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About this mod
A simpler elite campaign mod that doesn't make as many changes to the game as other similar mods. You are an elite, and your stats are changed to reflect how elites perform in multiplayer compared to spartans. That is all. THE CEA UPDATE BROKE THIS MOD AND IT NEEDS TO BE REBUILT FROM SCRATCH. I will not be doing this.
- Requirements
- Permissions and credits
MOD BROKEN:
The CEA update caused this mod to no longer work. In order to fix it, it needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch. As that is a lot of work, and will apparently need to be done every single major update to keep the mod functioning, I have decided I do not desire that kind of annoyance in my life. I will not be updating this myself until official mod tools are released, and, hopefully, a system is added to allow us to easily update mods.
Updates:
Basic First person version of the mod now has working elite first person animations.
In light of Lord Zedd's upcoming camera tool, the third person version will no longer be supported. When Zedd's tool is released, the Murloc Special will be updated to be First Person, so that players can choose camera perspectives using the tool. This decision is also to allow more usability for the view model adjustments becoming available in the next big update for MCC.
Description:
Unlike other elite campaign mods, like the Elite Campaign mod by Kableinstinct, this mod is much simpler in nature. For those who want an experience closer to the developer intended Reach campaign, but playing as an elite. Customization doesn't work, unfortunately, so I used that to curate the elite's appearance through the course of the campaign, using the Minor armor most of the time, but donning the space armor for EVA during the Long Night of Solace, and shedding the burnt up space suit after reentering the atmosphere for Exodus, then gearing back up in the minor armor when regrouped with UNSC forces afterward.
Since I'm a fan of third person, I wanted to make this in third person, but I recognize that not everyone wants a third person mod shoved in a mod that does something else they like, such as playable elite, so I made a First Person version as well.I may also create a version that makes some changes to the weapon sandbox, but as promised, the primary version of this mod will be the vanilla reach campaign. I did it.
The CEA update caused this mod to no longer work. In order to fix it, it needs to be completely rebuilt from scratch. As that is a lot of work, and will apparently need to be done every single major update to keep the mod functioning, I have decided I do not desire that kind of annoyance in my life. I will not be updating this myself until official mod tools are released, and, hopefully, a system is added to allow us to easily update mods.
Updates:
Basic First person version of the mod now has working elite first person animations.
In light of Lord Zedd's upcoming camera tool, the third person version will no longer be supported. When Zedd's tool is released, the Murloc Special will be updated to be First Person, so that players can choose camera perspectives using the tool. This decision is also to allow more usability for the view model adjustments becoming available in the next big update for MCC.
Description:
Unlike other elite campaign mods, like the Elite Campaign mod by Kableinstinct, this mod is much simpler in nature. For those who want an experience closer to the developer intended Reach campaign, but playing as an elite. Customization doesn't work, unfortunately, so I used that to curate the elite's appearance through the course of the campaign, using the Minor armor most of the time, but donning the space armor for EVA during the Long Night of Solace, and shedding the burnt up space suit after reentering the atmosphere for Exodus, then gearing back up in the minor armor when regrouped with UNSC forces afterward.
Since I'm a fan of third person, I wanted to make this in third person, but I recognize that not everyone wants a third person mod shoved in a mod that does something else they like, such as playable elite, so I made a First Person version as well.
This also uses the elite biped imported from multiplayer, rather than the campaign's AI elite biped. This means full support and animations for UNSC vehicles (except campaign vehicles like the sabre and mac cannon, which have been altered to allow elites to use them), as well as grenade and melee animations that don't freeze your feet when moving, and can be chained repeatedly with no frozen animations.
Lameass Fanfic Backstory:
Reach hides more secrets than just its forerunner ruins and the Spartan III program. Near the start of the Human-Covenant war, a Sangheili offering no name surrendered himself to UNSC forces. As the humans learned his language they also learned a story of bravery. An Elite who stumbled upon the sinister secrets of his prophets, that the divine crusade against humanity was all a sham. Unable to go public with this information for fear of the ultimate power of the prophets, he fled to aid humanity with the greatest weapon of war: Information.
Technology mimicking Covenant tech, such as energy shields for mjolnir armor, were possible thanks to this elite, and likewise was the spartans' training in Covenant Weaponry. The sabre program, creating shielded, orbit capable fighters on par with covenant Seraphs, were his doing as well. He even helped test flights for the sabre program (ever wonder why the sabre program was so highly classified? this is why). As he gained more and more trust with the UNSC he would eventually come to be deployed alongside other spartan teams, until eventually he was assigned his final deployment as Noble Team's number 6.
