iBotModz Tutorials: Halo 3: ODST

The Complete Halo 3 Modding Tutorial (Part 3 of 5)

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:35:11 +0000

The Complete Halo 3 Modding Tutorial (Part 3 of 5)
Written by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net

Requirements [list][*]-Xbox 360[*]-Halo 3[*]-xPort or xSata[*]-Resigner and ReHasher[*]-Container Edits v2[*]-HxD Hex Editor[*]-Xplorer 360 or xPort Software[*]-Read Part 1 and Part 2 of this tutorial[/list](all software program downloads at bottom)

Warning
If your TV that you intend on doing this tutorial with runs Halo 3 in "wide screen" (Wide screen is when you click the guide button and the whole screen is not covered) I suggest you change it to full screen. Screen shots taken in wide screen mode are a different resolution and size and will not get the same numbers that are in this tutorial.

Steps
If you have an account that you would like to make your screenshots on, sign onto that. We don't want our main account to be banned. I'm going to sign into my other account.

Lets boot up Halo 3 in full screen, and get to theatre mode. We are going to start a random film and take a completely random screen shot.

Once you get that to load, start it. Press A and X in the beginning to stop the film and bring up the tool box.

You can click either "autoname & save" or "Save as..." I picked autoname and save because I've yet to know what my screenshot is going to be or called. You can change the name once you've modded the screen shot

Since the other parts of this tutorial explained how to move content between your 360 and computer. I will skip right by that, we will start at the screenshot container on your xPort/Xplorer 360. Guess and check until you have your screenshot container file on your desktop. Something that can help, most modded screenshots end up being 0.27 mb and normal screen shots remain at 0.12mb (This is most of the time, yours might be different)

Now copy this file to your desktop, assuming you have the right file. (I keep mine on my desktop)

Now open up HxD Hex Editor and open the screen shot container file you just got.

We are going to extract the pure screen shot from this file. Start off by pressing "Ctrl+F" and search the word JFIF

This should automatically bring you to something simliar as this screenshot below.

This part is tricky!. Please follow it. You will want to take your mouse and select back from JFIF until you reach the end of the word "yoya" This picture below should help explain it better. Please don't select any part of the word JFIF. On the bottom of the picture it shows what block your currently on. Ours says "E148" so we will write down that sequence of numbers for the future.

Now we have to find the end of the screen shot. So "CTRL+F" the word "_eof"

This will bring up the "_eof" part of your screen shot.

Now select the first pair before the actual "_eof"

Now that we have the whole entire screen shot parts. We can extract it. Click "CTRL+E" to bring up the Selecting Blocks menu. For the first block input that number we wrote down awhile back. Mine was E148 (Yours should be identical if your screenshot size was the same)

Now this should automatically select all the texts which is the screen shot. Simply click "CTRL+C" (to copy it)

Now make a new file and paste all of that text you selected into it

I forgot to get screen shots of this but its fairly simple. Once you've pasted the new code in go to "File, Save as..." Then name is anything.jpg Then close that image out of HxD. We now test the image, opposite click it and go to "Open with... Your image previewer"

Now my image loads successfully. So we can now edit that image. NOTE: DO NOT CHANGE THE SIZE OF THE IMAGE

Once you've edited it, re-open that screen shot in HxD Hex Editor. If you get errors when trying to re-open the file, add .jpg at the end it should work. This is the file re-opened. Again you want to click "CTRL+C" and copy this to paste back into the container.

Go back to the screen shot container file, by clicking on it at the top. It should have your selection still saved, so simply click "CTRL+P" and paste over that. The text will turn red showing there was a change, simple "save it" to fix that

Now we will test our image, open up Container Edits v2

Open up the container of the screenshot. HxD Hex Editor should have made a backup so select the one that doesn't say .bak

Now on the drop down box select "Image Container" since this is an image.

Then click "extract" and name the image "test.jpg" It should promt with "extracting..."

Once done it will say "complete" If not you made an error and should try again with a FRESH container file.

Now we rehash/resign/retransfer to our xbox. I'm not going to cover that since its fairly easy.

And now the screen shot is on your xbox.

