dinosaurJR's Halo Mod

[Iashar Koranin]

btw, im still alive. just been lurkin around, tryin to find kool things on the net and talking with my gal online... but im getting a bit bord. i cant wait for SCII to come out! Swarm for the win!

[dinosaurJR]

Hey guys - yeah, I think slump is the word to use... a combination of work (Ive been to Brussels on business twice in the last month) holiday time (Ive spent the last week in a cabin in the mountains with no lights / internet / plumbing etc... kinda like a hermit...) work again (we are really close to signing my first contract deal at work... it means a big bonus... also that I keep my job...) also accounts on Stardock AND Steam (DoW: Soulstorm and Borderlands FTW) plus I cant get Blender to work on my new laptop, also MS3d won't register (I might have to buy a new license... Anyone else have issues gettign MS3d to to register on 64bit Windows7?)

But, other than that list of excuses... slumpy... thats how I would describe things...

I am getting my mojo back, slowly but surely though... Im gonna go for a new MS3d license tomorrow, end of week at the latest, then we'll see...

[Dan1025]

Well it's been forever since I did anything with A2 other than minor changes to my own install, RL has been crazy lately even with the end of my uni exams. Now though I've finally reached the big stretch of free time I have for this summer, and I've gotten back to modding.

So with that I've finally cleared the backlog of H:FC models that DJ has sent me.

Starting off with a new Covenant unit, the Illumination Class scout corvette, designed to locate Forerunner artifacts, as well as filling a general scout and patrol function:

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Next is one of the Covenants non-combat units and it's corresponding station, the Unggoy Mining Freighter and the Plasma Refinery:

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Next up is what I'd call one of DJs best models since the Haven, the Covenant Nest fighter yard/deployment facility. Part shipyard and part turret, these mid-sized automated stations build and deploy Seraph, Gigas & Tarasque Class fighters, and are armed with heavy needlers and point defense lasers:

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Now for a change, a UNSC unit, the Prowler Class, small and not all that well armed, these ships are used for stealth missions by the mysterious Office of Naval Intelligence:

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And now for something different; the first Forerunner units placed ingame for H:FC, the Onyx Sentinel and Onyx Sentinel Pair. These small killing machines guard various Forerunner installations, and singe units can combine into pairs to increase firepower & shielding.

First, the single Onyx Sentinel:

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And the Onyx Sentinel Pair:

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I hope you enjoy the pics, and it's good to be back =]

[pnaicattak125]

well i think this mod is actualy a really great idea
it high time someone gave Halo its Armada counter-part and from the pictures id say it wont disapoint

[Iashar Koranin]

Those sentinals are beautiful, but might I throw something in for the sake of cannon? A discription of the Onyx sentinels from the book says(and yes this is straight from the book, no alterations);

quotes from book: -Halo: Ghosts of Onyx-

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"Fred moved to the holographic display.
Floating before him was a simple structure: Three cylinderical booms sat parallel to one another. From the end-on veiw they formed an equalateral triangle." (That you seem to have down beautifuly.) "In the center of this sat a sphere, a quarter meter in diameter. the booms were a brushed matte-silver metal. The resolution was just good enough to see a swirled pattern etched into the alloy. The sphere glowed dull red as if it were heated from within. Nothing connected the sphere to the associated rods. there were no shimmering energy feilds, either."(It looks like you've got it on the mark for the most part )

For a texture reference it's fairly descriptive I think...Ok, so to another point, people keep limiting the sentinels to their primary(single) and hunter(double) formations, but these, on their own can't hurt a space vessel, (I realy want to help, I'm not trying to come off as condescending)
So I'll throw in a couple more samples for the team;

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""Something's happening," Linda said.
The image in the veiwer zoomed in on a cluster of the space-
craft. Seven of them moved into a line.
The veiw pulled back and revealed other identical formations.
Seven of these lines stacked into an elongated triangle, and the
spheres withing the forty-nine-craft pattern glowed red-hot.
"Hard to port!" Fred cried. "Emergency power to shields."
The deck tilted.
"Answering hard to port," Will cried.
A blast of golden light overwhelmed the image in the viewer.
the frame of Bloodied Spirit " (covie ship stolen by a small spartan team) "resounded like it had been struck with a hammer. the artificial gravity failed and Fred
gripped the railing.
"Starbord side hit," Will said. "Shields destroyed."
Fred moved his hand over the console and Bloodied Spirit ap-
peared on the viwer. A gaping crater of blue hull armor smol-
dered white-hot. Crystalline electronics crackled, and severed
plasma lines spewed fire. As the ship turned, Fred saw the hole
was five decks across and and had punched clean through to the port
side."

