HPC Tools Shortlist

[WaeV 5,049]

Similar to the Tutorials Shortlist, you can find many of the most useful content in this section, referenced here.

 

 

Eschaton

Eschaton is today's premier map editor. Performs meta-editing, reference-swapping, tag extraction / injection, rebuilding, and more. Plugins tell Eschaton how tags can be modified. Eschaton is compatible with Entity-style (.ent) and HMT-style (.xml) plugins.

 

SparkEdit

The venerable yet most advanced scenario editor for Halo PC.

HMT

An enduring classic, HMT used to be the standard Halo modding tool before Eschaton succeeded it. HMT is better than Eschaton at exporting and injecting resources such as models, bitmaps, and sounds.

 

Deathstar

A powerful map deprotector, which also has the ability to deobfuscate tag paths.

 

Flare

An advanced but easy-to-use gametype editor.

 

Pearl 2

The most comprehensive Halo map converter, capable of converting CE maps to PC or MD.

 

Map Renamer

Used for renaming PC, MD, or CE maps. MD name format is optional.

 

InjectSMAA - Anti-Aliasing

Adds AA filtering to help smooth out jagged edges in ingame geometry.

 

 

Additionally, you can find lots of source code mirrored here: https://halo.tools/git/explore/repos

[NeX 1,756]

Overall, the most complete plugin set is Sparky's conversion of the HEK editor Sapien

 

I think it's Guerilla, not Sapien.

Sapien::Sparkedit as Guerilla::Eschaton

 

Although not a perfect analogy, sapien and sparkedit are more "visually based", obviously sapien runs an actual game-render, where sparkedit just pastes the basics of the shader_environments onto a BSP model. Guerilla and Eschaton are more similar, being that they both are tag editors, although with Guerilla there is no need to rebuild maps due to tool. Eschaton also edits the instances of the tag inside the compiled map cache only, Guerilla edits external tag files, enabling one edit to take effect across any maps that are rebuilt referencing that tag after the changes.

 

/just my 2cents, great post and a perfect place for new modders to start getting their program suite together. I would also provide at least an external link to the HEK, HEK+, and Kornman's HEK (a_hobo and kornman00v2), since the extended CE HEK shits all over PC tools

Edited July 15, 2014 by NeX

[WaeV 5,049]

Right you are -- fixed! I want to add CE tools too, but I don't know them as well. Think you could write quick summaries?
 

HEK, HEK+, and Kornman's HEK (a_hobo and kornman00v2), since the extended CE HEK shits all over PC tools

Is the standard HEK even useful once you have Kornman's HEK set up?
 
Also, the HEK is just Sapien, Guerilla, and Tool, right?

Edited July 16, 2014 by WaeV

[NeX 1,756]

Right you are -- fixed! I want to add CE tools too, but I don't know them as well. Think you could write quick summaries?

 

Is the standard even HEK useful once you have Kornman's HEK set up?

 

Also, the HEK is just Sapien, Guerilla, and Tool, right?

 

 

Yeah I can do a quick few. Yes, the stock HEK still works once you have kornman's HEK set up, the programs aren't replaced or rendered ineffective....they're just hopelessly outmached in terms of usefulness. I haven't touched the stock sapien or guerilla since I started using Kornman's, and I use tool_pro exclusively, since the only difference between stock tool and this version is that the 128MB multiplayer cache file limit is removed, meaning you can build maps larger than that now. Dennis over at halomaps has some kind of parasite up his urethra about tool_pro, claims it breaks maps and gives viruses, but as you can see with Revolution (all of which have been compiled with tool_pro) the first claim isn't true, and I can personally guarantee that the latter isn't either. There may have been some shady versions released, but this one is clean as a whistle. Now I still use stock tool for compiling bitmaps and sounds just to be safe, but the build-cache-file command has never given me issue with tool_pro.

 

A basic breakdown:

 

Sapien (a_hobo):

This is a very advanced scenario editor that I claim to be proficient with, but far from an expert on. This program will render your scenario with the actual game engine, making it more resource heavy than most other programs, but it's still not too bad in terms of resource allocation, as long as you aren't using XP with 1GB DDR.

 

You can place and edit each instance of:

• Scenery (scnr)
• Bipeds (scnr)
• Vehicles (scnr)
• Netgame Equipment (scnr)
• Netgame Flags (scnr)
• Weapons (scnr, not to be confused with netgame equipment)
• Equipment (scnr, not to be confused with netgame equipment)
• Device Machinery (Lights, Controls, Device Groups, Machinery - scnr)
• Player Starting Locations (scnr)
• Sound Scenery (scnr)
• AI (I'll leave this to Hamp or TCK to finish, since I know literally nothing about it)
• Decals (scnr)
• Camera points
• Trigger Volumes

Aside from scenario items, you can mess with things that apply directly to the scenario_structure_bsp, including:

• Detail Objects
• Weather Environments (per portal editing possible)
• Sound Environments (per portal editing possible)
• Background Sound (per portal editing possible AFAIK)
• Fog
• Palettes for the above

You can even paint lightmaps, but will have to redo them for each new build from what I've read. Never messed with this as it seems rather buggy.

 

**NOTE**

a_hobo is the Kornman version of sapien - it will open, look, and feel exactly like the default Sapien.exe (with the addition of little easter eggs like "Microsoft is totally gay"), with the benefit of having unlocked features that were coded into the original, but later disabled before distribution. It's just more powerful, and I personally think it runs a tad smoother. It also tends to crash less often.

