haloman30

Introduction to the Blamite Game Engine

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Join the Team

 

 

So what is this thing?

The Blamite Game Engine is Elaztek's most ambitious project to date. It is being built from the ground up to operate and behave like Halo's engine (known in the modding community as "Blam"). It will utilize the same basic means of content: you have tags stored in .map files for most data, you have Blamscript files (.hsc) for scripting, you have Megalo for gametypes, and so on.

 

The Epic Preemptive FAQ

Why?


> Why not? Halo's engine is a joy to explore and play with. Maybe its rose-tinted nostalgia goggles, but many Halo modders do what they do because they enjoy it. Does Lord Zedd (Zeddikins) work to make old Halo betas be playable offline, work to improve tag injection, patch XEX's, or do any other number of things as a charity? Maybe. But I guaruntee he wouldn't be doing it if he didn't enjoy it. This same mentality is why we want to build Blamite. We enjoy programming, and the people we want to work on it are the people who enjoy learning and exploring and tinkering with Halo's engine. It's certainly a big job, but for us, it's a job very much worthwhile.

 

 

What about Unreal/Unity/[insert name of other game engine here]?


> Many engines don't allow for some of the features we want to include. Forge has been proven to be possible with Unity, as Installation 01 has shown a Forge mode in several videos. But what about modding? Not just an object editor, but a REAL modding toolkit - with the ability to add new armors, gametypes, maps, weapons, vehicles, characters, campaign missions, forge objects, props, features, and so on? This kind of thing simply isn't possible with Unity or Unreal. "But wait", I hear you say, "Unreal has free source code if you have an account!". Yes, this is true - and with this we could in theory implement some of these features. But let me ask you this - how long do you think it would take? It would take a significant amount of time for the team to learn an engine, and would almost certainly never reach full understanding of it. If we write our own engine - Blam-based or not - it would be our engine. We would know where absolutely everything is. We would have a much easier time implementing new features, expanding, optimizing, and debugging if we use our own code. On top of that, we wouldn't owe any royalties to Unreal nor would we need to worry about licensing with them, so that's a plus.

 

Hey, I'm a modder!

Awesome! If you know the ins and outs of Halo's engine, we'd love to have you on the team. If you happen to be Lord Zedd, Gamecheat13, or another "big-time" modder in the Halo modding community, please reach out to us - we'd love to talk with you! Additionally, if you happen to come over from XboxChaos, welcome aboard! Also, keep in mind that we need people with a basic understanding of how the engine operates - not just someone who can open a .map and change some projectiles and basic tag data. We're talking people who were able to create the thing you used to make those tag edits in the first place.

 

How can I help?

If you're a programmer, skilled modder, or otherwise qualified to help on a code-level, we encourage you to sign up by clicking here. If not, then spread the word. Get the world to know that we exist. Go on Halo-focused websites and modding sites, anywhere really - get the word out to make it all the more likely that someone will find us and want to be part of our team, to help make our vision a reality.

 

Useful Links

Blamite Team Signup Blamite Website Elaztek Gitlab Blamite Dev Blog Blamite Update Notes

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