Talk:Dark Omen Wiki

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by Mikademus...he is explaining to me how binary attributes are mapped to filenames.

"You might have noiticed that all the .M3D files have strange filenames, like "_7WATER.M3D"

the underscore indicates that the next character is a gfx effect directive Most water is "_7", there is one battle which water is "_6"

I'd like you to take a look at filenames. See this (from my source)]

code:

// Render flags for a model are provided, believe it or not, in // the model's filename. If the leading character is an underline // then the following is a hash for a binary attribute map where // // 00000 ( 0) = no flags // 00001 ( 1) = translucency // 00010 ( 2) = animate texture UV coordinates // 00100 ( 4) = transparency // 10000 (16) = *unknown* // // The hash depends on character // // '0'..'9': flag |= char - 48 (==> 0 .. 9) // 'A'..'Z': flag |= char - 55 (==> 10 .. 35) // 'a'..'z': flag |= char - 87 (==> 10 .. 35) // // The most common filename prefixes (actually, the only ones // present in Dark Omen) are: // // "_4": 00000100 (transparency) // "_6": 00000110 (transparecy and animated texture coordinates) // "_7": 00000111 (transparency, animated texture coordinates, and transparency) // "_K": 00010100 (transparency and unknown effect)

I don't know what the dec16 (bin10000) toggle does

I also don't really know the difference between "translucency" and "transparency", as they use the words in Dark Omen.

//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

Could you rename some files and see if you figure out what effect it toggles?"

(So I have started to use the Dark Omen Map Viewer to see the effects it has when I rename the Water files)

This is B2_07 and its _6WATER.M3D

This is B2_07 but with it re-named as _7WATER.M3D and the other file _6WATER.M3X renamed to _7WATER.M3X

and finally this is renaming to _KWater

The results can't be seen in these pics but _K actually stop the water flowing.

// "_K": 00010100 (transparency and unknown effect)

unknown effect = Stops animation of water flowing

Ok, final piece here]

After 9 they use letters, so A is 10, B is 11 and so on.

Thus

"_A" --> 01010 (== dec 10) "_B" --> 01011 (== dec 12) "_C" --> 01010 (== dec 13) and dec 16 == 010000

so _K == 20 == 00010100 == the unknown at pos 16, and transparancy at pos 4

So working on this priciple, under the Guidance of Mikademus (many thanks) I then replaced all _4 with _K and vice a versa, on the First Mission

It effected the Trees

Now i renamed all M3D files to begin with _M and this is the result on the first mission.

The closest tree has moving textures.

"Ah, only one tree was animated? That explains why all water is contained in

a single mesh. It would indicate that the UV coordinates of one instance only of the same model is updated, or something Again, a strange limitation of the format/system"

Now we know how the 16-value bit works, and we understand texture coordinate animation a bit better, but the difference betwteen transparency and translucency is still unknown

Now with renaming with _6 all the M3D files.

it created Black under the Tree's Branches.

A change from K to 6 turned off the colour keying

My Next mission will be to start up my 2 old Win98 pcs with Nvidia Geforce2mx 32mb and FX5200 128mb pci cards and play Dark Omen in glorious 3D, to test the difference between "translucency" and "transparency", as they use the words in Dark Omen.

(I think Darkmancer plays in 3D on XP)

Summary:-

The skills learnt here are enabling us to understand the Dark Omen engine, so that we may hopefully Alter Maps (Create a River Crossing or Import other Buildings) and combined with the existing Deployment Zone Mod, vary the Strategy on each Map. Even perhaps incorporate Single player Maps into Multiplayer.