Project Files
- Zeus uses project files with the extension .zprj. (I can't use .zpj, .zpr or .zpf, and even though Eschaton uses .meta, which is already in use, I want to avoid extension conflicts.) Project files include all opened maps, tags, gametypes, savegame files, and anything else you decide to modify in a single Halo modding session. All these files associated with a project are copied to a folder named after your project and the files are all stored into application memory (in Eschaton terms, maps are always expanded). I'll clarify this point in a later paragraph.
- Zeus can handle a variety of tag files, including all Halo CE Halo Editing Kit tags (such as .gbxmodel and .projectile), Eschaton .meta / .xml formats, and the Incyclopedia .incy format. It will eventually also support tag types for other versions of Halo, like .crate for Halo 2.
- Map files for all the Halo games end with .map. All these files will be supported.
Files with the following extensions will also be supported: .sav, .lst, and .bin. These include saved game files, autosaved checkpoints, player profiles, and gametypes.
Zeus Tutorial
Note: While the program is in alpha stages, some of the details presented below may change. I welcome your comments on this interface. I'll provide a new tutorial with each release of Zeus. There will also be a video tutorial available, when the time comes.
The goal of this is to get you acquainted with all of Zeus's main features very quickly.
1. Open Zeus. You will be welcomed as a first-timer if there are no existing preferences available to the application. It will automatically open the Zeus -> Preferences window for you, where you should at least specify locations for your Halo games.
2. Go under Project -> New...
3. A save dialog will come up and ask you where you want to save the project. By default, this is your Documents folder (or wherever you set under Zeus -> Preferences), but you may want to use your Halo game folder, instead. Wherever you decide to save your project, make a new folder and name it after your project. For the purposes of this tutorial, go to your Documents folder and make a folder called "Zeus Projects", then inside this folder, make a folder called "Super Spartans". Now type Super Spartans into the project name and save it into the "Super Spartans" folder by clicking Save. The path to the project file is now Documents : Zeus Projects : Super Spartans : Super Spartans.zprj.
4. After you click Save, a project window will be presented. This is where we will do all our modding. I will now continue along the lines of this tutorial so that you can understand what each item does.
5. As I mentioned before, each project file contains all of our modded files (including maps, saved games, etc.). To demonstrate how this works, go under Map -> Open..., then choose an existing Halo Demo map file and click Open. You will see the map file in the project window. Save the project by going under Project -> Save. Now switch out of Zeus into the Finder and take a look at the project in Documents : Zeus Projects : Super Spartans. Inside the project folder, you see a duplicate of the map file that you opened; the original map file you selected in the Map -> Open... dialog window remains untouched. The advantage to this is that you no longer need to make backups of your map files before opening them, but the disadvantage is that you will be using disk space for each item in your project file. The project file itself uses very little space.
6. Now to get to the modding! Click on the existing map file from the list and press the Delete key so that the map we opened before is removed from the project. Now go under Map -> New. In the Map Information area, choose Halo Demo, and Multiplayer. TaDa! You just made a working Halo Demo multiplayer map! Granted, the scenario is empty, but if you were to save the map file right now, it would still load properly - you would only see an area of black void and you would not spawn; it would be like a multiplayer chat room instead of a playable game.
7. We are going to make the scenario for the map now. Click on the Meta Editor tab and choose Scenario. What's interesting here is that you will NOT see a long list of values that you have to sift through, but instead, you'll see a popup menu. Click on the popup menu and choose Player Starting Locations. You will see two columns, one for each team. Notice that by default, there is one spawn point for each team - one for red and one for blue. This and other default values are provided so that the map is playable when the Halo game loads it. Zeus will automatically prevent maps from being corrupted, and will fix any existing corrupted maps that you open in a Zeus project file, to make sure that those map files will not crash the game from any known potential issues. Clicking on a spawn point in the list brings up a preview of the location as it appears in the Zeus scenario viewer in addition to the specific details about that spawn point. You can manually type in the location's coordinates and rotation, but since we have the item selected already, let's close out of the meta editor and click on the Scenario Viewer tab.
