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Messages - Mjollna

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226
Resources and Tools / Re: [TOOL] [Adt edit] ADT Converter
« on: October 21, 2011, 08:05:22 pm »
Hi !

Thank you for your message :)

It took us (Pag and I) a lot of time to code the program, but I think it's really linked to the fact that we really started from scratch : for me, first program being more than a quick 50 lines script, I hadn't really written a line of code in the last 4 years, and for both of us first collaborative project. We also had to understand/learn both 3.x & 4.x adt formats and compare many files (and I didn't know about 010 editor templates at the time... no colors and no apparent structures in files display...).

But in the end, there's not much to change actually. It's mainly the same data split into three files instead of being grouped in one. There are some slight differences in headers (more zeros as some offsets become useless), and no more mcin.

For retail files I think now our conversion is as close as possible to Blizz one, and we haven't run into bugs for a long time regarding them.

For non-retail files (or retail files edited), we've run into some problems since there are several tools to edit them, resulting in small differences in implementing adt format : chunk sizes, optional chunks, chunks at unusual places...

I guess if our code had better design we would have less problems with all this, but we didn't have a real plan at the beginning (actually, we didn't really expect it would work so well when we started O_o), which results in a little more work now to correct bugs. Well, we've learned from that and it'll be useful for next time :)

And we still have that problem for collisions with custom maps... I'm not really sure about the problem, but if my guess is right, it'll probably be hard to correct (at least for me).

If you're not scared about all this, and if you're interested, I don't mind showing you the source :)

I made some screenshots but it was mainly for testing purposes, so I'm sorry some of the screens are, well... far from having great aesthetics :)
Here you go :

-- Retail map --
-> Kalidar.

-- Custom map --
-> A very quick test
with wmo + M2 + water (mclq).

-- Custom map --
-> Another test,
this time with mh2o (included with Gretchin's app). Yes I know it looks really ugly, the patch was a real patchwork of different things piled together. I think I have fraps video of that somewhere, I can upload it if someone's interested.

-- Retail map --
And the last one is 3.3.5
-> Northrend_27_22.adt
offsetfixed to more or less 30_30, and *then* converted. There's also water at the bottom (most likely mh2o).

-- Retail map --
I don't resist to add
-> this one,
 it has no water but I just love the way textures alone can be swapped with Cata adt xD

227
Resources and Tools / Re: [TOOL] [Adt edit] ADT Converter
« on: October 21, 2011, 08:19:46 am »
@Keta :

I think my answer to you is too far in the chatbox history, so I'll just rewrite it here (and it could be helpful to others too that way).

- First of all, check that you used your own config file and not the one that is shipped by default with the newest version.

- If it's not the config file, if you want you can send me one of the adts that make the converter exit, so that I can see what's wrong and correct the program if there's a need to.

- For your java console error, it's very common and if you Google the error ("not recognized...") you'll find tutorials on how to solve it.

228
Resources and Tools / Re: [TOOL] [Adt edit] ADT Converter
« on: October 18, 2011, 08:33:35 pm »
New beta version !

Bugfixes almost no one has probably run into, but it's corrected anyway. Collisions problem not solved, however.
I'm also adding the new link to the first post.

http://gaming.mjollna.org/docs/ADTConverter_beta3.zip

Edit 2017-04-21 : attached the program to the post and updated link.

229
Noggit / Re: own wdt --> map missing
« on: October 15, 2011, 11:04:44 pm »
@Shruik :

Your wdt flags seem to have a problem. Here's what I tried :

- Extract the 3.3.5 untouched wdt, add it to my Noggit project folder in world > maps > QA_DVD : everything normal.
- Download your wdt, replace it in the folder : same problem as you.
- Copy the flags (0x0e) from the original QA_DVD wdt to yours (which had 0x1) and re-open : the map appears again in the continent list.

230
Level Design / [SOLVED] Ground effects question
« on: October 10, 2011, 10:56:24 pm »
Hello <!-- s:) -->:)<!-- s:) -->

I have a question about ground effects (nodxt/texture effect)...
I'm trying to create my own version of ED Canyon (yeah I know, not quite original, but I want to do it anyway <!-- s:) -->:)<!-- s:) --> ), and I've run into a problem (?) regarding ground effects.

