Starting Equipment

Starting equipment is the weapons and items the player begins with when he or she spawns in a multiplayer game. Generally, starting equipment is very basic, like a single submachine gun and a couple of grenades.

Halo 2 for Windows Vista allows up to six different pieces of starting equipment and different sets for each game type.

Defining Starting Equipment

Starting equipment is defined in the .scenario file, which is typically located in tags/scenarios/multi/ in a folder named after the level.

Click the Starting Equipment heading to expand it. One default starting loadout is displayed in the drop-down list. Changes to starting equipment are managed through three sets of controls: Flags, Game Types, and Item Collections.

Flags: Assigns grenades the player spawns with. By default, a player spawns with two fragmentation grenades. This can be changed to no grenades or plasma grenades.

Game Types 1–4: Specifies what game types the starting equipment is used for. The default setting for a scenario is that all game types use the same starting equipment. Use the drop-down lists to add specific game types.

Item Collections 1–6: Determines the item collection a player spawns with.

Specifying Item Collections

Each item collection is listed in the text box. If blank, no item collection has been assigned. To delete an entry from the item collection, select it, and then click Clear.

To edit the item collection, click Browse, and then select a new .item_collection file from tags\multiplayer\single_weapons or tags\multiplayer\powerups. Filenames are descriptive of the weapons loadout they contain.

Adding New Sets of Starting Equipment

To add a new set of starting equipment, click Add. Each game type should have only one set of starting equipment.