8. In the Scenario Viewer, we are taken directly to the spawn point that we have selected in the Meta Editor. (Selections are maintained between editing modes.) Before we do anything further with this editing mode, let me introduce you to the Scenario Viewer controls:
So go ahead and move the spawn points to wherever you want to move them, and make as many as you want by using the (r)eplicate key. By default, replicated objects are not added to any previous group, and they are uniquely selected. So when you select a spawn point and hit R three times, you get only three new spawn points, not an exponential (1 + 1 + 2 + 4) eight spawn points. But you can change this behavior in the options above the viewport.Camera Controls (you can change these in Zeus -> Preferences):
esc - break out of all editing modes (this is your "panic" key until you become familiar with the controls)
space bar - toggle camera / cursor control modes
opt - toggle visual guide mode (while in cursor control mode, hold option and use the left mouse button to make helper shapes)
cmd - object rotation mode (hold command and use the movement controls to rotate a selected object)
delete - delete any selected object
shift - multiple selection
q - de-select all objects
Left-click - in cursor control mode, this selects an object; in camera control mode, this toggles a 4x-scope-zoom-magnifier of the current view; in visual guide mode, this selects a visual guide
Left-click-drag - in cursor control mode, this draws a multiple-selection box; in visual guide mode, this lets you draw visual guides as geometric shapes or lines
Right-click or ctrl-click - nothing
Right-click-drag or ctrl-click-drag - while in camera or cursor control mode, "grab" an object and move it; while in visual guide mode, "grab" a geometric shape or line and move it
e - move forward
d - move backward
s - move left
f - move right
mouse wheel forwards / a - move up
mouse wheel backwards / z - move down
r - replicate (duplicates any selected items, if possible)
w - drop to bsp ground (brings the camera or the selected items straight down until their models collide with a part of the sbsp model)
g - toggle display grid (1 square grid = 1 square world unit)
t - toggle lock adjustments to grid/round to regular values (like 45 degrees and integer numbers)
v - toggle birdseye / perspective view (birdseye view snaps the camera to 1km above the map, facing downwards)
User Guide:
• When the Scenario Viewer viewport is displayed, it is watching your keyboard and mouse movements. If you need to "panic" and revert to regular mouse controls outside the editor, hit the esc key on the keyboard.
• Press the keyboard's space bar to activate the camera. Now when you move the mouse, you rotate the camera view, and when you use the E, D, S and F keys and the mouse wheel (or for users without a mouse wheel or trackpad scrolling support, the A and Z keys), the camera moves around the scenario.
• Press the space bar again to deactivate the camera and activate the mouse cursor. You can click on an item in the scenario and move the item using the same controls, but this time they will affect the selected item(s) rather than the camera.
• Click and drag or shift-click to select multiple items. To select multiple items of the same type only, choose "similar types" instead of "all types" or a specific type from the selection popup menu above the viewport.
• If you want to move the camera and selected objects at the same time, although this isn't usually necessary, hit the space bar until you are in camera mode, then use the standard camera controls and right-click-drag (or ctrl-click-drag) the objects around; moving the mouse with the right mouse button down will move objects rather than rotate the camera.
• To adjust the rotation of an object, hold the cmd key while using the same E, D, S and F keys, or hold the cmd key while right-clicking / ctrl-clicking and dragging the mouse.
• You will also see some options at the top, like those that let you lock selected objects' coordinates or rotation values, and handle all selected objects as either a group or as individual items (so you can rotate objects around their local axes or around the group midpoint axis, and drop each item to its nearest bsp collision or drop it only until another object in the group collides with the bsp). You can create and modify selection groups, and change whether replicated items are added to the previous selected group of items, or created into a new selection group.
• Holding the option key down while in cursor control mode puts you in visual guide mode. You can add geometric shapes and lines in this mode by using the left mouse button: left clicking to select shapes and left dragging to make and adjust them. Visual guides can help you determine general distances between objects and to create geometric guidelines, like when you want to place a large King of the Hill circle on a map. Visual guides are not saved into a map file and will not appear in-game (they are saved in the Zeus project file). To delete a visual guide, option-left click the geometric shape and press the Delete key.
If you ever totally mess up in the scenario editor or otherwise need to abort, use the "panic" key, the escape key on the keyboard. Then you can select Edit -> Undo or just quit Zeus without saving the project (which will make you lose all your changes since the last project save).
[to be continued and revised]
