Just contains CamTool.exe.

if you run it without any arguments then it must tell you the usage options?

Just shows up for a split second.

You need to open it from the command line instead of windows explorer. Go to the start menu, then click run. Type 'cmd' and then enter. Then type 'cd' then the path of the folder the camtool is in. Then press enter. Then type camtool.exe and then enter again.

Is this right?

yeah?! lol

Possibly. It's up to the individual programmers, who you're right haven't worked for Oddworld Inhabitants in many years. You would have to try contacting them as individuals. More than likely they wouldn't have the memory to provide much help, and I can't at all guage how interested they'd be in helping if they could.

Well that Mike Case guy was a *slight* help (basiclly told me what I already reversed) and also that the game scripts where built up from a demo and so are some what hacked together (which I already found out too :().

You can tell some of the characters are heavily scripted. One example is in AE, the first Slig that you see walk up to a Mudokon. He walks forward and beats the Mudokon, during this time he doesn't respond to pretty much anything the player does.

Not to mention the random few; "deaf Sligs". - The ones which dont respond properly to speech.

I hate to be a pessimist... but if nobody has made a level editor in all this time, it's pretty much a fruitless venture. Sorry to dash everyone's hopes, but even if you COULD edit levels, you'd still have to resort to really picky scripting code for the Mudokons and Sligs anyway.

Whatever happens is better than nothing. Worst comes to worst, we're left with every background from AO and action sprites.

'Course its scripted, ever notice how some Sligs have MASSIVE delay before the shoot? Yet some are instant..

Problem is tons of stuff is hard coded into the EXE, which is why I've come up with the plan of re-writing the game and converting the PC content to run on the newer engine which means people could do whatever they wanted. Of course I haven't even started that and its a log way off.. but its do-able!

The Sligs in AO are much more 'gung-ho' compared to AE (that's what I think anyway).

OMG!!! paul is back! yay! paul can u plz help me with using the cantool it's so fucking hard!!!
BTW thanx for posting this topic! it's my favorite one on OWF!
,DJ9000DEVIL

:compmad:My Windows Vista is being really sucky at the moment. Every time I use CamTool it stops Abe's Oddysee from working. I know I'm doing the right command on CMD and it comes up that the BMP file was patched successfully however I start the game and begin and it crashes. I've tried to contiune the proccess but it just closes.

Its not a Text Message dude.

I like that. It make it easier to get away. (Only in the first levels bearing in mind)

Abe's Oddysee for some reason keeps crashing when I start it up. Maybe I edited the wrong part on PSPad. If only they could make hex editing easier. I found 51 0H 17 UKEY = Q, maybe this is the controls.

Just so everyone knows I am making a GUI version of cam tool so its easy to use!

Oh you're still alive :)

PAUL GUESS WHAT

I LOVE YOU

FOREVER

NOW NO ONE WILL PM MEEEE

Great to hear so, keep up the good work :D

holy jesus paul your back! oh yer... and im pretty sure someone said if paul came back they will forever give me there rep... Paul, i cant wait to see what you do for this game. Also, remember that error you forced where it told you to find a replacement file. I was thinking, why does the game crash and not just do that. Did they have a developer version of the executable. Or is there some way to enable it. And didn't Digital Dialect recode the entire game???

Hi!
I've started to document oddworld's file formats, and then, I've found this thread.
It seems that Paul did some work already! But did he document it somewhere?
Anyway, if somewhone is interested in it, what I've done so far is available at http://hg.sitedethib.com/oddworld-formats/
So far, it provides full documentation of Indx and Palt formats, partial documentation for Demo, Bits, and NxtP, and a python3 module to handle that.
I'm quite interested in the missing bits of the Bits format, which would make me able to convert background files, and in the Path format, which seems to handle CAM's position, collision masks and object/character description.

If it helps Paul, Good job :p

EDIT: Welcome to the Oddworld Forums!

Nice Job ThibG, looks like you did a good job. Maybe you and paul can team up. And i tried downloading those python files but couldn't download. Can you upload them here on the oddworld forums in a zip folder. That would be great. To paul: why haven't you given out the source code for the cam tool and level editor. Why do all the work when others can help you out?

It's a mercurial repo, you can get it, update it, and other funny things using mercurial.
About the zip thing, I've just enabled bz2 and zip snapshots for oddworld-formats:
zip, bz2.

Big thanks! To help you out. VH and VB files are Pretty much the index for sounds.dat. and BSQ files are playstation midi files which use the vb and vh files as samples for music.

mlg man, thanks! That's interesting!
Have you any information regarding their formats?
Edit: Nevermind, it's nothing but common playstation files. At least for the VH format.

Kinda, i researched the bsq file a bit more. it is actualy a SEQ file renamed to RSQ. Using a program SEQ2MID you get a midi file, look back a couple pages and youl see a link to download the converted midis. As for the vb and vh, they use a simple format... i guess. Using a program called PSOUND i was able to open the playstation vb and vh files. So lookup that program and debug or something to see how it opens it. Or maybe there is a source code for it. Havn't looked it up.

Awesome :D How did you go about figuring out the DEMO stuff? I've been using IDA to reverse engineer the game exe to figure out how stuff is working. I know how "Bits" and "Anim" work. Both of these formats are different for odyssey and exodus though!

One thing I would really like to understand is how "Path" works, it uses some weird script type thing which I think could be similar to "Demo"? Only problem is that the offsets to things in these files is hard coded into the exe :(

@mlg man, thanks. Those file formats looks like the most common files formats used for PS1 midi. However, I haven't found any documentation yet.

@Paul, mainly intuition. Before looking at the file format itself, I thought it was a sequence of events/actions, and that it would be likely to have a simple structure, fixed in size.
After some tests, I've dismissed the first bytes (which causes the game to crash if not set properly), extracted all the commands from the game's demos, and started working on it.
There are unknown fields yet. Maybe it has no use, or serves to other characters than abe, and that's why I tried to make a custom NxtP file for the demos... But it hasn't been successful yet.

I think the Path format is one of the most useful. There is one for each sublevel, and it seems to deal with "sublevel layout" (the position of the different CAM files), initial state and scripting.
You're saying it's using hardcoded offsets in the exe... That's what I feard... So, it's the same with the map's width and height, isn't it? My first goal being to reimplement the game engine, having all those values hardcoded is quite annoying...

PS: I would be interested in Bits and Anim formats :P