Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Hi all,
This is a continuation of a thread that had some formatting problems.
Hope this thread doesn't. I'm going to try a quick test in this post,
then post the real question. Here's a chunk of the settlement header,
hopefully it will come out ok with linebreaks:
That's the test; I'll log out and log back in to see how it goes.Code:serialization::archive 3 4 4 4 264 0 267 0 0 0 2 0 184.550750732 0 40 0 -7.09150409698 1.21208238602 -2.87348890305
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Ok, that seems to work! Many thanks to alpaca and to TosaInu for running tests to see what was wrong. Here's where I am: The fun starts at where tell says tThat's for the hexedit gurus: this is the byte location for where it starts getting interesting. There seems to be some 4x4 homogeneous coordinate matrices here before the float data starts. (I have been reading up on this.) Here's the float data: Edit: Line-Break test by alpaca:Code:ell says 3863224Code:+1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8681725860 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -2.2101776600 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.2806341648 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 57 0 0 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 57 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.1207747832 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.4997914732 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.9928042889 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 84 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8747580051 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8698613048 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -1.4081792831 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 111 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.1258755475 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.1756218821 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -3.3048241138 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 25 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.9229867458 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -4.0490546227 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.6631650925 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 1 2 0 0 0 200 1 0 0 49 0 0 0 1 2 0 0 66 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 139 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.5850151777 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -1.8052126169 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.7539926171 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.6999999881 1 8 0 0 0 202 1 0 0 50 0 0 0 204 1 0 0 51 0 0 0 2 2 0 0 67 0 0 0 3 2 0 0 68 0 0 0 21 2 0 0 76 0 0 0 31 2 0 0 78 0 0 0 203 2 0 0 129 0 0 0 209 2 0 0 130 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 111 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.1258755475 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.1756218821 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -3.3048241138 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 84 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8747580051 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8698613048 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -1.4081792831 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 57 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.1207747832 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.4997914732 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.9928042889 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 25 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8681725860 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -2.2101776600 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.2806341648 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 1 1 0 0 0 68 2 0 0 91 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 157 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.2069556862 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -2.0798547268 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -1.6279093027 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 1 1 0 0 0 69 2 0 0 92 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 111 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.1647853851 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.2269621640 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +2.0150504112 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 84 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -1.0282818079 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8543335795 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -1.4318115711 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 57 0 0 0/Edit Doesn't this look like homogeneous coordinate data with weird granny bytes after it? I'm hoping GrumpyOldMan, Casuir, or zxiang1983 will take pity on me and find a pattern in the granny strings so I can go forward with some guidance but I can't see a pattern here. Hope this post comes out formatted alright. Many thanks for the interest in the subjectCode:+1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.2263863087 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.3336898088 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -2.3126564026 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 139 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.2344752252 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -1.9429701567 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +2.2158527374 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.8000000119 1 3 0 0 0 208 1 0 0 52 0 0 0 23 2 0 0 77 0 0 0 37 2 0 0 83 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 111 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.2340932637 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.0248921812 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -3.7247326374 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 84 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.4714680314 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -0.2671088576 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +6.7157201767 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 188 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.5613649487 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +3.7120764256 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -0.0595130324 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.5000000000 0 0 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 25 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.1719831526 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -2.7414629459 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 -5.0158138275 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.0000000000 1 1 0 0 0 94 2 0 0 94 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 212 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.8394250870 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -3.9999992847 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +1.1408995390 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.3000000119 1 5 0 0 0 101 2 0 0 95 0 0 0 102 2 0 0 96 0 0 0 124 2 0 0 105 0 0 0 16 3 0 0 170 0 0 0 17 3 0 0 171 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 139 0 0 0 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.5850151777 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.0000000000 -1.8052126169 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.7539926171 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +0.0000000000 +1.0000000000 +0.6999999881 1 1 0 0 0 104 2 0 0 97 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0If nothing else, it would be fun to make villages/towns etc. more tailored to the culture. Really, the interest is of course the fantasy mods with round doors for hobbit villages but better architecture for old (biblical, roman, etc.) mod types would be interesting too. Love this stuff
, hope others do as well. KE Edit: Sigh, same problem, no line breaks....don't know what to do about this. I used Mozilla but I can also use IE or the latest Firefox. If anything occurs to people please let me know.
Last edited by alpaca; 08-08-2007 at 21:20.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Ok, for humour.
Competititon announced. My birthday is tomorow.
Cleverest entry wins; but no prize is announced.
