Adding More Vehicles (a discussion)

[Sparky]

It's possible to have more than six vehicle types in a map. For example, B30.map has seven, and other full maps have even more. It should therefore be possible to modify the scnr tag's metadata so that there can be more than six types of vehicles in the map. It seems that the only restriction is the one imposed by the gametype that only provides options for six types of vehicles.

So, we can approach this issue from two angles:

Our first option is to avoid the blue warthog respawn glitch, and continue to add extra vehicles by swapping them with scen tags.

Our second option is to extract, modify and reinject the metadata and xml data of the scnr tag. However, it will not work if we only add an extra objevehi reference to the xml data. I don't think this would require rebuilding, because we would not be adding any extra tags. The other method one might go about adding new vehicles is to duplicate the scnr tag and its vehi references, but the new duplicate vehi tags end up not spawning as their originals did (because of the pointers, I assume). Therefore, we would somehow need to be able to find the vehicle palette values inside the scnr tag and duplicate them, allowing us to add new types of vehicles.

Any ideas?

[KeysOnFire]

Our first option is to avoid the blue warthog respawn glitch, and continue to add extra vehicles by swapping them with scen tags.

This is a problem for me, and anyone else who is making an "open" scenery map where there is no collision bsp, since the vehicles need to respawn after they fall to their doom. I wonder why vehicle palletes don't have tag classes of their own like itmc's? I wish I knew more about the vehicle pointers and how to customize them, hopefully one of the many geniuses around here has figured this out by now and is willing to share...

[Smythe]

well B30 and other full maps vehicles don't respawn and they are usually separated by different BSPs not that i this is a problem i don't think because this isn't the case of B30 because its one big BSP.
and in case of the blue hog glitch we should figure out how to edit the slayer game-type to make no vehicles respawn without the use of other game-types.
does anyone here know of the basic structure of a blam file because then we would be able to change game-types on the fly without having to swap between gametypes which some people don't know how to do.

[Rofldonutburger]

That's what I suggested before. (And people told me to swap scen with vehi >_>) Also, B30 has TWO big BSPs.

[Guest]

More then 6 vehicles in Multiplayer? Fat Chance.
Many attempted this grand feat, but all failed for a simple reason, it is a impossible thing......

[Altimit01]

As our guest points out, the engine is limited to having 6 vehicles in multiplayer. CE has yet to produce map that can spawn more than 6 different types of vehicles. Now I'm sure it'd be possible with a little bit of messing around in scripts and other methods but not in the scnr file. At least that's what I remember.

[>Shadow<]

Did you not notice the not-so-subtle "matg tag"? Try looking there first.

[Rofldonutburger]

Actually, I think I've seen a CE map with more than 6 vehicles spawned.

[Altimit01]

I refer ya'll to a discussion on halomaps about opensauce: Link. It's an open source tool for adding extra functionality outside the Halo engine. Post #23 expresses disappointment that even this tool very recently developed can not remove the 6 vehicle limit for multiplayer maps. There's plenty of ways to get around the 6 vehicle limit. Spawning through projectiles, itmcs, scripts maybe. But there's not a way to add to the number used by the game naturally.

[KeysOnFire]

Ok, so more than 6 vehicles is all but out of the picture...but what about making imported vehicles spawn in place of others? Example: I first tried swapping the warthog for the pelican in the scnr vehicle tags (obviously doesn't work). Then I tried injecting/swapping the pelican meta over the warthog's, still no luck. Messing with the stuff in the matg tag made my map crash. There's gotta be a way to do this...

[Sparky]

It actually is possible to add more vehicles to the scnr tag, as you can see in my bloodgulch map below:



However, the reason why they don't spawn is because of the gametypes, right? It seems like that's the reason: gametypes only deal with up to six vehicles. So what we need to do is modify the gametype to include more vehicle references. If the gametype has these extra vehi references, I would guess that the Halo game engine would incorporate the extra data, right? Or would it just consider the gametype file corrupted and stop after the sixth vehicle reference?

[Rofldonutburger]

I think it would work

[Sparky]

If you take a look at my latest Gametype reference post, you'll notice how the vehicle data is handled inside the gametype file. It leads me to believe that you would have to modify the game engine a bit so that it would look for some extra data inside the gametype file. Check it out and tell me what you think.

[TaxiService]

argh, i thought i posted here... but i didn't! D:


i wanted to say: you can have all the vehicle palette chunks you want, but you can't spawn more than the original six vehicles. <_<

to spawn more (as it have been done in a lot of CE maps) you probably need some scripting or... whatsoever. >_>



or, another not orthodox method is spawning them trough scenery.

to fix the blue base warthog spawn point glitch you could:
- use a gametype without vehicle respawn, or...
- move the blue base warthog spawn far away outside the map.

to fix that glitch that joiners see, that makes them see two vehicles in same place you have to include two versions of the map in your mod release, a hosting version and a joining version.

the hosting version will have the vehicles spawned, the joining version will have them all nulled out. this will fix that glitchy thing. <.<


mhlehh!

[Fonzeh]

It actually is possible to add more vehicles to the scnr tag, as you can see in my bloodgulch map below:



However, the reason why they don't spawn is because of the gametypes, right? It seems like that's the reason: gametypes only deal with up to six vehicles. So what we need to do is modify the gametype to include more vehicle references. If the gametype has these extra vehi references, I would guess that the Halo game engine would incorporate the extra data, right? Or would it just consider the gametype file corrupted and stop after the sixth vehicle reference?

I am impressed with your work lately, you have been doing much research lately.

And yes, Before root or any other programmer comes in here

it is IN the Halo Engine, and cannot be changed unless you want to rewrite the game.

We should make a halo editor though, like that of CE, which allows us to chance the engine as we please.