Downloads
Xplorer360.beta6.rar (55K)
Number of downloads: 5 -> Xplorer 360 Beta 6
360ConSigner.rar (47.04K)
Number of downloads: 4 -> 360 Con Signer
ContainerEditsv2.rar (994.74K)
Number of downloads: 1 -> Con Edits v2
HxD_Hex_Editor.rar (630.86K)
Number of downloads: 2 -> HxD Hex Editor
Paint.NET.3.35.zip (1.51MB)
Number of downloads: 3 -> Paint.NET 3.35
X360_CON_Hasher.rar (6.68K)
Number of downloads: 2 -> X360 Con Hasher

This was written 100% by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net. All images and words were written by him. No images were taken, and nothing but the glossary was from 3rd party sites. Part 4 will come very soon. This tutorial is only authorized on iBotModz.net and iBotModz Affiliate sites. If you see this elsewhere. Please contact iBotPeaches.

The Complete Halo 3 Modding Tutorial (Part 2 of 5)

Mon, 05 Oct 2009 02:01:05 +0000

The Complete Halo 3 Modding Tutorial (Part 2 of 5)
Written by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net

What we are covering in this session
Now that you have your Halo 3 disc maps that we got from Part 1 of this tutorial, we can move onto extracting user maps and the DLC maps such as Blackout, and Ghost Town to increase your modding abilities. We will also show how to find your gamertag's folder, find user maps and navigate around your hard drive.

Requirements
[list][*]-xSATA or Xport[*]-Xplorer 360 Beta 6 or Xport 360[*]-Xbox 360 Hard drive[*]-WxPirs[/list]
(All downloads for programs used are available at the bottom of this post)

Steps

First off get out your XSATA and XPORT and connect your hard drive to it. If you do not know how, please read the instruction manual that came with your product. I will be using Xport for this tutorial, it does not require the 360. It is a docking station for the hard drive. I apologize for the blurriness of my pictures, my camera must be broken.

Now open up either Xport 360 or Xplorer 360. This post will only provide downloads for Xplorer 360, and that is what the tutorial will also use. However Xport 360 works just as well. You should be greeted with a simple program that is blank. Go up to "file", "open" "hard drive or memory card"

If your hard drive is connected properly and nothing is wrong, 3 partitions will appear on the left side. If you cannot get your hard drive files to appear, go through the manual of your product. There are some settings you can forget.

Partition 3 is where all the files we need will be stored. I believe Partition 1, is all cache. Partition 2 handles the emulators and backwards compatibility for the normal xbox. (If that is wrong, drop me a PM and I will update this) ,and Partition 3 holds all xbox 360 related files. So we will double click "Partition 3" on the left side to expand it

As simple as it looks "Content" will be storing our files. You can double click content to expand its files.

Now you can see that the gamertag that is blurred out (there all blurred out, but the one with the most folders), is my main gamertag. It means it has stuff stored for 9 games (which represents the 9 folders)

The Halo 3 folder is 4D5307E6, which is within my gamertag folder. So double click that folder to open up the game's custom content files.

Now you will be greeted by a folder named 00000001, directly inside the 4D5307E6 folder. This 00000001 folder holds all user maps and game types.

You can now drag and drop those to your computer based on what you want to do. Remember the ideal forge map size is 116kb. If its anything different you either selected "save changes" or just broke your map. For such rehashing reasons and resigning issues, its recommended to make sure your forge user map size is 116kb.

Now lets get the remaining Halo 3 DLC Maps
Now lets go to Partition 3 and open the "content" folder as we did to get our user maps.

This time we will click the 0000000000 folder as it holds all of games content, that isn't user made Please ignore that opened gamer tag folder. I forgot to close it, just open the 00000000 folder.

If you did it correctly tons of games will appear on the right side. However they are in different names. 4D5307E6 represents the Halo 3 content and that is what you want to click on.

By successfully clicking on 4D5307E6 (Halo 3 folder) you should be greeted with 4 sub-folders. Those folders are 00020000, 00030000, 000000002, and 000C0000. Ignore all folders except the 00000002.

[
Now you double click that 00000002 folder to see all the Halo 3 DLC Maps. The maps are not in the .MAP format. They are in a container file. Your job is now to get those container files to your computer.

Use the "extract" function of Xplorer360 to extract them into your Halo 3 folder. Or desktop (your preference)

I'm looking for my Halo 3 folder, as it prompts for a place to store the file.

