Someone in the community emailed me recently about the tool to create JSD files, which, if I remember correctly, were the Jagged Structure Data files, for representation of physical objects in the world. (I don't know why this would be needed to make animated trees. I've forgotten a lot.)

Unfortunately, after checking, I realized that I don't have any of the tools.

But, I can tell you our tool was pretty crappy - a text script converter. You guys have always been bright. With the definition of the structure information in the source code, it should be possible to make a tool better than what we had.

Taking a brief look at Structure Internals.h, it starts to come back to me.

Each object occupied one or more tiles. There'd be some information for each tile. I don't think that the tile for the origin had to come first.

The heart of each tile's info was LOS information stored in 25 bytes, in a 5x5 array. The bits in each byte represented whether the object occupied that sub-cell of the tile. There was stuff for flags and armour values and so on which determined all kinds of stuff like whether you could walk on a particular tile.

The file had a header, TAG_STRUCTURE_FILE_HEADER, which defined the number of structures defined
in the file, and contained a member variable with the # of bytes of the rest of the file in it, so the engine could load the rest of the file in one big chunk and then work with it.

The files could also contain "auxiliary data". And something else (usNumberOfImageTileLocsStored?). Unfortunately I don't remember what these were, and I don't have the complete source code.

Sorry if this isn't very helpful.

typedef struct TAG_STRUCTURE_FILE_HEADER
(
CHAR8 szId [4];
union
(
struct
(
UINT16 usNumberOfStructures;
);
struct
(
UINT16 usNumberOfImages;
);
);
UINT16 usNumberOfStructuresStored;
UINT16 usStructureDataSize;
UINT8 fFlags;
UINT8 bUnused [3];
UINT16 usNumberOfImageTileLocsStored;
) STRUCTURE_FILE_HEADER; / / 16 bytes

typedef struct TAG_DB_STRUCTURE
(
UINT8 ubArmour;
UINT8 ubHitPoints;
UINT8 ubDensity;
UINT8 ubNumberOfTiles;
UINT32 fFlags;
UINT16 usStructureNumber;
UINT8 ubWallOrientation;
INT8 bDestructionPartner; / /> 0 = debris number (bDP - 1) <0 = partner graphic
INT8 bPartnerDelta; / / opened / closed version, etc ... 0 for unused
INT8 bZTileOffsetX;
INT8 bZTileOffsetY;
BYTE bUnused [1];
) DB_STRUCTURE; / / 16 bytes

typedef struct TAG_STRUCTURE_TILE
(
INT16 sPosRelToBase; / / "single-axis"
INT8 bXPosRelToBase;
INT8 bYPosRelToBase;
PROFILE Shape; / / 25 bytes
UINT8 fFlags;
UINT8 ubVehicleHitLocation;
BYTE bUnused [1];
) DB_STRUCTURE_TILE; / / 32 bytes