• Which the release of FS2020 we see an explosition of activity on the forun and of course we are very happy to see this. But having all questions about FS2020 in one forum becomes a bit messy. So therefore we would like to ask you all to use the following guidelines when posting your questions:

    • Tag FS2020 specific questions with the MSFS2020 tag.
    • Questions about making 3D assets can be posted in the 3D asset design forum. Either post them in the subforum of the modelling tool you use or in the general forum if they are general.
    • Questions about aircraft design can be posted in the Aircraft design forum
    • Questions about airport design can be posted in the FS2020 airport design forum. Once airport development tools have been updated for FS2020 you can post tool speciifc questions in the subforums of those tools as well of course.
    • Questions about terrain design can be posted in the FS2020 terrain design forum.
    • Questions about SimConnect can be posted in the SimConnect forum.

    Any other question that is not specific to an aspect of development or tool can be posted in the General chat forum.

    By following these guidelines we make sure that the forums remain easy to read for everybody and also that the right people can find your post to answer it.

How To Work Out File Formats?

scruffyduck

scruffyduck

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
34,759
Country
unitedkingdom
OK this is just a question from me to all you guys who have slaved over the file format in FS.

I wonder what method you use to go about it. I must admit that looking at a jumble of Hex codes leaves me quite bemused and not knowing really how to start. I feel I should be better at it so I would appreciate you thoughts :)

Thanks in Advance
 
arno

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
31,941
Country
netherlands
Hi Jon,

For my explorations of the MDL format it is basically staring at the hex stuff :). And then comparing it with the ASM (Fs2004 gamepack) or XML (XtoMDL) source to see if I can find the logic in the hex values.

After a while it usually starts to make sense to me, how it is stored in the binary format. But I think the most important is to have some sort of information on what should be stored in the file (like a source file or another description).
 
lmoelleb

lmoelleb

Messages
268
Country
netherlands
Same here. It also helps if you have a compiler going from for example XML to the binary format. Then you can change a single value and see what happens.
 
arno

arno

Administrator
Staff member
FSDevConf team
Resource contributor
Messages
31,941
Country
netherlands
Yes, of course I forgot that one. Unfortunately there is no such compiler for the new MDL format (yet). So it will become changing stuff in GMax in that case.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top