I did a search and also found a little util called MultiGrab http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/index.htm
You can take multiple screens at once without over-writing the previous one, save in different formats, and some other little goodies.

Do you think that these objects are also used withing the 3D GAME or only for the Janes Manual?

The map files all appear to contain a set of 256 * 256 8-bit height maps, with a 2124-byte header.

I'm working with the Demo files, will check tonight if the real files are the same.

The file TER_hm.map contains 36 such hi-definition maps, as do TER_hx.map etc
but TER_l.map appears to contain 128 lower resolution maps.

Probably we need to print out the maps and play jigsaws.

My sfmap program should be able to import the files and turn them into bitmaps, will look at that.

Cheers,
Keith

This information we need. I would love to look into those maps too. Do you think that RAW in Photoshop would do the trick, or your SFMap is the easier tool for that?

EDIT: Keith, would you care to give some short hint/tutorial how do you find size of the pic and header? I would love to learn that.

Some time ago I asked about any tools to help crack the files open. I guess judging form the lack of response there are not so many then.
But, there is one tool out there which is pretty popular. It is MultiEx Commander found here:
web page

After opening *.tre format I do not even think that we have any more "container" files to deal with in LB2. So perhaps then only 65-page manual accompanying the MultiEx could be very good source of "know how" in this matter and could be of some interest.

Any other similar tool? One never knows when such a find may come handy in modding.

Polack,
following your lead, I opened a map file as raw and guessed the width.
The actual width can be deduced from the tiling of images, the header length by counting the lines of random noise before an image starts.

Then a bit of arithmetic on file sizes etc.

The problem with opening a tiled raw image in PSP is you get a long thin ribbon of images - I was planning to create a 4-tile wide image for easy printing.
And programmed-manipulation shold be possible

Cheers,
Keith

PS the files I'm using come from the downloadable demo, the ones on the CD are compressed but much larger, I suspect when I get to the real files my numbers may be incorrect.

Fraps will run in the background and let you take screenshots or movie clips, plus give you a FPS counter in most (maybe all) games. Since the default keys are used by Longbow, I changed mine to ; for screenshot and ' for movie. The screenshots/movies are saved in the directory selected in FRAPS in the format you choose (BMP,JPG,PNG). It does a good job, but I have a hard time seeing the framerate counter under Glide at 1600X1200 for some reason.
FRAPS
I think you would like this method vs. copy/paste a bitmap.

I took a quick look at wrapper.dle and didn't detect any problematic issues, other than the usual GlobalMemoryStatus call. No suspect Heap calls that i can see. Are you applying the GlobalMemoryStatiusLie fix? Looks like this should do the trick here... If nothing else works, i can give you my little testing program to help determine if GlobalMemoryStatus is the one to blame here.

Great work with the terrain files guys!

Mario

I've put a zipped BMP image of TER_hx.map from the demo on my site

The map data is tiled 6 x 6, my program turns it into a single coherent image and saves as a BMP.

Need to test it on the retail files, then I'll upload the program.

Next step will be manipulating the data.......

Cheers,
Keith

Nice! I have a stupid question, if this is the "skin" for the terrain, what files hold the 3D wire frame (if that's the concept)?

Has anyone determined how the objects in the game are placed? Like buildings, etc.

I'm curious if we can add more buildings and perhaps thousands of trees!!! ;-)

G+,
I am afraid it is the other way around, those geyscale maps ARE the hights. Intensity of grey in each pixel represent the hight, black being min, white max and shades of grey all in between.

All of the 3D objects must carry coordinates which allow them to be placed in LB2 world. This data yet to be uncovered.

The last one may be a pretty "tall" order. How to place the tree, if there is no tree model here (AFAIK). And yet, you want thousands of them.

But as they say "if there is a will ... there is always a way". Hopefully.

What are parameters of raw and what about all other terrain files? What is 6x6?

Manipulating data in this setup (rasterized hightmap) is really blessing...

web page
web page

OK.

