kornman00

Since I'm here, I should point out that I updated the tools used for modding Halo Wars to include support for the new PC edition. You can find a download here: https://github.com/KornnerStudios/HaloWarsDocs/releases This time there's a drag-n-drop version GUI that makes building/extracting from ERA files easier.

I really should re-release this tool sometime. I miss the 'ol Megalo modding days

Tool will only output/write loadouts which have their names set. If an entire palette's loadout's names are all NONE (-1), then it will consider the palette unused.

I'd still like to see some variants with the iconized 'X' replacing the text 'x' Two birds, one cup. I mean stone.

1) The tool is 32-bit, not 64-bit. Getting the 64-bit versions won't do anything. 2) The newest tool isn't compatible with xml files generated from the previous release (which that CTF.xml was made from). I mentioned such in the HBO/halomods posts I made for the new update. You will have to decode a gametype using the latest release before you can encode with it.

In retail builds, objects will only ever print as "unknown" (since retail doesn't resolve object names) or "NONE" (the latter being equivelent to 'null'). If something is printing as NONE, then the object reference is essentially 'null', so it should be deleted.

You mention you were using the original tool here, but later you mention that you're using the 1.4 download, but don't mention the extact error you're getting. Are you positive you're using 1.4 (and not the previous release accidently) and are you positive you have installed the VC++ 2012 redistributables, as linked in the readme.txt? If so, could you post the exact error you're getting with 1.4? 1.4 comes with prefabucated .bat files which you can just drag and drop most game variant files onto and it should spit out an .xml file or .game file.

Just FYI, I'm pretty sure I made AND (ie, union group = -2) implicit for Conditions in the latest version (pretty sure new decodes will only dump out union group attributes on OR's, ie -3)

The new KSoft.Tool has been out since early yesterday morning Details here Download here

They can already do the work needed to reference resource data from stock shared cache files. What I'm suggesting would only involve adding new elements to the shared cache files and pages block in the 'play' tag (the latter is something they should already be doing in the case of the Longsword). It's a rather trivial process with a framework for working with tag data. However, if you're doing it all by hand, then yes it would be extremely tedious.

The second tag block in the cache_file_resource_layout_table ('play') tag contains the shared cache files list. It may actually be trivial to either A) add a new element to this block to reference a cache file with a non-shared resource in it or replace an existing cache file element to reference a non-shared cache (eg, replacing the campaign reference to something else in a MP map...assuming it doesn't use anything from campaign). It's been forever since I messed with resources in the 3rd generation engines, but I don't recall it being limited (ie, hard coded) to three different types of shared cache files like Halo2 was. Of course, the engine may index that tag block in a hard coded manner. So it would assuming the first is 'shared', second is 'campaign, etc. This would enable them to avoid having to hard code any shared cache paths (as block elements contain the path itself).

Actually I added the ability to decrypt .era files to KSoft a couple months ago, so you don't need to download or run anything else to begin modding .era files. Also, if you don't have an xbox that can run unsigned code, then you won't be able to mod the game. I've developed a campaign save editor for HW, but I can't say when exactly it will be released in Horizon. For an overview and notes for extracting/modding/building .era archives and their files, begin reading at this post: http://www.halomods.com/ips/index.php?/topic/369-ksofttool/page__view__findpost__p__5116