Red Alert 2 File Format Descriptions

shiny

Back in 2008 I spent some time gathering information about the Red Alert 2 file formats, and wrote a document collating all that I learned. I always meant to post it once it was complete, but I'm never going to finish it now. I've decided I shall post it here in case it is any use to anyone.

Note that very little of the information in this document is new, I just collated and tested information from many sources.

I also wrote quite a few C++ programs to read the files, I'm looking at packaging them up now. The VXL reader part is already available on this board: http://www.ppmsite.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=19916

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zzattack · Soldier **Joined**: 29 May 2007

Great stuff, nice to have all of this combined in a single document.

Regarding the IsoMapPack5 section, it's pretty difficult to find the corresponding tile image for the tile index. The code at http://code.google.com/p/ccmaps/source/browse/trunk/src/CNC%20Map%20Renderer/TMP_Collection.cpp?r=1 does this.

shiny · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:20 pm Post subject:

I've packaged all the code up with the document now; here it is.

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shiny · Posted: Tue Dec 14, 2010 10:24 pm Post subject:

zzattack wrote:

Great stuff, nice to have all of this combined in a single document.

Regarding the IsoMapPack5 section, it's pretty difficult to find the corresponding tile image for the tile index. The code at http://code.google.com/p/ccmaps/source/browse/trunk/src/CNC%20Map%20Renderer/TMP_Collection.cpp?r=1 does this.

Nice, out of interest what resources did you use to work out how to do it? I'd like to have a complete reference document one day, although I probably can't do it at the moment (working at a games company).

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zzattack · Soldier **Joined**: 29 May 2007

I have deduced this from the theater ini files, for the rest of the tool I mainly used xcc. Thanks for sharing that code, perhaps now I can find a way to correctly position voxels (turrets) on buildings.

zzattack · Soldier **Joined**: 29 May 2007

I attempted to compile your voxel rendering test program and there was one small modification I needed to make before it ran. My SDL headers seem to redefine symbol main, which the MSVC compiler at least doesn't seem to appreciate. Putting a "#undef main" right above the int main() function solves this for me at least.