Back to Metroid Prime hacking

[interdpth]

Hello, my name is interdpth, and i've been scouring through the net for data on those CMDL's and stuff. So far I can just draw the points of a model but I can do that pretty good as you can see
http://interdpth.arc-nova.org/SAMUS.png

But that's all I got so far.
I have the basic CMDL header that shalted guy posted. I see the unknown section has patterns in it, i've had a little help from Sarah Harp, and hoping to get more.

If anyone has any data they can share. PLEASE DO. This is my first 3D app, you may know me for my MZM and MF editors Double Helix and Zero Fission.

So help? XD

I found how to reference the texture files. But that's my only progress so far. Still better than nothing.

[Sercio]

Saraharp didnt finish his job. There is no release of his viewer for over 2 years now
Curious if something might happen...

[interdpth]

The more help I get, the sooner my own can be released. Currently it just reads CMDL's compressed or uncompressed it auto decompresses and reads just the first segment. If anyone wants to help, I can show my CMDL header and tell how I read it. @_@

ANY HELP is appreciated especially how to tell what a segment is and stuff i'll be here all week. =p

I'll have it loading directly from a pak when I can get the models displaying, than directly from the games! ^_^

[Fluesopp]

Have you looked at the code for Thakis' BMD viewer? It might give you a good idea of how to do the rendering.

[interdpth]

Yeah, i've looked, i'll be using it for rendering help.

But first I need to get the data figured out @_@

and I can't get in touch with the almighty Thakis i've heard about.


Edit:

If anyone could give me details on how to load textures and map them, that'd be lovely

[revel8n]

Hello All,
New here but hopefully my first post will be worth the read.

i have been interested in game file format reverse engineering for a while now, and after getting accustomed to things over on the xentax.com forums, i finally got around to looking into some of the various nintendo related games.

Since Metroid Prime was one of the games i had intended on getting into at some point in the future anyway, with the renewed (continued?) interest in the topic, i offered to help interdpth out with his endeavor to reverse the formats. Having started a little before the beginning of last week we have had a good bit of progress on things, so i am here with my first post to update everyone on how things are going.

So far the CMDL file is mostly done with concern to determining where the vertices, normals, uv, and index information resides. Models can currently be rendered without textures. The texture file information is known and a version that supports at least preliminary support for them should hopefully be done in the near future. For the moment the main things missing from this format is the determination of the texture stage information for blending, texture coordinate usage in multitexture, and some of the data that determines the number of indices present in the index data.

There is also a start on the CINF and CSKR skeleton and skinning information data, but this still needs a bit of testing with the model data, and there is a version of the CSKR format that contains some extra information that still needs to be deciphered as it is not present in all CSKR files. Hopefully the ANCS and ANIM formats will come to follow soon after.

Still trying to get more accustomed to the way the gamecube and revolution handle things as this is the first gamecube format i have worked with. But hopefully things will come together nicely in the end.

i have probably missed some things, but oh well, heh.

[interdpth]

Basic texture support has been added.


Some textures like Samus show as all color...
Should have that fixed soon I hope.

I think we'll have a release within the month guaranteed, as revl8n we still need to determine blending and all that, but I think we'll get it done soon, but check out this pirate in the mean time.

[MasterPhW]

It's nice to see, that there is still interest in Metroid hacking and that you already archived that much stuff.
Your IRC chat is also funny. xD
Keep up the good work!

[thakis]

Good job, guys :-)

[revel8n]

Just a quick update on the status of textures. They work! For the most part anyway. Still a few formats to work out. Now to work out the blending and other assignment flags as it appears some of the textures are used to specify specular or other appearance attributes for rendering.