Settlements: File Formats; Take 2

Yes, I think we are very close. Tested animated camels and elephants
last night. There was a oopsy on elephants not in the script but in
the Python converter from text to binary for Gmax users. (Elephant
bones have spaces in their names, I forgot this and wasn't parsing the
names correctly in the joints section for making the .ms3d file.) I think
we just have to sort out the anomaly Bwian is seeing with animated horses and
we are there. The only known deficiency is I can't handle animated
siege engines yet. Siege engines contain their own texture file paths
unlike other units and I store these paths in the joint comments.
Unfortunately, I also store the .cas header, hierarchy, and footer for
animations in the same place so there's a conflict there. I'm going to ignore
this for now and try to fix it up later.

There is also an issue about Gmax making a few extra bone assignments.
If Bwian doesn't see this as well it means its a Gmax "feature" that is fixed
in 3ds Max. (What happens is I do the usual primary and secondary bone
assignments on import. On export from Gmax a few random vertices end up
having three bone assignments, for some reason usually to one of the
weapon or shield bones. Oftentimes this is totally innocuous because
the weight on the third bone is zero but it is still worrisome that Gmax is
doing this.:no: )

I sometimes post good news/bad news sorts of things
but this is just a good news post. Yes, Bwian saw anomalous
bone assignments in a unit but I think this is solved.
I was looking through the Max Script documentation for
how to delete vertex assignments to correct the
anomalous assignments but saw this by serendity:

Edit: Apologies, serendity is usually spelled as serendipity.

Code:

---

skinOps.ReplaceVertexWeights <Skin> <vertex_integer> \

( <vertex_bone_integer> | <vertex_bone_array> ) \

( <weight_float> | <weight_array> )

Sets the influence of the specified bone(s) to the specified vertex. Any influence weights for the bone(s) that are not specified are erased. If the bones and weights are specified as arrays, the arrays must be of the same size.

---

This is literally a one-liner solution to the extraneous bone
assignments problem. If Bwian has the same results for 3ds Max
as I've had for Gmax this is a done deal. The crux is: any influence for the
bones not specified is erased and the original assignments i.e. those from
the .ms3d file, are enforced. Tried this out and it works for Bwian's custom
skeleton model where problems were noted before. Will post again once this
is confirmed.

KnightErrant, I hope you're not considering leaving us all in dire straits. Your work is beloved and needed!

Hi SigniferOne,

Long time no see in this thread for me I know. Been pursuing
too many other things; the importer/exporter for Gmax and 3ds Max
was intended as the warm-up exercise for the importer/exporter
for settlements. That projected three-week project turned into three
months. Now I'm back looking at animations and making tools for
Gmax and 3ds Max. I'm trying to recover what I did back in June
for battlemap animations for the dwarves and the armored_sergeants
with tails. I remember I got it working, I just need to repeat the
experiments again to get the details down. A wordy way of saying
I do intend to take up settlements again once my to-do list gets shorter.

It's all good to take breaks; modding sometimes can get too much. The most important thing as far as I'm concerned, is to not get burned out. So when I felt it was too much, I stepped away from Paeninsula Italica modding after November, but now am back in full swing to my Classical mod for Medieval (which is all thanks to you and GOM). So take care :)

Absolutely, you are right about burn-out. My problem seems to
go much deeper. I haven't played the game since last
March, I just program. I'm not grousing, I love this. But
tonight I was testing how to put a
new Musketeers anim in game and I couldn't remember how to lower my
camera angle. My guys got shot up for two minutes before
the divide sign suggested itself. I find this funny, modders are
the worst players because we never play. The last time I tried
to play a campaign I couldn't even find Wales as the English.:laugh4:

Numpad + and -!

Agree with you about the playing though, I haven't played a full campaign since the summer... and probably around March like you said. I can't wait till I put in my classical mod in; mostly I just load up the custom battle to test that the new batch of units is ready and working properly.

Whatever fun it is we get from the game, is good enough. I just hope you'll derive some further fun from all the other mods which will pour in with all the tools (Broken Crescent, middle eastern medieval mod with high quality units, seems the first contender so far).

You guys do some great work; I've spent a lot of time reading your posts, and learning much. It's fun to play a battle now and then too ;-)

Edit: I like the wolfslair user Id.
You mean play a battle for fun, and not to test out a mod?
I'm not sure I'm familiar with this concept. :laugh4:
<\evil music Join us in the quest for modding glory, hah, hah, hah,
oops, damn, my teeth just fell out. \end evil music>
Thanks for reading our posts, in the end, if we weren't having
fun, we wouldn't do this.

What I'm interested in right now i the *..worldpathfinding and .worldvegetation files, with the object of making some of the ambient settlement models more useful in the game, and increasing game performance by reducing and or changing the vegetation level and models in certain areas.

Have you studied their structure any?

Hi wolfslair,

Apologies, I haven't check the Wiki for awhile. Sorry, I've only looked
at the .world files, and only the north_european subdirectory at that,
so I don't know anything about the other files in the settlements folder.
I've followed as best I could the research done over at the TWC but don't
have anything to add. The buildings in the .world files mostly follow the
mesh format, i.e. verts, tris, normals, uvs, but there's always the two
mystery blocks I haven't been able to follow up on that prevent a converter.

Thanks for your replay, you've done some great research.

Right now it's the worldpathing file I'm interested in; and how the game reads from map.rwm to create battlemaps in a campaign, and on what basis the ambient scenery is generated and placed.

It looks like descr_landscape_ambient_settlements.txt is unfortunately just a holdover from RTW, I don't think the game reads from it at all when loading.

KE see if you can give it a try again. Take for instance "horse_breeders_guild.world", a simpler file and not something like a whole town. There'll be less of 'animations', less of weird blocks, and a smaller file like that would be easier to grasp about what's going on. Consider giving it just another try.

Any help to you guys?

http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showthread.php?t=148717

Anymore progress, sirs?