Specification of the .mis format?

nemyax on 11/9/2014 at 10:33

Has the .mis format been reverse engineered enough to be documented anywhere? Or can you perhaps point me to the mission loading functions in the leaked sources?
I'm only interested in brush definitions and object placement.

PinkDot on 12/9/2014 at 12:23

Quote Posted by nemyax

A large part of the .mis format has been reverse engineered by Telliamed, I believe. This website contains a lot of stuff you're looking for, especially the DarkLib.
(http://whoopdedo.org/projects.php?dark) http://whoopdedo.org/projects.php?dark

Object Placement is not a piece of cake though. As Location and Rotation are just objects' properties like any other properties, you need to kind of get into entire object hierarchy stuff...

BTW. Are you looking for brush definitions or the actual world geometry?

R Soul on 12/9/2014 at 13:46

Bear in mind the format will have changed since NewDark was released. The Build Dialog settings are saved in the .mis file, and brushes themselves have changed a bit. Cylinders can now have 26 sides, there's a new texture mapping mode that uses decimal coordinates. There are plenty of other changes but you get the idea.

If someone could use the source code to help you, you could generate new mis files in the 1.18 format, but you would not be able to edit them using your own tool(s) if you subsequently worked on them in NewDark.

PinkDot on 12/9/2014 at 18:22

Speaking of NewDark, it comes actually with some helpful commands:

Code:

wr_dump : dump worldrep to text file, <filename>
dump_tagblocks : Dump TagBlock list to taglist.txt
dump_tagblocks_full : Dump TagBlock list with all value defs to taglist.txt
dump_tagblocks_vals : Dump TagBlock list with current values to taglist_vals.txt
dump_props : Dump ObjProp list to proplist.txt
dump_props_full : Dump ObjProp list with all value defs to proplist.txt
dump_type : Dump a datatype definition to type_*.txt

wr_dump does not dump complete WorldRep information, but still can be useful to certain extent.
WRRGB chunk in the .mis format has been renamed to WREXT. I managed to decipher some of the new values, but not all.

The tagblocks and props related commands are very useful. Dump_type didn't work for me however - not sure why.

It would be a great idea to actually have all the .MIS format chunks gathered in one document. We don't have too many tools, that operates on the .MIS file so far. With the documentation this could change.

nemyax on 12/9/2014 at 18:31

Quote Posted by PinkDot

Are you looking for brush definitions or the actual world geometry?

Just the way that brush data is stored in the files. I'd like to know if it's possible at all to generate the data externally and bring it into DromEd for compilation. In other words, is it anything like the brushes in Quake's .map, only binary?
Is it correct that brushes versus BSP world geometry is the distinction you guys make when you say unstripped versus stripped missions?

Quote Posted by R Soul

Bear in mind the format will have changed since NewDark was released.

Thanks, I'll note that. Are the cylinder brushes stored parametrically rather than as geometry data?

PinkDot on 12/9/2014 at 19:39

Quote:

In other words, is it anything like the brushes in Quake's .map, only binary?

Quote:

Are the cylinder brushes stored parametrically rather than as geometry data?

All the brushes are stored parametrically (type, media, number of sides, pos, rot, size etc. - see below). .Map file contains actual planes coordinates and vectors, I think.

Quote:

Is it correct that brushes versus BSP world geometry is the distinction you guys make when you say unstripped versus stripped missions?

Yes, pretty much. Unstripped mission usually contains both - Brushes and WorldRep. Stripped mission is lacking Brush List info.

---
Below will help you understand BRLIST chunk in the .mis file.
Taken from Telliamed's DarkDBDefs.h file from DarkUtils (darkutils09-lib.zip).

Code:

struct DarkDBBrushFace
{
sint16 texture;
uint16 rotation; // 1 = ALIGN_BY_BRUSH
uint16 scale;
uint16 offset[2];
};
struct DarkDBBrush
{
uint16 id;
uint16 time; // time is wierd
sint32 primal; // terrain:shape, room:oid, object:oid, light:light number
sint16 base; // terrain:texture, room:room number, flow:gid, area:active
sint8 type;
uint8 zero1; // unused
Coord position; // center
Coord size; // length/2,width/2,height/2 or brightness,hue,saturation
SCoord rotation; // tx,ty,tz
sint16 cur_face; // selected face
float snap_size; // size of grid to snap to (14=1.0)
uint8 unknown3[18];
uint8 snap_grid; // vertices are snapped to grid
uint8 num_faces; // or type of light
uint8 edge;
uint8 vertex;
uint8 flags; // damn trickery
uint8 group;
uint32 unknown5;
struct DarkDBBrushFace faces[];
// Optional array of struct DarkDBBrushFace
};
#pragma pack(pop)
//
#define BRUSH_SHAPE_MASK 0xFF00
#define BRUSH_SHAPE_CUBE 0x0001
#define BRUSH_SHAPE_DODECAHEDRON 0x0006
#define BRUSH_SHAPE_WEDGE 0x0007
#define BRUSH_SHAPE_CYLINDER 0x0200
#define BRUSH_SHAPE_PYRAMID 0x0400
#define BRUSH_SHAPE_APEXPYRAMID 0x0600
#define BRUSH_ALIGN_VERTICES 0x0000
#define BRUSH_ALIGN_SIDES 0x0100
#define BRUSH_TYPE_SOLID 0
#define BRUSH_TYPE_AIR 1
#define BRUSH_TYPE_WATER 2
#define BRUSH_TYPE_AIR2WATER 3
#define BRUSH_TYPE_FLOOD BRUSH_TYPE_AIR2WATER
#define BRUSH_TYPE_WATER2AIR 4
#define BRUSH_TYPE_EVAPORATE BRUSH_TYPE_WATER2AIR
#define BRUSH_TYPE_SOLID2WATER 5
#define BRUSH_TYPE_SOLID2AIR 6
#define BRUSH_TYPE_AIR2SOLID 7
#define BRUSH_TYPE_WATER2SOLID 8
#define BRUSH_TYPE_BLOCKABLE 9
#define BRUSH_TYPE_ROOM -5
#define BRUSH_TYPE_FLOW -4
#define BRUSH_TYPE_OBJECT -3
#define BRUSH_TYPE_AREA -2
#define BRUSH_TYPE_LIGHT -1
#define BRUSH_LIGHT_OMNI 0
#define BRUSH_LIGHT_SPOT 1
#define BRUSH_AREA_ACTIVE 1
#define BRUSH_AREA_MEONLY 2
#define BRUSH_FLAG_ALIGN_BY_SIDES 0
#define BRUSH_FLAG_ALIGN_BY_VERTICES 4
#define BRUSH_FLAG_ANCHOR_VERTEX 4
#define BRUSH_FLAG_ANCHOR_EDGE 6
#define BRUSH_FLAG_LIGHT_SPOT 0
#define BRUSH_FLAG_LIGHT_OMNI 1