Down Under

Port Xbox Maps to CE

Tiddy-bits:

Obviously "new" maps to play on! ability to mod re-create and use for Halo CE gameplay

 

from Moses of Egypt:

 

Yes and no. Yes there are tools in the MEK that can do a lot of it for you, no there isn't any 1:1 converter nor a straightforward way of doing it. It requires some knowledge and skill.

Refinery is capable of ripping xbox maps and creating sbsp tags that can work for both xbox and pc.

HBOC is capable of manipulating entire directories of bitmap tags and converting them from pc to xbox or xbox to pc. You can toggle all tags from xbox to pc format, but you still need to go in and manually tell hboc how to deal with certain things. For example, you need to know which tags are multipurpose maps and tell hboc to swap their channel orders from xbox to pc format, xbox only texture formats(a8, y8, ay8, a8y8, p8) need to be converted to a halo ce format, and hud meter tags in monochrome format need to have their alpha and intensity channels swapped before converting to a halo ce format.

The mode to mod2 converter is capable of converting all models in a directory to an equivalent gbxmodel tag.

There are things that my tools wont do for you though(such as replacing shader_transparent_generic tags with some equivalent shader_transparent_chicago or something similar), but it does do most of the heavy lifting for you if you can figure out how to use it. If you're confused about how to use the HBOC, open it and click on "Useful help". I made sure to put in any explanations people might need.

I can't think of anything else you might need to know atm, but that should get you most of the way there.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
7 minutes ago, stunt_man said:

Yes it's possible to port the Xbox versions of the maps, I've been working on them for awhile. Latest public releases are here:

Nice; I thought you guys were still just recreating them, rather than porting them.

 

How did you get the shaders for the teleporter shields working? A lot of people would be interested in that.

gsccon likes this

Oddly, this is familiar to you... as if from an old dream.  

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

From what I remember, the Xbox maps are pretty similar except for using some special "compressed" tag classes for things like models.

I think some shaders were different too, and likely the unicode strings are different (minor font differences).

 

Shouldn't be hard to automate if anyone already has the Xbox model tag well researched. 

WaeV likes this

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
1 hour ago, Modzy said:

From what I remember, the Xbox maps are pretty similar except for using some special "compressed" tag classes for things like models.

I think some shaders were different too, and likely the unicode strings are different (minor font differences).

 

Shouldn't be hard to automate if anyone already has the Xbox model tag well researched. 

There are a few differences, yes.

 

Here's what I know:

  • Xbox maps are compressed using a DEFLATE stream, except for the cache file header.
  • Xbox maps have a shorter header in the tag data block
  • Xbox maps actually use the build string in the cache file header
  • Xbox maps exclusively support the sotr shader tag class. Halo PC simply won't render this.
  • Xbox maps support certain bitmap formats, which Halo PC will just output noise.
  • Xbox maps have different model formats.
  • Xbox maps do not rely on assets from outside the map file, where PC does and Custom Edition even supports loading tags from outside the map file.

I believe they also use 0x803A6000 instead of 0x40440000, or somewhere around this (if this is wrong, you can easily calculate it). I wrote it all down in the document in this topic:

 

WaeV likes this

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sorry I don't come around here much...

 

The teleporter shader I'm using in unreleased versions of my Xbox ports is actually a custom shader (2 shaders, actually) created by DSalimander. The ones in the "rc_final" versions of the maps is outdated, but was ripped from DSali's H2 Beaver Creek. The new one looks much better.

 

I have an old thread for my project on here and I'll update it when everything's finished. 

DSalimander likes this

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    No registered users viewing this page.