Hack 73. Adjust the Halo 2 Lighting

Add some ambiance by altering the lighting properties of your levels.

As every Halo fan knows, the lighting of a level can have a significant impact on game play. In fact, some players simply don't like to play on dark maps. By adjusting lighting levels, you may find that some levels are more interesting to you. In this example, you will be changing the lighting of the Foundation test map [Hack #54]. Remember to back up your .MAP file before you begin this process.

Altering the lighting of a map is easy thanks to Iron_Forge's ADI [Hack #50] lighting library. Make sure that you have this plug-in before you try this hack. You can check if you have the plug-in by going to the folder ADI\Libraries\ and looking for a file called LightMapLib.dll.

The plug-in takes advantage of the fact that the lightmaps are a single channel image. This means that every pixel in the lightmap is represented by one byte. The lighting plug-in simply "shifts" the value at each byte in all the lightmap images. This alters the brightness of each pixel in the lightmap, and ultimately creates a lighter or darker environment.

To use the plug-in, browse to the lightmap tag for the level. To find the right tag, look for a bitmap tag that has the lightmap_bitmaps in its name. This tag is usually under the directory scenarios\multi\levelname. For the Foundation map, the tag is scenarios\multi\marathon\foundation\foundation_foundation_lightmap_bitmaps. You will find this tag in the [bitm] Bitmap Texture list. Once you have the right tag selected, you will be able to click on the LightMapLib tab and use the plug-in (see Figure 9-9).

Figure 9-9. The LightMapLib tab

Next, you can lower the Foundation lighting a bit by changing the value from 100 to 80 (see Figure 9-10). This value is a percentage of the original lighting. If you leave it at 100%, it leaves the lights the same, 50% will make them half as bright, 200% will make them twice as bright.

Figure 9-10. Lowering the level's lighting

When you are finished, sign your map [Hack #53] and transfer it to your Xbox [Hack #54]. You will find that you now have a dusk version of Foundation (see Figure 9-11).

Figure 9-11. A more romantic Foundation