DO/Formats

From Dark Omen Wiki

Dark Omen consists of battles and campaign flow. The campaign flow is not yet understood, though we suspect it is largely hard-coded into the executable itself. The design of battles, however, is almost completely understood.

Battle Data Formats

Each battle is located in its own folder under the gamedata/1pbat path. Using the first battle "B1_01" (Defending the Trading Post) as an example. the principal files are

Filename	Description	Edit tools
B1_01.PRJ	Battleground layout file.	Mikademus' CLI Editor (PRJ section).
B1_01.BTB	Battle zone definitions; f.i. deployment zones and map boundaries.	Rob's BTB Editor; CLI Editor (BTB section)
B1_01.ARM	Army definitions. After the first battle, only the opposing side army is used. The players' is overwritten from the save file.	Both ARM and save files can be edited with Mikademus' (old) WH2EDIT and Ghabry's new Wh32Edit.
B1_01.SHD	Contains a heightmap with vegetation. Initially thought to be a shadow map for the terrain, now thought to be either used for path finding costs, or a useless vestigal. You can extract these as .TGA images by the "export shadow" command from the CLI Editor.	Currently not editable (no real reason to).
B1_01.LIT	Light sources for the map. These are only used fully when running in hardware acceleration, which in turn only works on 3d accelerated cards under DirectX6 on Windows98, which makes them difficult to test. The data format is cracked, though.	Currently not editable (low priority, doesn't influence battles).
B1_01.DOT	The dot-files define where the dots on the overworld are drawn when the Grudgebringers are moving to there next mission. It's maybe also responsible for triggering the different conversations.	View with Gabry's DOT-Viewer, edit using a hex editor.
B101.CTL	Battle scripts are stored in this file. This controls events that occur in game.	Viewable in CLI Editor (CTL section) and Rob's specialised BTB Editor.
*.M3D	All the 3D models used for and on the map in this battle	Rob's M3D <--> 3DS converter
TEXTURES/*.BMP	All the textures used by the M3D models.	Use any image editor, 8 bit 256 colours only.
Heads.db	The 3D heads used in battles and cutscenes	Edit using hex editor

Other Data Formats

Filename	Description	Edit tools
Heads.db	Description of the animated 3D heads used in cut-scenes and for regimental leaders during battle.