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OFP Islands to Visitor3 .pew format Discussion

Posted: 2008-10-02 03:14:32
by Synide
Hi,

A few people have asked me whether it's feasible to construct a conversion tool, too ease the conversion of OFP island file formats over to Visitor3 .pew (posew60) format for further editing and introduction into ArmA.

This topic is a discussion to help me scope out what would exactly need to be done.

- I see the tool as only needing to be able to read OFP OPRW format AND OFP 4WVR .wrp file formats, I won't bother with Visitor 2 .pew file formats.

- A Visitor 3 .pew file needs not only the actual object entries but also an entry for each type of object inserted into a templates array.
Becasue a OFP file most often points to a model that does not exist in ArmA then there are only 2 avenues to pursue.

1. For each distinct type of model object found on the OFP side convert this sp3x mlod to a p3dm mlod and place these models in a P:\ drive path which can be referenced in the ArmA .pew.

Or

2. For each distinct type of model found on the OFP side create a pointer to a 'dummy' model object but with the original OFP objects name so a Visitor 3 user could then go though and point them at appropriate ArmA objects or ones they have converted over from OFP.

Or

3. Maybe some preprocessing, that is... perhaps a initial tool that reads the different objects in an OFP island and creates a conversion text driver file that specifies the OFP object and what you want it to map to in ArmA.
Then the user would have to edit this text file and manually decide which OFP objects match to which ArmA objects or create the object.

Then once this conversion driver text file is ready, run the actual conversion tool which would read the OFP island and for each object it encounters query the text file to find out what it should map to on the ArmA side.

The above is stuff to do with objects... I'm still thinking about what to do with textures...

any thoughts?

Re: OFP Islands to Visitor3 .pew format Discussion

Posted: 2008-10-02 06:35:58
by Snake Man
Synide wrote:- I see the tool as only needing to be able to read OFP OPRW format AND OFP 4WVR .wrp file formats, I won't bother with Visitor 2 .pew file formats.
Correct, we can load any WRP into WrpTool and therefore they are saved to 4WVR.
1. For each distinct type of model object found on the OFP side convert this sp3x mlod to a p3dm mlod and place these models in a P:\ drive path which can be referenced in the ArmA .pew.
This is enough, we should prepare the WRP in WrpTool for the conversion, if there is addons used which dont have ArmA equivalent, they just have to be replaced or deleted.
The above is stuff to do with objects... I'm still thinking about what to do with textures...
We could have the initial tool to do just the objects + terrain elevations. When we have that, we can quickly do the satellite texture layer in photoshop. All the OFP island texturing is way way too low quality (512 textures total, remember) to be "converted", there is just no point in that.

Yes sure someone wants to imitate OFP texturing exactly to place similar satellite layer coloring to the exact same spots as in the WRP file the OFP texture, but... as said this is mostly specific cases, most users want to do brand new satellite texture to better match the ported terrain.

Posted: 2008-10-02 19:08:12
by PROPER.Q
Correct, we can load any WRP into WrpTool and therefore they are saved to 4WVR.
Agreed.

I don't really understand 1). Can you please rephrase.
Do you mean to convert models used on the particular island from OFP p3d format to ArmA p3d format?

2) sounds good - IF you can edit the templates outside visitor 3.
If its only possible within with the clumsy editor where you have to edit
one object after another then 3 might be way more convenient.


Textures are not important for us. They can be completely drop or will
be already removed from the OFP WRP file anyway.