posted 04-20- 06:57 PM            

I have increased the comment/ dof proplist
size limit to 8192 characters and included
the Multigen Creator -> .SM fix from
extractor"g"

posted 04-20- 07:04 PM               

Thanks Hippie.. cool work

posted 04-20- 09:36 PM            

there is a lodhack program that can globally
set values for all polys in a .LOD file.
http://www.mcnett.org/fst/users/gosulliv/lodhack-1.zip

posted 04-20- 09:46 PM               

NAT. Not sure if this will do what you want. Since it only works with 3ds files. BUT that progmesh program i mentioned a couple days ago can set the materials.

posted 04-20- 10:19 PM               

These will help alot guys.. I can start work again.. missed a whole day with this problem... Thanks a lot

posted 04-22- 06:28 PM            

yes you certainly may be blunt. Even worse
I actually missed increasing the DOF proplist
size in builder2. The new version with
a little bit of bounds checking thrown in is here:
http://www.mcnett.org/fst/users/gosulliv/extractorII-01.zip

I thought it would be good to get out a
version that had the multigen fix.

Would everyone prefer I tried to work the Multigen fix into Bjorns version of extractor?

I'm thinking of redoing the .ASC file format
completely and making extractor/builder more
like a decompiler/compiler to a kind of
high level OpenPlane language, as Bryan
was suggesting in another tread
that he might build into OPS
but I don't want to step on any toes.

posted 04-23- 03:38 AM            

I like the idea. I haven't read Bryan's suggestions you refer to, but I've had thoughts myself in ways that sound rather similar.

Maybe it's time to toss some thoughts back and forth about what'd be good and what wouldn't.

My thoughts were (mostly) simple:

Get rid of the confusing size/position info, as it makes it more or less impossible to get useful results fron diff's, and the information can be calculated anyway.

Change format for DOF properties so that they allow multi line comments, just like a comment section.

Do some property list parsing so that you can warn for illegal constructs. Even though SDOE can handle a missing parenthesis or so, it might mean something completely different than you thought.

Let the extractor use a rule set for property list formatting such that the property lists will look the same even if you've had the .sm in OPS a while.

Use symbolic names for LODs. The LOD refer to a model, the model has a name. x_1.lod is easier to find and understand than a number. It also makes revision handling easier since the numbers won't change a lot.

Sanity check LODs (number of vertices match, number of polygons match, number of vertice ref's/poly match.) Sanity check the flags. OPS doesn't mind flag errors, and SDOE just crashes (I experienced this yesterday!)

Maybe group nesting indentation for the extractor.

And a not so simple one:

posted 04-23- 12:24 PM               

LodHack... ok, I've got it, and read the readme... but I don't understand it to be honest..
useage: lodhack <lod file> <parameter> <value>

where parameter is one of colour,texture,material,flags.

the input value is decimal for texture and material
the input value is hex for colour and flags

colour is ABGR 4 bits each.

all polygons in the lod file will have the specified paramter set to value,
except the flags value is XORed with the polygons flag value so bits can
be flipped. You should not alter the polygon orientation bits.

So, I have an object file, I know what it's texture file is called and where it is..
I want to change only it's material value, from whatever it is (land) to water.

Could you please simplify the above readme so that I can do this, it would be a major help with my project

c:>\lodhack terrain15 colour?,texture?,Material(water value),flags?

I really don't understand how to enter the information, I know the value of water material, but what should I put for the other values?

Thanks Hippie

posted 04-23- 06:23 PM            

to alter all polygons to in an object to water you would use

c:\> lodhack filename.lod material 2

0 cemement
1 glass
2 water etc.

Hippie

posted 04-23- 06:47 PM            

o rename the product

extractor = smd (.sm decompiler)
builder = olc (OpenPlane Language compiler)
files will have a .ol extenstion

o Remove the name list and material table
from the .ol format, the material table
shouldn't be altered and the namelist can
be built up on the fly by the olc compiler.
Models,Texture,File references etc will
just have the actual name string in the
.ol file.

o remove the byte offset and length values
from the record headers in .ol file.

o simplify the group/parts/endgroup/endparts
records to [Group:xx] [ENDgroup:xx]

o allow DOF proplists to be multi line.

Then get the olc complier building working
.sm files again

Using symbolic names for LODs is a good
idea, I hadn't thought of using the Model
name as a prefix for the LOD files.

If I can get it all working again I'll
look into adding some of Bjorns other
suggestions.