Very interesting YouTube Video regarding Modding etc.

[Na_Dann_Ma_GoGo]

Hi there,
I just encountered the following videos (2 parts) where someone talks about SC2's folder structure and usage of files, file types and so on.
*click*

 

[overload119]

Included Asset Types

*.css (Cascading Style Sheet)
*.db
*.dds (texture)
*.fx (shader)
*.galaxy (Scripting language used for map creation)
*.gfx (shockwave flash)
*.m3 (geometry? (models/scenes?)
*.ogg (audio)
*.otf (font)
*.png (graphic)
*.SC2Layout (UI layout)
*.ttf (font)
*.txt (Plain text file)
*.xml (Markup language file)

 

[MGCǂSpectre]

Yes, yes I already saw and posted some of the extentions

- Why would they use OGG files, it's much easier MP3 to open, now this will require some codec installation for Windows Media Player. Can windows 7 read OGG files? only my Audacity can play them.
- gimp cant open DDS what kind of texture is it? - FIXED there is a plugin for DDS

 

[Mcasdf]

My first guess was that ogg was loseless and mp3 wasn't but that turned out to be wrong. So I have no idea actually, aside that ogg is open source. Meaning that they won't need to pay royalties or whatever to the owners of the mp3 filetype.

 

[Reaper2008]

Ogg is smaller too. Ogg@64kbps sounds as good as mp3@320kbps (generally). It's a good thing too.

@TheTerran:Media Player Classic and VLC Media Player are two excellent programs with ogg support.

But what's with XML and CSS?

 

[overload119]

XML for extreme customizablity. It's actually a god-send. You can see my other thread where XML is used for object editor stuff, kinda like .SLK was used in WC3.

CSS is used since a lot BNet stuff is displayed like a rich webpage. It doesn't have anything to do with in-game stuff.

 

[bboy-tiger-]

.m3 is model file extension ? You sure ? I cant see on the video...

 

[FreshMobster]

.m3 is model file extension ? You sure ? I cant see on the video...

Yeah, it's for model files. But there's good news about it which I just found out in my own wanderings. People at Blizzard are using 3DsMax for their model work, so they must have a converter for .m3 file format. Lets hope they will release it with the Galaxy Editor.

As it seems, some of the UI elements are also in .m3 format. Maybe for better scaling at different resolutions? Doodads, other various models and even CLIFFS bare the same model file format.

What intrigues me the most is that destructible/killable game objects (for instance units, buildings) have an additional mysterious .m3h file next to the original one. I looked through several of them and it looks that that file depicts the position of the attachment point (or maybe some other critical point) in the 3D model. This could very well mean, that we could add our own attachments to existing models, without the need to alter them. There are also a new set of files under name [Insert Unit Name]death.m3. Maybe a death animation file? Anyways, it seems that bigger, higher polycount models (such as the Mothership or buildings) have bigger (in KBs) "death animation" files than small ones, which have a close to 1:1 rate.

Anyways, this adds much more freedom to the custom map creators on redefining already existing content, without the need of creating new, or altering existing. Also saves precious space.

Oh and forgot to add. If my theoretical ramblings are correct the same effect model files (beams, explosions, floating bubbles, flying peons) could be used over and over without the need to include them with model (same is possible in WC3 but without such freedom of possible .m3h placement).

I'm attaching screenshots for you to see. Explanation is also there.

P.S. Don't look at .m3h endings in file property screenshots as I have selected both .m3h and .m3 files. .m3h files only take up to 8 KBs of space.

 

[Tigurius]

We started documentation of *.m3, see http://www.madx.dk/wowdev/wiki/index.php?title=M3 for information about the fileformat. And *.m3h is just XML with another ending and containing things like attachmentpoints like FreshMobster mentioned.