[WIP] Zeus: Pre-alpha 1 release

[Amy]

Don't worry moxy, your still the god of halo mac.

[Excend]

What ever happened to Brim's bible anyway?

[Noodle]

2 things.

1: Sparky, either tell us about shit like this AFTER there's some proof it works at all, and quit spamming the place with "LETS DO SOME CRAZY SHIT THAT MAY OR MAY NOT WORK!" threads.

2: Ghosts, the video in your sig is fucking hilarious in the best sense of the word.

[Zodiark]

What ever happened to Brim's bible anyway?

Tut Bible?

[Excend]

Well, Sparky made his scripting bible, but, I may be remembering wrong, I thought there was one made by Brimstone.

[Zodiark]

Was it this?

[Excend]

No...

I thought there was one made by Brimstone.

It was a pdf but I don't believe it was Sparky's.

[Guest]

How long before we see an image or video of the interface? This looks quite the challenge but I'm sure sparky can do it. Love the sharing tag system hope it works nicely.

[Zanghfei]

How long before we see an image or video of the interface? This looks quite the challenge but I'm sure sparky can do it. Love the sharing tag system hope it works nicely.

Be patient, He release on his own >_>

[Mgalekgolo]

look in files. there is a pre-alpha

[TheMacMan24]

Editing Halo 3 .map files and using them again on an Xbox gets really hard unless the Xbox is jtagged. It WOULD be awesome to have an app like Eschaton that can mod Halo 3 on a Mac though.

Yes that's it! We need one for halo reach definitely! Hopefully spark can help us, or better yet Bungie release a halo reach CE computer program mac+windows compatible to make, edit maps etc. and transfer onto a USB device to transfer to halo reach.

[Sparky]

In cases like this, my CE usage is for research purposes. For instance, with my tag mapping project with Eschaton (that's the plugin set I'm making), I make maps that have a specific sets of data and then I find that data's position and tweak the offset references while providing help text towards using those tag items. Each map file I build in CE would have, for example, two of every type of reflexive used, aka. two of each type of chunk, which shows me both offsets and sizes. So I essentially do all the testing on my own in that regard. (My plugin set doesn't need much testing beyond determining Eschaton's support for the data types.) In the case of Zeus, I take that offset information - or whatever the information may be - and apply it to variables and 'hard-code' (no plugins) the info into the application. Thus, it will be relatively large in size, likely larger than Eschaton, but it will also be fully-featured right out of the box, no extra downloads required. Since it will be the first application to use the online INCY, I will need to set aside some time to finish that web front-end also.

By the way, release will be AFTER I finish all my other ToDoList items for this summer. That doesn't mean I won't be working on it, but merely that the first useful application you'll see from this will be after those other items are instantiated. As alphabetically, it's at the bottom of the list.

[Modzy]

In the case of Zeus, I take that offset information - or whatever the information may be - and apply it to variables and 'hard-code' (no plugins) the info into the application. Thus, it will be relatively large in size, likely larger than Eschaton, but it will also be fully-featured right out of the box, no extra downloads required.

Code takes up hardly any space. All of the tag source files amount to no more than a few hundred kb. The Halo Engine itself, every bit of code that makes it run, is just around 4 MB. Eschaton is rather large because of the RB framework.

[tokage]

I give it 8 years.

Meanwhile I will be playing Settlers of Catan.

[Sparky]

Zeus will let you load CE tags directly and from there, you can either use them in your loaded map files or convert them directly to Eschaton meta format.

For example, if you are using tags from HaloMaps.org:

1. Open Zeus
2. Go under the Import menu and choose "Tags -> Halomaps -> Browse" or "Tags -> Halomaps -> Get list"
* "Browse" will display the HaloMaps web site so you can find and download the tags you want. Click the download link to start the download process.
* "Get list" will display a list of all the available tags on the Halomaps server, similar to how HDemoLauncher handles the HDM Mod Database. Click the checkbox next to the item(s) and choose "Download" to start the download process.
3. Once you have chosen the tags to download, a scrollbar will show you the progress of the download, and then the file will automatically unarchive and the tags will be loaded into Zeus.
4. Zeus will show you a window with a list of all the tags included in the download. These will be sorted by tag type. If you click on the arrow next to a tag, it will expand and show you its referenced tags. A warning icon will display next to a tag in the list if that tag references external tag data, which is important if you want to import the tags recursively into Halo Demo maps. (If you want to import into a Halo Full map, or if you are importing non-recursively, you can disregard the warning icon.)

If you have the bitmaps.map and sounds.map files from Halo Full, or other data files from other versions of Halo on your HD, you should make sure you specify their locations in Preferences before continuing.

5. You now have a few options:
a. Resolve References - Zeus will search the INCY for these references if it doesn't find them in your bitmaps/sounds files you specified under Preferences.
b. Load Recursively - Zeus will load the tags you have checked and any of their references.
c. Load Non-recursively - Zeus will load only the single tags you checked.

You should choose to resolve references if you want to import tags recursively. Either way, select and load the tags you want.

6. The tag data is now loaded and these tags can be imported into the mac games Halo Demo and Halo Full, and the PC games Halo Trial, Halo Full, Halo CE (does this seem strange to include?) and Halo 2, and any other game version formats, so long as you have referenced the appropriate data and map files under Zeus's Preferences window. The exception here is that you can attempt to use the INCY as a substitute for having Halo Full's bitmaps.map and sounds.map files, for example, or the data files from Halo 2 Vista, but this might not be legally acceptible for you to do.

7. Now open a map by dragging it to the window or using the standard File -> Open... menu item, or create a new map project by going under File -> New. You can then drag-and-drop the loaded tags by dragging their names from the tag list onto the name of your map in the map list.

If you loaded the tags recursively, it should be fine. If you loaded the tags non-recursively, any missing tag references will be marked with a warning flag.

Say you try to save/build your map file, but there are broken references. Zeus will prompt you to resolve these references in a manner of your choosing:

a. Replace these references with SAFETY TAGS, which are basically blank default tags. Safety Tags allow you to play the map without worrying about having it crash on you. If you do this with a mod2 tag, for example, you would see nothing where the model should be, and nothing would collide. But the game would load this "nothing" as a tag, so it won't crash on you.
b. Search the INCY and HaloMaps.org for the appropriate tag data. INCY queries are automated, so you just wait and see the results. HaloMaps.org queries would be as if you did step 2 above, but note that Zeus will check any files you have already downloaded from HaloMaps.org to see if the appropriate info is there (this requires the download history list in your Application Support folder, don't delete that file).
c. Cancel and go back to the project



...so that's how it will work. Any comments?