Meta faking?

[CaptainPoopface]

Can someone remind me how to meta fake tags? In particular, I want the game to think my modded rocket launcher weap is a magnum weap and my modded sentinel beam is a plasma pistol, so I can set the weapons on the map to "Pistols Only" and have my modded weapons distributed on the map(s) without ever having to muck with itmc tags or netgame equipment.

I'm also interested in the technique generally for other tags, because lately I am avoiding tag injection to spare myself SLC problems.

[T Beezie]

Aaaah.. good ole' "meta-faking"!
Maybe I can be of some assistance here.
This is something that I have used numerous times in many of my mods.
Its an older method of "fixing" certain issues when injecting new tags that are not native to your map that can totally wreck SLC.
And I am almost positive that it could also be used to fix your "pistols only" situation.
Gimme a few and I'll whip up a quick and simple tutorial for ya.

[troymac1ure]

Wouldn't it just be done here?

[T Beezie]

This method was introduced to me by xheadshotmastax.
It may not be the most "proper" way of fixing SLC, but it worked wonders for me.

I always used DotHalo for all of my meta-fixing needs, simple yet effective.
For this tut I added Containment's "gate mach" to Elongation.
After adding the new tag to your map using Entity, open your map in DotHalo,
scroll down through the tags and find the new tag that you injected, take note of the new tag's meta offset at the top of the tag window.

Highlight and copy the tag's meta offset, we will use this to overwrite one of our existing native tag's offset.
We want to find an unused tag to reference this to, for smaller non-vehicular maps I tend to try and find a garbage [bloc] tag from a vehicle.
For this I used the [bloc] tag- objects/vehicles/warthog/garbage/tire/tire
Using the copied meta offset from your new tag, paste/overwrite the offset of your native tag.

after doing so, don't forget to click the "Save Changes" button in the tag window.
And that's pretty much it... now just use whatever method you wish to spawn your new object, for example:
if spawning your new mach through the [itmc], you would reference the tire_bloc instead of the actual mach.
In my experience I've found that this can fix many SLC issues when injecting new tags, although I've only tried this method to fix machs, blocs, and bipeds.

But... I would assume that this can also be used to make your "alternate" weapons spawn in a pistols-only gametype.
For example, you would have to sacrifice the pistol for your rocket-launcher, by copying the meta offset of your RL, then overwriting the offset of the magnum .
And I'm guessing, but by doing so this should cause the RL to spawn in place of the magnum regardless of the gametype.
When I first heard of this method I told myself, "This sounds waaaay to easy!" But it actually works quite well...
I've used this during the making of many "mach-mods" that I have built and
I also used this technique to fix the "Buggers" in my Night-Ops MP mod, they were breaking SLC...
I pasted the biped's offset over a garbage bloc, then spawned the bloc through the char tag.

and if SLC really isn't an issue.. troymac1ure has the easiest fix.

[CaptainPoopface]

Ah, thank you. DotHalo? Ewwwww. I haven't used it in years, but I suppose it's quick and effective for certain things.

I thought I had tried Troy's suggestion in the past and not had success with it. I'll try it again before going through the meta faking process. For N number of modded weapons, this would only be N faked weap tags (assuming nothing else is injected), so it's not so much work.

Also, SLC is crucial. For the limited time I have available to mod, it is devastating to put the time into making one, only to see it fail on system link. Is the injected meta corrupted? Do I have shoddy plugins? Is there something about the versions of Entity I used for certain things in the mod that screwed the pooch somewhere? Which tag(s) is it? It's prohibitively time-consuming to try and debug SLC over system link, so I simply must be sure that what I do will work, even if it takes longer for each mod. With some paranoia, I now avoid injecting meta and I never clone chunks, using the meta sharing technique instead.

Modding was more feasible when I was younger and had fewer commitments...