Settlements: File Formats; Take 2

**alpaca** · 10-07-2007, 12:59

Originally Posted by Redmeth

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.

Believe me, a petition would have the same effect as swatting a locust in a swarm of two billion.

CA management isn't prone to show any goodwill to modders or even consider the idea. What help we got was because certain individuals (mainly Caliban and Palamedes, with the help of a few programmers) really tried to push things in our favor - but even with this, very little came out of it.

It simply looks like the bigwigs at CA and SEGA aren't interested in modders at all. They tolerate us, but they don't try to help us. If anything, they at least didn't try to stop their subordinates helping us, either.

**Roman_Man#3** · 10-07-2007, 17:25

Hello,

From what I read, this doesn't look to good, but can custom buildings and cities from RTW be brought into M2TW?

Thanks,
RM3

**Ashdnazg** · 10-07-2007, 17:36

not at the moment, they're totally different formats.

**Roman_Man#3** · 10-07-2007, 17:41

I thought they were both Cas files. So there is no way of editing battle map buildings in M2TW yet?

**KnightErrant** · 10-11-2007, 05:32

I think I concur with Alpaca, as much as Caliban has helped we are
probably on our own as regards settlements. Sorry, haven't been
monitoring this thread as I haven't done much. Here's where I've
gotten to: can now read large_towns and it just gets worse. More
data after the complexes/structures, the deployment outline is much
larger etc. I've also been leaning towards the realization that Milkshape
just doesn't have the data structures needed to hold the extra vertex
information that is in the complexes/structures (these are the two
"mystery blocks" that Caliban said were lighting and animations, I forget
the integer codes but they are in an e-mail somewhere).

So I'm stepping back and looking at 3dsmax as the only viable container
for this. I don't own a copy of 3dsmax but Bwian has pointed me to gmax
to learn MAXScript. I've slacked off on settlements to try and support
animations and try and get models into 3dsmax via MAXScript.
If I can just learn how to do a simpler problem then maybe settlements
won't seem so insurmountable. (At least settlements don't have bones,
my current headache in gmax.) However, to me it looks like the best
outcome would be: we should be able to modify an existing structure
(meaning a set of buildings, i.e. change the meshes to get a different
architecture, change textures, etc.) but adding new ones probably
involves changes to all the data the follows the complex/structures
section that I just don't see how it could be done without some magic
CA tutorial. (Not even possible I would think, that data is probably all
granny driven anyway.)

Real life problems, the tensioning spring on my lawn mower broke tonight
so tomorrow evening is a hunt around for repair parts. Check back on
Friday.

**SigniferOne** · 10-11-2007, 06:49

KE, I'm concerned about the fact that you're trying to import a whole settlement into Milkshape, and failing to do that given the constraints, find yourself necessary to go to another 3d platform. Remember my suggestion, that milkshape be only used as a kind of 3d reference tool, to know where to place buildings. If I gave you a set of coordinates and a bunch of building models, would you be able to produce a .model file from that? That's all that's really necessary here.

Also why do you trouble yourself with converting all of the scripts to 3dmax form?? If for some reason we NEED 3dmax to do settlement editing, then let it be used only for settlement editing. I would be loathe to think that you wanted to do so much for the community and then got discouraged and left it half way... The modeling and animation scripts work (almost) perfectly (see my post in anims thread), so just merely having a way to do buildings, in 3dmax or otherwise, is the last piece of the puzzle. Because with Vercingetorix script we can already import RTW buildings into 3dmax, and thus being able to insert them into Medieval 2 would be just a dream.