No credit for "Dude, you're really old" however, clever
stuff like "Did you have hamburgers when you were
growing up" is pretty good. You have to check the
entry section to get the birthday announcements. If you
get it wrong you don't get to play.
Cheers,
KE
Last edited by KnightErrant; 08-04-2007 at 06:16.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
KE, How did you find the Model T to handle when younger?
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Yo KE, good sling job on that Goliath dude.
Oh wait, confused you with your cousin, never mind then.
a.k.a Lord hokomoko @ the Lordz Modding Collective
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Ok, only two entries in the competition but I liked them both.
Model T handled well but it had nothing on my Stanley Steamer.
Goliath was over-rated, taunting was good, a real clutch player
with a sword but no shield control. If Ashur-Steinbrenner hadn't
traded Marluk the Assyrian for Femnod the effeminant Babylonian
he never would have made it out of the minors.
Tried a few post previews using IE but the data came out all jumbled.
I'll check out a couple of other options tomorrow.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Hi KE
I'm sorry I missed your birthday, I was away with the eldest at an athletics meet.Originally Posted by KnightErrant
As an act of contrition I do offer you a cyber present though, it's http://www.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/index.html , a web site with literally thousands of common errors (and corrections) in English. We both know that it's the natural state for a man of certain years to be pernickity and pedantic, and this is an admirable tool to assist in that regard
Back to the settlements, I honestly tried to look at the data you've posted but I get dizzy without line breaks. What are you copying from and pasting into? Sometimes there is a funny thing that happens with line breaks. Have you tried opening it in Notepad, saving it and then copying and pasting?
From the settlement you've looked at, how many total verts and tris would be involved? Is it possible to set the individual models up as groups within a milkshape .ms3d? And positions based on bones/joints? Milkshape has the following limits:-
#define MAX_VERTICES 65534
#define MAX_TRIANGLES 65534
#define MAX_GROUPS 255
#define MAX_MATERIALS 128
#define MAX_JOINTS 128
Cheers
GrumpyOldMan
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Hi GrumpyOldMan,
Thanks for the web site and for trying to look at the posts without
line breaks. Kind of reminds me of the vanilla battle_models.modeldb
file. How did people actually mod it that way?
Two thoughts on my problem: Easy way/hard way. (1) Maybe I just
can't start a thread. Solution, hijack an old wiki thread and do settlements
postings there. (2) Put it all in a pdf and just upload it. I'd rather do (1)
because (2) is too hard.
Good news though! I reached the end of the smallest village .world file today.
I just programmatically hard coded through all the weird grannies near the
end that were driving me crazy. ("Programmatically hard coded" is the worst
oxymoron I've ever made up but what I mean is, rather than just put in the right
byte numbers for the grannies between data, I kept making up rules until I
got through the section just by doing a for loop.) I won't try to post anything
because I'm basically where you were when you posted the mesh file stuff
in February, I know where the data IS, I just don't know what all the stuff
around it is. Also, I've made bad assumptions in the early part about what
bytes should be integers/shorts/ etc that I should probably re-think.
Without posting data and recalling Caliban's input the upshot is:
Settlements contains vertex and triangle data that can be pulled out.
The texture file paths are in there like siege weapons. No bone strings but
there are other strings I'm not sure of (near the end). Caliban gave indications
that some of the quad bytes sections are lighting models and animation
place holders. This might be a problem as this doesn't mesh with Milkshape's
allowed data.
What I'd like to do next is just re-look at the data and grannies to make
sure the file provides numbers to read it better; but not try to make sense
of the header/footers yet (always too hard to start with). The data beyond
just the settlement meshes seems to be 4x4 homogeneous coordinate
affine transformations which I would not have recognized before.
Without thinking further, at least it might be possible to modify what's there
but not add new stuff (don't know what would have to change with the grannies). I.e. you have 30 and only 30 village types to choose from, BUT,
you can make those 30 village types anything you want. Fingers crossed
that that might be true.
Regards,
KE
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Hmm these line-break problems are pretty weird. I played around with your above post and if you cut the entries somewhere linebreaks seem to work.
Edit: All right, it seems the "[code]"-tags can't have more than 65 lines each (or there's a maximum number of letters), so you have to split very large ones up.
Don't ask me why, though, maybe the programmer used a fixed-length array.
