Plugins:Community Tag Research Project

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 8:43 am

ok guys lets get back on topic here...

Dyer13 · Post by **Dyer13** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 3:42 pm

Sorry....hmm..I wish I new how to make a plugin...cough cough

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 3:46 pm

Dyer13 wrote:Sorry....hmm..I wish I new how to make a plugin...cough cough

well ive been pretty busy lately and havent been able to dedicate any time teaching others so if you have any specific questions feel free to ask in this topic and ill reply whenever i get the chance.

Dyer13 · Post by **Dyer13** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 3:51 pm

is there a tut anywhere? I know basic html, I dont know xml, or anything else, I have the "plugin maker" but I still need to know how to actually put together the plugin---if that makes sense...and I know you have to know the reflexives, or something, of what you want to change, and I dont know how you find that...I hope you can answer some of that, b/c right now I have no clue what im doing...

looknbarrel · Post by **looknbarrel** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:30 pm

This should help you some and you need to know hex and some basics on how a halo map is compiled

Here: http://halomaps.com/hexediting.html

That's for halo 1 but its pretty much the same as halo 2

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:32 pm

yes that tut is great for information but it doesnt explain much about plugins themselves so i suggest you take a look at something i wrote a long time ago, it should help get you started

http://files.halomods.com/viewtopic.php ... g+tutorial

looknbarrel · Post by **looknbarrel** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:35 pm

xbox7887 wrote:yes that tut is great for information but it doesnt explain much about plugins themselves so i suggest you take a look at something i wrote a long time ago, it should help get you started

http://files.halomods.com/viewtopic.php ... g+tutorial

Yeah thats a great tutorial and after you read the tutorials then open up some plugins and study them and that should help too

Dyer13 · Post by **Dyer13** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:39 pm

Thanks alot you guys... I actually wanted to learn HEX, but nobody could teach, so thanks!

looknbarrel · Post by **looknbarrel** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 4:53 pm

Dyer13 wrote:Thanks alot you guys... I actually wanted to learn HEX, but nobody could teach, so thanks!

No problem its always good to help someone

shade45 · Post by **shade45** » Sat Oct 01, 2005 7:25 pm

im making a plugin right now, but i just have a question how do i know if a reflex is nested or not and how would i add a nested reflex to a plugin using the dark matter plugin system??

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 12:14 am

shade45 wrote:im making a plugin right now, but i just have a question how do i know if a reflex is nested or not and how would i add a nested reflex to a plugin using the dark matter plugin system??

Okay I'm going to try and explain this the best i can...reflexives are actually pretty easy to figure out, but if there are multiple layers of nested reflexives it can get pretty complicated...so if you follow these simple rules you shouldn't run into too many problems. So say the meta that you are dealing with has a size of 512 bytes and your meta.data file looks something like this...

Reflexive|0|104|1
Reflexive|128|140|1
Reflexive|140|176|1
Reflexive|176|268|1
Reflexive|182|304|1
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Now its time to break this down into useful information....

Reflexive|0|104|1 <---main reflexive
-meta spans from 104 to 140
-chunk size of 36

Reflexive|128|140|1 <---lvl 1 nested reflexive
-meta spans from 140 to 176
-chunk size of 36

Reflexive|140|176|1 <---lvl 2 nested reflexive
-meta spans from 176 to 212
-chunk size of 36

Reflexive|176|268|1 <---lvl 3 nested reflexive
-meta spans from 268
-chunk size of 36

Reflexive|182|304|4 <---lvl 3 nested reflexive
-meta spans from 304 to 512
-chunk size of 52 (208 divided by 4)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So now you ask how I got all that stuff....well the approach is fairly simple.

1.) Organize your meta.data by listing the reflexives in order from where they point to. In this case they are already in order because i was lazy and wanted to keep this simple, but usually when dealing with nested reflexives this won't be the case.

2.) Find how much meta each reflexive points to. You can do this by taking the offset of where the reflexive points to, and subtracting it from the next immediate offset that a reflexive points to. This will give you your overall meta size, then from that size you can divide by the chunk count to get your chunk size.

