Halo Map conversions

From HaloDemoMods

Foreword

The .map files bundled in the Halo game series are similar (but not identical) between the demo and full versions. This is fortunate for those who wish to be creative with the game in all of its versions: demo and full for Mac, and trial, full and custom edition for PC. Thanks to the efforts of several Halo modding communities, we have tools to convert our new maps from both the CE and Full versions to the Demo version. While this may seem illegal, technically-speaking, any modifications to the software is illegal, anyway. Nevertheless, the Custom Edition was created for PC to enable people to do just that, in their own creative ways. Therefore, one might apply a double-standard to the mac community, whereby mac users should be able to play their own maps just like the PC community does. One might also note the abundance of those in the demo community and the lack of availability of and support for the Halo Full (Mac) game. (In other words, you can probably only buy it directly from Bungie now and there probably never even was tech support for the mac community.)

Issues and Applications

The conversion process from CE/Full to Demo is very straightforward and is only possible for those who have the Halo Full game (really, its map files). For those using QAR to convert from CE or Full, larger maps will probably have some invisible holes in the BSP, which would cause at least players (bipds) to fall through the ground suddenly. Other issues include broken spawning locations (spawning outside the BSP), damaged sounds, particularly with weapon reloading, scope zooming and melee, and ruined weapon triggers that, when pulled, would make the application crash/quit.

Those who have converted several of their own maps have not yet noticed any particular patterns with the problems, although there have been cases where certain weapons will always have damaged firing effects or triggers regardless of the map file in which they are housed. An example is the "m249 saw" weapon, found in the HCE Database.

QAR internalizes any resources that are not found in the Full maps. In other words, new game content is stuck inside the map file (rather than linked to bitmaps.map and sounds.map) so that it can be used.

The other main conversion application used has a slightly larger learning curve. Harbinger can be used to convert maps from Full to Demo.(Wrong it only converts CE to Full) (It is not used to convert CE maps to Demo.)

Fixing the issues

Converted CE maps generally have more issues than converted full maps, because the CE maps are links to external data (nonexistent for mac users), while full maps actually have their data intact within a few maps (--UNCONFIRMED--).

There is a secret application called Pearl that can be used to fix some - but not all - maps' BSPs, but it is unavailable to the public. If it fails to work with a particular map, it will render the map unusable - that is, the game will crash/quit when it tries to load the scenario. There are currently no plans to release Pearl to the public.

EDIT: Yarly, Pearl has been released.

Methods for fixing the BSP and other damaged data are not forthcoming. You can convert maps with perfect BSPs using Pearl.