How Halo maps Work [Updated!]

bcnipod · Post by **bcnipod** » Mon Mar 03, 2008 9:29 am

Explanation of Halo Maps and Modding Tools
Created by: bcnipod

Release Note:
This tutorial is only to be posted on the HaloMods forums (http://forums.halomods.com), my own forum(http://root.7forum.info), and on ROUS' forum(http://thecodeyardforums.makeforum.org). If this is displayed anywhere else, I request that you inform me so I can ask for it to be taken down.

Information about the tutorial:
This is an explanation on how the maps were put together, not about how to build one, but how Bungie original made them and how they work. Also this is a good thing to read if you want to learn more about what the tags do and mean. When making this, I used the map b30 as a reference. It is recommended that you use the application that I have a download link too, and load the map b30 with it the first time you go through this, so you can follow what I am talking about. Then when the map is loaded, sort the list by tag number, with it going from 0000 to 3693. Also, For a later part of the tutorial I will be using Eschaton 0.6.1 as my base of the explanation, because HMT is not standard cross platform so there is no real way to compare the Mac and PC versions.

Patrickh · Post by **Patrickh** » Tue Mar 04, 2008 4:37 pm

Well, a lot of this is blasphemy, sorry

And you didn't talk about how they work, all you talked about is the order in which tags fall in the index. And by the way, yes the map branches out from the scenario, but also a few other tags as well. The main tags in a map vary depending on the map type (sp, mp, ui), but each of these types, if you took all of there dependencies, and all of their dependencies etc. it will lead to every tag in the map. The reason you thought scnr was the main was because it's always first in the index, and the bsp(s) is always the last in the index as well as the last dependency in the scnr (it is stored in reflexive chunk(s) at the end. These are the main tags:
scnr - scenario
matg - game globals
tagc - All scenario
bitm - Loading Bkd
bitm - Loading str
ustr - multiplayer map list
bitm - lag icon
snd! - UI cursor snd
snd! - UI forward snd
snd! - UI back snd
tagc - multiplayer scnr
sbsp - bsp chunk

And those scenery you talked about don't always have a set structure like that, it depends how its built.

Good start dude, just fix it up and it could be a helpful tutorial