Tutorial 4: Placing Spawn points Using Halo 2 Sapien

This tutorial guides you through the process of creating a simple environment for use in the Halo 2 game engine.

Note: Halo 2 Sapien works within the tags folder. If you've completed the previous three tutorials, you'll want to browse to your working folder and then look in tags\scenarios\multi\mylevel.

Now that you’ve created a map and gotten all of the tags ready to load it, you need to place a spawn point in it so that a player model spawns and you can run around in the map.

To place a spawn point

1.      Start Halo 2 Sapien.

2.      Click Open on the File menu, navigate to your level’s folder, select the .scenario file, and then click Open.

Sapien is the tool that is used to make all game-engine changes to your level. You can use it to place spawn locations, weapons, scenery, and so on. There's a lot to load (everything that could possibly be used in a multiplayer game) so this can take a while. Once everything is loaded, you'll want to arrange the windows so they're easily accessible by you. For purposes of placing spawn points, the Hierarchy view, the Game Window, and the Properties Palette are the most important.

3.      When your map first loads, the Game Window may appear blank or as one solid color. This is due to the fact that the camera is located somewhere beneath the floor of your environment.

To move the camera, hold down the middle mouse button and press W, S, A, and D to move forward, backward, left (strafe), and right (strafe), respectively.

Hold down the middle mouse button and press R and F to move the camera up and down.

Hold down the middle mouse button and turn the mouse to look in any direction. When your map first loads, hold down the middle mouse button and press R to raise up the camera. Your floor and walls should pop into view.

To speed up the camera, hold down SHIFT while moving the camera.

4.      Once the floor of your map is in view in the Game Window, take a minute to look around. You'll notice the gray metal texture on the floor (remember f_il light_scratchy_grey?). You should see a sky around you—by default, this is the one from Coagulation, although you can change this by editing your scenario file in Halo 2 Guerilla.

5.      Go to Hierarchy view, click the + symbol next to the Scenario folder to expand it, and then click the + symbol next to Game Data to expand that, as well.

6.      In the Game Data list, click Player Starting Points.

 

 

Player starting points selected.

 

7.      In the Game Window, right-click to place a spawn location.

You will see a spawn point gizmo appear. Also, in Hierarchy view notice that a new item has appeared under the Element heading. This is the unique identifier for your spawn point. You can click it at any time to select the spawn point.

 

Spawn point.

 

8.      You've got your first spawn location, but it may not be on the ground or in the exact location that you want it. This is where the Properties Palette comes in.

Make sure the spawn point is still selected, and then switch to the Properties Palette.

You will see an item labeled Position.

9.      For now, don’t worry about the X and Y values, but change the Z value to 0.

This will ensure the player starts out on the ground.

To place weapons and other objects

1.      In Hierarchy view, browse to the Netgame Equipment folder.

2.      Just like when placing a spawn point, right-click in the Game Window to display a handle. It doesn’t look like anything yet, so you need to tell it what kind of weapon to spawn.

3.      Near the bottom of the screen, find the item/vehicle collection box, and then click the Browse button to its right.

The File Selection dialog box appears.

4.      Browse to the Halo 2 Tools installation folder and then to tags\multiplayer\single_weapons, select the weapon you want, and then click Open.

5.      Continue placing weapons as described above, as well as ammo, powerups, and vehicles found in their appropriate folders located in tags\multiplayer.

When you are finished placing your spawn points and objects, save your scenario. Now you’re ready either to edit and create environment tags using Halo 2 Guerilla or launching the environment in-game.