On untouched Blizzard texturing, it seems that it is possible to get several texture effects on a single chunk.
Here's an example of it :
- ingame :

- in Noggit :

As you can see, the clovers that are linked to the dark grass texture meet the rocks attached to the dirt texture. On the second screenshot you can see the chunk limits.

However, when I edit the textures with Noggit (104 and beta), then only the ground effects attached to the base layer show ingame where I edited.
Here's an example of that behaviour :

On one chunk, it's the grass I've set as "no alpha/base" one, so the clovers show everywhere, but no rocks where I've painted a quick dirt surface over it.
On the other one it's the contrary, dirt as base means I only have rocks showing up and no clovers.

-----------

Here's what I've tried as workaround/investigating :

- MTEX has only 4 textures. Not more, no duplicates, so everything seems alright there.

- EffectIDS are correctly set in the adt in Taliis Textures menu (which also shows 4 textures as it should be). GroundEffectTexture.dbc is ok, or the ground effects wouldn't show anywhere in the adt.

- MCLY seems to be ok. I think I checked on 5 different attempts/edits if the ground effects were set properly. When I paint with a texture that is already on the chunk, the IDs don't seem to change, and they're ok. If it's a new texture that wasn't before on the adt, then it looks like the ground effect ID is set to 0. However, I've then tried to change the EffectID for all textures in Taliis to 0 in textures menu, save, close, re-open in Taliis, re-change it to the correct values, save. Then the IDs seemed right on every chunk, but it still didn't help.
I've also tried to set the IDs manually in 010 Editor + template, but of course, same kind of operation = same result, i.e ground effects from base layer only appear ingame.
So would the problem be somewhere else ?

- With Taliis I've tried texture exporting, more or less playing with png, re-importing... without obtaining the desired effect.

- Various tests with MCNK editor in Taliis.

- I've also tried to change the map I was working on, for one that has absolutely no Blizz texturing (creation from scratch) and I had the same problem after attaching 3 different ground effects to 3 of the 4 textures I had in the adt. And since I had imported the textures from png on that map, I really had exactly the same ground effects on the whole adt, and it didn't look good at all. The opacity/alpha of layers above didn't seem to have any effect at all on the amount of ground effects coming from the base texture.

-----------

The only workaround I'm thinking about at the moment would be to duplicate the base texture under a new name, attach the main ground effect I'd like on a particular chunk to it, and finally swap it on every chunk where needed, but it doesn't really solves the problem (and it's not really a "clean" solution).
--> Edit : or just change the texture effect id on the base texture. Better & simpler I guess.

This time I'm really out of ideas... and I have a strong feeling that I'm not looking in the right direction or that I missed something. So if someone has a hint that would be absolutely great :)

Thank you very much ! And thx to Vel for trying to help on the chatbox today.

231
Noggit / Re: [BETA] changeset 263 (2d448f67eb48)
« on: October 06, 2011, 07:51:11 am »
Thanks for your detailed reply and the fixing, it's great ^_^

232
Noggit / Re: [BETA] changeset 263 (2d448f67eb48)
« on: October 06, 2011, 12:42:46 am »
Hi :)

Quote
As you can see, it does not get the model only but also the logging extra text. That should be stripped away, I guess.

Oh ok, I hadn't noticed the extra text -_-

Quote
I'm sorry, but the blue foggy thing _is_ MFBO. I don't know why Noggit adds one, but it does. (I probably wrote that code.) When your camera is clipped and you can't fly there: It's MFBO. There is no other mechanic doing that.

Ok.
I missed the chunk yesterday, I tried to find it on a file where I couldn't find it whatever I tried, but today I tried on another file and I found it quickly... I probably messed up something somewhere.

I've tried a lot of things tonight but in the end, nothing really came out of it, and now I need some sleep... I don't really know what triggers the creation of the chunk, every time I think I get it, I can't re-create it for sure.

Quote
I don't see what could be causing this. May you save the file in both versions once and make a binary difference of them? The only possibility, I guess, could be in MDDF flags. No idea otherwise.

I've done that, and MDDF match on both files :
http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/mddf.png
I've tried to look at other chunks, but apart from mcrf/mclq/mcnr they look pretty close.
I forgot to say that yesterday, but although the lights don't show up in 263, a file saved with 263 correctly displays the lights ingame. It's really just when opening a file in the beta that they don't appear.

