OpenSauce Halo CE SDK Update #2 (RC)

[Dwood]

Turns out the problem was on this line:

return getShaderPathScenery(Scenarion->scenery_palette[i].name.name);

Instead of [i] I should have used [index]. Just needed to sleep on the issue. I spent about two hours trying to fix it last night. Found it in less than 5 minutes of turning on my computer. eff.

[Kornman00]

Well, while I was neck deep in some gamespy code, I stumbled upon a way to load OS *without* using a dx9 hook (so you could use whatever dx9 hook that exists, no more having to do the d3d9_proxy.dll workaround) or an external loader. It'd still be in DLL form though of course, and I think I can set it up so that you can specify the DLL name via a command line argument, eg, "-os:OS.dll". The DLLs could then be placed in the HaloCE user directory (under the OpenSauce folder) too (I'd more than likely wouldn't use this setup for the OS HEK dlls however).

[Patrickssj6]

No technical information on what you found? :P

[Kornman00]

Who framed Roger wrabbit?

[Patrickssj6]

You just watched that movie because of the hentai women.

[Kornman00]

While this isn't strictly HaloCE related, I figured out a few things in H2Guerilla that are kind of interesting. The internal builds (as far as I can tell) had what was basically a "create restore point" hotkey for tags you have opened.

For instance, say I have a biped opened and was about to do some changes but the changes were just some new ideas and would affect multiple fields and block elements, potentially causing some problems. I'd hit this "restore point" hotkey and then that tag would have it's own restore point I can later go back and revert to. Each tag that is left open while running H2Guerilla will keep their restore points (so if you close the tag or H2G, the restore point will be lost). What's neat is that you can save the tag (eg, this theoretical biped tag) back to disk then say "oh ffffffffffffffffffffffffuck, I just borked the change colors block! oh ffffffffffffffffffffffffuck, and I've already saved the tag!" then be reminded that you hit the "create restore point" hotkey and be rest assured that the shit you just borked can be reverted. So you hit the revert hotkey and blam, the change colors block and all other fields are back to the same exact values as when you first created the restore point.

I also was able to get H2G's tag importer utilities to run; there's two, an auto pilot reimporter and a visual tool interface (as shown in the attached image). However, I haven't actually tested these to see if they properly run yet without further modifications (eg, it passes everything to h2tool and does a dance), but everything looks in order. In fact, it would even be possible to write custom re/importers for tags too using CheApe with the H2EK (with some elbow grease; 1-2-3-not it!).

I'd have to modify some of the program resources to actually make these features usable (for testing purposes I hacked in some ways to execute these utilities). Hopefully will be able to include at least the restore point feature in the H2EK OpenSauce builds (whenever they may be) however, it would require me to redistribute the H2Guerilla.exe since I'd be adding data, not just replacing (unless I used some 3rd party diff tools, but that still complicates things). Not sure I'm savvy with that (the current OS installer auto applies the CheApe extensions, no need to redist the HEK exes).

[sevlag]

would there be any way to do something like this for CE? this would be VERY useful when editing in CE

[Kornman00]

Sure, if someone wanted to do it. I'm not that someone.

[Kornman00]

For those not in the know, GameSpy released their SDKs to indie devs a while ago. I used the opportunity to update the structures documented in OpenSauce.

This release is a pretty big deal as it basically drops the pants on the GS systems. Albeit, the structures and some of the core code aren't exactly the same from 2003 (when HPC came out) as I saw when updating my engine documentation with the new SDK's information.

Part of Patrick's code for making the dedis report to multiple game versions is actually a mod of the function "qr2_check_send_heartbeat" (in qr2/qr2.c). I had fun going through this fountain of new information. I like having my code on point with correct or almost-correct names of whatever program I've RE'd.

Potentially, new gamespy features could be added to Halo...but don't look at me, I'm just saying potentially. At the same time, no one really has to fear about gamespy taking down the master server for HaloCE...someone could use the info in the GS SDK to create an emulator.

[Patrickssj6]

So that's where you got your reserved spaces from :P

Something cool would be a WHOIS so the server shows its server location (country) based on IP? But for that you don't really need to occupy the reserved spaces in the GS communication thingy...

I cannot think of anything besides a flag that shows if the server is running OpenSauce.