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Porting worldspaces

Submitted by Katana0 on

I'm working on a similar conversion to Morroblivion between TES4 and Fallout NV, and I am wondering how exactly it is that you are able to convert entire worldspaces without basically importing all the data and re-writing them in the other engine's construction kit, or if that is actually what I will end up doing.

Now before I get countless responses asking why I would want to attempt this and stating how stupid an idea it is (as I have seen on other forums), I am doing this purely to see if I can.  That is my only real goal.  So... I suppose any information would be cool...

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Sorry, the one you would need to ask about this is Galadrielle, the true Genius behind Morroblivion. Galadrielle, a French modder, wrote the ESP converter that converted Morrowind to Morroblivion. http://forum.wiwiland.net/index.php?showtopic=39859 We've just been trying to make it playable ever since...
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And Galadrielle has been long gone since because of being threatened with copyright laws. Sucks really.

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You want to port tesIV into FNV? Or port FNV into tesIV? I dunno how , but good luck anyways.

About the how to convert and import between the tes games, here is some info,

 there is the populare and easy to use ESPConverter0.98b by Galadrielle.

What more is there to say?

Tesport, imports stuff from Morrowind to Oblvion.

Testroi, imports stuff from Oblivion to Morrowind.

 

TESTROI :

" TEStroi is a utility to help you port (convert) the landmass from any worldspace contained in any mod/master created for Oblivion: Elder Scrolls IV (2006) to Morrowind: Elder Scrolls III (2002). It will automatically make an exact replica of the landmass, vertex normals (for shading), vertex colours (for structure layouts and additional shading) and texture the land in the nearest equivalent Morrowind textures, Oblivion originals, or replacement Oblivion textures (such as Qarl's).

It will also convert all the NPCs (name, race, gender, class, vital stats, skills, AI data) and replace the most common non-magical weapons, clothing and armour back to TES3's nearest equivalents. These NPCs are placed back on the landscape in their original locations (including those in child worldspaces). Support is also given to converting Shivering Isles based mods. It can also convert all sounds, lights, activators and statics and place them back on the landscape; you will have to convert TES4 meshes back to TES3 yourself to make usefulness of the placed statics, naturally.

Options exist to move the entire landmass a specified number of TES3 cells in any direction to avoid conflicts with other mods, or to disable the conversion of land, NPCs or books. Additionally, where textures do not exist in the original landmass, TEStroi can apply any Morrowind/Bloodmoon or custom texture of your choice to the entire landmass, such as snow, grass, rock, lava etc. helping to reduce the effort required to repaste the entire region.

TEStroi will produce a masterless Morrowind compatible plugin called troi_out.esp which may be loaded in to either the Morrowind TES Construction Set (TESCS) or in to the game itself and visited.

 Please note this is presently a Console application only, though it is simple enough to use. "

 

TESPORT

" TESPort is a free utility to help you port (convert) the essential features of any mod written for Morrowind to Oblivion. Essentially it is an ESM/ESP convertor from TES3 to TES4 and will create an Oblivion compatible copy of the original mod including all the external cells, landmass, vertex colour shading, Oblivionized landscape textures, all NPCs, common Oblivionized inventory for those NPCs, Books, Quests, Journal entries and Global Variables. The output is put in a file called TESPORT.ESP; an Oblivion (TES4) compatible plugin file and the landmass is put into a new worldspace called TESPORT, which you may later rename in the Oblivion TES Construction Set (TESCS).

Since this is a complete reverse-engineering job without assistance, not every feature of TES3 will be imported (indeed some TES3 features simply aren't supported in TES4).
Please note this is presently a Console application only, though it is trivial to use.


TESPort parses each record in a selected TES3 (Morrowind) master or plugin file looking for specific records, GLOBs (global variables), NPC_s (Non Player Character statistics, including inventory), external CELLs and LAND (the former contains details for each point on the world-grid including placed items and NPCs, the latter contains the land-height, vertex normals and applied texture settings) and BOOKs (obvious!) and writes a TES4 version of each record with a group header. For NPC_ and LAND records, Oblivion expects the data to be compressed with ZLIB. DIAL and quest INFO records are accumulated into QUST records.