233
Noggit / Re: [BETA] changeset 263 (2d448f67eb48)
« on: October 04, 2011, 10:05:46 pm »
Hi there :)

I was accepted in the beta group 4 days ago, so after a little playing around with the beta, here are my first observations.
First of all, I'd like to say it's great, I'm having so much fun with the program, thank you :) I fell in love with the import function, I gain so much time... M2 show up normally ingame without the re-save in Taliis step... And unicode is cool, I can see the accent I added on my "Mjollnà Island" now. I haven't had any crash at all, it runs smoothly.

I use Windows version on up to date Win7 64 bit. I can post my pc specs if relevant.

Nevertheless, I've found some weird behaviours so far, I don't know if it's bugs or not... I haven't made an account on the bugtracker yet, but if you think some of the points are worth reporting I can add them.

---

- Importing from a text file works great. However, I couldn't import from wmv's (Wow Model Viewer) log. I configured my config file to indicate where the log is, Noggit finds the log and reads what's inside, but doesn't find the M2. The error in Noggit's log is "It was not in any MPQ.".

If I copy the path in the import.txt and try to import the model it works, so I think the path to the M2 is right.
I use the latest wmv (0.7.0.1 r614 64-bit), which loads my live 4.2.2 files. However, the path/info doesn't seem to have changed between 3.x and 4.x for that particular model. I tried different models, with the same kind of error.

Full Noggit log : http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/wmv_pb_noggit_log.txt
Full wmv log : http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/wmv_pb_wmv_log.txt
Full config file : http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/noggit.conf
Full import.txt (when I then imported the same model successfully) : http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/wmv_pb_noggit_Import.txt

---

- I also ran into the "extreme texture reflection" problem that was mentioned earlier ( viewtopic.php?f=66&t=916 ) just once, but I couldn't re-create it, and I think I mixed some file names and I lost that particular adt save, sorry -_- I'll try again later.

---

- I think I also had the "really high camera" problem, but to me it's not mfbo (because the map I had the problem on just has no mfbo at all and never had one). Then I realised that the camera problem follows those blue foggy things (but it's not fog) that appear on 263 only with F7 lines activated.
Screenshot : http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/blue_lines.png
I have no clue about what they are (water remains ?), but it looks like very high sort of columns, they're invisible ingame and the camera goes above them, which is indeed very very high. When I activate fly on my testing character, the character seems blocked and can't go "inside". It can walk through it though.
The map is not based on a Blizz one, it has a new entry on map.dbc, no specific area defined, wdt is just plain boring (1 adt in 30_30, no flags activated, of course no wmo), default skybox. I have to say I made some other earlier tests on the adt and I think I used Taliis allwater option on it at some point. mcnk everywhere have 0x04 flag (I don't know how/why O_o), but there's no water anymore and no mclq anywhere, there's no mh2o and no mh2o offset in mhdr either. There's no wdl for this map, btw. I can send the adt if necessary.
I think I'll try to get that effect again on a brand new map, if I can.

---

- When I raised terrain on one of my edited maps (I'm currently trying to create my version of a finished ED canyon :) ), some of the saved chunks appeared clearer the next time I opened the map in Noggit, and I could also see that ingame. It looked like the same problem as in 104 (normals ?), so I used the raising brush with full radius at speed 0 to correct it. However, that action created some weird shadow and light spots everywhere on the map, that more or less follow terrain height. The spots can only be seen ingame or in rev104, not in 263. Here are some ingame screenshots to illustrate that :
http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/spots2.jpg
http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/spots3.jpg
I saved in 104 again with raising brush full radius/speed 0 to get rid of the spots. The upper half of the screenshot (in 104) shows the spots, and I applied the brush on the lower half so the difference can be seen :  
http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/spots1.png
Finally, after the "brush" correction in 104 + saving, I re-opened one adt in 263, raised little terrain and saved. Ingame (and in 104), you can see below some spots again where I slightly raised terrain in the bottom left corner. The rest of the adt is ok :
http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/spots4.jpg
Same result with smooth tool instead of raise/lower terrain one.

---

- I can't open adt saved with 263 with Taliis (sorry, I don't know where I can see in Taliis which version I'm using, if someone has a clue on this... ?). I tried to compare the same adt saved with 104 and 263. The only change I've seen is empty mclq everywhere on the 104 file, and Taliis console mentions "mclq not found", so I don't know if there's a link... ? Vertices/Normals were also different, but I tried to copy/paste some mcvt/mcnr from one 263 file to the 104 one and it didn't seem to have any influence (ie Taliis accepted to open the hex edited file).