The Murloc Special:
The Murloc Special is my personalized gameplay sandbox changes added on to the Heretic mod. The changes it makes are as follows:
Assault Rifle and Plasma Repeater can now headshot, and have slightly reduced bloom, This is to make it a viable option as a primary choice so player's won't always drop it in favor of the DMR or Needle Rifle, since the AR and PR can now be strong mid-short range contenders.
DMR has significantly reduced bloom, and only becomes apparent at maximum fire rate. This is to ensure that the DMR remains the dominant long range non power weapon. If you got a large gap to engage enemies in, you want the DMR over the AR. Unlike the comparison to the AR/PR, I felt the Needle Rifle needed no changes. In multiplayer, it may have, but in campaign the 3 shot supercombine is sufficiently powerful against a wide range of unshielded enemies found in the campaign that it did not need a buff.
Magnum now packs significantly more punch...as a .50 cal handgun should. I originally wanted to lower the recoil, but I decided to opt for more damage instead, since I didn't want the magnum to fill the same role as the DMR.
Shotgun now fires 8 pellets rather than 5...since its an 8 gauge shotgun, after all. Range damage dropoff per pellet is also removed, and magnetism range is increased. Now longer range from the target just means fewer pellets hitting, which still means less damage, but now the shotgun is a power weapon, like it was supposed to be. No longer does it do little more than a melee strike can accomplish. Tempted by that fully charged sword in long night of solace? maybe you'll want to try the shotgun instead this time.
The Concussion Rifle...perhaps the most underwhelming "power weapon" in the vanilla sandbox...now does slightly more damage. As the fire rate is fairly high for an explosive weapon, I felt a minor increase in damage was all it needed to get in line with other power weapons of similar intended strength, like the grenade launcher.
The Rocket Pod Warthog now does a fair chunk more damage than before. For how unwieldy the Burst functionality of the turret was, and how bombastic the spectacle of its rocket volleys were, the results felt disappointing when a ghost can shrug off a close volley of rockets with several direct hits within it. The Rocket warthog should now adequately destroy vehicles when needed.
The Banshees ONLY in the New Alexandria mission now have increased lethality in its dual cannons, slightly stronger tracking on the locked on banshee bombs, and faster flying speed. This makes the previously negligible annoyance they were before, now a very real threat. The Flying sections are no longer the cakewalk they were previously. Additionally, the reward for jacking one is now greater. This change was not made to other missions, as the banshee is already plenty effective in air to ground scenarios, but in New Alexandria, it only engages in air to air fights, and in those fights, it underperformed.
In missions where doing so did not cause a game crash, the starting ability is now replaced with evade instead of sprint. If I could do this for every mission, I would, but I can't figure out why some missions refuse to allow the tag to be injected. On the bright side, it does add a touch more variety to each mission, with some starting with evade, and others with sprint.
Civilian trucks in the Pillar of Autumn mission now haul a little bit faster. The mongoose is still the best choice if you want to take the mission seriously, as the trucks still handle like a sick whale, and accelerate similarly so, but the trucks are now fast enough to feel natural, like something that can actually drive on a freeway, and more importantly, is now fast enough to make the jump on the broken bridge.
Player Colors are more vibrant, effectively resolving the issue of Elite armors having fainter colors than spartans using the same color formats. NPC elites, and members of noble team are uneffected, this is purely a change for player customization.
To be added in the future when mod tools allow them:
Dual Wielding (before you ask, see help wanted section)
Custom Elite support
Elite model for Noble 6 in cutscenes
Assassinations
Firefight variant where instead of biped swaps, the elite team is simply made friendly to the spartan team, and helps them fight the covenant waves (basically 8 player firefight, choose spartan or elite by picking red or blue team)
Improved rain effects are working, but It's such a small change that I don't find it worth releasing an entire update for it, but it will be included whenever I get more of this to do list done.
Known Bugs:
Reach hides more secrets than just its forerunner ruins and the Spartan III program. Near the start of the Human-Covenant war, a Sangheili offering no name surrendered himself to UNSC forces. As the humans learned his language they also learned a story of bravery. An Elite who stumbled upon the sinister secrets of his prophets, that the divine crusade against humanity was all a sham. Unable to go public with this information for fear of the ultimate power of the prophets, he fled to aid humanity with the greatest weapon of war: Information.
Technology mimicking Covenant tech, such as energy shields for mjolnir armor, were possible thanks to this elite, and likewise was the spartans' training in Covenant Weaponry. The sabre program, creating shielded, orbit capable fighters on par with covenant Seraphs, were his doing as well. He even helped test flights for the sabre program (ever wonder why the sabre program was so highly classified? this is why). As he gained more and more trust with the UNSC he would eventually come to be deployed alongside other spartan teams, until eventually he was assigned his final deployment as Noble Team's number 6.
