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Model file (.alo) format

Mike.nl

By Mike.nl
in Empire at War

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Wildcat' Newbie

Wildcat'

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Sometimes the ALOViewer has problems displaying some of the textures. On my Bastila model, in the ALOViewer it show's her whole body using her face texture (I have two maps, one for face and other for clothes). But once I load up EaW, all the textures are mapped properly and are using the correct dds files.

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Mike.nl Newbie

Mike.nl

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I can't fix these things if no one tells me them, people. I'm not telepathic or something :)

 

So Wildcat and darthjacob1153, if you could put your ALO files and textures on a site somewhere and PM me the link (assuming you don't want the rest of the forum to get the models), I could perhaps figure out what the problem is and fix it.

And in case you're worried, you have my word I won't give the models to others (what's my word worth? I hope enough).

 

 

And while we're on the subject of viewer weirdnesses (or as I like to call them, unintentional behavioral occurances ;)), I am aware there are some other issues that don't make models show up like they should (i.e. like they do in the game).

 

The biggest among these is the fact that I don't Z-sort transparent meshes. This is probably best visible with units with lightsabres. The lightsabre mesh is usually higher up in the list than the main body mesh, meaning that I render it before the main body mesh. And since transparent meshes don't write to the Z-buffer, the main body mesh will overwrite the light sabre on certain parts, making it seems the lightsabre is actually behind the body mesh. This create some interesting Escher-esque images :)

 

To become a little big technical here, I really should group meshes depending on the render phase they're in (indicated in their shader) and then render the phases in order while Z-sorting the meshes that should be Z-sorted.

 

These are all on my list of things to do, but other stuff has gotten in the way of it. I'm also working on a rather large rewrite of the viewer 'engine' because of the phases thing and because I know more about the ALO format now than when I started on the viewer. So this takes time.

 

But small bugfixes to the current viewer, like the textures problem, shouldn't take a lot of time (depending on the size of the bug, of course).

 

 

I have to say though, I'm rather surprised people still use the viewer now that the tools are out. I was kind of expecting people to lose interest. But as I understand it, it's because using the viewer is faster than starting the game and seeing how the unit looks in there. So for this reason I think it's important that the viewer shows the model as game-like as possible.

 

 

Whew, that's quite a post. Well, I just wanted to let you know where I am and have you know that viewer development isn't dead (rather, just proceeding very slowly).

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Wildcat' Newbie

Wildcat'

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Oh! I'm sorry Mike. I didn't read this thread for a while. If it's not too late I'll still send my model to you. I'll send you a few. A couple of them crash the editor and another just has a weird mismap but shows up perfectly ingame. Also your viewer is awesome. I'll never throw it out. It helps as a quick reference to see the EaW models and how they were done so I can use the model names/animation names as a base for what I'm doing.

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Mike.nl Newbie

Mike.nl

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Oh! I'm sorry Mike. I didn't read this thread for a while. If it's not too late I'll still send my model to you. I'll send you a few.

No problem, send them when you can. It'll be interesting to get my hands on some actual community created exporter output.

I'll then see if I can fix what's wrong the viewer :)

 

 

And FYI, it has been brought to my attention that the viewer also crashes on certain other models, particularly W_LASER_..... models. The point about those certain kinds of models is that they use different chunk types.

The usual chunk type for storing vertices is 10006h. The laser models use 10005h, which stores vertices slightly differently. The exporter does not output those kind of chunks, to the best of my knowledge. A similar story is about bones. Normally, bone data is stored in 206h chunks. Some models have 205h chunks. Although similar to 206h chunks, they're still slightly different.

 

In fact, the 205h chunks lack a single value found in 206h chunks, but that's not a problem, because I didn't know what they meant anyway, so my viewer ignores them anyway. So it extracts the same information from 205h and 206h chunks anyway.

The same wasn't true for 10006h and 10005h chunks. My viewer, not knowing what to do with them, completely ignored 10005h chunks. This meant that the meshes that used 10005h chunks had no vertices. And apparantly DirectX doesn't like it when you pass it empty vertex buffers -> error :)

Although the basic vertex information (position, normal, texture coordinates) is in the same spot in 10005h and 10006h chunks, I still don't know what the rest of the 10005h chunks' data is for. And chances are I never will.

 

So maybe those models were created by a different, more powerful, not-released-to-the-public exporter. Or, alternatively, they were created by an earlier version of the exporter and Petroglyph was too lazy to re-export their earlier models ;)

 

 

Hm... I wonder, does anyone care about this blabbering? I always try to keep people up to date and 'educate' the readers of my posts into the details of the Alo format and the viewer whenever possible. A wasted effort in the age of the use-and-forget and as-long-as-it-works mentality?

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Wildcat' Newbie

Wildcat'

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I care. It could mean Petroglyph is hiding a much better exporter :p. What I wonder though is if they themselves have an importer..although I don't really see the need for one. I'll try to send the model soon.

 

EDIT: Sent 'em in your PMs.

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Mike.nl Newbie

Mike.nl

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Thank you, Wildcat. I'll look at them and the viewer when I get home later today.

 

And rest assured, I hereby promise that I won't distribute them, hand them out, etc.

Not even to the Ultimate EAW people (in case you were worried about the banner).

In fact, once I fix the viewer and I no longer need them, I'll delete every trace of them.

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Wildcat' Newbie

Wildcat'

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Thanks..Oh I just rememberd I forgot one texture, for her lightsaber hilt. Do you need it? I separated the different meshes into different texture maps, as I planned to have her in different clothes and weapons so I didn't want to attach everything together.

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Elryc Newbie

Elryc

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I dunno if anyone is still monitoring this thread, but I have the same problem as mentioned above where the in-game models (the ones in the .meg files) just display as textureless shapes in the viewer, and its driving me mad. I've tried updating directX, updating my video drivers, putting the directX DLL file in the ALO folder, moving the viewer into the EaW directory, and extracting the ALO, textures, and shaders. Nothing has helped.

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  • 1 year later...
crazyjayloc2003 Newbie

crazyjayloc2003

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Hi, Mike.nl!

Is the inormation on .ALO file format at http://mike.ultimate-eaw.com/AloFileFormat up to date?

 

I'd like to help cracking up the format (I have some experiences in reverse engineering and I will need a native ALO & ALA importer/exporter soon), if you don't mind.

 

WOW, cant wait until theres something to support the import for these file formats, it would be nice to see

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