How to make custom mercnet missions
Posted: Wed Nov 26, 2008 9:47 am
Note: Whether or not this can be applied to netmech, I do not know. It would probably involve messing with the .prj.
Who am I?
I am Don Halloran, aka "Axe" back when I played netmech and mercnet. I wrote 7 missions for mercnet, axe1 through axe7. I worked with Ed Wong, Mike Grover and Pat Grover on the 3D mercnet mission editor.
What's this about?
This will be an attempt to compile the knowledge I can still find or remember about creating mercnet missions.
What's the structure of a mercnet mission?
A mercnet mission is a file of the form xxxx.mwm in the missions directory under your mercenaries installation. A .mwm is simply a zip file (gzipped), you can open it with, for example, winrar.
Inside the zipped mwm you will find two types of files, .bwd and .txt.
.bwd files
The .bwd files are compiled/encrypted versions of another file type, known as a .wld file. BWD probably stands for "binary wld". A program to decompile .bwd files into .wld files was written by Ed Wong circa 1996. Each .bwd file represents one .wld file.
.wld files
The .wld files are plain text files written in a declarative langauge created by Activision. There are may different types of .wld files, which describe various aspects of the mission. For example, a file xxxxARE1.wld describes the placement of geometry in the mission.
.txt files
Opening these makes what they are fairly obvious. Text files in a .mwm are used to contain the briefing each team or player sees in the mission lobby, and other metadata about a mission, such as the player limit.
Turning .wld files into .mwm files. AKA, compiling a mission
In order to make a .mwm file that can be distributed to other players, you must take your collection of .wld and .txt files and compile them into the .mwm file. A couple of programs are used to do this: stripwld.exe and wasm.exe. Stripwld will "clean up" your wld files and produce a batch file. Wasm then uses this batch file to create the .mwm file. Wasm can also add the data directly to the prj. Run wasm with no arguments to see how this works. Note: everybody making missions back in the day always used the -t option with wasm to make a .mwm. Nobody ever modified a prj, because it makes mission distribution hard. See more below.
These tools are available on the mercenaries CD in the tools directory. You can also get them from various links on the mech2.org site. Both programs are packaged with the mission editor zip available in the downloads forum.
In order to use these tools you need to have dos4gw.exe. At this moment I'm not sure whether this program is on the mercenaries CD. If not, it is available here http://www.allstargaming.net/dl/files/dos4gw.zip
Distrubuting missions
This is easy. Just make your .mwm file available to other players. These files go into the missions dir in your mercenaries installation. There is no need to modify the .prj.
jNote: perhaps, maybe, just as a guess, but probably not, it is possible to make new missions for netmech by using wasm (see below) to add the mission info to the .prj. This means that each player would effectively have to perform the last couple of development steps. I have no idea whether or not this will work. All custom missions were made for mercnet. AFAIK no new content was ever added to netmech around the time all of this mission building stuff was originally going on (circa 1996-1999).
Turning .mwm files into .wld and .txt files
By far the easiest way to make a mission is to decompile an existing mission into its component files and edit those files. To start out, take one of the simpler missions, a small map with a small amount of geometry and simple objectives. The catch is that I no longer have the program necessary to do the decompilation. Such a program was written by Ed Wong circa 1996.
So now what?
Fortunately, the mw2 3d editor download (available on mech2.org) includes a sample mission, called "Gas". The source code (.wld files) for this mission are available in the "source" directory of the download. Unfortunatey, this is not the simplest mission to work with, containing a lot of files. Not every mission has to have all of the files shown in Gas. On the other hand, it does give you a lot of information!
REAL information
As you can see, I can no longer remember much about building missions. Hey, it's been 11 years since I made one. Luckily, EXTENSIVE documentation is still available....
MW2DOC.HTM
The mission building FAQ download available at mech2.org includes a file called MW2DOC.HTM. This file is also on the mercenaries CD. This is an excellent source of information as to what goes into each .wld file, and the overall structure of the files. Originally this document had a background image and white text, so in order to read it I suggest you open it with notepad or something similar and change the body tag text color to 000000 instead of FFFFFF!
Dan Kegel's Mission Building FAQ
Perhaps even more useful (while containing a lot of the same info) is a page belonging to Dan Kegel, which you can find here
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~dank/mercmfaq.htm
Note: I STRONGLY suggest someone copy the contents of this page and make it available from mech2.org, because Dan Kegel's page on caltech is way, way, waaaaaay overdue for deletion.
Note2: Actually, this file is also available in the mission building FAQ download. Again, change the text color to black in order to be able to actually read it!
Ed Wong's mission table FAQ
Some .wld files have a bunch of "mission tables" in them. These tables describe such things as objectives, and even AI (note: as far as we ever knew, AI DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY IN MERCNET MISSIONS. You can add AI mechs, but they won't do anything. You CAN use them to set off nukes though...hehe). Anyway, these tables can be hard to understand. Fortunately, in the mission editing FAQ download from mech2.org is a file by Ed Wong called MERCSTAB.HTM. This file describes these tables, and is referenced by Dan Kegel's page.
