A Look Behind the Scenes at H2V Programming

Probably the first and foremost accomplishment to begin H2V's extensive modding was kornman's unlocked Guerilla, which he was able to conjour in just a few days after release. With this program you can open, edit, or create any type of tag in the Halo 2 library.



His work allowed myself and other highly respected modders to access a number of important tags and their properties so that we could work on tools to unleash the full potential of Halo 2 modding.

This is a behind-the-scenes look at some of the work that has been done to date to achieve that goal.

One of the biggest complaints of Halo 2 Vista's Editing Kit was its lack of tags released with the game. Kornman's Guerilla Radio allows you to open any Single Player or Multiplayer map and extract the tags from it.

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...io_extract.jpg

You can also recursively extract the tags to additionally extract all of the tags that the tag you're extracting depends on.

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...radio_deps.jpg

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...brute_tags.jpg

This program also contains a number of built-in tools such as "Extract Import Info" - the ability to extract the import data from render, collision, and physics model to decompile them to their JMS format.

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...mport-info.jpg

This allows you access to all of the original source JMS files for any model you want.

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...ef_folders.jpg

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...render-jms.jpg

I've created a 3ds max script that allows you to import these JMS files so that you can look at how to create them or modify them for you own use. The JMS importer's current UI looks like this:

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...mporter_ui.jpg

It can currently fully import render and physics models, and it will support importing of collision models in the near future. Today I would like to show off the physics importer, because everyone already knows the the render models of the characters look like.

To run the script you open up the JMS file extracted with kornman's tool.

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...agdoll-jms.jpg

It creates the 3ds max scene with the nodes and rigid bodies defined by the tag. It also sets up all of the constraints, such as ragdoll and hinge constraints, which defines how the physics model interacts.

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v...sics-model.jpg

You can also use 3ds max's built-in Havok plugin to simulate the cyborg's physics and test it out.

http://files.modacity.net/images/h2v/secret/havok.jpg

You can view a short video of this here.

Currently exporters are in the works so that we can put our own models with custom collision and custom physics into the game.

Thanks for reading! Look forward to the release of some of this stuff.

Well done to Kornman, and to you ghost for that script. :)

Lol, ragdoll; neat.

:D Is all I can say :P

Good work!

I love you guys :D

^^ Will you be my firend?

Awsome. Now all we need is imported sounds and animations.

wait Nvm...

AWSOME WORK KORN MAN

An awesome achievement, congrats guys.

Thank You Kornmann, I need this big time.