How does it actually work?

[EWAN]

I've been modding Halo for awhile now. Using HMT, Sapien etc etc.. It's all very good and fun, but I'd really like to know how some of these programs work. For instance, HMT presumably changes things inside the .MAP file...and has a nice interface to do it with - which is great, but how did people make their pistol shoot grunts BEFORE Halo Map Tools was created? How did they make their hogs purple?

I really just want to know how programs like HMT work, and if possible what programming language HMT was written in.

Thanks a lot in advance

EWAN.

[Altimit01]

Well I can point you in a few good directions. To begin with, people just started looking at the structure of the file using a hex editor and made a few tweaks. HMT is a program that interprets the general structure of the map file and then interprets meta data using plugins. Those plugins were originally created using research from hex again, but later incorporated information from the HEK that was released with Halo:Custom Edition (CE). If you want the source code for v3.1 of HMT is available on this very site and is written in Visual Basic. There's also some tutorials posted by Grenadiac who wrote sparkedit on the general structure of a map file (apparently the forum upgrade killed off tutorial #3). If you want some more in-depth information contact me by PM and I can start walking you through some of the more general stuff.

Here's some preliminary information you might find useful:
Gren's Tut part 1
Gren's Tut part 2
Gren's Tut part 3 (Eaten by forum upgrade)
Example tag loader tutorial with pseudo-code
HMT 3.1 source
Eschaton 0.4 source (not 100% accurate for tag structure)
Tag reader source (same problems as above)

[WaeV]

Ooh! Bookmarked.

[EWAN]

Thanks very much, I'm going to check that all out now