Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Guides and such related to development go here.

Moderator: Skyfaller

Forum rules
No Discussion Threads!
User avatar
Sir MMPD Radick
Clan Nova Captain
Clan Nova Captain
Posts: 1625
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:07 am

Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by Sir MMPD Radick »

I have no idea how accurate it is or whether it is any good but it looks like someone put some effort into creating the information in this zip.
This was created in 1998, author unknown to me atm.

Mercs Mission Editor FAQ
James 3:5-10: My Reminder
And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
User avatar
Jerad Gray
House Steiner Private
House Steiner Private
Posts: 32
Joined: Fri May 30, 2008 1:12 pm

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by Jerad Gray »

Another one that I must look into.

(Update by Moderator so there is not a double post)

Yuck, thats just to much work through bad user interface to be really any fun, to much looking up object calls and stuff...

But for anyone that does want to give it a try I have a hint, when you are looking through the faq, if you come across any blank pages hit 'ctrl" "a".
User avatar
Col.Kell
House Steiner Archon
House Steiner Archon
Posts: 868
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2008 7:44 am
Location: An Isolated Tennessee Valley.

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by Col.Kell »

I have actualy been able to make a MercNet test map called "Precious Cargo" by reading this FAQ. I just made this map to test it out, but Skyfaller said in IRC he'd love to try it when it was done. it is a lot like Galuzza, with a few additions in scenery and gameplay.

Get a friend and download it here, then try it out and see what you think.
MechWarrior 2: 31stCC
Image
allmhuran
House Steiner Private
House Steiner Private
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 4:12 pm

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by allmhuran »

Nobody ever really used the mission editor. It was created after mercnet had peaked and was never quite finished. I didn't use it to make any of my missions and neither did Ed, though I think Hammer may have made a test mission with it.

The best way to make missions, imo, is to use a text editor. It's time consuming, but it works.
allmhuran
House Steiner Private
House Steiner Private
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 4:12 pm

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by allmhuran »

BTW the contributors I know of were Patrick Grover, Michael Grover ("Hammer" and "Jammer"), Ed Wong (endymion) and myself (Don Halloran, "Axe"). But I don't know how to contact them anymore, and I don't really remember *anything* (as would be the case for the other guys I assume).

Er, and of course one very useful file from Activision themselves.
User avatar
Sir MMPD Radick
Clan Nova Captain
Clan Nova Captain
Posts: 1625
Joined: Tue Jan 22, 2008 10:07 am

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by Sir MMPD Radick »

very useful file? *Wonders what that could be*
James 3:5-10: My Reminder
And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body. Out of the same mouth proceedeth blessing and cursing. My brethren, these things ought not so to be.
allmhuran
House Steiner Private
House Steiner Private
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 4:12 pm

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by allmhuran »

The MW2DOC.HTM file (edit the file to change the text color to black). It explains what each file does and what to put in it. The easiest way to start is to decompile an existing simple mission with not much geometry in it and use it as a template, but this requires that you have the tools to turn the bwd's back into text files. Ed Wong wrote a program to do that, I don't have it anymore though. Perhaps it's somewhere on this site or someone else here has created something similar.
User avatar
Skyfaller
Clan 1st MechWarrior
Clan 1st MechWarrior
Posts: 1017
Joined: Sat Apr 12, 2008 2:58 am
Location: Germany
Contact:

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by Skyfaller »

I have written a decompiler for BWD files that produces XML files. (Edit: An example of such a conversion can be found here). Unfortunately, my understanding of the tags inside the BWD files is not complete enough for full decompilation or even two-way conversion. All I know about the tags can be found here.

We are able to replace files in the PRJ, as long as they are smaller or equal in size to the file replaced. Replacing larger files might also be possible, but is apparently broken. Adding new files does not work yet.
allmhuran
House Steiner Private
House Steiner Private
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 4:12 pm

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by allmhuran »

I'm not sure exactly how far you've gotten, so I'll just give you a breif overview of what I know.

The MW2DOC.HTM (one of the files which can be found in the zip linked in the OP) describes the structure of .wld files. These .wld files are the decrypted versions of .bwd files.

A .wld file is written in a plain text declarative langauge defined by activision specifically for MW2 mission files. There are several different types of .wld files, which you can see if you open any .mwm file (since a .mwm is just a zip file of the various .wld files and supporting .txt files for a mission).

I suppose, given a .bwd file and some description of what it should look like as a decrypted, plain text .wld file, it would be possible to create a program to do this translation. In fact, as far as I know, this is exactly what Ed did, through a gruelling trial and error process. For instance, we know that a "planet" file (xxxxPLT1.wld) contains the following line

planet <gravity> <atmosphere> <seconds_in_day> <days_in_year> <tilt> <circumference>

Thus, given the bwd file xxxxPLT1.bwd, it should be possible to figure out how it is translated from xxxxPLT1.wld, since we know the structure of the .wld. I, however, would not enjoy trying to do this.

Here's what I do remember: When I was making missions, I used the command shell program TAR.EXE. Now, whether I was using this simply to unzip the .mwm into bwds and then using a different program (perhaps created by ed) to turn the bwds into wlds, or whether perhaps I was in fact using TAR to decrypt .bwd's, I can no longer remember. I'll do a bit of a rummage through my memories and the internet and see what I can find.
allmhuran
House Steiner Private
House Steiner Private
Posts: 32
Joined: Mon Nov 24, 2008 4:12 pm

Re: Mercenaries Mission Editor FAQ - Year: 1998

Post by allmhuran »

By the way, you do not need to touch the prj file in order to add custom missions, in case that's not clear. All you need to do is zip them into .mwm files and add them to a directory under your mercenaries directory.
Post Reply