Balltze - Xbox button prompts for Halo CE (and more)

[Jerry 49]

Balltze is a mod for Halo Custom Edition that aims to be what LiteLoaderBDS is for the Minecraft Bedrock dedicated server.

 

This mod currently has two main goals:

- Restore most of the functionality from the original Xbox version that is missing on the PC versions.

- Create an API that allows you to manipulate every aspect of the game from your DLL or Lua script. This could (eventually) help in the process of creating a reimplementation of the game's netcode

 

Features

Balltze is still under development, but currently it has two experimental features that someone out there may find useful for their evil modding purposes, and of course, it brings back a feature from the original xbox version that many users had been requesting for years and maybe it's the reason why you're here reading this.

 

Tag definitions

It is common practice in Halo Custom Edition modding as far as scripting is concerned, to access map tag data. However, since there is no way to access every field of a tag structure, this has to be through memory addresses and offsets which just makes the scripts hard to read and maintain. Plus, it's very easy to make a mistake and cause the game to crash and end up with a "The game has encountered a segmentation fault/gathering exception data" message on your screen.

That's the reason why, from the Invader tag definitions, this project generates a set of C++ headers which contains every tag structure of Halo Custom Edition, putting an end to all those horrible offsets in your code. At the moment an API that implements these structures for using it from Lua scripts is under develoment, but you can already use the header files in your C++ mod.

 

Tag data import

This is probably the most important and monstrous feature of this mod; it allows you to import tags from other maps to the current loaded map. Needless to say the number of possibilities that this feature are endless, from making new and additional resource maps for your map pack, to build a skins-like system similar to what currently exists in the master chief collection for vehicles and weapons.

Currently it just loads all the ui.map tags into each map, since like the previous feature, it needs an interface for Lua that allows you to choose which tags to import from which map.

 

Here is a demo, loading some assets from @Yukizume

 

 

HUD gamepad button icons

Balltze restores this function from the Xbox version, it uses the icons which comes with the stock tagset in the HUD globals by mapping them to a button in a configuration file. However you can add more icons to the HUD globals and set them to a button in the configuration file.

 

 

 

 

 

Gamepad pause button

Allows you to pause the game from your gamepad. Like the icons, it can be configured.

 

Installation

1. Install Chimera.

2. Create a folder called "mods" (e.g. "D:\Halo Custom Edition\mods").

3. Copy balltze.dll file to your mods folder.

4. Copy the "balltze" folder on your "My Games\Halo CE" folder.

 

Download

balltze-release-0.1.0.zip (Latest build at github releases, for some reason I cannot upload the zip file here :c)

https://github.com/MangoFizz/balltze

 

Contributing

If you have any suggestions or want to contribute in any other way to the project, feel free to do so and submit a pull request. The project has big goals in mind, so any kind of help is more than welcome.

 

Credits

• EzDeath - Testing and ideas.
• @Kavawuvi - Development of Chimera and Invader.
• @MrChromed - Testing and moral support.
• Sledmine - Development and testing.
• @Yukizume - Testing and supply of assets.

 

No crew member of the Pillar of Autumn was harmed during the creation of this post.

Edited April 13 by Jerry

[Vaporeon 223]

Nice, people have been wanting those Xbox button prompts for years.