I pretty arbitrarily split your post into 5-line-packages with 4 of your float entries and/or all the strings. It seems (if you interpreted the float/string stuff correctly) that this stuff usually consist of 17 floats and a granny string? 17 is really weird, being a prime number it doesn't make much sense for coordinates or anything unless one or two of the numbers mean something else
Edit2: Meh damn pattern-detecting brain... For the granny strings, a subdivision into packages of four seems to make most sense, too (skipping the very first one). The first seems to differ most, the second one is often 0, sometimes 1 or 2 and very rarely 3 - and the third and fourth are always 0 I think. So #1 could be an id or a link or something, #2 could be a flag with three options and the other two are unused (in this file).
I also read your post and you mentioned the 4x4 matrices
Translation matrix, huh. Makes sense in a way. The question is: What does the 17th float do?
Last edited by alpaca; 08-08-2007 at 21:44.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Yes, Thinking about it we've probably seen these 4x4 matrices before in
the mesh files. The book I've got on 3-D graphics has this to say for
homogeneous co-ordinates (but my words not the book's):
You can do rotations in 3D: R v = x
You can do scalings in 3D: Sv = y
but to do translations you have to do v = x + T
No longer a matrix multiplication but a vector add. Once you have adds and
multiplications you have a ring structure (abstract algebra) but not a group
structure (just adds or multiplications, depending on what you are doing.)
Rings have less known about them so groups are better. The cool part, and
the part I missed at university is that in projective geometry you can make
4x4 matrices like:
and make translations obey matrix multiplications and so be a group. (ThisCode:( R Tvec) ( v ) = ( x ) ( 0 1 ) ( 1 ) ( y )
won't work out well in HTML but this is all I can do right now.) These are
called homogeneous co-ordinates and are probably known to all the modellers
\but where news to me. (My Linear Algebra course skimped on projective
geometry.)
I've seen these in the settlement files but, like you said, there's a 17th float
which doesn't fit (rotations and translations and then an overall scaling?).
At any rate, I have found some overall logic to the .world file. The header
says 40 so you can read the first part: that part defines 31 entries that
have a sequence number/ There happen to be 31 complexes so maybe
that is the magic number. Then come 867 entries. Total mystery except
the header/footers contain a count of the number of homogeneous data
segments but also contain a secondary count of somethingh else. At the
end that number turns out to be 867. Wish I knew what it meant.
I've been refactorizing the code and, except for these oddities, it is almost
suitable for putting in for loops. Maybe a little more study will unlock the
inexplicable. (Or make me buy an X-box: Mario bros. was entertaining when I
played it against my daughter.)
Apologies, I should be fixing animation difficulties but I can't do
that at lunch time; unemployment would result if I installed the game.
@GOM, I've copied almost all of that interesting chapter, just a few pages
more. Sorry, been kinda' rattled with contractors and getting lawn stuff done.
Regards,
KE
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Thanks for the explanation, I already looked it up on wikipedia.
Scaling might make sense, since we're dealing with pre-defined buildings consisting of blocks it could be we have some groups here which have of course to be scaled uniformly (because otherwise they'd be distorted).
Ok looking at the file:
At the start we have some stuff I can't really identify in the header but you might know what it is (bytes 26-51), then we get a float followed by two 0-bytes and your number 40.
Following that, we have a four-byte 0 and then three floats again which might be coordinates.
After that we get 17 integers again (with some -1s in there which means it's probably settings of some sort) until we hit byte 147.
Then nine floats and 17 integers, again followed by 9 floats and so on. I guess these are the entries you described, but I count 40 of them. I'm pretty confident these describe something of our settlements, three points in each entry and followed by a number of integer-settings of some sort (a lot of which are disabled, i.e. -1 - or 2).
Rinse and repeat to byte 4229 where we get the 867 you speak of, followed by 867 almost identical entries (a lot of them are totally identical except for their "id")
Unfortunately I probably can't help you to any huge extent because I don't have that much time and you know the granny file formats much better than I do anyways.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Hey KE, is any work still going on on this? It'd be a shame if this wasn't pursued further
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Indeed!!
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
@alpaca and SigniferOne,
Many apologies, I've really dropped the ball on animation support and
posting anything new on settlements. Probably can't get really active
again until the yard stuff (don't ask) is finished, but here is where I am
on settlements. Made it through the village.world a few weeks ago.
Almost throught town.world lately. (Only getting stuff done at lunch time.)