Now it dumps the container file directly into that folder. Don't worry the container files will stay on your 360. Your not moving it, just copying it. Repeat this for all container files, with current updates there are now 3.

Now we have the container DLC maps on our computer.

We will now take those maps and extract them into their raw .map format. For this we will need wxPirs (download at bottom) Open up wxPirs, and go to "file" "open..."

Now you should select one of those container files we extracted from your hard drive.

This will extract the files and make them readable. You will now see the .mapinfo, .bin and .map files. The disc maps .mapinfo files were stored in a different folder on the disc, so we will extract the files into the correct place of the Halo 3 disc maps. Follow the pictures to understand more. First we will select all the .MAP files with "CNTRL". I used the Legendary Mappack as you can tell, so If yours doesn't match you can switch container files to match this tutorial exactly.

Note on the picture above, how I selected all the .map and moved them to the maps folder with Part 1 of this tutorial. I then moved the .mapinfo files and .bin files and moved those into the same folder as the disc maps. This allows the programs such as Sandbox to open all maps without problems.When done you should have all the DLC .mapinfo, .bin and .map files moved into the same place as the disc maps, that we did in Part 1. The picture below is selecting all the .mapinfo files

Once you extract all the DLC containers, you should have all the .mapinfo, .bin, and .maps in your same folder as part 1 of this tutorial. This picture shows the root folder should look like with the addition of both the Heroic and Legendary Mappack.

This is a picture of how the info folder should look.

And this how the images folder should look.

If they don't match, you extracted the files to wrong place. You should get the idea by looking at these pictures, so go back and re-extract them.

Glossary
Disc Maps:Maps from the Halo 3 disc.
Partition: A separate part of the hard drive, split into "sections"

Downloads
XPlorer_360_Extreme_2.rar (54.61K)
Number of downloads: 1
wxPirs-1.1.rar (41.26K)
Number of downloads: 6

This was written 100% by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net. All images and words were written by him. No images were taken, and nothing but the glossary was from 3rd party sites. Part 2 will come very soon. This tutorial is only authorized on iBotModz.net and iBotModz Affiliate sites. If you see this elsewhere. Please contact iBotPeaches.

Get Sgt. Johnson without Pre-order

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:45:42 +0000

Get Sgt. Johnson without Pre-order

Requirements
[list][*]Xbox 360[*]Halo 3 ODST[*]xSATA / xPort / Transfer Cable (Just a method to connect Xbox HDD to Computer)[*]Sgt. Johnson File (download at bottom)[*]xPort 360 or Xplorer 360 Extreme 2 to browse HDD (included)[/list]
First open up your browsing software and use it to open Partition 3, where we will be dumping this file.

Navigate to Partition 3 > Content

Now navigate to 4D530877

Then select the folder 0000002

Drop the attached file in there.

Downloads

Johnson.rar (19.97K)
Number of downloads: 13 -> Sgt. Johnson File

XPlorer_360_Extreme_2.rar (54.61K)
Number of downloads: 2 -> Xplorer 360 Extreme 2

Setup_XPort_360_v2_07.zip (3.27MB)
Number of downloads: 7 -> xPort v2.0.7

The Complete Halo 3 Modding Tutorial (Part 1 of 5)

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:54:02 +0000

The Complete Halo 3 Modding Tutorial (Part 1 of 5)

Written by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net

What we are covering in this session

Today we will be cover ripping Halo 3 to your computer so you may use the .MAP files and image files which other sites cannot provide. It will require lots of things. For people saying "omg wtf, this ain't no tutorial for h3" If you actually modded and didn't sniff off every thing like XSATA and resigners then this is what you have to do. Most people go beyond this, but this is the lowest you can go. Halo 2 required a raw dump to get clean maps. So this is the tutorial built for Halo 3. Written by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net

Requirements

[list][*]CD Disc Drive[*]wxRipper (Ripping Halo 3)[*]wx360 (De-compiling the direct Halo 3 dump into files)[*]Halo 3[*]Phillips and Flathead screwdrivers[*]Movie larger than 8gb[*]Patience[/list]Steps

Here we have a normal CD Drive (DVD Drive if you want, but CD will work and is better to use just in case you break it) , with the sticker removed around the plastic piece that holds a disc in place

After you've sliced or cut your sticker around your plastic piece its time to take apart the drive. All driver are different, and all you need is some screwdrivers to remove the case. I've already done it, and try to match your drive closest to the below picture. Notice how there is only the blue thing, so you can "hot swap" it.

