[Tsshp-hackers] Underworld model colours

[jim <ji...@ma...>]

These are quite hirsute. Recall that a shade command in an Underworld
model definition has 2 (16-bit) parameters, colour and shade (darkness).
The shade value is straightforward, but I couldn't for the life of me
figure out how colour is encoded. And no wonder.

The colour word is not in fact a colour index. It is the ADDRESS, in the
model segment (remember segments?) of a location where the colour index is
to be found. These are set up on the fly (in fact, rendering commands to
set them are queued) when the model is encountered. So of course they are
different for different models. The actual values are stored in a
different table, not even in the model segment!

These tables are of course in different places for Underworld and
Underworld II. In fact, the colour table has a different field size (5 vs
4) for Underworld II. The file offsets are different for different builds
(there are several builds extant) but I think the layout of the segments
is the same within each game.

I think it might be a good idea to throw out the sodding thing entirely,
and rather than fishing in the exe to extract the things once and for all
to a text file or some simple format. How does uwadv handle models?

Cheers, jim
-- 
http://madeira.physiol.ucl.ac.uk/people/jim/
                                              - Bill Stickers is innocent!