vvmtool/README.md

3.3 KiB

vvmtool

This is the exporter for our extended model format (VVM). It's based off IQM and to some extent is backwards compatible (this was done so that editors capable of displaying IQM files would just work, however it depends on how the loader is written.

These days, you can find an updated version of this tool inside the FTE SRC, however it has grown to become much more than a model exporter and become less portable as a result.

For those reasons, we are preserving our version of the original, extended tool here. It exports plain .IQM files, as well as .VVM files.

Extra resources, such as the pre-release files we shared on inside3d.com:

History

In 2016 when we had our first prototype of The Wastes, we started out using DPM for toolchain related reasons and quickly migrated to IQM. However we needed a better system for handling reproducible output files. The original tool only handled compilation via plain command-line parameters which was not good enough.

The input command file (.qc) syntax is obviously inspired by qdata and other tools such as studiomdl. So if you're familar with those tools you know exactly what to expect.

We then went on and designed extensions that we needed to make the game work, for example a generic model-events system that'd call events in the game-logic when a certain keyframe in the model is displayed.

More complicated things were hitmeshes, for more accurate hit detection of body parts as well as submodels that made the action of shooting body-parts off possible.

We developed this together with David of FTEQW, since this had to be developed in conjunction with the FTEQW builtins that'd later be exposed to the game-logic.

However, the initial extensions to the IQM format in FTE were designed by us; and this is the exporter that was used to make our game.

Building

Make sure you have a C++ compiler installed and issue:

make

Usage

Please read the vvm.txt file included in this repository for more information.

LICENSE

Copyright (c) 2010-2016 Lee Salzman

Copyright (c) 2016-2017 Vera Visions

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.