WC3 Media Extraction for TC questions

tbaldree

Rear Admiral
Howdy. Been lurking about here for a while.

I recently built an online space combat sim called SabreWing
http://www.sabrewing3d.com Has pretty obvious WC influences. What am I saying - REALLY obvious.

On the sly, I'm ruminating on doing a Wing Commander 3 TC using my current codebase. All the hard work is done, it's basically a media conversion. Most of media work has been done by other users in the community, converting the 3D ship meshes to intermediate formats. I have a lot more freedom than with using pre-existing games though, since all the code is mine, and I won't have to do wierd workarounds for the right effects.

Why Wing Commander 3? It's the best one, of course. The last WC with Kilrathi. WC4 with all those PEOPLE was just boring. (blasphemy, I know)

Anyway, I did some preliminary tests and was very pleased with the overall WC3 'feel' that could be achieved. ("YOU CANNOT DEFEAT THE DRAKHAI!")

On to my questions. I've searched round about on Thomas Bruckner's site, and HCL's legacy files and info, but haven't found what I'm looking for.

Is it possible to extract the cockpit graphics from WC3? They aren't MAT's are they? I've made some attempts at manually reconstructing them from the (meager) screenshots of WC3 I've managed to scrape up. Unfortunately, I'd like to have the hand animations intact, which isn't possible if I do that. I don't even have WC3 anymore, and just can't bring myself to shell out 200 bucks for a copy of Kilrathi Saga on EBAY when I don't know if this is even possible. That said, are they extractable from the demo (if extractable at all)?

Can the inflight comm movies be extracted to any usable format?

How about comm voices? Sound effects?

Any help with these questions would be greatly appreciated. If you've already extracted them yourself, and wouldn't mind sharing them, that would also be fantastic.

Media in hand, it would take about a week of evening-time to rework SabreWing to use exclusively WC media. Boy, I'd like to relive the WC3 glory again (with hardware acceleration, of course) and I know some other folks would too.

Thanks for any info you might have!

Travis
 
Popped in some models, sfx, and music last night. Here are a couple of shots. (Obviously the HUD would be done in WC style, but this is just a quickie) They're a little muddy from jpg compression, but you get the idea.

shot1.jpg


shot2.jpg
 
I like it! I'm not sure about most of the stuff you asked about (haven't looked into the WC3 files in a while...) But I'll poke around and see what I can see.

TC
 
Just snagged a copy of WC3 on EBAY last night for 20 bucks. Should have it soon, and then I'll have the right files to work with.

I managed to extract the .iff's from the wc3demo .tre, and believe I found the one with the cockpit graphics in it, but I'm not sure how to further extract the images from the .iff.

Travis
 
Isnt it a 3d object? Like wcp ones? If so i think you can convert it (with Thomas tools)to wcp format and then extract it.
 
Nope. In WC3 and the two prior games, cockpits are static bitmaps. The hand animations are individual image frames. In WCP, the cockpits were actually 3D, and of course in WC4, there was no cockpit at all.

Travis
 
Well then, they're probably in MAT format, which can be converted to BMPs using another program from Thomas' page ;).

If all else fails, BTW, I can extract WC1/2 cockpits and the animated hand without any trouble - but of course, they will be in 320x200, so they won't look that good.

Those screenshots look great. I remember trying SabreWing a few months ago... didn't get very far (not the game's fault - blame my connection), but clearly I'm gonna have to give it another look.

Now, as for comm voices, I don't think anybody's ever done anything like that with WC3. That doesn't mean it's impossible, though.
 
Yes Q, if you want, tbaldree, send me this iff and i will see what i can extract from it :)

[Edited by KillerWave on 03-04-2001 at 22:32]
 
They probably are as MAT's. I think there are several of them crammed into 1 IFF though - exploring the IFF with iffedit seems to indicate this anyway. Unfortunately, I don't know how to yank out the individual MAT's (or even if they ARE MAT's) I tried opening the iffs directly with a mat converter that I probably found on Thomas' page, but with no luck.

I don't have any problem viewing the .v00 and .vga files of previous wing commanders with wcnav, but wcnav doesn't recognize the images in the WC3 iffs, and as you said, only displays 320x200, which wouldn't work.

*sigh* Hopefully I can take a whole lot of screenshots when I get the full version.

Travis
 
Originally posted by tbaldree
They probably are as MAT's. I think there are several of them crammed into 1 IFF though - exploring the IFF with iffedit seems to indicate this anyway. Unfortunately, I don't know how to yank out the individual MAT's (or even if they ARE MAT's) I tried opening the iffs directly with a mat converter that I probably found on Thomas' page, but with no luck.

No, you have to convert the iff to wcp format to get the mats. Like i sayd before, send it to me and i will see what i can do...;)
 
I've sent that along. Zipped it up to make it a little smaller on your end. Thanks again for any help!

Travis
 
Perhaps the wc3demo tre's use a different format than the final tre's included with the full game. I'll be able to test this later this week when my copy comes in. If anybody else has a copy of wc3 and the time or inclination to check it out, that would be great, though.
Or, maybe there's just no good way to extract them. Hmmm.

Travis
 
There's gotta be a way, right?

Can one of you send me this iff file? Send it to jakub@julia.iium.edu.mo (my usual account is almost completely full of UE stuff ;)).
 
Well, using HCL's wc3/4 -> prophecy converter, I managed to get a couple of MAT's from the iff's. Only ship textures though (256x256) I'm pretty sure there are some larger cockpit images in there, especially as the iff references the shp and vdu data for the cockpit, and has separate sections for forward, back, left and right. They don't look like they'll be easy to drag out, though.

Travis
 
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