Hi Mike, can you do the same as you did on Ghost Recon Red Square & Training, for the maps in Rainbow Six Rogue Spear?

The maps for RS are a similar but slighty different format. Perhaps in the future I (or Ronin) can work on that format.

~Mike

I'll look at that source in a bit.

I'm looking through the lights.  They actually appear to be lighting data.  There appears to be a "projector" section following each light that might have been for projected textures.  I don't think they used that, either.

They might have for SOAF, though.  But I don't recall any projectors in those maps.

Thanks for your help, Mike.  :cookie: :cookie: :cookie: It has been quite valuable and has probably knocked a great deal of time off of what it will take to complete this project.

Your college work is far more important than any of this stuff.  So no worries about that.  I just hope you do well.

Now, I'm going back to work... :tongue:  

Format of the PortalList entries:

Long: Chunk Size
Long: Chunk ID (0)
Long: String Size
String: "Version" & CHR$(0)
Long: Version #
Long: String Size
String: Portal Name & CHR$(0)
Long: Number of Vertices
----{
Float: X
Float: Y
Float: Z
}---- (repeat # vertices)
Long: Room #1
Long: Room #2
Byte: Unknown (0 in the maps I've looked at)

~Mike

Thanks for the updates, Mike.

I figured out the formats for the TransitionLines, PlanningLevels, RoomList and the DoorList last night and have them parsed.

As you said, the Planning Levels are probably just a room listing by "floors".  I guess that's used when interpreting the mission scripts to determine which "level" to place tangos with "room over room" situations.

Transition lines are, I think, transition from one "thing" to another.  They are just two points.  I don't know what the "thing" is, yet.  Loading them into Max would at least show where they are.  Their proximity to a door or a stair case would probably show what they are for.  Perhaps transitions between rooms and/or levels.

Their storage is simple.  For each entry you have:

integer - length of transition line name
string - transition line name (i.e. shermantransition101_1.39)
float x 3 - point 1
float x 3 - point 2

I got the storage for the Lights parsed but I don't know what all the values are for, yet.  I've been looking at the light settings in GMax (same as Max 4) to see what settings there are.  I think they will be about the same information.  They each seem to start with a 6.  I think this might a light type.  Probably an "omni" light (as opposed to a spot or ambient).  The rest is probably color, intensity, falloff, etc.

Some of the objects in the object list have some XML data followed by binary data.  I think the ones with XML data can be interacted with by the player.  The others don't appear to have any of the XML info and are probably "static" objects. How that's organized I'm still not sure, yet.  But I'm working on that, now.  Since you said they use the geometry data in the geometrylist.  The binary data may be placement, rotation, scaling, etc.

I'm wondering how the "helicopter" in the last mission of Island Thunder (the one with the watch towers on the periphery and the old mansion in the middle) fits in with that.  That object is in the object data outside the maps.  I think it has two models, too.  One whole and one blown up.

The RoomList is an odd thing.  Each room listed appears to contain one or more sections, each with a different name.  In each "section", it appears to have a 3x3 matrix embedded in it as well as three vertex/locations, some long integers and a couple of character values.  I don't know the significance of those, yet.

What makes me think the 9 float values are a matrix is that when you look at the values on most of them, they appear to be a 3x3 identity matrix.
(i.e.
1,0,0
0,1,0
0,0,1 )

Two values might be a line or bounding box.  I don't know what three would be for.  Three vertices together usually mean a triangle.  But I can't fathom what a triangle would be useful for in this.  I'm not even sure what these entries are for, really.

The storage format for that after the count is:

integer - unknown use at this time
integer - version string length
string - "Version"
integer - version

room loop using room count

integer - room name length
string - room name (length of integer above)
char  - unknown use at this time
integer - section count for this room

section loop using section count

integer - section name length
string - section name (length of integer above - i.e. shermanlevel101_1.0a)
char - unknown use at this time
integer - usually 1
float 3x3 matrix:
usually 1.00,0.00,0.00;0.00,1.00,0.00;0.00,0.00,1.00
sometimes 0.00,-1.00,0.00;1.00,0.00,0.00;0.00,0.00,1.00
float x 3: a point or vertex
float x 3: a point or vertex
float x 3: a point or vertex
integer - unknown use, usually 1
float - unknown use, usually 1.000
char - unknown use, usually 0

end section loop

integer - unknown use usually 1
float - usually 1.00
float - usually 0.00
float - usually 0.00
float - usually 0.00

end room loop

Here's a sample section of a room with the trailer:
Section Name: shermanlevel101_1.0h
Int value.: 1
3x3 matrix?
0.000000,-1.000000,0.000000
1.000000,0.000000,0.000000
0.000000,0.000000,1.000000
Vertex 1: -22.081812,-41.610008,1.540660
Vertex 2: -1.379159,-3.526352,0.000000
Vertex 3: 1.379159,3.526352,0.400000
Int value.: 1
Float value: 1.000000
Char value: 0
Room Trailer?
Int value.: 1
Float value: 1.000000
Float value: 0.000000
Float value: 0.000000
Float value: 0.000000


I was going to work on the PortalList next.  You've made that easier.  Thanks.

I had suspected that the OccluderList did something like you pointed out by the name.  But it's nice to see that you've already figured it out.  At least it's fairly simple. The newer versions of the game engine probably use those whereas the original version did not.  They probably did that to try to improve performance for the patches.  I can see why they didn't go back and add them to all the maps.  That probably would have been lot of work.  They probably only did it in places where it made a big difference.