3.) Decide what reflexives are referenced by other reflexives (nested). Nested reflexives are still reflexives, they are exactly the same as regular ones, the only difference is that they reside in another reflexive's meta which you can easily determine by checking if a reflexive is located within anothers spanned meta. This is kind of hard to explain so if you have any specific questions just ask and I'll answer. Just remember that reflexives point to a specified size of meta, and nested reflexives are just located in others meta.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is what they would look like mapped out in the h2x plugin system

Code: Select all

1.Label-Main Reflexive-80-Left
1.Reflexive-0-36-120
.*--2
2.Spacer--25
2.Label-Level 1 Nested-80-Left
2.Reflexive-24-36-120
.*--2
3.Spacer--50
3.Label-Level 2 Nested-80-Left
3.Reflexive-0-36-120
.*--2
4.Spacer--75
4.Label-Level 3 Nested-80-Left
4.Reflexive-0-36-120
.*--2
4.Spacer--75
4.Label-Level 3 Nested-80-Left
4.Reflexive-8-52-120

The spacer command is just for looks, I like it because it clearly shows what reflexives are nested and it's much less confusing for me. As you can see, each layer is represented by a number, then a dot, then the value type. This makes it pretty easy to use when working with nested reflexives. Anything not under a reflexive is level 1 in his system...if somethings under a reflexive, its listed as a level 2, if somethings under that, level 3, and so on. I know I didnt explain much of anything but this should be a great example to get you started...hopefully everything here is correct but theres no guarantee

shade45 · Post by **shade45** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 7:43 am

Ok thanx im pretty sure i get what your saying

Edit:
Ok i ran into a problem this is the meta for the first reflex of my tag

In the meta for that reflex i have two other reflex's which i underlined in blue
Now my only problem im having is listing it in the plugin file.
I listed it in the format you did but i get an error when trying to ue it in dark matter.
Here is what i put..

Code: Select all

.Tab--unknown32
1.Label-Main Reflexive-80-Left 
1.Reflexive-28-76-120
.*--2 
2.Spacer--25
2.Label-Level 1 Nested-80-Left
2.Reflexive-32-44-120  
.*--2 
3.Spacer--50
3.Label-Level 2 Nested-80-Left
3.Reflexive-36-56-120 
.*--2

i think the problem might be the offset i set the nested reflexise point to.....

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 9:39 am

okay youre somewhat right, but you need to fix a couple of things and i would need the meta.data file also for the chunk sizes...but at least i can fix your offsets. This will work assuming your chunk sizes are correct and the meta you highlighted is where the first refelexive points

Code: Select all

.Tab--unknown32 
1.Label-Main Reflexive-80-Left 
1.Reflexive-32-76-120 
.*--2 
2.Spacer--25 
2.Label-Level 1 Nested-80-Left 
2.Reflexive-28-44-120  
.*--2 
2.Spacer--25 
2.Label-Level 2 Nested-80-Left 
2.Reflexive-36-56-120 
.*--2

shade45 · Post by **shade45** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 10:48 am

Ok thanx its working now

, also is how do u find the size of the last reflex, does it just run from where its meta starts to the end of the tag?

thanx for all the help

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 10:52 am

shade45 wrote:Ok thanx its working now , also is how do u find the size of the last reflex, does it just run from where its meta starts to the end of the tag?

thanx for all the help

yup, the last reflex will always point to the end of the meta, unless of course there is padding of some sort, but we wont get into that...just assume that it spans until the end

shade45 · Post by **shade45** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 12:06 pm

Ok here is my first plugin, this is for [garb], this plugin is complete, everything is listed but thier all unkowns.
This is my first plugin so if u find anything wrong with it or find out any of the unkowns just tell me and ill fix it

anywayz here's the plugin......

TheTyckoMan · Post by **TheTyckoMan** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 12:14 pm

been gone 2 days and lots of stuff happened

nice to see you making plugins shade45

btw, one thing that might help you on your plugin making quest is to go look at one of the plugins already made and then look at the meta for that type of tag and follow things out and see if you get the same results

xbox7887 · Post by **xbox7887** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 3:10 pm

shade45 wrote:Ok here is my first plugin, this is for [garb], this plugin is complete, everything is listed but thier all unkowns.
This is my first plugin so if u find anything wrong with it or find out any of the unkowns just tell me and ill fix it

anywayz here's the plugin......

very nice...but you might wanna take a look at the meta and youll notice that not everything is a float. for instance, offset 0 is most likely a short (Int16), although it could be a bitmask too. just pay attention to the different value types but other than that its a great start

shade45 · Post by **shade45** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 3:33 pm

Ok cool, thanx for the advice xbox and tyckoman

i appreciate it

TheTyckoMan · Post by **TheTyckoMan** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 5:39 pm

np.

oh and would you look at that.....xbox7887 is full of love and joy for everybody