and bitmaps? Advice and ideas is desired.

Perhaps after I get it set up, you might be able to use the layout as an example?


You know what I'd love to see for that effort, is a readme file per each shader, so it fully explains what each thing does.Planned on it.

[P13F4C3]

Yea, awesome idea, i needed a shader the other day because i couldnt figure out how to get some lights working but lightning gave me 1 that worked perfect, This would also help people from uploading maps with the default shader, Which are just useless maps because they dont look good

[jahrain]

Lol why ask? Who would not want shaders!?

[UXB]

Yes as shaders and bitmaps focus on textures, and differ from other tags considerably. I have went to halomaps.org many times in search of shaders, and find next to nothing. I think this is a great idea, and its a shame no one thought of this earlier...Not being a map designer the detailed requirements for particular assets eludes me. I have seen enough when I drop in on this forum to see the need but can not create them.

I have setup two new sections :Halo 2 Vista Bitmaps and Halo 2 Vista Shaders. There is something in the bitmaps but you guys will have to submit shaders.

What other sections do you feel the H2V maps site needs?

[jngrow]

I'm excited as this kid: koolaidfacemelter.ytmnd.com (http://koolaidfacemelter.ytmnd.com)
But omg, I would totally love it. Especially just like a massive pack with a perfect shader_collection file and everything.

[Llama Juice]

Yea, Lightning... how much... uhh.. how much bandwidth do you have? :P

Sounds like a jolly plan to me, to be honest though, for this to work I think it would need to be a shader+bitmap combo thinger... like.. you download a .rar of lets say a water shader+bitmaps thinger

[FILE DIRECTORY]
\
\shaders\multi\multi\water.shader
\bitmaps\multi\multi\water.bitmap
\bitmaps\multi\multi\waterbump.bitmap
and so on and so forth... just have that all in a rar so that they could unrar the package right to their tags directory and get it going from there without having to really edit anything.

Ideally, that's how I think it would have to be.

[spookers622]

I agree with Llama Juice, especially with shaders that use bitmaps that the map editor didn't come with. I wouldn't want a bunch of shaders lying around that i couldn't use.

[FireScythe]

What i would like to see is a dependency download system, where you select the shader you want to download and the server packs all of the dependencies that that particular shader depends on into a single rar (on the fly), which you then download. But this would cause problems with versions with duplicate bitmaps being a possibility, but that could be sorted out by using the date that the bitmaps were added to distinguish the correct one.

Although, this system would probably be very complicated to set up.

[Lightning]

That would be something totally out of my league, Firedragon, but a cool idea none-the-less.

I plan on having the archives packed with recursive structure, so no need to worry about messing with dependency locations.

[Kornman00]

I use bungie's own tag database file for when I extract a tag with dependents so I can look in one place at the tag I extracted, and all of its dependents. It also shows the dependents for that same tag's dependents, so you can branch off from other tags easily. I'm also planning on making the database support building from source tags as well (not that trivial), just have various other things I'm trying to take care of with my code library I use.

[jngrow]

any progress on this so far??


EDIT

sigh but it needs one so bad... meh guess it wont matter once we get kornman's extractor

[Ki11a_FTW]

^^dont bump bro

[Con]

It's okay if the bump is on-topic enough.

[jngrow]

Quick question: When the time is right, will someone be able to simply extract every shader and its dependent from Halo 2? Because if so, uh.. awesome.

[Llama Juice]

Why not just make your own?......

[jngrow]

Because almost all the shaders you would ever need are ALREADY MADE.