Dashus Posted March 5, 2007 Share Posted March 5, 2007 Apologies if this is covered elsewhere. The vis lightmap format in TSL explained: vis files near as I can tell act as a sort of table telling the engine which rooms should render when you are standing in a given room. In the case of TSL this is done by simply listing the room models in a plain text file with a .vis extension. It can be placed in override. Curiously, without the vis file, no frame buffer effects will work. This includes things such security camera effects as well as forcefields (ie "stacking" forcefields to make things very very obscured and the nifty wavy yellow forcefields found in the cut 8** modules). My suspicion is that this is due to the fact that it needs a list of other rooms with possible additions to the frame buffer. This is the vis file I put together for 298tel (Czerka Military Sub-base): 298telg 5 298telh 298telf 298teli 298tele 298telj 298telh 5 298telg 298telf 298teli 298tele 298teln 298teli 5 298telg 298telh 298telf 298telj 298teln 298tela 4 298telb 298telc 298teld 298tele 298telc 4 298tela 298teld 298tele 298telb 298teld 3 298telc 298tele 298telb 298tele 7 298telg 298telh 298telc 298teld 298telf 298telj 298teln 298telf 6 298telg 298telh 298teli 298tele 298teln 298telj 298teln 7 298telh 298teli 298tele 298telf 298telo 298telq 298telj 298telo 3 298teln 298telp 298telq 298telp 2 298telo 298telq 298telq 3 298telo 298teln 298telp 298telj 8 298telg 298teli 298tele 298telf 298telk 298telm 298teln 298tell 298telk 2 298telj 298tell 298telm 2 298telj 298tell 298telb 4 298tela 298telc 298teld 298tele 298tell 3 298telj 298telk 298telm 298telll 0 The format is: <room model><space><number of rooms visible from this one> <space><space><visible room 1> <space><space><visible room 2> etc. -298telll (that's 298TELLL) is a ball. I think it's the planet model in room L. Having no doors it has 0 connections. -It appears to be case insensitive. -I'm not sure if the blank line is required but all the games vis files have it. -The only way to determine which rooms are connected (as far as I know) is to open the map in KT and then import the models into gmax and figure out which room you're looking at and drawing pictures to see which connect. -In the absence of a vis file it seems to assume that all rooms are visible from all others (obviously very inefficient). (Saving the example above as 298tel.vis and putting it into override will make all the frame buffer effects work for 298tel ) [Edit - Updated with information gleaned below (so far). Thanks all! ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth InSidious Posted March 5, 2007 Share Posted March 5, 2007 IIRC, .vis files tell the game which rooms you can see from the current room... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pavlos Posted March 5, 2007 Share Posted March 5, 2007 IIRC, .vis files tell the game which rooms you can see from the current room... It can't be. Modules like 298TEL does not possess a *.VIS file and you can see from one room to the next in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knightmare66 Posted March 5, 2007 Share Posted March 5, 2007 If it can't find a .vis file, then maybe the engine assumes that every room can see every other one. M19aa (Tatooine Rakatan temple) in K1 has a dummy vis file (each room model has 0 visible rooms), and you can't see any rooms from any other one. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth InSidious Posted March 5, 2007 Share Posted March 5, 2007 ^That may be so...Or 298TEL had a hack-fix put in? Can't see why, but it would make sense. I'm pretty certain that to see from one room to the next you need a .vis file... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pavlos Posted March 5, 2007 Share Posted March 5, 2007 The same problem occurs in 801DRO. It has two (I think) "rooms." Both 298TEL and 801DRO do not have VIS files and in both cases you can see from room to room. I replace the 151HAR module's VIS file with a blank one and I can still see from room to room. Perhaps this only applies to TSL. Edit: Hmm... I must be wrong if two people have independently come to the same conclusion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dashus Posted March 5, 2007 Author Share Posted March 5, 2007 298tel didn't have a vis file. And you can see fine. However, I did some further testing and it appears that the file is not a "connected to" list but rather a list of rooms "visible from" the given room. Stepping into room J in 298 (the west corridor) will stop rendering e and n (the north and east corridors) with my old vis file. [Edit - The updated vis file renders them properly after stepping into the corridor. Thanks for pointing that out! ] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knightmare66 Posted March 5, 2007 Share Posted March 5, 2007 I doubt the .vis files have anything to do with the lightmaps- they were just stuffed in that .bif file because they weren't large enough to warrant their own .bif. (BTW, there doesn't seem to be any specific references in the .exe to any .bif file- it might just mount all .bifs in the data folder. If that's true, then new areamodels could be put in their own .bif files instead of having all their parts dumped in Override.) They seem to operate similarly to how the vis tables in BSP-based engines work- instead of a list of which nodes are visible to which, there's a list of which rooms are visible to which. Pavlos, if you used a blank text file (no data), then the game probably fell back on making everything visible. M19aa's .vis file has data that actually has each room set to 0 other visible rooms: m19aa_03b 0 m19aa_01h 0 m19aa_03a 0 m19aa_02g 0 m19aa_02c 0 m19aa_02f 0 m19aa_02b 0 m19aa_02j 0 m19aa_02d 0 m19aa_02e 0 m19aa_02a 0 m19aa_02i 0 m19aa_02h 0 m19aa_01d 0 m19aa_01e 0 m19aa_01i 0 m19aa_01a 0 m19aa_01c 0 m19aa_01b 0 m19aa_01f 0 m19aa_01g 0 232TEL also has some VIS problems. From the room with the two workbences, you can't see the caved-in hallway stub that's directly south of the map start. Here's a screenshot of this problem: http://www.markshan.com/knightmare/pics/232tel_visbug.jpg There also seems to be a problem in 301NAR with the rail on the walkway to the landing pad disappearing when you get near the door to Tien Tubb's shop Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dashus Posted March 5, 2007 Author Share Posted March 5, 2007 Yeah I'm inclined to agree at this point that they were just thrown into the lightmap bif. I've removed any mention of lightmaps from my initial post. BSP trees was actually what I thought of when I realized what they were doing And if somebody can get me the rooms in play in both of those bugs I'll be happy to fix them in TSLRP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
knightmare66 Posted March 6, 2007 Share Posted March 6, 2007 In 301NAR I've found that it's a problem with 301nara not being visible from 301narc. I dunno about 232TEL. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dashus Posted March 6, 2007 Author Share Posted March 6, 2007 301 is fixed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoffe Posted March 6, 2007 Share Posted March 6, 2007 (BTW, there doesn't seem to be any specific references in the .exe to any .bif file- it might just mount all .bifs in the data folder. If that's true, then new areamodels could be put in their own .bif files instead of having all their parts dumped in Override. The BIF files are not stand-alone unfortunately, they are listed in (and their content indexed by) the chitin.key file located in the main game folder. Thus it's somewhat troublesome to add new BIF files to the game since the chitin.key file must be updated with their content as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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