2010-04-13, 05:35 AM
Here is the first steps towards breaking the MDL files free of Som's clutches. It should open a great number of MDL files though I'm aware of a few I plan on adding support for but I thought I'd go ahead and toss this out there before taking a look at those.
I want to ask everyone to try to open as many MDLs as you can with it and let me know which ones don't work (there has to be at least a few) and more importantly anything in the importer that doesn't look identical to Som... I mean down to the last nitpicking detail.
The reason I need help is the MDL files have this packet encoding scheme and most files only use one to three of the kinds of primitive packets available (of which there are a good deal) so I have to run into a particular kind of packet before I can wrap my head around what it's doing.
I don't actually know what this build will do if it runs into an unrecognized packet code, but you will be able to tell.
If you find a file that just doesn't open report it and wait until I've fixed it before looking for more because I don't want you to test a bunch of files that all have the same problem.
This is actually a custom build of Assimpview. I've changed the name to Somimp_so_and_so just so it won't be able to take on a life of it's own and get confused for Assimpview. It's not Somimp either.
Before anyone spazzes out you can't actually use this for anything but it does represent an understanding of the format itself. Once we understand it 100% we can start converting other files into MDL files. I think all that is left to do is animation. But I have a feeling that will prove a whole other ballgame...
EDITED: The new dl location: https://anon.swordofmoonlight.com/holy/S..._debug.exe
I want to ask everyone to try to open as many MDLs as you can with it and let me know which ones don't work (there has to be at least a few) and more importantly anything in the importer that doesn't look identical to Som... I mean down to the last nitpicking detail.
The reason I need help is the MDL files have this packet encoding scheme and most files only use one to three of the kinds of primitive packets available (of which there are a good deal) so I have to run into a particular kind of packet before I can wrap my head around what it's doing.
I don't actually know what this build will do if it runs into an unrecognized packet code, but you will be able to tell.
If you find a file that just doesn't open report it and wait until I've fixed it before looking for more because I don't want you to test a bunch of files that all have the same problem.
This is actually a custom build of Assimpview. I've changed the name to Somimp_so_and_so just so it won't be able to take on a life of it's own and get confused for Assimpview. It's not Somimp either.
Before anyone spazzes out you can't actually use this for anything but it does represent an understanding of the format itself. Once we understand it 100% we can start converting other files into MDL files. I think all that is left to do is animation. But I have a feeling that will prove a whole other ballgame...
EDITED: The new dl location: https://anon.swordofmoonlight.com/holy/S..._debug.exe