Duck and Cover

Hey, first post in this much under-appreciated corner of the 'net.

Is there a way to export FOT's world map? Specifically, I can't find it in any of the .bos files.

IIRC, it should be a .zar file under gui? It may be in one of the .bos, I have since unzipped all of those. I'll take a look later to find it but I do remember seeing it somewhere.

The ZAR is stored within the campaign file (which I beleive you need to decompress with zlib). It's not that hard, but it's hard enough that most people couldn't do that... Matux released a "savegame extractor" or somethign a while back, but I don't remember wether it handled cam files... Either way you still need to extract the ZAR data from the rest of the file...

If someone would send me the cam of the main plot I could check it out rather easyly.

The bos.cam file is 19M so is not very wieldy to email! I guess the next easiest way is to open it up with the campaign editor, and make screenshots of each portion within the interface, then piece them together with an imaging program.

Red wrote:The ZAR is stored within the campaign file (which I beleive you need to decompress with zlib). It's not that hard, but it's hard enough that most people couldn't do that... Matux released a "savegame extractor" or somethign a while back, but I don't remember wether it handled cam files... Either way you still need to extract the ZAR data from the rest of the file...

If someone would send me the cam of the main plot I could check it out rather easyly.

Oh, something to check out later today...
Thanks Red...

If all you're looking to do is to use the World Map of the FoT core campaign w/your own material there's no need to extract the map. All you have to do is to use the bos.cam file as a basis for your own campaign. You can import data from your own campaign.txt file and simply don't change the image.

Cheers,

OTB

Will you be changing yours, OTB?
Just for informational purposes.

Flamescreen wrote:Will you be changing yours, OTB?
Just for informational purposes.

Oh yes, I'll be changing mine, all right. My campaign takes place southwest of the southwestern limit of the core campaign's map and so I've pieced together a world map using satellite photos from mapquest.com. (One of many very tedious things I've had to do for this campaign!)

The only problem I've encountered so far is that the satellite photos end at the Mexican border, and this means that I've got a blank spot where the border starts to angle up. I may have to completely revamp my World Map with something from another source since it looks very bad (not to mention Americentric!) w/northern Mexico as a huge, black hole.

OTB

Red wrote:The ZAR is stored within the campaign file (which I beleive you need to decompress with zlib). It's not that hard, but it's hard enough that most people couldn't do that... Matux released a "savegame extractor" or somethign a while back, but I don't remember wether it handled cam files... Either way you still need to extract the ZAR data from the rest of the file...

Man, how the fack do you decompress with zlib?...stil haven't found an exe or anything I can run..just hope I downloaded the right zlib...

ok..ftdewo didn't work, only on mission and save files...crap!

Well, zlib is just a library... You'll need a program to do the work between the zlib... library and the actual file stream.

Well, there are exceptions, for example tar.Z... the .Z part is that the stream was compressed using zlib (and can just be decompressed with a single pipe), while the tar is a directory structure so to speak (hence it saves the directories and files), so compbining both you get a compressed archive. Tar was originally developed to make continuous backups of files on tapes.. I think it's simply stands for Tape ARchive, not sure though...

Anyway, the zlib data has to follow a certain structure (which you can often identify with a header - though I'd like to point out the header is optional) and even though FO:T uses zlib in a bunch of places (savegames, campaigns and sprites and potentially in the .BOS files... it's supported by the program but not actually used with the game). The problem is that this zlib compressed stream (data...) could be just about anywhere in the file. Of course if you either know the format of the file or know how to recognize the zlib header it's much easyer to decompress stuff.

[edit]
If you KNOW you have JUST a zlib compressed stream and are stuck without a *x machine on hand, rename the file to "whatever.Z" and open it with winzip.

Alright, Red has walked me through how to get the zar files out of the bos.cam file on #Fallout. You will need hex workshop or some other hex editor to do it though. And each tile of the world map is in a different place so you'll have to piece them together after you find them! Not fun unless there is an easier way.

Basically highlight the bytes starting with <zar> and ending before you get to <campaign_tile>. That is one tile picture. Save the selection as something like "zar1.zar". Then repeat and rinse for all of the tiles that make up the image. Open them in Redviewer to see what they look like and export them as TGA's if you like.

Then you will have to piece them together like a big puzzle. Don't know if it's worth it but what the hell!

Jimmyjay86 wrote:Alright, Red has walked me through how to get the zar files out of the bos.cam file on #Fallout. You will need hex workshop or some other hex editor to do it though. And each tile of the world map is in a different place so you'll have to piece them together after you find them! Not fun unless there is an easier way.

Basically highlight the bytes starting with <zar> and ending before you get to <campaign_tile>. That is one tile picture. Save the selection as something like "zar1.zar". Then repeat and rinse for all of the tiles that make up the image. Open them in Redviewer to see what they look like and export them as TGA's if you like.

Then you will have to piece them together like a big puzzle. Don't know if it's worth it but what the hell!

oof...sounds stressful..BUT I talked to Gareth, he said the world map was a 19MB PNG file, so...are you sure it's piece by piece ?

Red could you be online later today ? I'll try and connect and talk to you a little...damn internet line I've gotten, screw me over last night... AGAIN !!!
facking cable !! :mad:

Yeah, it's a grid of tiles 75x75, but with a "hreader (ie: <campaign_tile> which contains additional information about the particular square (possible random encounters, cities et al).

Note that I still haven't seen the .cam file! You'd need to extract all of those tile manually, and th e map is HUGE if I remember correctly, so that'd take forever.

I oculd always make my viewer kind of "search" for all ZARs in it, but I don't really like that method...

As a note, the cam file ISN'T compressed (well unless you coint the RLE compression used in the ZAR's which I noted made the ZARs BIGGER THEN A "RAW" file!).

Red wrote:Yeah, it's a grid of tiles 75x75, but with a "hreader (ie: <campaign_tile> which contains additional information about the particular square (possible random encounters, cities et al).

Note that I still haven't seen the .cam file! You'd need to extract all of those tile manually, and th e map is HUGE if I remember correctly, so that'd take forever.

So according to JJ86, I just copy and paste using Hex workshop and save the selection as a ZAR ? sounds alittle to easy...why the need for zlib then ?

Red wrote:I oculd always make my viewer kind of "search" for all ZARs in it, but I don't really like that method...

Well this would be kinda cool...why not make a new little util for this ?

Because I like to figure out formats. And that's not properly figured out yet I might look into it once I actually have a CAM file to work with.

It's NOT "zlib"'d as you like to refer to it, as mentioned by my last post. I jsut assumed it MIGHT be since they used it in the savegames and I figured (wrongly at that too) that the CAM files miight be somewhat similar.

As for copy/paste, well, no, itr's "select and export to inary file". If you copy.paste you'll lose data.