Automatic COB -> C#/MSIL convertor

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 16 Jul 2006, 18:06

I've been working with dan (more recently wrote the tank viewer tools for Dungeon Siege) on a TA to SupCom conversion toolset.

This is focused on translating;

3do -> scm. Done, Bone based model with UV texture mapping.
textures. Not done, intends to merge all the textures and generate UV mapping info.
cob -> sca. Sca is a keyframe format depicting animations triggered by a lua script. Keyframe generation from Cob piece/bone manipulation is waiting on the decompiler which will generate the lua script to connect everything.

The decompiling code is being rebuilt to be able to target Microsoft .NET's CodeDOM objects. This will allow the generation of C#/MSIL/VB.NET/etc sourcecode. I am planning on writing code which will generate Lua sourcecode from the CodeDOM tree.

The decompiling and texture code will take a while. Also, untill GPG releases information on SupCom scripting, the lua generation can not be really implemented and untill the game is released tested.

The reason for posting it here? Being able to convert 3do + texture (losslessly) to a bone based UV mapping format would be a considerable boon. As would being able to translate the scripts to something which doesnt suck from a design POV

AF · Post by AF » 16 Jul 2006, 18:18

You might want to consider integrating basic support for that model and scripting format into spring as a part of your project.

Post by **jcnossen** » 16 Jul 2006, 18:36

Cool.
So is there an official supcom model format out already?

EDIT: I got the pascal code of dan's viewer thing, but there is no license information. Are there any official supcom files with proper licensing, so it might be a candidate for spring support (GPL..)?

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 16 Jul 2006, 20:22

AF wrote:You might want to consider integrating basic support for that model and scripting format into spring as a part of your project.

To be honest, getting Spring's model format working once SupCom's formats are done is in all likelyhood trivial compared to getting it working From TA -> SupCom in the 1st place.

The differences between TA's Cobs and Spring's Cobs are trivial (at least from a decompiling POV).

jcnossen wrote:Cool.
So is there an official supcom model format out already?

There is the unofficial file spec and it will probably change since there is still a while to go before release.

EDIT: I got the pascal code of dan's viewer thing,

So far, we have automatic 3do -> scm and hand written calls to the cob command->sca bone transformation api.

The gif is only 15 frames, but the viewer does interpolation between keyframes (which can be generated at arbitary times from the cob commands);

but there is no license information. Are there any official supcom files with proper licensing, so it might be a candidate for spring support (GPL..)?

As far as I know, there isnt any licensing info out nor any offical specs.

Buggi · Post by **Buggi** » 16 Jul 2006, 22:38

Needless to say, you have GPG's FULL attention with this project.

Post by **jcnossen** » 16 Jul 2006, 22:53

Lucky bastards, how many rts games get a full set of custom units before their release

AF · Post by AF » 16 Jul 2006, 22:56

If we had support for the 2 supcom model and scripting formats we could get rid of 3d0 completely and share the supcom editing tools, aswell as make supcom->spring->supcom transitions a whole lot easier.

FoeOfTheBee · Post by **FoeOfTheBee** » 17 Jul 2006, 00:41

AF wrote:If we had support for the 2 supcom model and scripting formats we could get rid of 3d0 completely and share the supcom editing tools, aswell as make supcom->spring->supcom transitions a whole lot easier.

I wonder how the competition between the two engines would turn out in the long run. Spring would probably not support all supcom features at the beginning, but would be free and run on older hardware.

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 17 Jul 2006, 02:27

jcnossen wrote:Lucky bastards, how many rts games get a full set of custom units before their release

Dan is putting me to shame, the TA texturing -> UV mapping on 1 compiled texture prototype is looking great.

SwiftSpear · Post by **SwiftSpear** » 17 Jul 2006, 04:49

Xon wrote:
jcnossen wrote:Lucky bastards, how many rts games get a full set of custom units before their release

Dan is putting me to shame, the TA texturing -> UV mapping on 1 compiled texture prototype is looking great.

We had considered doing an automatic conversion toolset but there's a few problems. Firstly it doesn't really produce workable UV's, so you get the 3do unit in a UV mapped format but you can't edit it too much from that state because the per face textureing is just ugly when you push it onto a UV map. Second it just didn't seem economical when we still supported the old format. Spring won't have that though. Anways, best of luck :D

Das Bruce · Post by **Das Bruce** » 17 Jul 2006, 06:11

jcnossen wrote:Lucky bastards, how many rts games get a full set of custom units before their release

Look around you fool!

Xon · Post by **Xon** » 28 Jul 2006, 18:34

Converted Arm Advanced Radar Tower. Automatically converted model, texture file and the radar opening animation. The closing animation still requires fixing before it is properly extracted.

Sheekel · Post by **Sheekel** » 28 Jul 2006, 23:21

We already know what everyone wants to see in SupCom...

Peewees!!!!!!

smoth · Post by **smoth** » 28 Jul 2006, 23:30

/me rubs hands like an oldschool villian come to gundam supreme comander and I will... what?? no. no.. hang on a sec... OMG... IT'S A GUND....*KERSPLODES*

Spring RTS Engine

Automatic COB -> C#/MSIL convertor

Automatic COB -> C#/MSIL convertor