Yuri Bacon's Final Message to Carto

[divine1gore]

This is the message that Yuri posted in #game_chat to announce his departure from the community. As one of his friends, I am re-posting it here along with his attached files for posterity.

"I know no one really cares but I've decided to leave the Halo community, whatever presence I did have. Community is shitty and toxic tbh, but that doesn't really matter at this point. But I'll be nice and try to leave what I little I've got to give. Gametype modding.txt contains all the info I found out about H2V's gametypes (most if not all of which should apply to H2X as well) and how it stores things for custom gametype modding. Custom score limits, custom time limits, instant respawn times, no weapons, unwinnable (literally) CTF, fast movement with CTF flag, FFA Territories, its all in the gametype to find. Well, what's possible by hex editing the gametype file alone that is. Bacon.hpl is just the playlist I used with my server. I doubt anyone cares, but its there anyway. I'm not gonna bother to update my server anymore, so if you actually enjoy my server for some reason, theres the playlist file if you ever set one up (ask Divine, he'd probs help ) Goodbye, sad to say theres not many of you I will care to remember." -- Yuri Bacon

[bacon.txt should be renamed to bacon.hpl since its actually an hpl file but the forum won't let me repost it as an hpl file]

 

[demonsako]

Sucks.. he was really cool.

 

[| SCRAPY |]

Wonder what happened :/

 

[Yuri Bacon]

Thanks for uploading this to the forums. I misplaced my gametype modding file at some point when I blasted away an old Windows partition to make room for some tasty Linux. Saved me the work of joining the Carto server and searching forever and a half back in a general channel just to leave the server right after.

I've been working on and off on a program that handles editing gametypes for you so no one has to learn how to open a hex editor to get instant respawns and other cool stuff. It's just a simple Java program that runs in the command line, but I think it will do just fine for most anyone. Also, anyone remember that "extraneous" data at the end of H2X gametypes? ( https://halo2.online/threads/convert-halo-2-xbox-gametypes-to-halo-2-vista-gametypes.2801/ ) Well, its pretty obviously a hash, but at some point I managed to dig this tidbit of gold from the internet: https://www.gothi.co.uk/2010/06/xbox-save-resigning-a-technical-overview/ Basically, its a hmacSHA1 hash of the save data minus the hash, where the secret is the hmacSHA1 hash of the game's XBE key using the "Xbox Key" as the secret, then drop the last 4 bytes off. Kinda complicated (well, more like needless but this is what security through obscurity brings you) but if anyone wants it, I pre-calculated Halo 2's secret, which is `29 32 8F AC 19 66 2C D2 1C 92 C4 99 36 D4 A5 8D`. I've been able to both edit H2X gametypes and resign them, and convert a H2V gametype back to a H2X gametype and sign it, both working on my OG Xbox. TL;DR: My program will be able to convert between H2X and H2V at will. No clue when I'll have it done considering the very slow rate at which I bother to even touch it, but give it a couple/few months and I should have it done You'll know when I have it done tho because I'll make a forum post about it, source code and all (tho I'm sure reading my source will be just plain torture ).

To get to the point of why I'm actually posting anything here tho, here is a corrected gametype_modding.txt file, since in the process of referencing this file to work on my program, I've found a small handful of incorrect info, such as contradicting info what endianness the gametype file is, some options being listed as being stored in the same byte, a couple missing options and values, and other stuff. This was a result of just throwing the file out there without thouroughly combing through it one last time to make sure everything was there, because I made up my mind and wanted to leave servers right away but still wanted to post that file. I've done a better job of combing through the file this time to make sure everything is there and correct, but its still possible something in there is wrong, so if anyone finds anything, just correct it and post it back to this thread or something

And no, I don't plan to go back to Carto. Not soon, or ever really. I still love Halo, esp. Halo 2, but leaving the toxicity behind me has been great for my mental health, and I just don't care to go back to a community that honestly probably isn't any better now than it was a year ago. If ya still wanna catch some games with me some time, hit up my Discord DMs if you got me friended. I've got an Xbone and MCC now and wouldn't mind playing a few games