.lvl files

[SligStorm]

Hey Paul, Any progress from ripping the sprites yet? And do you think you could give us a .cam converter? cuz ur .lvl builder isun't much use without it

[Xavier]

hum...

He gave us a cam converter... it converts the .cam files to .bmp files
Look at the first posts

[Paul]

not much progress since one of my hdd's died still recovering data from it
however the "it_is_me_your_father" appears to be some kind of debugging stuff.
It seems to check for a key combination being held or some such, i dont remeber how but I managed to get it to display the frame buffer

[ZANGG]

hum...

He gave us a cam converter... it converts the .cam files to .bmp files
Look at the first posts

He means in reverse. IE: BMP to CAM

[Paul]

it would be a bit of a pain .cam files contain OTHER information to so you'd have to replace the orignal file with the new image data and then hope it still works (because it prolly wont, at least until i figure everything out which wont be for a while since i dont have much spare time lately)
also check the file sizes, that should prove that there is extra info since theyre not all the same size or just whip youre fav hex editor out

[ParamiteSurprise]

not much progress since one of my hdd's died still recovering data from it
however the "it_is_me_your_father" appears to be some kind of debugging stuff.
It seems to check for a key combination being held or some such, i dont remeber how but I managed to get it to display the frame buffer

That "frame buffer" happens when ya turn the Scroll Lock on, it happens ingame too - - i just dont understand it

[Paul]

hmm it just works for you when you use the "it_is_me_your_father" and turn scroll lock on?

[ZANGG]

Anything new on the lvl files?

[Paul]

not yet, been playing around with the "path" files, you can change the background but the collision detection remains the same, very strange

[ParamiteSurprise]

hmm it just works for you when you use the "it_is_me_your_father" and turn scroll lock on?

No i only turn scroll lock on without it_is_me_your_father, btw, what is it_is_me_your_father??



Oh and i've found something out with the scroll lock thingy, when i play the game, on the right, eg if i was in the first screen in scrabania, the red flash alarm would go off and tell me that theres sligs in the other room... :O

[Xavier]

Paul, for the AE backgrounds, if your .exe file is broken, you can toy around with the one of the demo, available on the official site: http://www.oddworld.com/firsttenyear...s/exoddemo.exe

[LIJI]

Very interesting stuff.
Paul, Correct me if I'm wrong, but are CAM files raw bitmaps with 15-bits color and an header?
If so, I could make a BMP to CAM converter.
Also, I'm glad that someone finally found out what it_is_me_your_father do.

Edit:
Also, You can see the order of the CAM files to see which parts were added first and which parts were added later.
For example the first level didn't have the 2 screens with the Slig and the door originally (Where the background is orange), and it jumped to the screen where you have to jump over the landmines.

[Paul]

Yeah I thought that was intresting how they added those extra bits in, but I think that might have been because the screens they added have the "distant/small" parts where abe is in the background, maybe they didn't implement that yet?
Also yes, CAM files are pretty much just raw bmp's but they're in segments and each word is an RGB segment or 15/16bit colour.
A level is made of CAMeras, Paths and Levels, the level contains all the game engine data, the cameras are the backgrounds, and the path's are the level maps which tell how the cam's link up, the collision detection, placing of sligs, chant orbs and just about everything.

edit: oh whoops, forgot to mention if you make a bmp to cam converter the game will crash unless you include the extra information from the orignal cam file, e.g its more than just a bitmap theres fonts etc in a lot of them

edit again: some info on path files, the start is just a lot of file names stuck together, where there isnt a file name or just null's means that there is no screen in that area of the map, the data after this is everything else which will take a while to figure out, ive managed to figure out Palt's too which is simple, and Fonts for the most part just a few things need to be discovered for those (e.g how do you know which palt they use??)

[LIJI]

If it's like that, Why not make it a gui or add more command lines and use 2 parameters, the original cam file and the modified BMP. That should do the job.

[Paul]

basicly because im lazy and want to make some super tool at the end of all this to edit everything

[LIJI]

Ah, good.

[Paul]

Very interesting stuff.
Paul, Correct me if I'm wrong, but are CAM files raw bitmaps with 15-bits color and an header?
If so, I could make a BMP to CAM converter.
Also, I'm glad that someone finally found out what it_is_me_your_father do.

Edit:
Also, You can see the order of the CAM files to see which parts were added first and which parts were added later.
For example the first level didn't have the 2 screens with the Slig and the door originally (Where the background is orange), and it jumped to the screen where you have to jump over the landmines.

check the other thread for the it_is_me_your_father stuff, its basicly the ddcheat for oddysee

[LIJI]

I managed to modify and "compile" the first level a little.
I replaced the 2 first screens with some random image (I actually tried to swap the background of the 2 first screens, but I can random stuff instead).
The game can read the cam files without crash.
Yet the cam converter crashes when trying to process them. :P

Paul, can you post more information about how are the cam files working? Especially the header.
If you can post the source code of the cam converter (If it's C or C++) that would be great.

[Paul]

Im not gonna give the source to that util because im prolly gonna use this as a uni project so I can't.. however I was about to write a cam patcher/bmp to cam or whatever you wanna call it because theres a few extra things I need to find out from them, so i'll post that exe up later

[SligStorm]

I was just thinking, when you convert the CAM files into BMP how come it dosen't rip the forground as a seperate image?

[Nate]

I imagine that they're rendered together and a pixel map tells the graphics engine when to display or hide the characters. It's really only the context by which the character sprites are placed that dictate fore- and background.

[LIJI]

Because the foreground isn't an image, it's a bunch of objects such as Abe, Sligs, Muds, Chant-killers and landmines.
The images of the objects are stored in the BAN files.

[Paul]

so heres a tool to convert cams to bmp and replace the image in a cam file with another bmp.. was too lazy to write a readme so just run it with no args to figure out how to use it

[Xavier]

Sounds great

When can we expect a cam extractor to bmp for AE?

[Paul]

prolly not for a while, im still working on decoding .ban files, its going pretty slow at the moment though :/

[Hulaabeo]

Does this work on AE?

[Paul]

AO only im afraid, heres a screen shot of the first screen in rupture farms thats been replaced

[Chubfish]

That is pretty impressive. Now I wish I had AO for the pc. Not only for that -it_is_me_your_father thing but for whenever you may finish this.

[ParamiteSurprise]

It also works with the demo - notice that noentry til novemeber 1997 on one of the images below:

[Paul]

you should edit the sign out to somthing else