I thought there was already replacement terrain where everything is higher (from Hatchet and Flexman)? So that would mean that smeone's already figured this part out and may already have tools available to mod the terrain.

I wonder if they'd share.

So it appears we have terrain getting sorted out.
The Janes manual sorted out.

What would we really like to see changed?

I'd like to see better looking skins on the targets, maybe a new terrain set, something mountainous, with lots of trees (maybe a ficticious Russian campaign). Higher polycount objects, etc. Less shake in TV mode (when heads down), something to even out the flow of the game (i.e.no Turbo mode required, etc).

It's fun to dream..

Maybe since I'm no where near being able to actually hack this game like you guys, I'll try to be your beta testers for any "fixes" you come up with. In the meantime, I'll look into documenting multiplayer TCP/IP communication for Recluse.

O yeah , man .... I agree.

web page

Now that's dreaming in technocolor. It would be too cool if LB2 opened up enough to include just a fraction of that terrains quality!

Yes, great work.

I have a quick question Mario, what would cause the game to "hang" when you exit missions or exit to the OS?

I'm usually lucky and can ALT+TAB out, start
task manager, then kill the LB2.exe process.

Just wondering why it's doing this. Has anyone else seen this issue?

I think that the terrain base height is set by this parameter in the CA.INI file:

[NTC]
TerrainHeight=28

[AZR]
TerrainHeight=50

I believe this is an offset from "sea level", so it rises and lowers the map set. I'll try changing it to something else and see if I can determine how much 1 unit is. Let me get back to you on this after UFC is over.

i think updated models/skins/buildings is something I would like to see; maybe some new vehicles/aircraft too. Also, a new cockpit!! Since we can run the game in hi-res, there should be room for all of the guages, dials, etc. And the Up-Front Display wont be a tiny box that can only display one line of text, hehe

Okay, I was off on the parameter effect in the CA.INI file. It is actually a multiplier ratio for the terrain height data. Here was the effect:
TerrainHeight=0 sets you to 0 (sea level) and the terrain is totally flat (like water)
TerrainHeight=1 sets you to 38 and the terrain is flat (though I'm sure it has SOME height variability)
TerrainHeight=2 sets you to 75 with (visibly) flat terrain
TerrainHeight=50 (default) = 1893 with normal mountains
TerrainHeight=100 = 3786 with doubled height of mountains.
That makes me conclude that the data point for the FARP I was testing from is a value of 37.86 and the multiplier is used to scale the elevation of the terrain to correspond to the (8-bit?) range of the Digital Elevation file without clipping. The one thing that seems missing here is the parameter that sets the minimum level in the map (what happens to the data that is < the lowest elevation in the height file, I'm fairly sure they don't discard the use of their full range by not using it). For example, if the file IS 8 bit, 0-255, you would want to use 1 to correspond to minimum map elevation and 255 to correspond to max map elevation, plus helicopter or Hellfire ceiling, I would think. Make any sense?

EL,
I think you are on the right track.
The .map files are 8-bit heights, ie 0 to 255.
Not sure how values of 1893 and 3786 are derived unless there is a magic fractional number applied globally too?

I've written a program to display the heights as a relief map and save as a bitmap file that can be opened in a paint program.
The height files are 'tiled' in 256 * 256 byte tiles. The data for the upper left-hand tile comes first, then the next tile. Most of the files have 36 tiles in a 6 x 6 array, the bigger files are 2 x many or 8 x many, maybe some others.
I suspect Longbow keeps a single tile in memory at any time, or maybe 9 tiles?

The program is easy to use and can be found here on the Longbow page.

I'm thinking of adding a height manipulation capability, it would be easy to change the height files, but any objects placed on them would presumably be misplaced.

I cant run LB2 yet to investigate. Need to get it working on Win2K!

I think we need to identify an exact point on a map and compare its height in-game with the data from the map file. I can make a version of the program that displays point heights if that helps.

Cheers,
Keith