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| Thread: Reading and parsing maps | |
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melianos
Tavern Dweller
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posted June 16, 2011 11:10 PM |
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Reading and parsing maps
Hello.
H6 is coming (who doesn't know that here ?), and when it comes out, we shall go through the maps available way to quickly.
Then will come a sad waiting time for new maps, or for people to redo old maps that we played on H5 (or older heroes).
So I've been thinking of parsing (reading) H5 maps, and converting them as H6 maps. So we could convert (once the program is made) maps from H5 to H6.
I know how to do the parser, that's actually quite easy. My problem lies in reading H5 maps, and understanding what I read.
I tried to open the Listen to Silence map with wordpad (was sure it would fail, but well, it's always worth a try), and I got, well, something unreadable, with many special caracters (couldn't even copy/paste it).
Does anyone know how to decode and read the H5 maps (charset and such things) so I could create the parser ?
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mike80d
Famous Hero
Map Maker
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posted June 17, 2011 12:28 PM |
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I personally do not, but this is a great idea that I hope works out.
One challenge you will have is that the Developers for Heroes 6 have already stated that the maps in H6 are larger than previous game versions. Keep this in mind, and good luck!
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Warmonger
Promising
Legendary Hero
fallen artist
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posted June 17, 2011 02:52 PM |
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magnomagus
Admirable
Legendary Hero
modding wizard
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posted June 17, 2011 03:13 PM |
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You won't be able to read the terrain file because it is hardcoded, but you can read the xdb for the placement of objects
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Warmonger
Promising
Legendary Hero
fallen artist
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posted June 17, 2011 03:15 PM |
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You should check the meaning of "hardcoded". Only game executable is hardcoded (compiled), other files may just be given in an implicit format.
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The future of Heroes 3 is here!
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markkur
Honorable
Legendary Hero
Once upon a time
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posted June 17, 2011 05:40 PM |
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Edited by markkur at 17:45, 17 Jun 2011.
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Great idea and I hope a way can be found to do this.
However one question comes to mind; will H5 & H6 Editors speak the same lingo?
Another snag may be that even if they do, if Mike80D is right about the larger maps, then the "copy and pasting" map objects in H5, most likely will not work.
I share this, also for general map-making purposes;
In H5, I wanted to copy an "object list" from a normal map to the next larger map-size. My purpose was to "Add more room around all factions, to add more objects to the existing lay-out". When I pasted; all objects were placed "to match the orignal {X,Y} object locations, so those became a "skew" on the larger map. The transfer put the added room only (as I should have expected) to the "North and East", thus my quicker start was a no-go.
On a smaller map, it may be possible to "drag over all objects" and then center the lot (my purpose) but I didn't think of trying that, because all terrain was virgin and all objects placed in the underground were buried and had to be dug out. A serious Dwarven treat.
Anyway, <imo> if the maps ARE different cell sizes then you would need a program to "re-figure the objects {XY}s" on the new map size". That's just objects, I don't know a thing about the transfer of modified terrain and tiles. I should add; the the map description info was copied that appears in the drop-down, but I think I had to change some info there to allow the map to open? Seems it was the clash in listed cell-sizes.
Good luck. It's a great idea.
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melianos
Tavern Dweller
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posted June 17, 2011 08:32 PM |
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Edited by melianos at 20:37, 17 Jun 2011.
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Quote:
First of all, you need to unzip (unrar?) h5m file.
Great, I didn't know I could unzip h5m files.
Quote:
However one question comes to mind; will H5 & H6 Editors speak the same lingo?
They can't. That's why I want to parse it. Basically I read it, and translate it into H6 map. But for that, I first need to read it 
One extra question, inside there are xdb files, does someone know how to open them ? Also, how do I open the bin files ?
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