LAe.ipl - Only LOD's?

[pivke]

Hello,

 

there is one question left for me, as I'm not able to understand it. So, generally looking at map files like LAe2.ipl, LAn.ipl or LAs.ipl, there are lines like this:

5105, Stordralas2, 0, 2543.460938, -2142.28125, 10.1953125, 0, 0, 0, 1, 99

As we know, this line says us, that you are going to find the LOD of this model at line "99". So far everything looks good.

 

But the only file that's making some headache to me, is "LAe.ipl", because there are only LOD-models. There is no "normal" model. Why? Can anyone tell me? When I'm going to render it with MEd, there are high-poly models and high-resolution textures. I'm a bit confused...

 

Thanks in advance to everyone trying to help me!

[Link2012]

Most (if not all) IPL files in data/maps contains only LODs and basic placements, the actual non-LOD placements are in streamed IPLs, those are loaded on demand depending on the region of the game you are. They are stored in gta3.img and are named as scenename_streamN.ipl (e.g. lae_stream0.ipl).

When those streaming IPLs are loaded the placements are linked with the LODs in the non-streamed IPL... think about it as the appending ipl lines on demand.

 

MEd is capable of reading and basic editing of those streamed IPLs, for that reason you see the scene completely fine.

Those IPLs aren't in plain-text, but in a specific binary format (for faster loading) though I think you can store them as plain-text... and needs special programs if you want to decompile it, such as IPL Helper.

[pivke]

Hey,

thanks for your answer!

 

So, for example, I've got this line in LAe.ipl:

5544, LODexaminerbuild02, 0, 1873.742188, -1682.476563, 34.796875, 0, 0, 0, 1, -1

From a view of a software developer, how do I know if this file is a LOD? And how do I know if there is an existing non-LOD model?

 

Maybe the solution is to just search for the given ID "5544" (for example) in the corresponding binary-ipl file?

[Link2012]

From a view of a software developer, how do I know if this file is a LOD? And how do I know if there is an existing non-LOD model?

The game identifies a given entry is LOD only after a non-LOD entry gets linked to the LOD entry.

When the text IPL is being read, the game loads all binary IPLs related to this text IPL, so it can check out what is LOD, what is not, etc.

 

So you should do the same:

• Open all binary IPLs related to LAe (i.e. lae_stream0.ipl, lae_stream1.ipl, lae_stream2.ipl, and so on)
• Append the entries from those to the end of the entries of LAe.ipl (on the fly of course, don't modify LAe.ipl )
• Parse all the entries (linking LODs and so on)
• Now you know what is LOD and what is not