All Sapien/a_hobo crashes will be logged in your debug.txt found in the main HCE directory.

 

Guerilla (kornman00v2):

Guerilla, and the Kornman version kornman00, is the single most powerful tag editor that exists for modding Halo 1. With PC tools such as eschaton, changes are made to tags that are already compiled into the .map, so in order to make identical changes (say, you want the phoenix tag set on...boarding action), you must recreate them per map, even if that means extracting tags and importing them into your map.

 

With Custom Edition, tags exist as their individual files, with a scenario tag not being a certain segment of memory inside a cache file, but instead its own very real <tagname>.scenario file. These files can be saved, edited, created from scratch, and duplicated via the Guerilla application, and offer the most comprehensive options for editing. Kornman00v2 is the most updated version of Kornman's version of Guerilla, and allows for edits of previously unsupported tags, such as <tagname>.ui_widget_definition tags, as well as un-concreting boxes and options that were previously unavailable in stock Guerilla. This tool is where you will spend 95% of your time working with the game.

 

The main advantage to this individual-tag-file format, is that the directories in which you save these tags, stemming from your root HCE directory's "tags" folder, is the name of these tags in a cache file after you "stitch" the tags together. tool (or tool_pro) will use your scenario file as the root node of the tag tree, and piece together your map based on all the dependencies/references inside of that scenario tag. Hence why damnation.map's scenario file is named "levels\test\damnation\damnation" - the damnation.scenario file path is "C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Games\Halo Custom Edition\tags\levels\test\damnation\damnation.scenario". 

 

This format can be confusing for beginner Halo PC modders, since the naming seems random, and can sometimes lead to mistakes, or take inordinate amounts of time to locate a file that should be somewhere, but isn't. Most tags are consistent - the stock "pistol" tags are usually located in the "weapons\pistol\pistol" directory - so the model is:

"weapons\pistol\pistol.gbxmodel"

 

and the weapon tag itself is:

 

"weapons\pistol\pistol.weapon"

 

making things very consistent. 

 

However, some tags are grouped together, such as particles, and some global effects, whereas some effects and particles that only pertain to a single weapon, scenery, or biped tag, will be placed in those directories instead.

 

Tool (tool_pro):

Tool is the most fickle bitch that you will ever work with. You must get to know her, and then she will behave for you. But even still, she will throw seemingly random errors in your face at the most unexpected time. It generally ends up being your own damned fault, but she doesn't like sound tags particularly. It is not like the other programs that make up the HEK, in that it doesn't natively support a GUI. It is a CLI, and must be used with a copy of command prompt in your HCE root directory (or using the "cd" command from another directory), and commands that it executes must start with "tool". There is a GUI version of tool, called tool++, but we do not speak of it.

 

Tool is a compilation aide - in that it compiles files of raw format (.TIF image files into .bitmap tags, for instance) into a format that the game can use. A .bitmap tag is more than just an image - it's the image, as well as the data needed to use that image in the game's setting. These tags can be edited with Guerilla, saved, and then recompiled with tool in order to get the changes to take effect. If I wanted to compile an image that would be my shield bar, it will need to be 32-bit-color as the compression, a 2D texture, and have an alpha channel that matches what I wish to be visible. When tool compiles an image for the first time, it creates a new .bitmap tag, and will set everything to the defaults, such as "color-key-transparency" as the compression, which will not include an alpha channel. I must change these settings in Guerilla, save them, and then re-compile the same image in order to get the format to be correct.

 

Tool is also where you will "build" your maps. You will have been messing with many tags that your scenario references, probably played with the placement of these assets in Sapien, and now you're ready to test them out in the game itself as a finished (or at least playable) .map file. Tool will compile these tags into a map, and all it needs is the path to the .scenario file. 

 

To compile stock damnation, I would type: tool build-cache-file levels\test\damnation\damnation

into the cmd window.

[DeadHamster 954]

Additional CE Tools;

Bluestreak JMS Exporter;

http://ghost.halomaps.org/bluestreak/jms/

GBX Model Importer

http://ghost.halomaps.org/bluestreak/gbxmodel/

Aether is a tool that allows users to create advanced lightmaps in 3ds max, and transfer them over to the CE engine.

http://haloce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=4312

Hek+ allows you to extract tags from compiled maps, so that you can use them in your own maps;

http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=1542

[SpyrilFudge180 2]

I found this to be a good news section. I came to this link through my email and find this awesome. I have some skill in modding but I don't have any skill in map making. by the way I thought Guerilla and Sapien were ads or something to the modding tools but they help out just like Halo Editing Kit and Halo Hacker Tools as well as Spark Edit. I should check them both out.

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

To be honest, I've always thought the Windows version of Deathstar looked more attractive than the Mac version.

This is a very helpful list, though. Nice!

[WaeV 5,049]

Thanks! =)

 

To be honest, I've always thought the Windows version of Deathstar looked more attractive than the Mac version.

Maybe, but not with that gnarly purple color scheme:

 

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

Thanks! =)

 

Maybe, but not with that gnarly purple color scheme:

 

There. It's red. It's much more mild, too.

Edited August 4, 2014 by 002

[WaeV 5,049]

Updated the OP =)