Phenomena

 

Ok, I'm posting this tutorial because I want to spark up Halo Trial modding here at HaloTrialMods. This tutorial will allow you to rebuild Halo Trial multiplayer maps to include stuff from the single player map b30, I'm hoping the members of HTM will be mature enough to respect bungie and NOT use content from the full version.

To start you're going to need three things, an edited version of HMT 3.5, a ppf patch to edit the header of bloodgulch, and a hex editor. All of which can be downloaded at the bottom of this post.

To start apply the 'rebuild.ppf' to your copy of bloodgulch. If you don't know how to install ppf mods read this tutorial here.

Now load bloodgulch in your THMT (Trial Halo Map Tools). Go to Tools > Extract > Batch Extract. Hit the browse button and create a new folder on your desktop called BG Rebuild, within that folder create another one and call it batch, this is merely for organizational purposes to help us work in a clean and healthly environment. So once you've okay'd your batch folder, check off "Extract Metadata" and then hit the "Start Batch Extraction" button. Yes to extract BSP.

Once it's finished closed the batch extraction window and now to go Tools > Extract > BSP/Model Sections, extract it to BG Rebuild > BSP Stuff.

Close out of bloodgulch and now load b30.map, scroll down to the vehicles, and select the pelican. Check the button that says "Recursive" and hit the save meta button. Extract it to BG Rebuild > New Items > Pelican.

When it's done extracting to go to Tools > Generate Raw Models Offset List, and save it in your bg rebuild folder.

Tools > Extract > Raw Model, Load the CSV fiile your just saved in your bg rebuild folder. In the list look for vehicles\pelican\pelican and extract it to bg rebuild > new items > pelican > vehicles > pelican.

Tools > Model DeCrapper/BSP Builder. Right click in the large white area, and go to add you want to add your mod2 meta file for the pelican, it will be located in the same folder you just extracted the raw data to. Now add the three corresponding BSP files, which we extracted earlier and are located in the BSP Stuff folder.

Now de-crap these models.

For now we're done with THMT, open up your bg rebuild folder. Create a new folder called rebuild. Copy all the contents off the batch folder into your rebuild folder. Now copy all the contents of your New Items > Pelican folder into your rebuild folder, overwritting anything when prompt. Go into your BSP Stuff folder, there should be a file called bloodgulch.sbsp.meta, copy that file and overwrite the one located at rebuild > levels > test > bloodgulch. Now the last thing you need to copy into your rebuild folder is the copy of bloodgulch that you applied the rebuild.ppf to.

Back in THMT, go to Tools > Rebuild Map, add the orginal map (which is located in your rebuild folder now) and click yes when prompt to auto fill.

Click the add button down at the bottom and add pelican.vehi.meta AND pelican.mod2.meta, located at rebuild > vehicles > pelican. Everything else will get added automatically.

Hit "Build".

When asked if any new vertices have been added click yes and browse to your bsp stuff folder and open bloodgulch.vertices.new, yes for new indices open bloodgulch.indices.new. Again choose yes.

Once the rebuild is finished I like to test the map out in sparkedit, check out the pelican model in the model viewer to make sure its ok, if sparkedit crashes or the model doesn't render then you have a problem and should try rebuilding the map again. If it still isn't rendering properly you'll have to restart the rebuild from the very beginning because you screwed up somewhere.

In my case the rebuild was successful so I may move on to the next step. woohoo.

Close sparkedit and load Hex Edit. Load bloodgulch.map.rebuild. Either get a pen and paper or load notepad whatever you refer because we need to write down a couple things. Go to offset 0x08 and write down those 4 bytes, in my case its "6C 34 F3 00", now go to 0x10, write those 4 bytes down (7C 55 9A 00 for me) and last we need 0x14 (F0 DE 58 00 for me).

Close your hex editor

Load your rebuilt bloodgulch in PPF-o-matic again and apply the rebuild.ppf patch again this time selecting the "Apply Undo Patch Data" button first.

Load your map back up in the hex editor write down your three offsets back in the orginal places (0x08, 0x10, and 0x014) AND at these other locations: 0x08 --> 0x5E8, 0x10 --> 0x5EC, 0x14 --> 0x2C4. Save and your done. Congrats you just rebuilt your first halo trial map.

It may seem like a long process but once you have it memorised you'll be flying through it.

Thanks to sword for showing me to how to rebuild trial maps in the first place.