Halo Megathread: 2 new trailers for Halo 5 have been released. 10/27/2015

[Jubel]

change the scripts

I don't really know if it's technically changing the scripts but don't place too many trip mines in halo 3 forge vOv

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[blueblur121]

The new Halo 2A forge maps are literally giant empty skyboxes.
You can add terrain and you can make simple scripts using the tools provided.
Then you can make buildings, vehicles, weapons, spawns, objectives, etc.

So yeah, pretty much making maps from scratch.

You are using pre-made parts, but it's a console level editor. It's as "from scratch" as it's going to get imo.

Pageloss

[McJob]

The new Halo 2A forge maps are literally giant empty skyboxes.
You can add terrain and you can make simple scripts using the tools provided.
Then you can make buildings, vehicles, weapons, spawns, objectives, etc.

So yeah, pretty much making maps from scratch.

You are using pre-made parts, but it's a console level editor. It's as "from scratch" as it's going to get imo.

It's not any different what I said. You still aren't making new maps. You are modifying pre-existing ones. Scripting is limited, you can't create custom geometry or objects (new meshes, audio, coding etc), and you still have limited space to build your level in.

Do those features sound nice? Sure. But I had a lot of fun with Halo 3, and you're not going to convince me otherwise. Halo 3's Forge was fantastic. Nothing is "stuff" just because it's old.

Going to repost this here from FFShrine. Haven't included the placement notes (where each track is played in Halo 2) since Blockland Forums lack spoiler bbcode. HALO 3 IS ON THE WAY! Hold on tight.

• 274 Songs, 2:18:59 Playtime, 382.1MBs Uncompressed
  
• MP3 320KB/s
• All IDv3 Tagged.
• Organised into folders.
• Includes Cover Art and .m3u Playlists (based off the folders).
• Custom Names either based off quotes from the specific cutscene, the place the track is played or what is happening when the music plays.

HALO 2 --- VERSION 1



Download Links:

• MEGA: DOWNLOAD!
  

Important Notes:

• This is the first rip (I know of) that all of the individual menu songs extracted from the game. All of the menu tracks had to be extracted by hand; they are actually encoded in the XWMA format instead of the ADPCM format the other files use. By finding the file offsets and chunk sizes of the data (the physical data is stored in a different location to the tag files that references the data), I was able to use a Hex Editor to rip the data chunks, save the chunks as .wma files and convert them to .mp3. The reason they are a different format is the same reason they are a higher quality audio/have less compression artifacts; during the game, you have lots of sound effects, dialogue, background atmosphere and other sound elements mixing with the music, so the developers could get away with packing the quality of the audio lower. In the menu, since you are only hearing the music, the files needed to be higher quality.
• There are 3 "deleted" tracks included. These tracks were included the files and were programmed in, but were lacking the correct script functions for them to play. Thankfully their order in the files were retained so it's possible to guess where they were supposed to play. "Glue (F Note) (No High) (In)" is supposed to play when you enter Regret's Temple, but is missing a "Start" function (the stop function exists and is even called during the game script). "Swell (Stinger) (Six)" was supposed to play at some point between "High Moans" and "Ionizer", but it has no functions within the game script. "Spooky Ambience Two (Loop) (Two)" was supposed to play before "Women Choir Three", but again lacks both the start and stop music functions.
• There are two variations of the non-loop "Trying Winds" song. One was called "bakboys" in the files, and the other was called "boys". The former now has the tag "Background Choir", while the latter is "Boy Choir".
• The full version of Peril did not actually have "Full" in the filename, but I added it as a tag to make it clear.
• In almost every single instance, I use Alt-Outs and Alt-Trans-Outs interchangeably because they lack one or the other. The only exception is "Retro (Full) (Alt Transition Out)".
• Except for a few examples where "Choir" was already used, I have renamed any instance of "Vox" to "Choir" as it sounds better, and there are no instances where the Vox is not referring to a full choir.
• There are a few instances of names that had to be made up on the spot; "new_halo_steve_ck\nhsc..." became "Halo (Scarab)", "halo_rev_short" became "Halo (Short)", "steve2_nolead\stvnolead\in" became "Halo (No Lead)", "Bomay" is what the actual file was called, and there is no indication of what it means, "bdfull" became "Flood Bait", "end1_vox" became "Halo 2 Theme (Menu)", "mid_wmel" became "He Flew Pretty Good! (Menu)".
• Two tracks were given names from the official Halo albums; "15_strings" became "Unforgotten (Menu)" and "Groove2" became "In Amber Clad" since there was already a track called Groove, and I felt they were totally different in every way and wanted to make them distinct.
• "More Strings" is the actual file name; I will probably improve the name when I extract Halo 3's soundtrack, since the same track appears in that game.
• The file "06_sentinelwalls\x07\music\x07_02_mus" was exactly the same as "Swell (Stinger) (One)" (but a completely different filename, since the latter is named like a cutscene music file). I decided to remove the duplicate.
• One of the duplicates of "Glue (G Note) (No High) (Loop)" was incorrectly listed as a "No Low", even though it was the same as the others.
• There are 18 audio tracks that started with a "Loop2" instead of "Loop1". Because there's no tag data for a Loop1 in any of these tracks, I believe this is either a developer mistake, or variations of these loops were removed during development.
• There was a conflict in the filenames between the In and Loop sections of the "Tension (No Strings) (Alt)" track. One was named Loop2 when it was clearly the "In", while the other was called the "Loop1". I have named them as I felt was appropriate.
• Swell stingers 1, 2 and 4 do not exist, and Trill stingers 1, 2 and 3 do not exist.
• There are about 5 loops which are named "Short Loop", and yet had the same size and sound as all the other regular loops, so I named them as normal.

