A Modern History of Halo Modding

[WaeV 5,049]

I'm taking a class which is basically "how to be a Masters student and do research," and I'm finding it really interesting. Research publications seem to come in two forms: a traditional research paper which discusses a specific new technique, and a "survey" which discusses background information and the prominent advances over the past two or three years.
 
Surveys are great for newcomers because they introduce you to a lot of advances at once, giving you a high-level overview and letting you draw connections. They're also great for people in the field, because it covers stuff you might have missed. (What? I never knew that program existed!)
 
It's also a great way to immortalize knowledge, kind of like Skeez's coup de grace megatutorial:
 

 
 
We have The Black Art of Halo Mods, but that only takes us from 2001 through the end of 2005 (published May 2006). For perspective, Eschaton's beta releases didn't come out for another two years.
 
I'm writing a survey for school credit which obviously needs to be done first, but once that's finished I'd like to start pulling this together. Here's a basic potential outline:
 

Quote

The Dark Ages

 

• Hex-editing
• Discovery of map magic
• Pointers and offsets
• Iron_Forge's Retail Offsets

The Big Three

 

• Sparkedit
  • Scenery editor, used to this day
  • Log mods
  • Continued development on the Mac platform (more on this later)
• HMT
  • Most seriously developed editing application
  • Resource extraction/injection (program originally intended specifically for sound injection/extraction)
  • Metadata editing: pioneered concept of XML plugins
  • Rebuilding maps
  • Notable mods and HMT-related advancements
    • Chain-spawning
    • Phenomena's 64 Plugin Pack
    • Assorted plugins for advanced purposes
• HHT
  • Reference-swapping

The Middle Period

 

• HEK
  • I don't really want to cover this in detail, but probably overview the programs and what they do
• Map Conversion
  • Harbinger
  • Queen Anne's Revenge
• Halo 2 Editing, Assorted Programs
  • Halo 2 uses mostly the same map format, with some differences
  • A few programs were made which could edit both Halo 1 and Halo 2 maps
  • H2 Program Entity introduced the ".ent" plugin, which is better than HMT's format
  • H1 editor Lethargy deserves a small mention

The End Times (also the greek translation of "Eschaton")

 

• Eschaton
  • New Rebuilding
  • Entity-Style Plugins
  • Sparky's Plugins (based on the HEK)
  • Import tags from CE maps
• Assorted Programs
  • DHCM
  • Pearl
  • Other programs from 2008-2011 ModHalo
• Join-Friendly vs Joiner Friendly
  • Reskins and cosmetic mods: FTW, FTW2, etc.
  • Joiner-friendly scenery?
• Open-Sauce
  • Explain what the hell this project actually is
  • CE engine extensions/enhancements
  • HEK editor extensions/enhancements
  • Create new tag types?
  • Bumped particle and scenery limit?

A New Decade of Modding

 

• Programs
  • Live-Editing
    • Conure's hacky VB proof-of-concept
    • That one project from Modacity
    • Overcast
    • Quickbeam
  • Archon: History and new features
    • BSP painting!
    • Sweet renderer upgrades
  • Pearl 2
• Protection
  • I don't actually know much about this topic, but I only want to cover protections that I can also explain how to break
  • Soft-Protection
• Distribution
  • Halo Anti-Cheat
    • Seamlessly merge servers from all versions of Halo
    • Download maps automatically
    • FOV changer!
    • Also apparently there are some anti-cheat features, too.
  • HaloMD
    • "Mini Demo" based on Halo Full executable
    • Integrated lobby, download+patch system, XMPP chat

 

Any thoughts or suggestions on topics that should be covered or omitted?
Is this outline pretty good, or is there anything that should be reordered?

I'm absolutely in favor of written contributions towards any given section, but I expect I'll end up writing a lot of this myself. It will probably be ten pages or so, all told.

 

[TCK 2,164]

How detailed would each bullet point be? I'm considering whether I have time to write the HEK part, and I could do that in pretty good detail.

[WaeV 5,049]

This is a really rough outline, but I expect each bullet point would be between two and five paragraphs. You are definitely better equipped to talk about the HEK -- I was going to keep it pretty short.

 

I don't expect this to be like a manual; the HEK already has one of those. Imagine you're talking to someone technically competent that simply hasn't been exposed to Halo modding before. You're just explaining what the various things are, what they do, and why they are or aren't important.

 

Maybe a few paragraphs about the HEK overall, and 1-4 for each component. Perhaps HEK Plus should be covered? As I said, I don't know much about CE tools.

Edit: Agh, how could I forget about Btcc and HAC?

[Pfhunkie 3,544]

I remember the big three and middle periods... I then went into a dark rift for years and came back at the end of the end times. I was using HMT/HHT to do things and Tucker was laughing at me for not knowing what Eschaton was.

[Skeezix the Cat 3,089]

This tickles me in places that should not be tickled that something I did was used as an example for something so professional

[Takka 13,376]

Seems great so far, but really don't see why chain spawning needs a mention, and isn't specific to HMT either. Anything with a reference swapper is capable of it.

[WaeV 5,049]

Mostly because it's one of my favorite mods and I'm really partial to it. It pushed the envelope as far as what we knew we could achieve.

 

You're right that it's not HMT specific, but it's from that timeframe. Maybe there should be a "technologically notable mods" section rather than put it under HMT, good point.

[Pfhunkie 3,544]

HMT didn't have reference swapping back in the day, right? I swear that when I was first modding that it didn't.

[Sceny 3,138]

HMT didn't have reference swapping back in the day, right? I swear that when I was first modding that it didn't.

You can mod?

[Takka 13,376]

HMT didn't have reference swapping back in the day, right? I swear that when I was first modding that it didn't.

Naw, but there were some extremely messy ways to get some of the same results with it.