Lots of new stuff in the town.world file, ArrowTowers, ArrowSlots, gates,
perimeters, etc. Don't know what any of it means yet but it all has to be
coded through. The good news is that I think I've seen all the granny variations
for settlement data. Without going into it here, 95% of the data in a .world
file is mesh models. They are organized as "complexes" with each complex
containing 1 to 8 maybe more "structures". These structures are a self
contained mesh with vertices, tris, normals, tangents, the other stuff
Caliban told me about like uv coords as cube normalized RGB values, and
animation byte quads (don't know yet what these are). Reading the complexes
has finally been reduced to a simple loop with no hard coding. Its all the
data at the end that is still incomplete. I'm sure if I try large_town I'll see
even more stuff I haven't seen yet but it gets easier each time I try another
world and there's only what, city, large_city, huge_city, to go. Even if they
require separate case statements for their own oddities, that isn't out
of the question.
Problem is, even if I leave out all the actual mesh data, the granny strings
and other data still run to ~0.5 Meg in a .txt file. This is probably too much
to post and ask for help on (and I haven't tried lately to see if I can post
code anyway). Maybe the best thing is to get town.world read all the
way through and then upload the Python code so people interested could run
it and see the .txt file output and then post comments on what the
data blocks at the end might mean. I've run into one very odd data structure
that just doesn't seem to have an entry that allows me to read it
programmatically; I have to just crunch through it until its over and then
hard-code it. Would really like some other eyeballs on this problem.
Nowhere near a converter, this is still just reading data to the end.
Hopefully, a converter would pick out a structure for a modeller to work
on and reconstruct the whole .world file with the new structure in place.
The worrisome part of that are the quad byte sections Caliban described
that relate to animations and to lighting sources; Milkshape doesn't have
this so this may be a 3dsmax only thing. Not ready to try this, but remember
when we were doing the mesh file for units and didn't know what the mystery
block were? I could try just putting in arbitrary values and see what happens.
(Reread that and realized it doesn't make any sense if you haven't been
living in these files. Better explanation follows.)
The quad byte blocks must have the same number of entries as the vertices.
Makes sense if they are vertex normals, tangents, or uv coords. If they
are animation or lighting entries, then that means the anims, for instance,
are tied to specific vertices. I'm thinking this is something like smoke from
chimneys. If you mod a structure by adding more vertices, how do you
make sure the smoke still comes out of a chimney and not the side of a
house because the vertices got renumbered? If you can't get the data
into Milkshape you would have to do something else. What that might
be I haven't got to.
That's the update.....Yep, this is taking awhile.
KE
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
KE, much happiness on the progress, and love the turtle. FYI, the chimney smoke is defined in the chimney smoke text file (as regards the density of smoke etc). Maybe the animations could refer to windmills. But from what I remember, windmills don't turn, so maybe it's something CA wanted but later turned back on (which means you can just hardcode to paste it in, without debugging it). Either way, all is nice, hope the yard fixes itself. (yeah!)
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
are there any flags blowing in the wind (or at least turning awkwardly)?
a.k.a Lord hokomoko @ the Lordz Modding Collective
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Did you check the animinstances file? I thought it would contain the animation data.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Re: animinstances
Here's what surfaced Friday. I've seen .anim and .animinstances in the
village.world file. Friday I hit the same bit in the town.world file. Going to
try and post the section here:
This stuff comes after all the "complex" and "structure" data (my made-up names). The animInstances file always comes last after the .anim files.Code:# ------------------------------------------ # Beginning of .anim strings Section # ------------------------------------------ 0 0 nentries = 12 0 0 ntrans = 3 17 DamageTransition0 106BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Wall_Animations/Town_Wooden_Palisade/palisade_straight_animation_a.anim 17 DamageTransition1 106BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Wall_Animations/Town_Wooden_Palisade/palisade_straight_animation_b.anim 17 DamageTransition2 106BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Wall_Animations/Town_Wooden_Palisade/palisade_straight_animation_c.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 119BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Town_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_Animations/palisade_arrow_tower_animation.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 124BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Stone_Tower_Animations/stone_tower_4m_E_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 124BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Stone_Tower_Animations/stone_tower_4m_B_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 124BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Stone_Tower_Animations/stone_tower_4m_G_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 126BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Thatch_Tower_Animations/thatch_tower_4m_B_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 126BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Thatch_Tower_Animations/thatch_tower_4m_G_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 126BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Thatch_Tower_Animations/thatch_tower_8m_B_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 126BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Thatch_Tower_Animations/thatch_tower_4m_E_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 124BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Stone_Tower_Animations/stone_tower_4m_D_animation_a.anim ntrans = 1 17 DamageTransition0 126BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Tower_Ambient_Animations/Ambient_Thatch_Tower_Animations/thatch_tower_4m_K_animation_a.anim ntrans = 8 17 DamageTransition0 120BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_damage_impact.anim 17 DamageTransition1 123BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_damage_destroyed.anim 14 DoorCloseAnim0 112BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_close.anim 14 DoorCloseAnim1 119BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_damage_close.anim 15 DoorImpactAnim0 113BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_impact.anim 15 DoorImpactAnim1 120BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_damage_impact.anim 13 DoorOpenAnim0 111BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_open.anim 13 DoorOpenAnim1 118BlockSet/North_European/Animations/Gate_Animations/Wooden_Palisade_gate_anims/NE_wooden_palisade_gate_damage_open.anim 79 settlements/North_European/Settlements/Town/north_european_town_A.animInstances
Have not looked at any of these other than to see, yes, they are more
binary files. If luck holds then they should have a structure like the .cas
files but I don't know this.
