Custom Projectile Decals

[razorfever]

Custom Projectile Decals
Nothing special but couldn't find anything on this anywhere so either everybody has figured it out for themselves by now or nobody has really sat down and fiddled with it. Someone will find it useful. So here goes.

Thanks to neodos for helping me out a bit and getting me on the right track.
Cut me some slack this is my first tut.

This is to create a new projectile that has its default bullet hole decals replaced by a custom drawn one.
(this tut is for bullet projectiles, not plasma or explosive projectiles)

What you will need:
Entity (I use 1.3.9 and EU v1.6 because 1.3.9 is a lot easier to use and comes with better plugins, but it cant clone chunks\reflexives from anything under the [effe] tag, EU v1.6 and probably others can)
Dothalo
Adobe Photoshop
DDS plugin for Adobe Photoshop (Its on Halomods somewhere, just search)

Tutorial:
Open Entity
Under the [proj] tag, choose the (bullet) projectile that you want to have the cusom decal and duplicate it. Now Go to the Indents of the new Projectile and take note of the Material Effect [foot] it uses.
Under the [foot] tag, find the Material Effect you just took note of and duplicate it.
Under the [effe] tag, find effects\impact\impact_bullet_small\hard_terrain_stone and duplicate it.
Now using the chunk cloner, replace the new Effect's 'Location\Direction' and 'Unknown9' chunks with the original Effect's 'Location\Direction' and 'Unknown9' chunks.
Now Under the [deca] tag, find effects\decals\bullet_holes\stone_med and duplicate it.
Under the [bitm] tag, find effects\decals\blood_splats\bitmaps\flood_splat and duplicate it.

Now we've created all of the duplicates we need so as not to affect the decals of any of the map's original projectiles, but they're not linked. So go back to the Indents of the new projectile you created and change its [foot] indent to the Material Effect [foot] indent you created, and so on down the list so that all of the duplicates are linked.
ie. Duplicated Projectile [proj] creates Duplicated Material [foot] creates Duplicated Effect [effe] creates Duplicated Decal [deca] creates Duplicated Bitmap [bitm]. (For the foot tag, Swap any Impact Effect for your new one for whatever textures you want your custom decal to show up on. So if you only want your custom decal to show up on stone, only swap the hard_terrain_stone Impact Effect for your duplicated effect)

Now would be a good time to test your progress because if something doesnt work when you're finished you wont know if theres a problem with any of the Duplicates or with the actual Bitmap you upload next. Assign your projectile to one of the weapons already on the map, fix signature, ftp to your xbox and see if the weapon makes little Flood Splats on whatever textures you swapped your effect for in the foot tag. If it freezes or no decal shows up at, you obviously did something wrong.


Your Custom Image
In Entity, go to the [deca] tag and find your decal. Open the meta editor. There you can choose how big the decal will appear (1.0 or 1.5 is usually good) and in what style it will appear. There are 4 styles under the Type drop box. Painted Sign is the clearest.
Still in Entity, under the [bitm] tag, go to the one you created by duplicating the \flood_splat bitmap. Up the top of entity hit the blue + picture and hit save Image. Save it somewhere. Now with the Photoshop DDS plugin in Photoshop's plugins\file types folder, open the flood_splat image with Photoshop.
There are four channels to this image. You only need to edit the RGB channel. The grey background behind the four little flood splats is transparent in halo 2, so with the RGB channel selected, colour the whole box that grey colour. From there its up to you. I'm pretty sure any colour will show up in halo in plenty of detail. So draw what you want. When you're done save the image. If your 'Saving as..', make sure you save as a DDS. Thena box will appear. Make sure you select DX3 from the top drop box. Then save.

Now open Dothalo. (I use Dothalo because Entity can be dodgy when trying to inject bitmaps)
In the Tag window, under the [bitm] tag, go to the one you just saved the flood_splat image from. In the Raw Data window a picture should appear. Hit Inject Bitmap and find the DDS you just saved with Photoshop. It will say done and the picture you just drew should appear in the Raw Data window. The colours may not be accurate but thats ok for now.

Thats it. Fix the encryption with Dothalo and run the map. Instead of flood splats, your pojectile should now be leaving pictures of that toilet you just drew everywhere. If something doesnt work, its something you did involving the DDS you injected. If it does work, your done.

Yeah i know its a bit over-explained, better than not enough
This is the most proper\cleanest way i can think of, any better ideas let us know

Note: the projectile will only leave a decal where it lands. If the projectile ricochetes like most are able to do, it wont leave a decal

[DarkShallFall]

This is so basic >_< well written though.

Heres the newest DDS plugin.
http://developer.nvidia.com/object/phot ... ugins.html