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Map Requests / Re: Solar Winds Sector size [Map Request or Mapping Tips?]
« on: April 24, 2021, 12:58:35 am »
Here's what I've found. The bh_start.dat and save games have object locations.
First, how the game stores object positions in these files. Each object has 8 bytes that determine the X/Y coords for sector, and 2 bytes for sub-sector.
All objects have positions stored as:
X4 Y4 X3 Y3 X2 Y2 X1 Y1 XS YS - each of these being a byte
Calculate sector X Position as seen in game display:
Calculate sector Y Position as seen in game display:
Note that the 4 and 3 bytes are only used by the game to move ships temporarily out of the play area. At the start of the game the Rigian scout and Nightshade ship are located way out of the play area since they appear after triggers. Not sure why numbers are stored this way instead of 32-bit signed integers, but maybe this is some coding strategy I'm not aware of. I'm sure this math can also be simplified but I couldn't be bothered.
The sub-position of each sector is represented by XS and YS and these are unsigned bytes.
The player's ship position is stored at: 0x0321 and is 10 bytes long, matching the byte pattern from above.
Immediately after this starting at 0x032B starts a chunk of data that contains the positions for planets and NPC ships. These records are 13 bytes long. The first 10 bytes represent the position of the object as described above, the last three bytes are as follows:
Byte 11: Controls the graphic the object uses, also determines the mini-map colors
Byte 12: Not sure exactly
Byte 13: Something to do with the SCIENCE descriptions
I'm attaching an raster of an SVG I put together using the data from the starting save game file. Limited to the first solar system. Note that objects are scaled larger than what they would be in a sector. A 1:1 scale of the planet sprites to the sector size was too small. The largest planet takes up about 75% of a sector when it would only take up 25% in-game.
Anyway, hope that helps if you still decide to do a raster map. I will probably file this SVG version away for the moment, as I'm not 100% happy with the outcome and have other things I should be getting done.
Attachments and image tags don't seem to be working. Here's a link:
http://garoux.net/forum/swtest.png
*EDIT*
I only tested this out on the first game, although I imagine the second one would be similar if not the same.
I also forgot to mention that I didn't find interesting in the way of secrets in the first game. You can teleport your ship to the far-off stars that you can see on the furthest scan level that you normally don't get to travel to in the game, but there's no planets or anything. There's also a lone asteroid, but based on its location I think the X coordinate was just screwed up in development and it actually belongs in the belt with the others.
First, how the game stores object positions in these files. Each object has 8 bytes that determine the X/Y coords for sector, and 2 bytes for sub-sector.
All objects have positions stored as:
X4 Y4 X3 Y3 X2 Y2 X1 Y1 XS YS - each of these being a byte
Calculate sector X Position as seen in game display:
Code: [Select]
((X4 - 127) * (1 << 24)) + ((X3 - 127) * (1 << 16)) + ((X2 - 127) * (1 << 8)) + (X1 - 127)Calculate sector Y Position as seen in game display:
Code: [Select]
((Y4 - 127) * (1 << 24) * -1) + ((Y3 - 127) * (1 << 16) * -1) + ((Y2 - 127) * (1 << 8) * -1) + ((Y1 - 127) * -1)Note that the 4 and 3 bytes are only used by the game to move ships temporarily out of the play area. At the start of the game the Rigian scout and Nightshade ship are located way out of the play area since they appear after triggers. Not sure why numbers are stored this way instead of 32-bit signed integers, but maybe this is some coding strategy I'm not aware of. I'm sure this math can also be simplified but I couldn't be bothered.
The sub-position of each sector is represented by XS and YS and these are unsigned bytes.
The player's ship position is stored at: 0x0321 and is 10 bytes long, matching the byte pattern from above.
Immediately after this starting at 0x032B starts a chunk of data that contains the positions for planets and NPC ships. These records are 13 bytes long. The first 10 bytes represent the position of the object as described above, the last three bytes are as follows:
Byte 11: Controls the graphic the object uses, also determines the mini-map colors
Byte 12: Not sure exactly
Byte 13: Something to do with the SCIENCE descriptions
I'm attaching an raster of an SVG I put together using the data from the starting save game file. Limited to the first solar system. Note that objects are scaled larger than what they would be in a sector. A 1:1 scale of the planet sprites to the sector size was too small. The largest planet takes up about 75% of a sector when it would only take up 25% in-game.
Anyway, hope that helps if you still decide to do a raster map. I will probably file this SVG version away for the moment, as I'm not 100% happy with the outcome and have other things I should be getting done.
Attachments and image tags don't seem to be working. Here's a link:
http://garoux.net/forum/swtest.png
*EDIT*
I only tested this out on the first game, although I imagine the second one would be similar if not the same.
I also forgot to mention that I didn't find interesting in the way of secrets in the first game. You can teleport your ship to the far-off stars that you can see on the furthest scan level that you normally don't get to travel to in the game, but there's no planets or anything. There's also a lone asteroid, but based on its location I think the X coordinate was just screwed up in development and it actually belongs in the belt with the others.
