User talk:Neo

Hi Neo,

We (geyser and Alloc) are positively impressed by your recent contributions to the "OBD" knowledge database. Wow.

What kind of activity (professional, Oni-related) has led you to such expertise? What tools do you use to analyse Oni?

OUP could use some expert OBD knowledge right now: we'd like to produce a fully functional release Soon(TM).

Would you consider private dialogue with us (mail, ICQ)? (about TXMP and recurrent data types)

geyser 03:09, 6 March 2007 (CET)

Hi guys,

What's so much to be impressed, I just added some matrices here and there (mostly) ! :)

I've been digging through Oni binary files for some time now (I think it was the summer of 2002 when I opened a dat file in a hex editor out of curiosity and when I saw all this TXMP, PNTA, IDXA, M3GM etc. stuff I thought that maybe I can get something out of this binary format). While I'm not a game developer I have a bit of a passion for 3D stuff so I learned a bit of Open GL and a bit more of Direct 3D so I'm quite familiar with transforms, quaternions, textures etc.

As for used tools: much like anyone else I think. A hex editor, Excel for some things, SQL Server (database) for some others, Visual Studio (while it's file hex editor is quite dull it has a cool memory view in debug mode (you can set the number of displayed columns and the data type to display (integer/float, decimal/hexadecimal, 1/2/4 bytes). Obviously since this was in debug mode I had a program that loaded the DAT file into memory and where I could select a "file" (for various reasons I happened to call them "resources"). In addition I sometimes used a disasembler (home made, don't ask what it is) to stare at some things inside the executable :). Last but not least I have a "viewer" for a bunch of things from Oni (texures, 3D models, animations, environment). Good to test things like what I added to OBAN and OBOA file formats.

As for mail/messenger (MSN or Yahoo) I guess it's OK but I don't feel like posting my mail address in here, it's a public place... any ideas ?

Neo

OK, we won't ask you about your home-made disassembler ^^, but the viewer definitely sounds nice.

Viewers (and exporters/importers) for things other than TXMP is what OUP currently lacks.

Needless to say, we'd like to see those (is it C/C++?) and with any luck integrate them with OUP... ^^

As for contact, our coordinates are available (just click our sigs). My YIM alias is serguei_mechkov.

geyser 02:53, 7 March 2007 (CET)

I only have a few more doubts about the TXMP format. Will experiment a little tomorrow night.

geyser 02:53, 7 March 2007 (CET)

Your homemade tools remind me of someone from the previous Oni Central Forum... Have we met? ^^

geyser 02:53, 7 March 2007 (CET)

Nope, we had not met before. As for viewer I intend to make it available but not right now, I kept doing experiments with it for the last 2 weeks or so and the whole source looks like after a war. The current one is written in C#, I also have one that is written in C++ but it has not been updated in a while so it lacks/gets wrong some things. I'll add you to my YIM list and you can ask for more details there, I'm not familiar with this wiki stuff to write too much... :) Neo