Now you must find a DVD that is longer than 140 minutes. So that will make it larger than 8gb. I'm using Pirates of the Caribbean 3. Any movie newer than 2006 however has better protection and cannot be burned using this method.

This next part is confusing and will require you to pay attention and follow it exactly. Otherwise you will get a failed raw dump. Your job is to successfully get the movie (Pirates) spinning around on the disc in the "hot-swapped" disc drive. Like so.

(Its spinning around in Real Life, my camera shutter speed is fast enough to catch it, even though its moving. Our frame rate as a human is too slow, so its moving, but for the camera picture its not)

Now load up wxRipper (Download at bottom)

Click that Magnifying Glass on the right of the green arrow. This will load up the DVD and make sure it loads. If it does you will be greeted like this. It will say "done" in the log box and show tons of numbers.

Now for the hotswap. Click "Stop Drive" under the HotSwap menu. That should slow the DVD down to a stop.

Now you can remove the little blue thing, remove the DVD and neatly and carefully place Halo 3 on the disc drive and place the blue thing back on top.

Go back to wxRipper, and go back to the HotSwap menu and select "Spin Drive"

Now Halo 3 should spin up and you now have "tricked" the system into thinking its burning a DVD. Go to "File" "Start Dump" and begin the RAW DUMP transfer. It may ask you to name your ISO, save it to your desktop and call it "Halo3.iso" This is temporary till we extract it.

This is the start of it. It counts the file size up on the far left till it reaches the full size. I took a picture fairly early so it has awhile to go.

Go grab a drink, and sit down this takes a good 20 minutes. I was gone during this tutorial, so I did not get a picture, and too lazy to burn another copy just to get a picture. It says complete and you now have a Halo3.iso on your desktop.

With this image, lets open wx360. Which comes in the same folder as wxRipper. Once you load up wx360. Go to "File" "Open"

Now browse into your desktop and select Halo3.iso

Like a miracle, all the files load up into a English language that you can read. Go up to "File" "Extract All Files"

Now it will ask you to save it somewhere. I save my stuff on my desktop. so I named it "Halo 3 Files" and saved it there.

Then you watch and wait as it takes about 40 minutes to convert raw .ISO material into usable files.Watch the log on the bottom of the program as it displays the current file being transferred and its fun to watch. The code below is an example of what is shown in the box.

subfile : 040_voi.map @ 0x288720, size 0x18137000 in C:Documents and Settings----DesktopHalo3Filesmaps

 subfile : 050_floodvoi.map @ 0x2B898E, size 0x17E50000 in C:Documents and Settings----DesktopHalo3Filesmaps

subfile : 070_waste.map @ 0x2E862E, size 0x19BA1000 in C:Documents and Settings-----DesktopHalo3Filesmaps

You now have all the Halo 3 raw files on your computer!

Next Tutorial features....

[list][*]-Getting DLC Maps[*]-Using these maps with Sandbox[*]-Making a Mod in Halo 3 to "Mod"[*]-Connecting to your xbox 360 with either xPort or xSATA[/list]Glossary
[list][*]Hotswap = Hot swapping may be used to add or remove peripherals or components, to allow a device to synchronize data with a computer, and to replace faulty modules without interrupting equipment operation.[*]ISO/IMAGE = An ISO image is an archive file (a.k.a. disk image) of an optical disc using a conventional ISO format that is supported by many software vendors[/list]Downloads
[list][*] wxRipper-1.2.rar (156.42K)
Number of downloads: 7[*] wx360-1.6.rar (80.76K)
Number of downloads: 4[/list]Common Errors

Q: I get this error.

A: You need to get a bigger disc that's not 8gb. Or you when you put in the DVD you took too long and the disc stopped spinning. You always need to disc spinning, until you stop it.

This was written 100% by iBotPeaches of iBotModz.net. All images and words were written by him. No images were taken, and nothing but the glossary was from 3rd party sites. Part 2 will come very soon. This tutorial is only authorized on iBotModz.net and iBotModz Affiliate sites. If you see this elsewhere. Please contact iBotPeaches.