Porting content between MMs?

[GreatEmerald]

I was wondering if it was possible to port content between MM6-8, mainly maps, items and monsters (with changes so you wouldn't end up getting peasants in dragon caves, of course ). For one, I'd really like to stroll through the Abandoned Temple of Baa with my trusty Movement Phase and having limited spells and everything. Maps ported over would have a different feeling in each of the games.

[Variol]

If I understand you correctly:
There are a lot of "stolen" items in maestro's mod for MM8 and placed into MM7.

[GreatEmerald]

Actually, I meant quite the opposite... Probably I wasn't too clear about it. I mean that it would be fun to have all the maps and possibly story (if it's possible to port them over games) in different MMs (especially MM6 dungeons in MM7 or MM8), but retaining all the monsters and items of the game that the content was ported to, just making sure that the original balance wouldn't be broken.
In short: port maps and story, change item and monster IDs in them to the equivalents of the game that the contents is being ported to (except things like quest items for obvious reasons). That would prove interesting I do believe.

[mkienenb]

You'll be able to do some of this with my new editor once it gets to the point of supporting MM7 and MM8 file formats in addition to MM6. You can already copy various things from one MM6 project to another.

You'll be able to copy map terrain, although I'm not 100% certain about MM6 maps to MM7 & 8 since there's some extra data structures involved for MM7 & 8.

Copying 3d models and sprites should work.

Copying events may not work since some events are unique to each game.

Generally speaking, the higher game numbers have more information. It's probably easier to remove extra information (with the corresponding loss of functionality) than to create missing information. I won't really know for sure until I get around to doing it

So for now, no. There are enough differences that you can't do a straight copy. But probably in the next year or two.

[GreatEmerald]

I see, all right then. What are the differences in terrain between MM6 and MM7/8, though? Visually I don't see any...

[mkienenb]

I see, all right then. What are the differences in terrain between MM6 and MM7/8, though? Visually I don't see any...

I haven't looked the MM7 & 8 terrain data files recently, but off the top of my head, I think that they have Bsp nodes whereas MM6 doesn't. There might also be some normals for terrain in MM7 & 8 -- not as sure about this one.

Computing terrain normals should be trivial.

I don't know much about BSP nodes yet, so I can't say how hard it is to create one from scratch. It might even turn out that BSP nodes are only computed while the game is running, and they don't have to be correct when reading the map from the file. At one point I studied the 7/8 structures, but that was years ago, and I'm very focused only on MM6 structures right now.

Removing bsp node data to convert a map from MM7/8 to MM6 would be trivial, though

There's only minor differences in the engine data structures for MM6/7/8. As I said before, 99% of the time, it's just adding an additional field or attribute to a data structure. Once in a great while (like for events), they replace an existing field or attribute with something completely different, though.

[GreatEmerald]

I'm familiar with BSP, although I don't see why they'd need it... Terrain is basically a replacement for BSP, since it usually uses heightmaps... I do understand why they need it in the Labyrinth engine, though.

[mkienenb]

I'm familiar with BSP, although I don't see why they'd need it... Terrain is basically a replacement for BSP, since it usually uses heightmaps... I do understand why they need it in the Labyrinth engine, though.

Yes, this is why I suspect it's only computed at runtime and the values are not actually used when stored in the data files.

[vladimir-maestro]

If I understand you correctly:
There are a lot of "stolen" items in maestro's mod for MM8 and placed into MM7.

there is no maestro mod for mm8 - it is only for mm7 and there all items are unique cause i've done them

[tolich]

maestro said that he has made these items