Halo Update series

[HandofGod 15]

So I feel like I just lurk around this forum and don't contribute much besides asking ridiculous questions, bugging 002 and checking on Halo Revolution. I firstly want to applaud all the good work that NeX has been doing for his Halo Revolution project and also share that I too have been working on something similar, but for Halo MD. It's a shame I can't tag this as a Halo MD project, but maybe one of the admins can create an additional MD tag...

 

The Halo Update series is my attempt at reimagining the stock multiplayer maps that came with Halo PC/Mac. I've done this all on my Mac and have not touched HEK or any other CE specific tools at all so I'm proud to admit that this is a Halo Mac project aided with Photoshop, Eschaton, swordedit, Archon, Emergence and Deathstar Deprotector. 

 

As a huge fanboy of Halo Reach/Anniversary (the former being the last Halo Bungie game ), I really wanted to incorporate the weapons and assets available on Halo Custom Edition related to Reach plus some from Halo 2 and Halo 3 into a project that would encompass those games plus Halo 1. As I'm based solely on Mac, this is more or less a Halo MD exclusive project. So basically what I've done is taken the good aspects of the various mods/maps available on Custom Edition, rip them if necessary, sort and organize the tag data and put together maps that have various themes (summer in Sidewinder, desert in Gephyrophobia, winter in Infinity, swamp in Danger Canyon, blizzard in Ice Fields, etc...). I know this is a no-no for some of you as I am taking various peoples' work and altering it for my own purpose but I know that most of these assets from the Halo games were already ripped from the original games. I'm sure I'll get a few negative downvotes or whatever but I really don't care anymore. 

 

One of the maps I'm working on, Sunset, is Sidewinder in terms of its bsp structure and layout but it has no ice and has a more summer/forest feel than the original. I worked to improve the shaders of the map, weapons (with a Spartan Laser replacing the Flamethrower) and vehicles. I have also made sure that the size of my maps are below 200 MB as this is the limit that nil has sensibly put for all mods on MD. This has allowed me to improve my editing skills and made these maps more fun to work with as I do need to be thoughtful of what scenery, shader bitmaps and other assets I inject into them. The most recent map I've worked on is Outback, which is Gephyrophobia set in a water purification facility on Alpha Halo in the desert. I have some screenshots here but they are quite awful due to my Macbook Air's Intel Graphics situation. And I'm not sure if I put the images in correctly and it says I cannot attach any of them. 

 

Outback alpha:

 

 

Bloodgulch (no theme atm) earlyyyy alpha:

 

 

Downpour (my version of Danger Canyon):

 

Stock maps I have started/completed alphas & betas of so far: Damnation, Prisoner, Battle Creek, Gephyrophobia, Sidewinder, Ice Fields, Danger Canyon, Chiron TL-34, Timberland and Hang 'Em High. 

 

I of course am indebted to nil, 002, Samuco, Sparky, Taxi, Modzy and others actively working on Halo MD. I also drew tags and inspiration from Gallavant, Zteam, CMT, bourrin, aLTis, NeX, DeadHamster, the FTW2 team, TMM, Johnlex2, Azurex117, the HRH team, Jesse and other various Latino modders such as Leonox, Gunelite and Ed Ayala. I would be happy to share some of these maps but I'm still not totally sure how to convert them over to Custom Edition. 

But here's a link to Sunset v1.2 in MD map format: http://www.mediafire.com/download/4zu6f7apjubnjmi/sunset_2.map.zip

[Takka 13,376]

It's a shame I can't tag this as a Halo MD project, but maybe one of the admins can create an additional MD tag...

We've had specific support for MD for the past couple years, however due to the near nonexistence of it's content shared here, it was decided to cut the tags for it, to make organisation much much less redundant (mostly when it comes to the tools for it). Considering that Halo PC can support the MD map formats, it would probably best that you stick to that in the future. Sorry.

 

Also, if you want to embed images on a forum, you'll likely have to choose a different hosting provider, because they're blocking hotlinking.

[Kavawuvi 7,026]

Also, if you want to embed images on a forum, you'll likely have to choose a different hosting provider, because they're blocking hotlinking.

More like, he needs to put his images in his public folder in order to directly hotlink them. That's Dropbox for you.

[HandofGod 15]

More like, he needs to put his images in his public folder in order to directly hotlink them. That's Dropbox for you.

Fixed it. Signed up for Photobucket instead and it works just fine now.

Edited February 11, 2015 by HandofGod

[Sceny 3,138]

There are better Reach huds out there. Please ditch the one you're using.

[NeX 1,756]

I would love to know where you got the giant swamp onion that i see in danger canyon...the only ones ive found are always part of the bsp.

Also, dont just end up going copypasta with the tags. Actually customize them in terms of balance and usage

[HandofGod 15]

There are better Reach huds out there. Please ditch the one you're using.

I thought someone would mention that, I get complaints about it from people on Halo MD too   I'm still deciding on which is best and I will likely switch it up soon.

 

I would love to know where you got the giant swamp onion that i see in danger canyon...the only ones ive found are always part of the bsp.

Also, dont just end up going copypasta with the tags. Actually customize them in terms of balance and usage

If you check Pandora Swamp out on Halo Maps, it has a great deal of nice swamp scenery including CMT's c10 trees that they did, which is what those are. And yessir, I'm trying to put my own touch to things on these stock maps. Pretty nice cliffwall below that I messed around with for Battle Creek incorporating one of your sandstone bitmaps I believe and the stock bitmaps (don't mind the HUD lol)

Edited February 13, 2015 by HandofGod

[HandofGod 15]

Messed around with the hud on Photoshop this weekend for far too long. I think the shield meter/health meter looks better now. Still have a long way to go...

 

 

[NeX 1,756]

Yeah man HUDs are a bitch to get looking good/right. The nice thing is, once you get the knack of what works/what doesn't, they get faster and better exponentially for each attempt. My first Rev HUD shield/health meter that I modified from the SPV3 one took me no time, but that was just modifying an original. 

 

When I did the most recent one from scratch, I started with one coherent piece and did it in layers so I could easily separate the portions for their individual bitmaps about  in the hud interface tags. From blank slate to working full-version took about 6 hours from blank slate to working full-version in photoshop, then another 3-4 hours getting them all working in-game for the final HUD. A few tweaks here and there for a another few hours before the one you see now.

 

I made the Elite HUD in photoshop using the same process in about....3 hours from blank->in-game final. It's....a tedious annoying process, but you get better at it each time. 

 

 

As a tip for visors, I found that using the Brush tool on soft gradient setting at 1-2 pixel width depending on the thickness you want works wonders for the outlines of things.. I basically take a screen shot of the game in 1920x1080 (the aspect ratio/resolution that I want the HUD to work best with) and then I shrink/smash it in PS to the 1024x1024 version so I can overlay and know exactly how it will look later. I then make a transparent layer on top, and go around with a pencil took 1 pixel size in bright green and mark every "ground point" for the outline where the corners will be. I then go through and use the brush tool like I mentioned, starting at one side and using the shift-click method to get perfect straight lines between the points, and the outline is done in literally minutes. The time consuming part is afterward going and seeing where curved lines need to be and making paths for those with the pen tool to then stroke with the brush afterwards, but the pen tool is a bitch to learn. 

[HandofGod 15]

So I'm probably going to cancel or scale back this project. Halo MD just doesn't have the players who might be interested in it. Everyone loves Bigass on MD and I will probably make some mods based off that. Plus I want to work on my ODST themed mod series more.