---

- It's not much, but some M2 lights/effects don't appear, whereas they do in 104. I noticed that on that particular model I use : worldgenericnightelfpassive doodadslampskalidarstreetlamp02.mdx
Here is one screenshot to show this :
http://mjollna.org/docs/misc/lights.png

---

Hope that helps... Is it better with one big post like this one or several smaller posts for each issue ?

Thanks for reading :)

234
Resources and Tools / Re: [TOOL] [Adt edit] ADT Converter
« on: September 29, 2011, 07:47:02 pm »
Hello :)

As far as I'm concerned, it's not in my immediate plans.
Here are my reasons :

# Why converting from 4.x to 3.x ?

- As you said, all editing tools are for 3.x format. As a result, such a converter is not useful for custom maps.
In the end little content would be concerned : retail maps released since Cataclysm was released, for editing purposes.

- There would also be the new Cataclysm-only M2 to convert back to the older format I guess, to get a full map with all objects. And finally there would be some data change/loss (I'm mainly thinking about mcmt here... It's not much, but it's still all over Deephome).

# At the moment, I'm putting lots of efforts in learning a lot of things about programming, to improve my skills, knowledge and general understanding.
I have a few big books to continue reading, so maybe later, why not, but not now.

---

Oh and btw : one of the users found a bug in the converter, so conversion may fail sometimes because of mcsh. We're working on fixing this (hum, well, actually Pag is), but in the meantime you can "kill all shadows" in Taliis before converting to skip the problem.

235
Noggit / Re: problem with Noggit
« on: September 26, 2011, 07:28:58 am »
Hi,

I don't use beta but... Almost all the lines in your config file seem commented (the #), and I guess it could be part of your problem.

236
Level Design / Re: [QUESTION] Taliis won't save
« on: September 25, 2011, 11:16:48 pm »
I don't know about the "falling through the world" thing, I've never seen that.
About the saving, I don't know if it's the same problem, but when it seems that I can't save in Taliis, I usually "save as" with Taliis in another folder (instead of doing a simple "save"), and this way it works nicely.

237
Resources and Tools / [TOOL] [Adt edit] ADT Converter
« on: September 12, 2011, 06:25:46 pm »
[center:1pajf7nz]ADT Converter by Pagdzin and Mjollnà[/center:1pajf7nz]

About this tool :

This programs allows conversion for adt pre-Cataclysm to Cataclysm format.
Conversion should be ok up to Cataclysm build 11927. This does not include Wow alpha files.
World building maps are partly supported for the moment (see read me file > updates).

Have fun !

Additional Info :

This is still a *beta version*.
Read Me file included (don't forget to set up the config file before launching).

Feedback more than welcome :)

Download :

http://mjollna.org/docs/ADTConverter_beta3.zip

--------------------

Edit : I add below the update fean really kindly made (on page 4 of this topic) so that it's clearer for people.
He has updated the ADT Converter to MoP, so that it generates the _obj1 and _tex1 that are now mandatory in live servers.

You can download his version here : http://www.feangren.net/divers/ADT_Conv ... ta_1.1.zip

Thx again fean :)

238
Tutorials / [TUTORIAL] Bitmasking
« on: August 22, 2011, 09:43:03 pm »
Hello :)

First post... It took me some time to get out of silence :)
I'll just introduce myself a little... I'm 29, and I play Wow for almost five years now. I started to be interested about things "around" the game through exploration one year ago. All this led me to look closer at the files, and finally I ended up here :) What I like in modding/world building/looking at files with an hex editor is to learn new things, and contrary to the original game, the whole creative process attached to it.
Even though I ended university with one year of computer science, I studied social sciences as major. That's why most of my knowledge in this field is self-learning (thx Google). I can make (very ?) ugly but functional scripts, and I don't mind spending a lot of time trying to understand a notion if in the end I can create something out of it.

