Tutorial on Halo Map Switcher
Halo Map Switcher is a method that will allow you to easily switch between several mods and back to your original map.
This saves the painstaking copy-ing and pasting from your back up folder to your maps folder.
Also when you want to start some serious modding it is good to use HMS since it has shortcuts for all of the most important modding tools.
Before getting started
Now, we ofcourse want to use this program to its full capacity and enjoy it as much as possible. Therefore copy the halo.ttf file and past it in your font directory in windows. This is probably C:\WINDOWS\fonts. Paste the font here to get the nice halo style letters.
Make sure your HMS folder is in your halo root directory so probably in: C:\\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Halo\HMS, this way the shortcut for halo itself will work and you will be able to make back ups of the maps in your halo\maps folder.
Getting known with HMS
First things first, when you open the HMS.exe (after installing VB runtime ofcourse) some differences will strike you (when you have seen previous versions of HMS).
Lets
first look at what buttons there are:
-”Backup all maps” will backup all the maps that are in your halo\maps directory to a new created folder within the HMS folder.
-”Restore all maps” will restore all of the with “Backup all maps” backed up maps so you can play with a clean set of maps again.
-”About” is just something the creator wrote down, a small thanks for the people that helped him etc.
-”Apply a PPF” will apply a .ppf file of your likings to the map it is ment for.
-”Tutorials” will guide you to tutorials for HMT, SparkEdit and HHT.
-The options “map to set” and “restore a map” I will handle later.
-”Open with Ed-Hex” will directly open a selected map with the supplied hex editor so you can emediately start hexing.
-The shortcuts you see have 8 real shortcuts and one map renamer. The shortcuts are just to be set once at the define shortcuts and
will always enable a quick load up of the programs. New is “Hmmm” (Halo Map Meta Motifier from Xhzjang) which is kinda like .ppf
, but then for all maps (within limits), also new is the “BSP remover” (also from Xhzjang). Back are the “offset browser” and the “Ed-hex” shortcuts.
Getting started
Click the option “Backup All Maps”, this will, how could we guess it, make back ups of your maps, therefore make sure these maps are originals, or at least the maps you always want to be able to restore quickly! It will make a new folder in your HMS folder called “mapsbackup”, with a copy of all the current maps in your maps folder that you use to play halo.
(Notice
the new created folder named “mapsbackup”, all
backup maps are now in there)
Playing with multiple maps
The next thing I want you to do is see what maps you want to play with or edit. Some of my favorite maps are Cliffhanger, Keyes and Forest Gulch. All these replace bloodgulch, so if I wanted to play them on a LAN or anything that would take a lot of time switching them. If you have 3 or 2 maps that replace the same put them in your “Downloaded Maps” folder, because it asks for replace bloodgulch.map for bloodgulch.map (which we dont want), rename them before putting them in there. Name them alphabetically so Cliffhanger becomes bgmap1.map, Forest Gulch becomes bgmap2.map and Keyes becomes bgmap3.map.
You saw that bloodgulch was bg, here is the list of rapid switch (rs) names:
-battlecreeck=bc
-bloodgulch=bg
-bitmaps=bitmaps
-derelict=derelict
-death island=di
-sidewinder=sw
If you have multiple maps for these rename them to rs term and give it a number 1, 2 or 3 (HMS is 3 rapid switch maps compatible) and paste them in the downloaded maps folder.
Rapid Switch settings
If you want a short memory help on what BGMap is what map then:
First go to halo folder, then HMS, then Rapid switch you’ll see something like that:
Make a right click on “BloodGulch.vbs”
Choose Edit with notepad
You’ll see something like that … but in English:
Replace it with the names you want in the quotation mark:
Then save the file and run the RS.
Here’s the result after double clicking the Bloodgulch.vbs:
Rapid Switching
After this press a number for the map you want to play. (You need to have copies of BGMap1.map etc in your halo\maps folder)
Modding multiple maps
What goes for playing multiple maps also goes for modding multiple maps, for example: when you are modding its wise that after you have made some good progres you make a back up of your progres. Number your rapid switch maps now at the progres you have made so in time. So the oldest backup is now called bgmap1.map, the second oldest is bgmap2.map and the latest backup is bgmap3.map. In this way when something goes wrong you can just go back to the back up and start from there again. If you notice you did something wrong a while ago then take a less recent back up etcetera. When you make a fourth back up rename all the backups so that you still have 3 back ups that are the most recent. One of the wisest things to do is have a back up per every rebuild map since you cannot reverse that progres.
After a modification you can quickly set your map in your halo maps directory and or if you have done that click the “halo shortcut”, so you can test your modifications right away.
Halo Map Switcher also comes with some other handy features concerning modding itself. When you want to make a mod that changes something of a map in more than one way, like in SparkEdit some stuff and in Halo Map Tools some stuff then you can just click on a shortcut for HMT, SE or HHT and start editing the map emidiately. When you want to start some modding you first need to tell HMS the location of the modding tools. You can do this by clicking the “define shorcuts”. This will pop up a window like the one below.
Well
the thing it wants you to do is search for the appropriate .exe
file, so HaloMapTools.exe when searching for HMT
etcetera.
With the BSP remover keep in mind that for it to work you need to have the actual program (.exe file) in your halo\maps folder. The rest can just be anywhere you like.
For the offset folder you need to search for your a10.retail.html, because there isnt an .exe file that comes with offsets.
If you are unsure on how to use certain features of those modding tools you can click the “Tutorials” button that will cover tutorials for HMT, HHT, SE and HMMM.
Another feature handy for editing quickly is the option “open with Ed-Hex”, this will once you have selected a map, open it with a hex editor so you can start hexing. Just click the triangle, select your map you want to edit (this is the one in your halo map directory so the one you play with, so you can instantly test after having done anything) then click open.
The
Hmmm shorcut is a new feature and will help you open Halo Map Meta
Motifier quickly, especially when you have just modded some meta you
save time in searching it up.
Restoring maps
When you made a mistake with modding, or you want to play with a clean map again then you want to “restore” your map. Hereby meaning restoring the original map in your “mapsbackup”. We will take the example with bloodgulch again. Click the triangle, select the map you want to restore and click restore to (how could we guess again) restore that map. A little screen will come up and disappear when its done.
If
you dont know what maps you have been modding or just want to restore
all of your maps press the button “Restore All Maps”,
at the top.
However,
if you dont mod single player maps like me, its a good thing to
remove those from your “mapsbackup”, simply
because that will save time, because unlike the rapid switching, when
restoring a map it will copy the original map over another and with
rapid switch it just renames quickly.
Applying .ppf
PPF files are files made of the differences between two maps. To apply one click on the “Apply a PPF”
In
there you will a bar that asks to what map the .ppf should be
applied, what .ppf file should be applied to that map a searchbar to
search your .ppf's and a way to set a location to where you keep your
.ppf's.
(it is a good thing to name them in two parts, first part a small description so you know what its for and the second to what map they should be applied, example “forest gulch.sounds.ppf”, meaning it will need to be applied to the sounds.map and is for playing forest gulch.)