Kavawuvi

Finally got real Internet here!

This week, a few things were fixed! Also, a lot more HSC things have been implemented, and so we're getting closer to figuring out how to implement custom scripting globals. I've also learned a bit more about how bitmap tags are used in the process. Hopefully that, regardless of if Demon gets finished, it will be a good reference and documentation for future CE modding.

This weekend, a few things were done. The function for checking if a command is visible/allowed was more thoroughly decompiled. This helps in reverse engineering Halo's scripting system. Next, a couple of replace options were added to hook.json: forbid and stub. The "stub" replacement option will simply make the function do nothing if it is called. This should be used sparingly and only when the original functionality is not desired and we specifically do not want to reverse engineer this function. For example, a function whose sole purpose is to set things in the Windows registry should be stubbed out. The "forbid" replacement option will crash the game if it's called, and an error message will be logged. Unlike the stub function, this should be used whenever possible. If a function (and every caller to that function) has been reverse engineered, then there is no need to hook into the original function. Therefore, we can assert that the game does not call this function anywhere using this option. Next, calculate_lod_pixels was added, and this determines how many "pixels" a model takes up in order to facilitate Halo's model level-of-detail. Lastly, all functions pertaining to gamma were stubbed out. This means the registry is no longer touched by this, and the OS gamma is no longer modified by the game. We are intending on adding a gamma setting to the game as a shader in the future rather than having the game mess with your OS, as the game, upon crashing, may not fix your gamma setting. As a result, Halo Trial with Demon generally no longer touches the registry at all, now. There are still some code paths where it does touch the registry, but those do not seem to be hit typically. Eventually those will be reverse engineered as well, so stay tuned.

We get asked this a lot: Why Halo Trial? Why not Custom Edition? Or the retail CD version? Or the Xbox version? Halo Trial is not only free to distribute with no DRM, but it contains the full gamut of Halo's features, NOT just those required for Blood Gulch or The Silent Cartographer. All levels are fully playable when rebuilt with Invader, and most custom maps can be ported, too. The other PC releases contain some pretty nasty DRM and require a CD key which is becoming increasingly more difficult to get. Not even Custom Edition is safe from this. The Xbox version is a bit out of scope for what we want, being that it is not a PC game and thus requires emulation. There is an Xbox decomp in progress if a reimplementation of the classic Xbox version is more to your liking: https://blam.info/ Being easy to share and set up made Halo Trial the best choice.

Demon is a reverse engineering project that aims to reimplement the Halo PC demo (AKA Halo Trial) executable as an open source and free reimplementation for anyone to use, modify, and learn from. The project repo is here: https://github.com/Aerocatia/demon

(also happy belated birthday, @Takka)

Played a game with some friends last weekend, and it performed pretty well. Granted, it isn't a very recent game, but I am happy with it nonetheless. That said, I am upgrading the motherboard to have better expansion options, and I've decided to go to AM5 on X670 with the 7950X. I'll be gifting my current 5950X CPU to a friend of mine as well as helping them buy a whopping 128 GB of RAM. They have desperately needed an upgrade from their current 8700K/32 GB RAM setup, and they have needed way more cores and RAM for what they need to do, but sadly they cannot afford to go all the way due to sky-high prices in their region, so I am sure they will be happy with this late birthday present of what is basically an fully maxed out AM4 PC. I could just upgrade my board, but buying yet another expensive board now that I will probably not want to use in 4 years sounds unwise (although the same can be said for any recent Intel board these days). Frankly, the 7950X isn't that much better than a 5950X, and to make matters worse, it has a relatively worse time with four DIMMs than the 5950X. However, I won't need to upgrade much in the future, so I see this as a win.

Working on some more features. This one's a command for fullbrighting BSPs so you can quickly debug them without baking lightmaps. This is great for incremental changes or for placing objects in Sapien without lighting.

I got sick with the flu on the weekend. Ended up sleeping for about 16 hours and didn't eat much. It wasn't that I wasn't hungry - I was actually very hungry - but that merely getting up to eat food was way too exhausting. I finally got enough energy to eat a banana and some grapes, and I feel a bit better now. Why do people think it is OK to go to work with this? (not that anyone where I worked did, but this thing basically utterly wrecked me for three whole days)

It can be the tiebreaker.

The Rust rewrite of Invader has been going fairly smoothly, as you can now extract bitmaps and sound data from extracted tags. I've also been working on improving performance among other things. In other news, Discord announced that they were going to add support for subscriptions so you can support your favorite content creators in exchange for perks such as bonus content and cosmetic perks. So, to help with the development of Invader, I've decided to roll out Invader's new subscription plan which I like to call Invader++, replacing the old model entirely. With Invader++, you will get priority access to new builds, new features, and other services, all for a very low price! Here's the pricing for each tier: I imagine most people will probably get Invader++ Ultra. I will also be awarding one year of free Invader++ Ultra to the first person to the winner of this month's screenshot of the month. That's right, no pizza pics are needed today, just good old fashioned screenshots of your favorite game. Post your entry here and you might just win a free year of Invader!

Good to see people still making maps for CE!