Who am I?
I am Don Halloran, aka "Axe" back when I played netmech and mercnet. I wrote 7 missions for mercnet, axe1 through axe7. I worked with Ed Wong, Mike Grover and Pat Grover on the 3D mercnet mission editor.
What's this about?
This will be an attempt to compile the knowledge I can still find or remember about creating mercnet missions.
What's the structure of a mercnet mission?
A mercnet mission is a file of the form xxxx.mwm in the missions directory under your mercenaries installation. A .mwm is simply a zip file (gzipped), you can open it with, for example, winrar.
Inside the zipped mwm you will find two types of files, .bwd and .txt.
.bwd files
The .bwd files are compiled/encrypted versions of another file type, known as a .wld file. BWD probably stands for "binary wld". A program to decompile .bwd files into .wld files was written by Ed Wong circa 1996. Each .bwd file represents one .wld file.
.wld files
The .wld files are plain text files written in a declarative langauge created by Activision. There are may different types of .wld files, which describe various aspects of the mission. For example, a file xxxxARE1.wld describes the placement of geometry in the mission.
.txt files
Opening these makes what they are fairly obvious. Text files in a .mwm are used to contain the briefing each team or player sees in the mission lobby, and other metadata about a mission, such as the player limit.
Turning .wld files into .mwm files. AKA, compiling a mission
In order to make a .mwm file that can be distributed to other players, you must take your collection of .wld and .txt files and compile them into the .mwm file. A couple of programs are used to do this: stripwld.exe and wasm.exe. Stripwld will "clean up" your wld files and produce a batch file. Wasm then uses this batch file to create the .mwm file. Wasm can also add the data directly to the prj. Run wasm with no arguments to see how this works. Note: everybody making missions back in the day always used the -t option with wasm to make a .mwm. Nobody ever modified a prj, because it makes mission distribution hard. See more below.
These tools are available on the mercenaries CD in the tools directory. You can also get them from various links on the mech2.org site. Both programs are packaged with the mission editor zip available in the downloads forum.
In order to use these tools you need to have dos4gw.exe. At this moment I'm not sure whether this program is on the mercenaries CD. If not, it is available here http://www.allstargaming.net/dl/files/dos4gw.zip
Distrubuting missions
This is easy. Just make your .mwm file available to other players. These files go into the missions dir in your mercenaries installation. There is no need to modify the .prj.
jNote: perhaps, maybe, just as a guess, but probably not, it is possible to make new missions for netmech by using wasm (see below) to add the mission info to the .prj. This means that each player would effectively have to perform the last couple of development steps. I have no idea whether or not this will work. All custom missions were made for mercnet. AFAIK no new content was ever added to netmech around the time all of this mission building stuff was originally going on (circa 1996-1999).
Turning .mwm files into .wld and .txt files
By far the easiest way to make a mission is to decompile an existing mission into its component files and edit those files. To start out, take one of the simpler missions, a small map with a small amount of geometry and simple objectives. The catch is that I no longer have the program necessary to do the decompilation. Such a program was written by Ed Wong circa 1996.
So now what?
Fortunately, the mw2 3d editor download (available on mech2.org) includes a sample mission, called "Gas". The source code (.wld files) for this mission are available in the "source" directory of the download. Unfortunatey, this is not the simplest mission to work with, containing a lot of files. Not every mission has to have all of the files shown in Gas. On the other hand, it does give you a lot of information!
REAL information
As you can see, I can no longer remember much about building missions. Hey, it's been 11 years since I made one. Luckily, EXTENSIVE documentation is still available....
MW2DOC.HTM
The mission building FAQ download available at mech2.org includes a file called MW2DOC.HTM. This file is also on the mercenaries CD. This is an excellent source of information as to what goes into each .wld file, and the overall structure of the files. Originally this document had a background image and white text, so in order to read it I suggest you open it with notepad or something similar and change the body tag text color to 000000 instead of FFFFFF!
Dan Kegel's Mission Building FAQ
Perhaps even more useful (while containing a lot of the same info) is a page belonging to Dan Kegel, which you can find here
http://alumnus.caltech.edu/~dank/mercmfaq.htm
Note: I STRONGLY suggest someone copy the contents of this page and make it available from mech2.org, because Dan Kegel's page on caltech is way, way, waaaaaay overdue for deletion.
Note2: Actually, this file is also available in the mission building FAQ download. Again, change the text color to black in order to be able to actually read it!
Ed Wong's mission table FAQ
Some .wld files have a bunch of "mission tables" in them. These tables describe such things as objectives, and even AI (note: as far as we ever knew, AI DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY IN MERCNET MISSIONS. You can add AI mechs, but they won't do anything. You CAN use them to set off nukes though...hehe). Anyway, these tables can be hard to understand. Fortunately, in the mission editing FAQ download from mech2.org is a file by Ed Wong called MERCSTAB.HTM. This file describes these tables, and is referenced by Dan Kegel's page.