I have to say I admire all your work a lot, programs, maps, tutorials, custom models... That's one of the reasons I decided to register here, and also why it takes me so long to say something :)

As I said, I started looking at the files very recently. Since the end of July I've mostly tried to understand the differences between 3.x and 4.x adt, so I have very basic knowledge of other Wow formats.
A few weeks ago a friend of mine wrote a tutorial for me about bitmasking, which helped me understanding how flags work in Wow files. I saw this morning a thread about bitmasking, so I thought I'd share the tutorial here (I hope it's the right place to post). Of course, my friend is ok for translation/repost, I asked him, and he even re-read the translated version (also thx to Pag for 2nd re-reading).

Thanks for reading, hope the post will be useful :)

-------------------------------------------------------------
Bitmasking

- Original author : Hâthor.
- Translation (French -> English) & last example : Mjollnà.

Introduction

I'm (Hâthor) going to choose enum in C# as an example. It's like a special table, declared as such :

Code: [Select]
public enum DayOfWeek
{
Monday,
Tuesday,
Wednesday,
Thursday,
Friday,
Saturday,
Sunday
}

It can be used this way in the code :
Code: [Select]
private DayOfWeek day = DayOfWeek.Monday;
The value given by the compiler is 0 for the first one, and adds 1 for every following entry. Of course, it's possible to declare such tables.

Flags

The same enum with flags works like this :

Code: [Select]
public enum DayOfWeek
{
Monday = 1,
Tuesday = 2,
Wednesday = 4,
Thursday = 8,
Friday = 16,
Saturday = 32,
Sunday = 64
}

What's interesting here is that the combination of values is easier than above. For example, if we want to write Monday and Thursday in our variable day, we'll write :

Code: [Select]
private DayOfWeek day = DayOfWeek.Monday | DayOfWeek.Thursday;
The "|" is the logical operator XOR.

Code: [Select]
1 => 00000001
XOR
8 => 00001000
-------------
9 => 00001001

And 9 is 8 + 1 (Monday + Thursday) ! 10 would be Tuesday + Thursday, etc. All combinations take only one int (= 4 bytes). It takes less space than a whole table of values.

Mask

How can I know if my variable (9) contains Thursday (8) ? We'll apply a mask, which is going to hide all the things we don't want to see.
We mask the total value with an AND that holds the value we want to find :

Code: [Select]
9 => 00001001 // Monday + Thursday : total value
AND
8 => 00001000 // Thursday : what we're looking for
-------------
8 => 00001000 // Thursday remains

By applying the mask, we found the value we wanted, 8 / Thursday. Then the variable containing Thursday can be written this way :

Code: [Select]
if ((day & DayOfTheWeek.Thursday) == DayOfTheWeek.Thursday)
{
...
}

Another example with 17, does it contain thursday ? :

Code: [Select]
17 => 00010001 // Friday and Monday
AND
08 => 00001000 // Thursday
--------------
00 => 00000000

0 is different from 8, so it doesn't contain Thursday.

Another example : netmask and subnet

An IPv4 address is divided in 2 parts, the host and the network. Usually, personal routers give an IP that looks like 192.168.1.xxx, and the mask 255.255.255.0.
Let's say the PC is host number 2 (so that the IP becomes 192.168.1.2).
When data runs accross a network, both host and network often need to be known separately. That's why routers apply the netmask to the IP to know where to send packets.

For example :

Code: [Select]
192.168.1.2 => 11000000.10101000.00000001.00000010
AND
255.255.255.0 => 11111111.11111111.11111111.00000000
----------------------------------------------------
192.168.1.0 => 11000000.10101000.00000001.00000000

My data has to be sent to network 192.168.1.0. If the mask is inverted, it's possible to know the host.

Another example : wdt flags

It works exactly the same way.
On one byte, all the flags are "summed up", and you can find them by looking at the binary.

Example :
If you have the value 0x6E (see screenshot below, click to see bigger image), if you convert it in binary, you get this result : 0110 1110
(for quick conversion : http://home2.paulschou.net/tools/xlate/)
Every "1" if an activated flag.



The schema below converts every value in hex and decimal.



Here we have :
10 : 0x2
100 : 0x4
1000 : 0x8
10 0000 : 0x20
100 0000 : 0x40

Let's add them again in hex : 0x40 + 0x20 + 0x8 + 0x4 + 0x2 = 0x6E, it's ok.

Every flag adds a special feature to the way adt are handled/displayed by the wdt :
http://www.wowdev.wiki/index.php?title=WDT

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