Posted: 16 Jul 2009, 17:17
Hi again all,
its been about 6 months since i've tuned into revolt pub, good to see people are still into it!
i hope to find a little more time soon to keep working on some scripts to help make tracks for revolt, using freely available 3D programs and writing open source VBS files so everyone can see what's going on.
here are a few notes about what i've learnt so far - maybe it will help someone interested in mapping:
* W world files are what you see and it's a big mesh file with texture uv mapping. they include funnyballs at the end to assist rendering performance but only the stock tracks use these properly, i think most custom tracks just have one big funnyball which might limit the game performance (not sure)
* NCP files are the track surface collision files and are defined as a set of planes defined by their normals. define one main plane then the other clipping planes to be left with a small tile. again there is a kind of grid that might assist collision checking performance and stock tracks make use of this. custom tracks i haven't checked.
* PRM files are standalone mesh files, using the same mesh format as world files. however they are instances and can be placed around the world by the FIN file.
* FIN file contains the name of the PRM and the xyz of where to put it and a rotation matrix to spin it into position
* FOB file is similar to the FIN file but it positions objects. the FOB file uses an object index which i think is defined directly inside the revolt.exe binary, as it contains a list of object files that seemed to be in the right order. ie. the sprinkler in the nhood track was numbered at say 16 and it was the 16th object listed in the revolt.exe file
i am less certain about the following info, my colleague knows more about them, please correct me if i'm wrong:
* FAN files contain AI nodes. from memory i think the format was just in pairs of nodes defined in xyz coords but i didn't look into it much. sometimes the path can split and rejoin.
* PAN files might be the player track distance line. ie. tells you how many meters to the end of the track and to other players. again i think the path can split and rejoin.
* TAZ files are track zone files and might be to help the game reposition you when you go off course and outside the zone. also to make sure you didn't take a shortcut, you must go thru each zone in order.
* LIT file are light files but i know very little about these
* ?SOUND? files, can't remember what they are called but i think there is a file that sets up sounds. ie. in nhood there is a sound of birds and of kids playing.
thats all i can think of for now. i did get a lot of help from the ali / perror site to begin with. others have described these files before. however i'm not trying to repeat what they have done, just give my own opinion about what i think these files do.
note that with some initial help from the ali info, i have learnt most of these things from my scripts that convert the revolt binary files into plain text, and simply looking at these and plotting them in a 3d program. it's quite interesting as there is a challenge to guess what each piece of info might mean, and to try and form a pattern in the data.
so far i have put more work into converting the binary into text, and looking at the results, and not much work into making the process work in reverse. that is to make edits to the plain text and convert it back to binary for revolt to use. i did do this for the car HUL files about 6 months ago, and thanks for the positive feedback for that.
so to finish this post i'd like to ask where to focus effort? my idea is to work on the texture mapping problem since that is where some people have asked questions. as above this info is in the W world file, which is the first file i started working on way back in late 2008 when i first got interested in this whole business! i just wanted to see what the world file looked like in 3D with full textures (i put up a bunch of pics in the snug) and i got hooked on learning about each type of file after that!
its been about 6 months since i've tuned into revolt pub, good to see people are still into it!
i hope to find a little more time soon to keep working on some scripts to help make tracks for revolt, using freely available 3D programs and writing open source VBS files so everyone can see what's going on.
here are a few notes about what i've learnt so far - maybe it will help someone interested in mapping:
* W world files are what you see and it's a big mesh file with texture uv mapping. they include funnyballs at the end to assist rendering performance but only the stock tracks use these properly, i think most custom tracks just have one big funnyball which might limit the game performance (not sure)
* NCP files are the track surface collision files and are defined as a set of planes defined by their normals. define one main plane then the other clipping planes to be left with a small tile. again there is a kind of grid that might assist collision checking performance and stock tracks make use of this. custom tracks i haven't checked.
* PRM files are standalone mesh files, using the same mesh format as world files. however they are instances and can be placed around the world by the FIN file.
* FIN file contains the name of the PRM and the xyz of where to put it and a rotation matrix to spin it into position
* FOB file is similar to the FIN file but it positions objects. the FOB file uses an object index which i think is defined directly inside the revolt.exe binary, as it contains a list of object files that seemed to be in the right order. ie. the sprinkler in the nhood track was numbered at say 16 and it was the 16th object listed in the revolt.exe file
i am less certain about the following info, my colleague knows more about them, please correct me if i'm wrong:
* FAN files contain AI nodes. from memory i think the format was just in pairs of nodes defined in xyz coords but i didn't look into it much. sometimes the path can split and rejoin.
* PAN files might be the player track distance line. ie. tells you how many meters to the end of the track and to other players. again i think the path can split and rejoin.
* TAZ files are track zone files and might be to help the game reposition you when you go off course and outside the zone. also to make sure you didn't take a shortcut, you must go thru each zone in order.
* LIT file are light files but i know very little about these
* ?SOUND? files, can't remember what they are called but i think there is a file that sets up sounds. ie. in nhood there is a sound of birds and of kids playing.
thats all i can think of for now. i did get a lot of help from the ali / perror site to begin with. others have described these files before. however i'm not trying to repeat what they have done, just give my own opinion about what i think these files do.
note that with some initial help from the ali info, i have learnt most of these things from my scripts that convert the revolt binary files into plain text, and simply looking at these and plotting them in a 3d program. it's quite interesting as there is a challenge to guess what each piece of info might mean, and to try and form a pattern in the data.
so far i have put more work into converting the binary into text, and looking at the results, and not much work into making the process work in reverse. that is to make edits to the plain text and convert it back to binary for revolt to use. i did do this for the car HUL files about 6 months ago, and thanks for the positive feedback for that.
so to finish this post i'd like to ask where to focus effort? my idea is to work on the texture mapping problem since that is where some people have asked questions. as above this info is in the W world file, which is the first file i started working on way back in late 2008 when i first got interested in this whole business! i just wanted to see what the world file looked like in 3D with full textures (i put up a bunch of pics in the snug) and i got hooked on learning about each type of file after that!
