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Post by Kneesnap on May 6, 2017 15:07:04 GMT -8
I've been off and on trying to extract the maps into a .obj format for a while, and this is just where I'll post any progress I make. The end goal is to write an extractor / importer so we can view all of the levels in their full glory and hopefully even be able to create our own. Here's my current progress, of Forest Zone, Level 2.  |
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Post by Admin (Kneesnap) on May 6, 2017 16:22:23 GMT -8
Oh, OH. This is neato progress, thanks for sharing! The end goal sounds like quite the journey - how long did it take you to reach this point?
Posted by Froli.
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Post by Kneesnap on May 7, 2017 14:14:14 GMT -8
Well, honestly I've been trying off and on since the middle of last year, but I've only started getting serious about it recently.
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Post by Kneesnap on May 7, 2017 15:03:16 GMT -8
I figure you and probably anyone else who'd like to help extracting this would like to know what I've done so far. I continued miles' thread over at forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=13417 and they've been super helpful at helping when I've gotten stuck. I'm still rather new to this and I'm figuring it out as I go. So far: I've written a small hacky program in node.js that I use to automatically grab the data and put it into a a file that I can then export into a .obj with hex2obj. The .MAP format has a RIFF structure, so it is broken off into sections with up to four "keywords" like "VRTX" or "GRID". GENE - ? PATH - ? ZONE - ? FORM - ? EMTP - Unknown, but I have seen this mentioned in a forum related to datamining MediEvil (Another game by SCEE.) I'm going to try to get in contact with a guy who extracted models from it. GRAP - ? LITE - ? GROU - ? POLY - Contains some data that look like 3D Models before the actual map data. VRTX - Vertex Indices for the map. The two bytes after this are the vertice count. (Little-endian means the bytes will be flipped, so 13 47 should be read as 47 13) GRID - ? ANIM - ? If anyone wants to help out, try editting random values in a map level (with a hex editor), and record what happens (Assuming it doesn't crash.) This'll help us create a full structure to the format as a whole, hopefully allowing completely custom levels. |
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Post by Admin (Kneesnap) on May 7, 2017 20:38:33 GMT -8
I'm not sure how we'd be able to test file changes if there isn't a way to play the game with extracted files, as well as there not being a way to create a new archive either.
Posted by Froli.
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Post by Kneesnap on May 8, 2017 0:00:21 GMT -8
Oh, I thought you figured it out when you made your video with the modified replay demos. I think the PSX version's MWD isn't compressed so there's that too. We could just hex-edit the raw data. (I think that'd work, I haven't tried it though.)
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Post by Mr. Frog on May 8, 2017 21:18:08 GMT -8
This looks very promising! I really hope that a level editor/creator does come out of this, keep up the great work!
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Post by Admin (Kneesnap) on May 10, 2017 9:33:15 GMT -8
Actually, for some reason, the demo files are not compressed in the archive, so what you find extracted for those appears in the archive as is, so those are the exclusive case for that.
Posted by Froli.
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Post by Kneesnap on May 11, 2017 21:12:38 GMT -8
 I'm currently working on a program that will be a jack of all trades for Frogger modding, since most of these utilities can't be automated right now, here's some progress:  I can automatically convert textures from .VLO to .BMP, and soon I'll be able to convert back. Only issue currently is all the textures are upside down  EDIT: I'll make sure to post the source code + download here when it's done. |
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Post by Admin (Kneesnap) on May 11, 2017 21:46:33 GMT -8
Oh neat, that will be much better than painstakingly using TextureFinder!
Posted by Froli.
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I'm currently working on a program that will be a jack of all trades for Frogger modding, since most of these utilities can't be automated right now, here's some progress: