Hack 72. Alter the Textures in a Level

Change the look of any map by creating your own texture files.

In video games, everything from the players to the sky is given a texture. Hacking the textures of a level allows you to make the level appear as you wish.

In this example, you will inject the O'Reilly tarsier into the Foundation map (see Figure 9-1). You can find the tarsier on the O'Reilly home page (http://www.oreilly.com).

To work with textures in ADI [Hack #50], make sure that you copy shared.map, single_player_shared.map, and mainmenu.map into the ADI directory. In addition, to work with the .DDS format, you may have to add a plug-in for your graphics program (e.g., for Adobe Photoshop).

Figure 9-1. The original tarsier image

The first step is to extract a copy of the texture that you would like to alter. Technically, you don't need to do this step, but you will for this example besides, it gives you a backup copy of the original file. To extract the texture, open up Ch2r [Hack #51] and navigate to the bitmap that you would like to alter. In this example, you will be altering the file scenarios\bitmaps\multi\marathon\foundation\foundation_doors.bitm (see Figure 9-2).

Figure 9-2. Locating the Foundation doors

Once you double-click the texture, it will open in the metadata editor. From here, you will often see an error, but don't worry about it. Simply switch to the Old Bitmap Editor and you'll be able to work with the file (see Figure 9-3).

Once you have the bitmap open, you can extract the file to your PC (see Figure 9-4).

Figure 9-3. The original Foundation texture

Figure 9-4. Extracting a Halo 2 texture file

Now that you have the texture saved, open it up in your favorite graphics editing program and make your changes. After you are done, you may need to flatten the image. If you have any difficulties exporting to the correct DXT format, I suggest that you save it as a BMP and use a tool called DXTBmp (http://www.mnwright.freeserve.co.uk/) to convert it. This application makes it easy to save the file in various formats (see Figure 9-5). I had more success with this application than with the plug-ins for graphics programs.

Figure 9-5. The Foundation doors open in DXTBmp

After making your changes, simply use the Inject option in Ch2r [Hack #51] to replace the original texture with your altered version (see Figure 9-6).

Figure 9-6. The altered texture injected into Ch2r

After you sign your map [Hack #53], you can upload it to your Xbox [Hack #54] and enjoy your new texture (see Figures 9-7 and 9-8).

Figure 9-7. The altered door texture

Figure 9-8. A few more changes