MOB File Format Breakdown Thread

Hey dulcaoin,
Way to go! Good news about the float format!
So, the main problem that remains for now is that all those offsets are relative to the chest thing we analyzed (the Tutorial Chest 1, that is). There got to be some kind of a byte count or an offset into different blocks of a mob file (i.e. the property block, the item block, etc.). On the other hand, it may well be dependent on the mob file subtype (chest/npc/weapon/etc.).

Btw, it's interesting they actually have a container item inventory reference in the mob file. I wonder what it's for, since all the items are referenced directly in a chest (and the chest itself is back-referenced in the weapon/ammo/armor/etc. mob files, too). Maybe it was used by the Worlded?
I deleted the item inventory reference entry in my rebuilt chest mob and it still worked fine...

Good targets for further analysis (in our chest mob) would be:

1) Great targets for offsets/byte count/stuff like that:
the "80 0E" thing at the offset 0x0046
the "01 18" thing at the offset 0x0073
the "6E 16" thing at the offset 0x007C

2) Unknown stuff that crashes the game if changed:
offsets 0x0038 (value 0B), 0x003A (value 07), 0x003C (value 20), 0x003E (value C2).

I'll try to join up in 4-5 days, for now I can't do anything but remain kinda passive due to life troubles... :-((

Thanks in advance!

UPDATE: Uh, had a couple minutes to check a small, but important thing: fired up the protos editor and checked for some more similarities to info there and in the mob file. Found nothing so far, even though there's no direct way to check for such things as OCOF_LOCKED and the like (I guess they are defined in temple.dll and not in the *.mes files)...

- Agetian

 

Hey dulcaoin,

I'm not sure there's really that many of 'em left after I refined the file ;-)
You can use the refined one (from a download I provided in my posts above) to determine the possible valuable offsets. Of course, I'm not saying that everything I've emptied out is absolutely useless, but at least it's not useful for our chest's functionality so it can be ignored for the time being.

P.S. I wonder if there's any reference in the Internet about the Arcanum mob files? It might be useful if one exists (I know that Arcanum had a world editor distributed with it, but I'm not sure how far its community went with it...). I tried searching for it (google/search.com/etc.) but to no avail...

IMPORTANT PUZZLE THING: My friend, while further IDA'ing the mob loader routine in temple.dll, has found a logical switch construction with 17 elements that is called when the game loads something that it calls "fields". He's so far unable to investigate further what it all does, because the file blocks are loaded into different places in memory and it's very hard to trace the process. Anyway, does the number "17" ring a bell? (Well, it may be 16 as well, 17th branch being the default one). Could it be the total number of MOB types (chest,item,weapon,npc,...)? Or the MOB subtypes? Any ideas are welcome.
By the way, judging from the string references in temple.dll, it might just as well be the number of MOB types:
10292670: 'obj_t_bag',0
1029267C: 'obj_t_trap',0
10292688: 'obj_t_npc',0
10292694: 'obj_t_pc',0
102926A0: 'obj_t_generic',0
102926B0: 'obj_t_written',0
102926C0: 'obj_t_key',0
102926CC: 'obj_t_scroll',0
102926DC: 'obj_t_food',0
102926E8: 'obj_t_money',0
102926F4: 'obj_t_armor',0
10292700: 'obj_t_ammo',0
1029270C: 'obj_t_weapon',0
1029271C: 'obj_t_projectile',0
10292730: 'obj_t_scenery',0
10292740: 'obj_t_container',0
10292750: 'obj_t_portal',0
Exactly 17 types... So, this might turn out to be prominent in the future. Probably there is one subroutine in temple.dll for each of the mob file types, so they in fact may be seventeen different subformats instead of one and the same format for each mob file type.

UPDATE: The subroutines I'm talking about seem to be somehow connected with the obj_f_* stuff someone mentioned in this thread before. For those who don't know/remember, the obj_f_* fields are defined in temple.dll and they are names for certain fields in mob files (e.g. rotation, height, and so on). This means that if me or my friend had found a way to detect the reference to one of those string constants while the mob files load we would be able to plug once again into our "Mr. Laboratory Animal" Tutorial Chest A and determine the order of the loaded fields and match their contents, after which it would be easier to do the same for any other MOB file. Any volunteers to help us with that, by the way? Maybe someone here knows a good way to detect such references?

THREAD STATUS UPDATE: Stickied this thread due to its high relevance for toee modding.

- Agetian

 

Hi,
I think my friend told me something about softice (I think he has it, even though I didn't ask specifically) and something about it not working on XP, so I'm not sure if it'll work.

If I have some spare time within next few days I'll test out OllyDbg and see if it's worth it. Thanks!

- Agetian

 

Critical question

I have a critical question to all of you. Does anyone know of moebius2778's e-mail address? I really need to contact him somehow about working with the MOB functions in temple.dll (I know that he worked with temple.dll a lot in the past), but he seems to be long gone from here (his last activity was in November 2004) and the e-mail function is disabled by the administrator on this site.

If anyone can give me a hint how I can contact this guy, I'd be very glad!!
Maybe he could help me a li'l bit with the DLL thing...?

Thanks in advance.
- Agetian

 

Thanks, pal! Gotta check this out for sure today!!
- Agetian

 

Hmmm... didn't work (the e-mail doesn't exist). Gotta find some other way.
Thanks anyway!
- Agetian

 

MOB File Format Update

After a certain analysis I came to a conclusion that offset 0x0034 definitely defines the MOB type. It can contain one of the following values:

00 - Portal
01 - Container
02 - Scenery
03 - Projectile
04 - Weapon
05 - Ammo
06 - Armor
07 - Money
08 - Food
09 - Scroll
0A - Key
0B - Written
0C - Generic
0D - PC
0E - NPC
0F - Trap
10 - Bag

- Agetian

 

Its been a while since I read this whole thing, but I am pretty sure what I am about to say addds a little something.

Comments have been made about only being able to mob in shopkeepers. I have been fiddling with Jinnerth the tailor and Armario the cabinet maker, and realised the large number of mob files in their map folders are the inventories of their shops.

Moreover, these inventories are 'stored' in a chest, protos 1001. This is mob'ed in but of course invisible (or something, 'not drawn' or something perhaps). This invisibility is in the mob itself it would seem, as it is not in the protos and it appears happily if spawned.

Curiously, this chest is trapped. So if you go into Armario or Jinnerth's houses and hit 'search', you find a trap

O, but if you spawn it from the console or heartbeat or something and open it, it doesn't have the inventory in it. (But then y would u other than for testing )

Hope this is of some help to someone.

 

Funny this should be resurrected, I came on to ask the same thing.

Agetian, could we simply have a breakdown of the .mobs as they are known, including particularly unknown areas so if necessary we can concentrate there when looking for new stuff.

 

NOTE: This thread is outdated. It has been unstickied, but will remain intact because it still contains valuable information. Please use this thread in order to ask questions about the MOB file format. A new thread will be created where I will post the MOB specs with time. That thread will be closed and you will not be able to post there directly, so please use this thread for MOB questions instead.
Thanks.

- Agetian