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"Fred watched as more alien drones crystallized into triangu-
lar lattices. Individually they were no match for even a Covenant
single ship. Combined they had enough punch to atomize
Bloodied Spirit."

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Onyx Sentinel formationIII.jpg and this is my hypotheticle diagram of said formation

[IceBite]

Actually, since there is no real image of the Onyx Sentinel, that model could work. The book only says 'boom', but 'Halo: The Flood' describes the Sentinel (the Halo Installation one) looks like a 'cube with wings' if I remember correctly.

[Iashar Koranin]

The description you are thinking of, icebite, is that of the halo instalation sentinels, wich are created on the fortress-world rings, not the shield-worlds, such as Onyx. I'll give you the paragraph of descriptive text for that one as well since it has been mentioned;

Book: -Halo: The Flood-

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"It hovered in front of the Pelican's cockpit for a moment,
and light stabbed Rawley's eyes. It was made from some kind
of silvery metal, roughly cylindrical but with angular edges.
Winglike, squarish fins shifted and slid like rudders as the
device bobbed in the air. It--whatever it was--shone a bright
light into the cockpit, then turned away and dropped altitude.
Below her, she could see dozens of the things flying in a loose
line. In seconds, they dropped below the tree line and out of
sight."

Also, remember that the halo monitor AI, 343Guilty Spark, may have been rampant at that time, also he may have altered the design of his instalations sentinels for more efficency, as he was fully capable of doing so.
The sentinels on Onyx are presumably unaltered from the original design, seeing as the re-activation of the shield-world was very recent, and the worlds steward was most likely dormant till the signal from the halos awakened it.
343Guilty Spark was the staward of Instalation 04, and had full acess to all systems and functions of said instalation for millions of years, while the Onyx systems had not been run in millions of years.
The descriptions are fundamentaly similar, but there are many permutations of the sentinels to consider, the monitors themselves for example, are a form of sentinel-like construct.
They all seem to have spheroid cores, some have arms, those arms may vary, and the designs on/around the central bodys may vary as well.
Point being, the design was said to be of an Onyx sentinel, if I remember corectly, so I found it's description and threw it in there for reference, if it could be of any help.

P.S.
Ah, and I think I might have figured out a way to create the grouping affect of the Onyx sentinels for the more powerful blast described... post a reply if you want to hear it, otherwise I'll be trying to gather a bit more info for it.

[IceBite]

What I'm saying is that the descriptions in the books may not completely describe how the writers intended on looking. And, your offer sounds intersting......

[Iashar Koranin]

Ok so on the game, speices 8472, has the biopulse super-weapon, it takes
around 6-8 battleships, grouped with a frigate, the battleships fire their
energy into the frigate, and it combines the beam and amplifys it. Thereby I
think if we use a similar aproach, and modify this weapon to work with a
grouping of sentinels,and perhaps 1 special sentinel, and give it a good
range, it'll balance the playing feild.
Mind you I'm no good at modifying weapons, so this is only a sugestion, but
if you guys could get this to work I will gladly test it out on my setup.
Also, I can lurk the halopidia forums for a good sentinel idea for the central one...
(I WANT TO TEST STUFF)

P.S. Found a candidate,the normal sentinels(Ring world forms) have a stronger
variant, the enforcer Sentinels, they are colored diferently and have slightly stronger weapons.
We can use this idea and create a specific type just for this task.

[C.A.B.A.L.]

I think you mean the golden Sentinel Majors. Enforcers look like this:

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Ignore the Arbiter on top.

I like this idea, but we're going to need to find a way to get them into formation faster or make it so it can't be interrupted by taking pot-shots at the sentinels forming the thing.