Halo 2's Audio System - A quick explanation:

• Audio tracks are separated into several parts, including In, Out, Loops, as well as Alternate In, Alternate Transition (when a song flips between the ordinary loop and the alternate loop without stopping), Alternate Out, Alternate Transistion Out and Alternate Loops.
• Each of those are split into tiny 1-second (usually less) "permutations".
• Some tracks have "Sound Details", which are basically additional little stingers which are randomly played based on some parameters the designer sets.
• Some tracks are "Glue" tracks. While they are sometimes played by themselves, they generally are designed to layer over other sound files to give them extra flavour.
• The sound system has the ability to do fade-ins/fade-outs, and possibly some other audio FX.

[blueblur121]

It's not any different what I said. You still aren't making new maps. You are modifying pre-existing ones. Scripting is limited, you can't create custom geometry or objects (new meshes, audio, coding etc), and you still have limited space to build your level in.

Holy stuff dude, it's a console level editor. What the forget do you expect.

Do those features sound nice? Sure. But I had a lot of fun with Halo 3, and you're not going to convince me otherwise. Halo 3's Forge was fantastic. Nothing is "stuff" just because it's old.

I had fun with Halo 3's forge too. Everyone did. That's because it was before better forge existed.

I'm not saying it's stuff because it's old. I'm saying it's stuff compared to what we have now.

[Masterlegodude]

The fun thing about Halo 3's forge was the glitches

Like making a long chain of teleporters out of the map, deleting a weapon as a player goes to pick it up so that the player now holds nothing, grabbing a weapon as a player picks it up so you can mess with their arms or even cause them to explode into nothing, overloading maps (mostly Sandtrap and Sandbox) with mines, and carrying a player on a turret and shoving them into walls

[blueblur121]

Did you ever do the elephant launcher?
It's awesome if you can get a bunch of people in some warthogs in it at the same time.

[Alkatjo]

I like seeing these arguments unfold, reminds me of what I used to be back when I first joined. I shudder at the thought still.

[Masterlegodude]

Did you ever do the elephant launcher?
It's awesome if you can get a bunch of people in some warthogs in it at the same time.

I don't recall, but i did manage to flip the elephant one day to notice the silly "How did you do that?" message before i even read about that online

Oh, another thing i enjoyed doing on maps like Foundry and Rat's Nest was having infinite explosions with fusion coils and propane tanks with adjusted respawn settings

I think that's still possible to do in newer Halos

[Zack]

I don't recall, but i did manage to flip the elephant one day to notice the silly "How did you do that?" message before i even read about that online

Oh, another thing i enjoyed doing on maps like Foundry and Rat's Nest was having infinite explosions with fusion coils and propane tanks with adjusted respawn settings

I think that's still possible to do in newer Halos

Oh god, I absolutely loved messing around on Foundry. I managed to get outside the map once and built some neat stuff there.

I somehow ended up with a bunch of Left 4 Dead maps made on Foundry, which was pretty interesting.


My favorite map was that DLC map on the docks that I forgot the name of. It was just such an interesting setting, IMO.

[Masterlegodude]

My favorite map was that DLC map on the docks that I forgot the name of. It was just such an interesting setting, IMO.

Longshore

That map was interesting, the aircraft carriers had those cutouts of pelicans and those jets from The Art of Halo 3 that were later actually seen flyer overhead in ODST and a picture of Fronk on one of the team's base would slowly blink it's eyes over the course of a game

I also decided to make a clean version of Fronk from the billboard one day just because i liked how it looked

[Foxscotch]

Apparently the Dawn's cryo pods come equipped with nanobots that Cortana used to change the armor. She also modified the firmware, which explains the UI changes and compatibility with armor abilities.

I'm not into this handwave stuff i need a REAL reason

what really want is for is microsoft admitting that they made a bad decision in changing it
from a continuity perspective but also from an aesthetic perspective because halo 4 armors were ugly including the master chief's

[McJob]

i need a REAL reason

My assumption is that if all the games had the same art style (343's art style as opposed to Bungie's), that's how the armour would have looked in Halo 2 and 3. Of course, 343 didn't just up the poly count; they went ahead and changed the entire art style.

If Bungie did Halo 4, the game would have probably looked more consistent with Halo 3 and Halo: Reach.

[·::Kishgal::·]

Holy stuff dude, it's a console level editor. What the forget do you expect.

I don't see why it being on a console is an excuse for not being the best it can be. Just because that's the norm doesn't really mean that that's okay.

[blueblur121]

i need a REAL reason

Okay. It's different because 343 changed it.

[blueblur121]

Hey remember how the Halo 5 beta was 10.27 gigabytes?
The release date is 10/27.
Those clever bastards.