I'll just post this and see how the code tags work for me now. If not this will
just be another code posting with no line breaks.
Edit: Couldn't find a smiley with crossed fingers but this looked ok after
posting. As usual, I'll log out and log back in.
Edit2: Still working!!! Holy moly, I've got a posting jones working here.
Too late tonight for a discussion but I'll shoot for tomorrow.
Last edited by KnightErrant; 08-26-2007 at 05:43.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Yeah, you just have to keep in mind to not post more than 50 lines or so.
Ok so the anim file apparently contains the damage and open door anims, what's in animinstances?
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Aah, so the 50 lines may have been the problem.
Haven't done anything more, BUT life looks managable at work
now. Will try to get to the end of towns and then comparing villages
to towns may reveal something. Will look at animinstances next with
maybe a check on large_towns to see what else may come into play.
At this point why am I doing this?
(1) Hundreds of modellers are waiting to mod settlements?
Naw, hardly think so.
(2) Tens of modellers are waiting to mod settlements?
Naw, hardly think so.
(3) Bwian is waiting to make Hobbit villages?
Probably.
(4) I've bit off more than I can chew and am just too embarrassed
to admit it.
Yeah, that one! That's exactly it!!!
Sheer bloody-mindedness is a strong motivator.
KE
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Yeah I know the feeling. If it makes you happy though I'm also looking forward to edit settlements (I liked playing Lego and what Caliban told me about the process it's a lot like that, it only looks much cooler
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
I can't speak for everyone, but I for one and I think most of the EB team is also tremendously interested in the possibility of editing settlements.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
KE, how can you say that!
Imagine that in M2 engine.
Last edited by SigniferOne; 08-28-2007 at 17:30.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Ok, point taken. I am encouraged to keep going.
Here's a link to the beta reader.
http://www.twcenter.net/forums/downl...o=file&id=1578
The two files in the zip are animationlibrary.py and settlementutilities.py.
animationlibrary.py is almost the same as the one distributed for the
animation utilites except I put a trap in the function getstring to jump
back out if it gets a requested number of characters more than 1000.
This usually means I'm reading the wrong int and it puts Python into a loop
where it beeps every time it reads the bell code, very annoying to have
happen at work!
settlementutilities.py is the one to double-click on. Just put
north_european_village_a.world and north_european_town_a.world
in the same directory with the two Python files. Currently the .txt
file doesn't have the actual mesh data output to it. If you want this
just search for WRITEDATAFLAG and set it to True. The output file
will be very large!!! You can cut and paste the vertices and tris
to make an obj file. The u and v coordinates are also converted from
RGB encoding into floats if you want them too.
Now for numerology, I'll start. The village has 31 "complexes" containing
a total of 98 "structures" or self contained meshes. The town has 30
complexes with a total of 123 structures.
Villages have a block of data at the top (after the 40 entries block of
which 31 have a positive sequence number that should correspond to the
complexes) that has 867 entries. This number shows up again near the
bottom for another block of data.
For towns the number is 1228.
Question 1: What do these entries correspond to?
For no good reason I kept a running total of the number of triangle groups
defined in all the structures. For villages this number is 1274. Guess what,
there are two blocks of data right at the end (after a block with 867 entries)
that have 1274 entries. For towns this number is 2017 with the same
correspondence. So, of course,
Question 2: What do these entries do or is this a coincidence?
There is a block of data preceded by this comment by me:
# ------------------------------------------
# Beginning of hard coded 17 floats but
# variable ints with 5 byte signatures
# ------------------------------------------
It has 156 entries for villages and 173 entries for towns, BUT, nowhere
can I find that number to read in order to tell me how to read this data.