The Murloc Special:
The Murloc Special is my personalized gameplay sandbox changes added on to the Heretic mod. The changes it makes are as follows:
Assault Rifle and Plasma Repeater can now headshot, and have slightly reduced bloom, This is to make it a viable option as a primary choice so player's won't always drop it in favor of the DMR or Needle Rifle, since the AR and PR can now be strong mid-short range contenders.
DMR has significantly reduced bloom, and only becomes apparent at maximum fire rate. This is to ensure that the DMR remains the dominant long range non power weapon. If you got a large gap to engage enemies in, you want the DMR over the AR. Unlike the comparison to the AR/PR, I felt the Needle Rifle needed no changes. In multiplayer, it may have, but in campaign the 3 shot supercombine is sufficiently powerful against a wide range of unshielded enemies found in the campaign that it did not need a buff.
Magnum now packs significantly more punch...as a .50 cal handgun should. I originally wanted to lower the recoil, but I decided to opt for more damage instead, since I didn't want the magnum to fill the same role as the DMR.
Shotgun now fires 8 pellets rather than 5...since its an 8 gauge shotgun, after all. Range damage dropoff per pellet is also removed, and magnetism range is increased. Now longer range from the target just means fewer pellets hitting, which still means less damage, but now the shotgun is a power weapon, like it was supposed to be. No longer does it do little more than a melee strike can accomplish. Tempted by that fully charged sword in long night of solace? maybe you'll want to try the shotgun instead this time.
The Concussion Rifle...perhaps the most underwhelming "power weapon" in the vanilla sandbox...now does slightly more damage. As the fire rate is fairly high for an explosive weapon, I felt a minor increase in damage was all it needed to get in line with other power weapons of similar intended strength, like the grenade launcher.
The Rocket Pod Warthog now does a fair chunk more damage than before. For how unwieldy the Burst functionality of the turret was, and how bombastic the spectacle of its rocket volleys were, the results felt disappointing when a ghost can shrug off a close volley of rockets with several direct hits within it. The Rocket warthog should now adequately destroy vehicles when needed.
The Banshees ONLY in the New Alexandria mission now have increased lethality in its dual cannons, slightly stronger tracking on the locked on banshee bombs, and faster flying speed. This makes the previously negligible annoyance they were before, now a very real threat. The Flying sections are no longer the cakewalk they were previously. Additionally, the reward for jacking one is now greater. This change was not made to other missions, as the banshee is already plenty effective in air to ground scenarios, but in New Alexandria, it only engages in air to air fights, and in those fights, it underperformed.
In missions where doing so did not cause a game crash, the starting ability is now replaced with evade instead of sprint. If I could do this for every mission, I would, but I can't figure out why some missions refuse to allow the tag to be injected. On the bright side, it does add a touch more variety to each mission, with some starting with evade, and others with sprint.
Civilian trucks in the Pillar of Autumn mission now haul a little bit faster. The mongoose is still the best choice if you want to take the mission seriously, as the trucks still handle like a sick whale, and accelerate similarly so, but the trucks are now fast enough to feel natural, like something that can actually drive on a freeway, and more importantly, is now fast enough to make the jump on the broken bridge.
Player Colors are more vibrant, effectively resolving the issue of Elite armors having fainter colors than spartans using the same color formats. NPC elites, and members of noble team are uneffected, this is purely a change for player customization.
To be added in the future when mod tools allow them:
Dual Wielding (before you ask, see help wanted section)
Custom Elite support
Elite model for Noble 6 in cutscenes
Assassinations
Firefight variant where instead of biped swaps, the elite team is simply made friendly to the spartan team, and helps them fight the covenant waves (basically 8 player firefight, choose spartan or elite by picking red or blue team)
Improved rain effects are working, but It's such a small change that I don't find it worth releasing an entire update for it, but it will be included whenever I get more of this to do list done.
Known Bugs:
On closer examination, it seems the height of the player model is not off, but rather, something about biped swapping the first person view of an elite over a spartan player causes the character shadows and body animations to behave strangely, such that it provides the illusion of floating far off the ground. However, the feet can often be seen clipping into the ground while not lining up with the shadow.
This is apparently a bug with the base game and has nothing to do with this mod, this happens on multiplayer maps as well if you play as an elite.
The Falcon passenger seat animations in Winter Contingency are all kinds of borked, but at least they function. While the change that causes this only NEEDS to be done with one seat, it was applied to all seats to allow compatability with co op of any number of players, so they can all enter the falcon. The changes also cause Jorge and the Player to already be on the ground before the falcons fly in at the start of the mission. That part is only fixed by undoing the previous change to the seats, which causes them to not work in the second falcon sequence, so it's kind of gotta be one or the other. I chose "being able to complete the mission without quitting and loading rally points"
Cutscenes still show Noble 6 as a Spartan with default armor. I tried swapping the puppet biped in the cutscenes with an elite to see if that could actually make Noble 6 an elite with weird, mismatched animations in the cutscenes, but instead, that just made noble 6 disappear. If I can find a way to fix this, I would LOVE to make this change, but I don't think assembly is enough to do this. We will most likely need official modding tools.
