Halo 2 Photography

[T Beezie]

TBZ, please post your old mods!......... Cool stuff that was never released.

That's what I like to hear.
... and after some serious scrounging around,
I was able to find some of my old map files tucked away on an old USB thumb drive.
Found some pretty wicked mods that I forgot about and somehow let them slip through the cracks.
Life is quite busy these days, but surely I could find the time to resurrect some of this old shiz.





Marines -vs- Teh Flood v2 maybe? ^_^

[neodos]

T Beezie the king of the AI mods!

[HawaiianModder]

T Beezie the king of the AI mods!

So true, AI was the most interesting part of H2 modding IMO

[T Beezie]

[CaptainPoopface]

Very nice! I like the darkness and the large number of vehicles. Looks fun to play. Release coming?

Would you be interested in making an AI mod with the buggers and jetpack elites? I have a half-decent jetpack mod and a very decent flying biped mod that would be fun to play against airborne bipeds. There is a level on the gondola in which buggers and jetpack elites attack, although not as part of the same group.

[T Beezie]

So... I've never been the best at skinning. Although recently I've urged myself to learn a bit more of the ins and outs of shaders and such. While attempting to beautify an old Containment mod I've had lying around, I've learned something about ground shaders. Apparently, Bungie has a couple of different ways that they go about creating their ground textures. For example, if you look at the map Coagulation, the ground shader utilizes a 'blending map', which designates different textures for different areas of the terrain. Yet, while poking around in my Containment map I've noticed that this feature is completely absent in the production of the map's terrain. Containment uses only a single 512x512 bitmap stretched out to cover the entire ground, only complimented by it's detail map. So.. I've supplemented this by using Coag's ground shader coupled with my own 'custom' blending map. IMO, this really brings added life to an otherwise bland terrain, the only drawback I can think of, is that it would possibly tax the map's rendering cost? Although I have yet to see any notable change in the map's gameplay performance. Like I said, I'm still a n00b when it comes to skinning, plus I've been away from the community for quite some time, so this is probably old news.
Just glad to be back in the saddle again.

Very nice! I like the darkness and the large number of vehicles. Looks fun to play. Release coming?

Would you be interested in making an AI mod with the buggers and jetpack elites? I have a half-decent jetpack mod and a very decent flying biped mod that would be fun to play against airborne bipeds. There is a level on the gondola in which buggers and jetpack elites attack, although not as part of the same group.

I may release the New Mombasa AI mod soon, but I'm afraid that it may lack the luster of it's age old counterpart (Night Ops). Its quite rough around the edges, yet still very fun to play, I just don't wanna waste my time polishing a turd.

And the jet-pack mod thing sounds like alot of fun, I'm just sooo taxed for time these days.
I recently got married, and I also have a little one on the way!
And between all that and work, sadly my spare time is little and far in between.

[T Beezie]

New skin coming along nicely

[XZodia]

cool! =)
tb have you got aim/msn/other? I have an idea for a vehi which would work in your map...

[XZodia]

WIP Hover Hog, with custom anti-grav

I'm really happy with the anti-grav, I tried to capture the feel of the warthog while making it clearly anti-grav.

[DoorM4n]

Badaaaaaaaasssssssssssssss!

[XZodia]

After the UNSC salvaged part of a covenant vehicle, top scientists reverse engineered it and developed this prototype Anti-gravity Warthog.

[DoorM4n]

Maaaan! That is awesome! When you said top scientists, I thought of Family guy! ! haha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doARYLLi7Jo

[CaptainPoopface]

Nice Xzodia! Does it actually hover like the Ghost, or is it basically a Warthog with the tires rotated and the material effects nulled? :p I remember trying to change the hover height of the Ghost and having quite a hard time balancing the thrusters so it wouldn't just flop over when you got in. What does the L trigger do? It is pretty easy to add an effect acceleration for a boost like Turk645 did. Or you could incorporate Demonic's jumping warthog capability. That would be cool.

Upload a patch for it? Or are you collaborating with T Beezie (say yes)?

I also tried making the tank go faster, but it would do a backflip when you approached a vertical wall because the treads were too strong. Vehicles are tricky to manipulate.

