Unicode String
Files
Halo 2 is available to
people all around the world, speaking (and writing) different
languages with different alphabets. To enable translation and
support all these languages, it uses a special type of text format
called Unicode. Unicode is a format that supports different
alphabets.
For the purposes of creating a level, there will typically only be
two of these files needed, one that contains the descriptive text
displayed on the Level Selection screen and another that contains
the names of the various locations within the level (used for the
Territories game type).
Creating a Unicode Text
File
Using Windows Explorer, browse to the appropriate
folder. Typically this will be either data\scenarios\descriptions
or your level's folder within data\scenarios\multi. Halo 2 Map Editor contains an
example Unicode text file, and you'll want to open it to see the
contents. Note that although the file is a .txt file it is using an
extended Unicode form of this file.
Using Notepad, open one of the example text files. If it’s a
description file, you'll see something like this:
[Strings]
Name= "MyLevelName"
Description= "A written description of my
level"
To create a Unicode text
file
1.
Fill in the fields inside the quotation marks with the
appropriate information.
The Name box is the level name. The Description box is the text
displayed as the level loads in Halo 2.
2.
Replace any other strings with appropriate information
for the level, and then select Save As on the File
menu.
3.
Make sure the Encoding drop-down list is set to
Unicode, and then save
the text file in data\scenarios\descriptions with an appropriate
filename.
Compiling Unicode
Strings
The Unicode file must be converted into the Halo 2 format, which is a
multilingual_unicode_string_list file.
For description text, use the following command line:
C:\<Halo2ArchitectDirectory>\H2Tool new-strings
data\scenarios\descriptions
For location text, use the same command but directed to the levels
folder:
C:\<Halo2ArchitectDirectory>\H2Toolnew-strings
data\scenarios\multi\MyLevelName
Compiled Unicode text files are placed in the same folder as the
original uncompiled text file—either tags\scenarios\descriptions or
tags\scenarios\multi\levelname. To complete the process, use
Halo 2 Guerilla to
associate the Unicode file to the level.