When do you start back to school?  I would have thought it would be this week.

Cheers,
Bruce

Transitions are used by the game to indicate floor surfaces where a character transitions from one level to another (e.g. a ramp). They aren't placed with portals (portals are their own transitions).
When working with the tools and MAX they were made by creating a rectangular coplanar face along the "joint" between the two faces that served as the transition from one level to another. The two points in the file must define either the line between the two faces (i.e. the two vertices shared by each face) or the upper left/lower right of the rectangular polygon created in MAX.

If you look at the map tools documentation in the Desert Siege disk's "Extra" folder covers the purpose of shermanlevels and shermantransitions in greater detail.



No idea. If it helps though: When making maps with the official tools it was necessary to include a roomlist.txt file for the MAX exporter to use. The room list file had to contain the names of all the rooms along with the list of each shermanlevelheight represented in the room (otherwise the map wouldn't run properly). The physical dimensions of the shermanlevelheight designators may be stored in there (per room).



No lighting is done within MAX. The darkmaps are created automatically with a stand-alone lighting tool. They included it free with the modding tools (in the GR:Desert Seige Disk's "Extras" folder).
When you exported a map from MAX using the exporter, the .map file always had an empty light list (hence my confusion earlier). You'd then have to run the lighting tool and place your lights there. When you saved, the tool automatically generated the darkmaps and filled the MAP's light list.



After the 6 is another long value (unknown), then a float (angle of light), four more values (long's or float's) and then a float (attenuation). After that I don't know. The string contained in the light entry is the texture projection file (usually "none"). If you fire up the lighting tool you can see the properties available for each light (also covered in MAP documentation). You could easily use the tool to tweak properties and then see the effect on the file's lightlist to pin-point the locations. Or just ignore the lightlist completely since the tool is free for download and already handles the generation of this list



Next week.

~Mike

I'm having real problems getting the RSE lighting tool to work.  I got it work for a few minutes this morning on the swamp level.  Since then it crashes EVERY time I select "start".  No matter what map I select.

I've even rebooted my PC a couple of times and tried the swamp level again.  It still won't startup.

Even when I did get it running the first time, the image was extremely dark.  I could just barely make out the level.  I'm sure there's a way to lighten the image but I don't know how.  It might be in those popup messages at the start but they don't show up, now.

I'm going to try powering off my PC to see if that will get it to work again.  If that's what it takes, I'm amazed they ever got their maps lit using this thing.  It seems to be pretty wobbly.

Yeah, I knew we'd talked about that 39 byte section before.  This thread has some pretty big posts in it.  I'll go back and look at that when I need to focus on the GeometryList again (possibly tomorrow).

I got the Occluders working today. So that's done.  The only thing I don't have any info on is the VFogList.  So far, I haven't found one that has anything in it.  I guess it's unused.

Something really weird about the lighting tool.  It won't work at all on my "new" machine after that first time.  It doesn't seem to matter what I do, restart, reboot, power off/restart.  It just won't load maps at all, now.  It looks like if you try to load a map and it crashes, it won't run after that unless you fix something.  I knows it read out those messages after it starts. So maybe it corrupts an INI file or registry entry(ies).

But on another machine it seems to work just fine and hasn't crashed there.

I'm looking at the ObjectList right now.  Some of these things have two versions and some have three.  Some are object type 0x32 and some are type 0x2E (and there are probably others, I've just been looking at these two, so far).  The layout of those types is different.  I don't yet understand why some objects have two version/name headers and why some have three.  I did find the size values for the complete object data and for the string data.  So I can process the "chunk size/chunk type/version, name/version,name" and skip over the rest right now.  But that data is important.  It's not needed to begin drawing the maps for placing things in context, though.

The first thing to do, now, is get a wireframe view working.  Then solid shaded polygons.  Then I'll need textures.  So I guess I'll start working on an RSB class at the same time that can read all the various formats and versions.  I don't have to display the objects at first.  And the viewer will help me determine if my interpretation of the data is correct.

Yes, the stuff at the origin in the Geometry List is the geometry for the objects in the map (cars, trees, doors, glass, etc.)
These entries have the same layout as the room entries but they have a chunk ID of 3 instead of 4.
For example, here's the collection of the objects in the Embassy map (spread out):


As you said, the ObjectList contains no geometry, but specifies instances of these objects and the properties for them (location, animation, etc). Somewhere in each ObjectList entry is an index/reference into the object in the geometry list. I'm not exactly sure where or how it is referenced, but it shouldn't be hard to find.

~Mike

Hello guys

Sorry to reply on this old thread but I've got some questions about Ghost Recon models (MAP, CHR, QOB etc...). I sent a PM to Zazoo but he did not answer me yet :/
In fact, I am in internship in a small serious video game company and I have to update Zazoo's 3ds max plugin to make it works on latest versions of 3ds max (as Ronin said, it only works on 3ds max 3, 4 and 5). The problem is : these formats are closed, and I have to use a hex editor to figure out the structure of the files. I use also Ronin's Ghost View which give some parsing informations.
But this work was already made by Ronin and Zazoo, and I am loosing my time to redo it (even worse than Ronin and Zazoo - I am not used to hex - and I only have 3 months to do this job).
So my request is simple : is there anybody who can help me to figure out these formats, or who have MAP, QOB etc.. specifications or better the sources of Zazoo's plugin or parser or Ronin's GhostView ?

Thank you for whoever helps me