[XZodia]

Yes, it actually hovers like a ghost. Well more like a modified spectre =P. It has the feel of a warthog but is clearly anti-grav
There are no cheap haxzorz here lol.

Left trigger is boost. The faster the warthog moves, the brighter the lens flares on the jets are.
It sounds just right too.

Jumping might be cool...

I'll upload a patch, this I did on my own but might give it to T Beezie (whom I recently introduced to MPC).
However, I have another vehicle in mind the mod he says he is working on.

The trick with the tank is to give it the gears of a warthog.

edit:
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2121&p=35283

[T Beezie]

Behold... teh uber hi-rez!

[DoorM4n]

There are no cheap haxzorz here lol.

HAHAHA, I feel like a lot of my maps are ghetto rigged.

T-Beezie! Release that!!!

[T Beezie]

So... I had the idea today to play around with some "armor effects".
I knew it was possible to add a [scen] to your biped, such as when Turk645 created his "Ghost Rider" flaming skull attachment back in the day.
During my experimentation with this I tried to add the "glowbugs" from Backwash, but it had a different outcome than some of the other effects I had tried.
They didn't actually stay "attached" to my MC, they just kinda fluttered around. But when I moved, they always followed.
Click pic for short video...

it was kinda creepy!

[CaptainPoopface]

That's cool! I didn't know they could be attached to the chief. I wonder what controls the delay in how soon they follow the chief. I would love to have some flies buzzing around me when I play. What happens when the biped dies? Do they mourn tragically and stay with the corpse, or do they disappear?

Also, your skins look great. I would love to see your skins on a larger number of maps, including the less popular ones (waterworks, burial mounds, sanctuary, etc.).

Further, I don't know if you're aware of it, but DemonicSandwich discovered a method called meta sharing that makes adding attachments and effects much cleaner. Essentially, you copy the chunk count and offset of a the reflexive that you want (by editing the plugin), from a tag that has that reflexive, and insert it in the tag that you want to add the reflexive to. For example, if the chief's hlmt has the chunk count and offset of the warthog's turret attachment, then the chief will have the same turret attachment. You can then change the marker and the actual attached tag as desired. This avoids the potentially map-bricking chunk cloner. See the attached plugin.

[T Beezie]

Meta Sharing? That's definitely a new one for me, never heard of that yet. May have to give it a try.
And when the biped dies, yes.. they mourn tragically, lmao! .. and they disappear soon after.
But, as far as figuring out how to edit the distance or speed of which they follow the MC, I have no idea.
I'm assuming that it would most likely be a value located within the [effe] tag, although I haven't had the chance to dig too deep into it yet.

[troymac1ure]

That's cool! I didn't know they could be attached to the chief. I wonder what controls the delay in how soon they follow the chief. I would love to have some flies buzzing around me when I play. What happens when the biped dies? Do they mourn tragically and stay with the corpse, or do they disappear?

Also, your skins look great. I would love to see your skins on a larger number of maps, including the less popular ones (waterworks, burial mounds, sanctuary, etc.).

Further, I don't know if you're aware of it, but DemonicSandwich discovered a method called meta sharing that makes adding attachments and effects much cleaner. Essentially, you copy the chunk count and offset of a the reflexive that you want (by editing the plugin), from a tag that has that reflexive, and insert it in the tag that you want to add the reflexive to. For example, if the chief's hlmt has the chunk count and offset of the warthog's turret attachment, then the chief will have the same turret attachment. You can then change the marker and the actual attached tag as desired. This avoids the potentially map-bricking chunk cloner. See the attached plugin.

This can be seen in some tags in ME2 if the reflexive is red in color. There's not alot, but you will come across them. They actually point to a reflexive outside of that tag (you will notice that ME2 won't let you edit that reflexive externally, you have to jump to the original reflexive).

[XZodia]

Actually, that red highlighting has shown me that there is a lot of shared data...
Its certainly useful to know when data is shared, thanks for that =)

[DoorM4n]

T Beezie, that was awesome!!!

[T Beezie]

Just some old pics that I had stashed away, thought I'd share...

[XZodia]

I remember seeing that second one but I don't think you released it...

[bumlove]

pic 2 looks like it would have been prime for doorman's pirate ship