Installation:
Use the assembly patcher to load these patches on to VANILLA UNMODIFIED campaign map files. The assembly patcher sorta explains the rest.
Help Wanted:
Here are the features I would like to implement, but have encountered issues that the halo mods subreddit have not been able to find a solution for. If you know a way to fix them, please share your findings in the comments:
Replacing noble 6 with an elite in the cutscenes simply causes noble 6 to disappear. It would probably look janky if it DID work, since spartan animations aren't made to fit an elite, but it MAY be possible to inject the cutscene animations into the elite biped anyways to allow one to replace noble 6's model. I have not found a way to do so, though.
Injecting the evade armor ability causes some maps to crash. It works perfectly fine on over half the campaign maps, but others cause a Fatal Error followed by a CTD when the evade tags are injected.
While trying to add dual wielding, a couple issues arose, I'm assuming due to the use of the multiplayer elite biped, who is not programmed to dual wield, rather than the AI elite, who is often seen dual wielding in the campaign. Specifically, dual wielding a dual wieldable weapon will only break the player's animations. You will only fire your main hand weapon, and grenades are thrown instead of firing the alternate weapon. Switching weapons will reveal that the dual wieldable weapon WAS picked up, but instead of dropping it, you will switch to it as a "third weapon", and you can continue to cycle through 3 different weapons normally, until you pick up a new weapon, whereupon the dual wielded weapon and one of your previously equipped weapons will be dropped. As I've seen a couple mods get dual wielding working using the AI elite model, I can be fairly certain that it isn't the weapons causing the issue, but rather the biped. What I need is a way to get all the dual wielding animations and programming added to the multiplayer elite biped without totally changing the animations back to the AI elite biped. The goal is to get dual wielding functioning, while preserving the smoother animations provided by the multiplayer biped, such as grenade throws, melee, and vehicles
Also on the subject of missing animations required for certain features, the elite biped only supports assassinations against other multiplayer spartans, specifically spartans, and multiplayer versions of the elite. The AI elites, being of a different animation set, only support being assassinated BY spartans, even though the game has animations for elites assassinating other elites (see elite slayer in multiplayer). I don't expect to be able to get assassinations against grunts and jackals working unless there's some elite vs grunt/jackal assassination animations hidden somewhere in the game files.
Here are the features I would like to implement, but have encountered issues that the halo mods subreddit have not been able to find a solution for. If you know a way to fix them, please share your findings in the comments:
Replacing noble 6 with an elite in the cutscenes simply causes noble 6 to disappear. It would probably look janky if it DID work, since spartan animations aren't made to fit an elite, but it MAY be possible to inject the cutscene animations into the elite biped anyways to allow one to replace noble 6's model. I have not found a way to do so, though.
Injecting the evade armor ability causes some maps to crash. It works perfectly fine on over half the campaign maps, but others cause a Fatal Error followed by a CTD when the evade tags are injected.
While trying to add dual wielding, a couple issues arose, I'm assuming due to the use of the multiplayer elite biped, who is not programmed to dual wield, rather than the AI elite, who is often seen dual wielding in the campaign. Specifically, dual wielding a dual wieldable weapon will only break the player's animations. You will only fire your main hand weapon, and grenades are thrown instead of firing the alternate weapon. Switching weapons will reveal that the dual wieldable weapon WAS picked up, but instead of dropping it, you will switch to it as a "third weapon", and you can continue to cycle through 3 different weapons normally, until you pick up a new weapon, whereupon the dual wielded weapon and one of your previously equipped weapons will be dropped. As I've seen a couple mods get dual wielding working using the AI elite model, I can be fairly certain that it isn't the weapons causing the issue, but rather the biped. What I need is a way to get all the dual wielding animations and programming added to the multiplayer elite biped without totally changing the animations back to the AI elite biped. The goal is to get dual wielding functioning, while preserving the smoother animations provided by the multiplayer biped, such as grenade throws, melee, and vehicles
Also on the subject of missing animations required for certain features, the elite biped only supports assassinations against other multiplayer spartans, specifically spartans, and multiplayer versions of the elite. The AI elites, being of a different animation set, only support being assassinated BY spartans, even though the game has animations for elites assassinating other elites (see elite slayer in multiplayer). I don't expect to be able to get assassinations against grunts and jackals working unless there's some elite vs grunt/jackal assassination animations hidden somewhere in the game files.