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
Dark Omen battle folder principal files
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). |
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. |
Other Data Formats
Other Dark Omen file formats
Filename | Description | Edit tools |
Heads.db | Description of the animated 3D heads used in cut-scenes and for regimental leaders during battle. | |
CH*_ALL.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. | Ghabry's DOT-Parser. |
Audio files | All audio files in Dark Omen can be converter or replaced, but it requires special tools. |