Right now it is just hard-coded in. This is very unusual for granny strings;
they always tell you how to read themselves so I'm a bit perplexed on this
one. The entries are 17 floats followed by what I read as 5 bytes being
a signature, then followed by a variable number of ints which, by trial and
error, I have made up rules for until I was able to read both cases, village
and town. One entry looks like this:
If I rearrange the first 16 floats into a 4x4 matrix I getCode:+1.00000 +0.00000 +0.00000 -0.11595 +0.00000 +1.00000 +0.00000 -4.10875 +0.00000 +0.00000 +1.00000 -4.22434 +0.00000 +0.00000 +0.00000 +1.00000 +1.00000 sig: 1 0 0 2 0 , ints: 0 0 0 0 68 3 0 0 0 0 155 0 0 0 13 4 0 0 220 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 54 0 0 0
In homogeneous coordinates this is a translation with no rotation.Code:+1.00000 +0.00000 +0.00000 -0.11595 +0.00000 +1.00000 +0.00000 -4.10875 +0.00000 +0.00000 +1.00000 -4.22434 +0.00000 +0.00000 +0.00000 +1.00000 +1.00000 sig: 1 0 0 2 0 , ints: 0 0 0 0 68 3 0 0 0 0 155 0 0 0 13 4 0 0 220 0 0 0 2 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 3 0 0 0 54 0 0 0
All of the entries seem to be translation only.
Question 3: Why 156 and 173 and how can I figure out when I'm done reading
this data block?
This is probably enough for now. If anyone gets a chance to run the program
and look at the grannies and data blocks please post back ideas.
Edit: Aargh! Found a write out bug for villages. After all the complexes are read
there are three strings for .worldTerrain etc. After that my code wrote out
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
56 0 1 0 [4308] 57 0 [4307] 0 0 255 255 255 255 0 0
That's not what is in the file just this
57 0 1 2 [4307] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
56 0 1 0 [4308] 57 0 [4307] 0 0 255 255 255 255 0 0
I think my editor auto-indented the write statement to be inside the loop
instead of after it, the Perils of Python.
Last edited by KnightErrant; 08-28-2007 at 21:53.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Short notice before I leave (and after I return I'll have to do some learning so I probably won't get around to research anything more today):
The 1274 4-byte entries you mention are in my opinion a kind of coordinate-transformation between IDs. They consist of a starting ID and a second int that specifies how many of this structure have that ID (usually 1 but can be 2 or more) so the transformation is between a block ID and a unique ID for each instance.
In fact they're not 1274 entries but 1274 different unique IDs. They're only 867 entries (counting offsets and dividing by 4) and therefore coincide perfectly with your 867.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
KE, I hope you haven't taken leave of us, and left us bereft unhappily in the dark!
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
I second, although I wouldn't blame you
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
Hi SigniferOne and Alpaca,
No, no, not at all. I've just been trying to go back to animations
and catch up on some problems people have been having.
TIKO_TWOW_RU has had a animation problem where somehow
in Milkshape he got bones to have different numbers of animation
frames and that killed the game, not suprisingly. Working on that
revealed that the .cas to .txt utility doesn't convert degrees to radians
so that's wrong. Hopefully, no one was using that. It's been an easy fix
but haven't been doing settlements this last week.
Started working on large_towns just to see what is new and the
good news is the complexes and structures were read ALMOST
without any new coding, but right after them (which is fortunately
90% of the file) completely new data structures start unlike anything
in villages or towns. This slows things down of course so I'll be working
on this the coming week. I hope Kingdoms doesn't change things much;
probably won't have anything near a converter till then. (I keep caveating
this on being able to do something about the data blocks that Caliban said
had to do with lighting and animations.) When we get to this. more information
might make this worrisome bugaboo go away.
Probably nothing to report for a week or so. However, any insights on the
village or town data structures is very appreciated.
KE
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
I concur. It would be very sad to see development on this area stopping. Keep up the great work.
Re: Settlements: File Formats; Take 2
I have no expertise in this area but this seems like a very complex problem that could be easily solved by CA if they were willing.
Does anyone fancy the idea of a petition by modders addressed to CA with the objective of allowing the building in M2TW and Kingdoms to become available for modding?
I am not volunteering to lead this idea but a lot of people that are the best modders of the community seem to be interested in this and allowing the buildings to be moddable would show CA's goodwill towards the community and encourage modders to do even more extraordinary things.
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