SGP: Report - Reappearing Dumpsters and More

[Hoho5000]

After doing some more research, I've noticed some interesting things happening. Starting on MS, I usually go to the nearest supply cache to grab a mongoose. Well, I went there first thing without turning on my VISR. When the door opened, I didn't see any glyphs on the wall. None at all, no even the faint traces that you can see with your VISR off. I turned my VISR on, and they all appeared like normal. When I turned it off, they were still visible. When I watched the replay, I could see the glyphs quite clearly, even before turning on my VISR. Odd...

Anyways, I then took a mongoose over to the disappearing door at District 8. Needless to say, it was still there. Then I went to the glyph area in District 6, went back, and the door was gone like usual. Then, I went back to District 5. Before I got there, I noticed the garbage can usually in front of the door wasn't there. When I got up to the door, it suddenly appeared.
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This happened right after it loaded the District 5 BSP.

Just a little background on Halo maps, each "mission" is stored in a .map file. The level geometry itself is split into different BSPs (except for multiplayer maps) so you have a bunch of smaller areas that make up the whole level. This way, the whole level isn't loaded into memory at the same time as that would be a waste of memory. In previous halo games (Halo 1 comes to mind), only one BSP would ever be loaded at a time. At certain points in the level, you have to switch to the next BSP to keep going on in the level. This is done through trigger volumes and scripting. When a player enters the trigger volume, a script gets called that switches the BSP. In ODST, each district of MS is a separate BSP, and as far as I can tell, ODST can have two of these loaded at a time (I'm pretty sure). The loading of each of these occurs when you approach a security door to another district.

Anyways, when I got back to District 5, some of the Optican health terminals were missing. The only part left of them was the screen, which was just floating in space. I had seen this before, but I went back and got pics.
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This has only ever happened (I think) after I've done gone to the area in District 6. This fact leads me to believe that going to that specific area is causing some sort of loading glitch. Still, it doesn't make much sense that going to this particular area, one filled with glyphs, would cause all these things to happen... Hmm...

[ColdGlider]

That's a very informative report, Hoho.  Actually, that was probably a perfect report.  Just the facts, based on testing, with photos.

Back when I was playing with the barrier codes, I would move "two districts away" in order to ensure that the BSP would reload. 

First I would note the code on the barrier in front of the doors from D04 to D06.  I would move from D04 into D06 and proceed straight across to the doors into D08.  I wouldn't actually cross the doors into D08, because the volume trigger would load up the D08 BSP before the doors ever opened.  (Otherwise there would be nothing to see, natch!)  At this point, BSP memory was populated with D08 and my current district, D06.

I would then do a 180 and head back into D06 which would cause no reload, as expected.  As I walked through D06 to the D04 doors (with the game having recently replaced D04 with D08 in memory) it would indeed trigger a reload of the D04 BSP.  All of this is expected behavior and matches your description of how things work behind the scenes.  The odd thing is that when I walked into D04 and stood in the same spot I began at (in front of the barrier) I would typically observe that the barrier's code had changed, indicating (to me) that a different object had been placed there.

From your knowledge of the architecture, does the facility exist to select a random (or even sequential) object to populate a given spot?  (I'm thinking heck no.)  If not, then a script would be required, as you previously indicated, correct?

And if that is the case, why would a script be written to randomly (or sequentially) select from a population of differently coded barrier objects to put in the same spot?

Conceptually, it makes a lot of sense to me to have an assortment of different codes, or IDs for the barriers in-game.  It could indicate the UNSC military unit that owned the piece of equipment, for example.  But intentionally putting different ones in the same place?

Perhaps the code image is an overlay.  I don't believe I have witnessed a code ever disappear, although I have witnessed an entire barrier disappear in D04.  Does my "overlay" concept even make sense to you from a technical standpoint?  Am I way off here?

This is begging me to make a new video.  My "to do" list keeps growing...

[Hoho5000]

By no means am I an expert, but what you are describing sounds like different permutations of scenery spawning. I know the most about Halo 1 because the mod tools have been released (and fully unlocked . The model tag of these barriers was probably compiled with several variations, each referencing the different images. In Halo 1, unless you specify a specific permutation to spawn, one will be chosen randomly. I never noticed that myself (I wasn't really paying attention), but I'll look out for it next time I play.

[ColdGlider]

Very enlightening, Hoho.  Please keep us up to date.  I'm going to I split this off to its own topic.

[Hoho5000]

Well, I managed to get the Super TriGlyph to show up somehow. This wasn't what I was trying to do, but I was in the area, and thought I'd pay the Magic Wall a visit. I had just gone through District 6, but did not stop or venture into the glyph area. After I got the Super Tri, I went back to District 6. All the glyphs along with "BELIEVE" were completely gone. This time, I went into the area, then back to the Magic Wall. It was blank. Then I went back to District 6. The glyphs were back, but "BELIEVE" was still gone. Oh, and going into the glyph area in District 6 while there were no visible glyphs still caused the doors in District 8 to disappear. Hmm...

[EnigmaBiz]

Not really sure if I am posting in the right place. But it did involve a dumpster, so I was trying to block a door open by pushing dumpster in the way with a mongoose and actually flipped the mongoose with me inside the dumpster, turning me into a dumpoose, for all of 5sec. Anyways I moved a truck 2 dumpsters and a mongoose in the gates path. ( I know ColdGlider has done something along these lines) I walked away to another gate and returned to find that the gate had closed.

But...when running Theater mode, interesting things happened...

1.) just before the gate closed, the gate itself disappeared revealing a blue screen with background mapping and buildings.
2.) everything i placed to block the gate disappeared.
3.) in monitor I had everything paused while the gate was glitched, every time i approached it i was either teleported back to my ODST of whisked away to another area of a different part of MS.

   

[Scatcycle]

yeah, whenever im goin on a mongoose i would be like "oh notin here" then pass it and it appears in corner of my eye "wait what? was that just there? trickkyyy....."