 Since each TES4:Oblivion cell contains only 32x32 grid points - that's 4 times smaller than TES3:Morrowind's 64x64 cell format, TESPort generates 4 cell records for later use; as a result, for example, a cell at co-ords (5, 6) in Morrowind will cover 4 cells in Oblivion: (10, 12), (10, 13), (11, 12) and (11, 13). TESPort then looks for the LAND record. Each LAND record has to be split up in to 4 records containing the vertex normals (VNML), vertex height gradients (VHGT), vertex colour shading (VCLR) and vertex texture (VTEX) data. The VNML and VCLR data is re-arranged in to 4 smaller grids. The VHGT data is also arranged in to 4 smaller grids, but 3 of the cells have recalculated cell offsets and the edges of these cells are recalculated so there are no join gaps. The TES3 VTEX data (a 16x16 grid, arranged in sets of 4x4) is arranged in to a logical (X-Y) 16x16 grid, blown up to 34x34, then 4 sets of 17x17 texture points are processed for each cell. Each TES3 texture number is matched to a TES4 FormID number via a lookup file and a sequence of TES4 compatible ATXT-VTXT records is created. 4 LAND records are then generated, compressed with ZLIB format into an Oblivion compatible LAND record and for each of the 4 CELL-LAND combination; a cell record, 2 cell child group records and a LAND record are written to TESPORT.ESP. "

Don't know if this info helps you, but since you asked....

 

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To all of you, that is a very generous amount of information!  Do you know if there is any documentation as to how these programs were developed, or perhaps even if they were open source?

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Lightwave, he wrote these words I posted for you on his homepage. He wrote TESPort and TESTroi.

You might just also want to check out his converter:  TESAnnwyn !  

"TESAnnwyn is a 3D landscape height map importer/exporter utility for TES3: Morrowind, TES4: Oblivion and Fallout3 computer games. With TESAnnwyn you can import and export RAW/BMP image files containing containing height map data to and from a 3D landscape for all games, import/export the Vertex Colour RGB image data to or from a 24-bit colour BMP and export TES3/TES4 texture placement map(s) for re-importing in to any game. With the import facility you can emboss/engrave images or photographs on to the landscape as well as real world height map data (such as mountain ranges). With 32-bit files, a full detail height-range of 486,626 km in increments of 14cm is possible!

The various export formats (RAW and BMP) are useful for embossing/engraving photographs or other images on to the landscape, rescaling in any dimension or rotating the image in a standard image editing package (such as the free Gimp, or Adobe Photoshop) or creating your own maps.

TESAnnwyn will automatically correct underflow/overflow landscape errors that can occur with steep heightmaps as well as report on the height range of import images and exported game landscapes.

 The decoding of the TES landscape, TES record formats and the writing of this program has been done entirely by myself. Apart from what I've already added to the TES4 Wiki, AFAIK little information seems to exist on the net regarding the format TES uses for landscapes in both games."
 

"TESAnnwyn can do all of the following:
Export any TES3 landscape from one or more ESM/ESP(s) to an 8/16/32-bit RAW file or 8-bit Greyscale, 16/32-bit colour BMP.
Export any TES4 Worldspace landscape from one or more ESM/ESP to an 8/16/32-bit RAW file or 8-bit Greyscale, 16/32-bit colour BMP.
Export the Vertex Colour map from a TES3 landscape or TES4 Worldspace landscape to a 24-bit colour BMP.
Export a texture placement map from a TES3 landscape or texture layered maps for a TES4 landscape.
Import any 8/16/32-bit RAW or BMP image containing heightmap data in to a TES3 or TES4 landscape and calculate the normals for correct shading.
Import a 24-bit BMP Vertex Colour map over a TES3 or TES4 heightmap import.
Import a TES3 exported texture placement map in to TES3 or TES4 so the land has the land has its original textures. When imported to TES4, the TES3 textures are replaced with TES4's nearest versions using the same method as TESPort.
Import TES4 exported texture layer placement maps in to a TES4 land so all the original texture layers are in their original positions. You can swap textures by modifying the text dat file produced after the export.
Forcably texture the entire landscape in any single base texture - for TES4 this includes the 3D fauna textures or your own custom texture.
Use large height ranges, full detail range up to 7km for 16-bit files (at least 4x what the official Construction set achieves with the same data). Up to nearly 490 million metres with 32-bit files. Mount Everest is now possible. :)
Import real-world height maps (e.g. mountain ranges), or your own geometric structures (e.g. Egyptian Pyramids) in to both games.
Import massive landscapes, literally hundreds or thousands of square miles and play them in game (NB TES3 is very slow, but TES4 is playable).
Re-scale, off-set and limit the height of all data points when importing/exporting.
Emboss or Engrave any image you like (e.g. a photograph, text etc) on to the landscape.
Produce square cell grid images on heightmap and Vertex Colour map image exports.
Shift the starting cell position for the imported landscape to avoid conflicts with other landscapes.
Use image files of any dimensions (i.e. not limited to the 1024x1024 quads of the official Construction Set).
Optionally prevent the importing of flat wilderness cells (to avoid wasted landscape cells).
Automatically rescale greyscale BMP exports for the full available 8-bit range, if desired.
Generate Cell sized NIF files from a TES4 Worldspace ESM/ESP (part of the LOD2 project, still in development).
Doesn't crash, create seam problems, or require splitting of image files like the official Construction Set importer does."

 

Download TESAnnwyn 

Download TESPort

Download TESTroi

and here's Lightwave's homepage

best of luck with your project

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