PROTOS.TAB Investigation Agency

Heya guys,

I'd like to announce that my friend Silvanor (who doesn't come to this forum himself since he doesn't know English) has opened a "PROTOS.TAB Investigation Agency". He'd like you to post requests about protos.tab fields in this thread, and he'll try to look them up in the game engine (it's not gonna be an easy job, but Silvanor has found a quite nifty way to look up protos.tab fields in the temple.dll or somewhere else). Please don't post things like "tell me all the fields" or "tell me #3 through #80" here though - the guy doesn't have that much time, and each protos.tab field is gonna be quite a lot of work to analyze and to break down... BUT, if you know of a field that is used in the original protos.tab (i.e. there are certain values there), but you don't know what the field does (and would like to know ), please post a request in this thread. I'll pass on the request to Silvanor immediately, and hopefully you'll know the meaning of the field in just a couple days.

Come on, guys! Let's get to PROTOS.TAB breakdown!

P.S. Of course, all fields discovered this way will be supported in the next releases of ToEE World Builder.

- Agetian

 

Ah yes, forgot to say this before... PLEASE use the enumeration rules given in ToEE World Builder, otherwise we may get confused real quick here. What do you mean by Column 30 - should I count from zero or from one?... In ToEEWB all the protos.tab columns start their count from 1, so you could be either speaking about col. 30 or col. 31.... As well as you can be speaking about col. 29 (if you use some older notation from Phalzyr's ProtoEd or whatever). Please clarify what you mean, OK?
Thanks in advance.

The way I'm seeing it at the moment (per ToEE World Builder):

Column #30 (not named in toeewb) - from what Silvanor said, it appears to be internally unmapped, so it's almost definitely NOT used by the game. It rarely has a value in it, though - and maybe when it does, the value may only be used by an official Worlded or something like that...

Column #31 (called "Category" in toeewb) - almost always has a value, a small number. It's a subcategory of an object, as defined in "oemes/category.mes". The way it's used is a little weird though, and will take some time to explain:
the game stores all objects in "banks", for example, NPCs are in the bank of values between 14000 and 14999, so all NPCs belong to the 14th bank, scenery objects are in the bank of values between 2000 and 2999, so all scenery belongs to the 2nd bank, etc.
So, categories in "oemes/category.mes" are defined in the following way:

{2001} - first subcategory of scenery (bank 2, subcategory 1)
{14001} - first subcategory of NPCs (bank 14, subcategory 1)
{14016} - 16th subcategory of NPCs (bank 14, subcategory 16)

etc.
Bank numbers are easy to find out, since object identifiers in protos.tab are stored in exactly the same way (for example, NPCs have indentifiers from 14000 to 14999).
So, when column #31 has a value, it has a value defining the subcategory. E.g., when a NPC has a value 6 in column #31, you should look up {14006} in "category/oemes.mes" to find out what it is.
Hope this helped.

- Agetian

 

The race field is tricky. Internally it seems to be mapped to a table of racial types, which is as follows:

10284E10: 'type_humanoid_subtype_',0
10284E28: 'type_humanoid_subtype_human',0
10284E44: 'type_humanoid_subtype_orc',0
10284E60: 'type_humanoid_subtype_halfling',0
10284E80: 'type_humanoid_subtype_gnome',0
10284E9C: 'type_humanoid_subtype_gnoll',0
10284EB8: 'type_humanoid_subtype_elf',0
10284ED4: 'type_humanoid_subtype_dwarf',0
10284EF0: 'type_humanoid_subtype_reptilian',0
10284F10: 'type_humanoid_subtype_goblinoid',0
10284F30: 'type_outsider_subtype_chaotic',0
10284F50: 'type_outsider_subetype_lawful',0
10284F70: 'type_outsider_subtype_good',0
10284F8C: 'type_outsider_subtype_evil',0
10284FA8: 'type_vermin',0
10284FB4: 'type_undead',0
10284FC0: 'type_shapechanger',0
10284FD4: 'type_plant',0
10284FE0: 'type_ooze',0
10284FEC: 'type_monstrous_humanoid',0
10285004: 'type_magical_beast',0
10285018: 'type_giant',0
10285024: 'type_fey',0
10285030: 'type_elemental',0
10285040: 'type_dragon',0
1028504C: 'type_construct',0
1028505C: 'type_beast',0
10285068: 'type_animal',0

The routine that handles the racial types is very tricky, and it seems to be a little different for PCs and NPCs. I'm not sure if all of the above-mentioned types can be used, but it's very much possible. The types are mapped to different numbers which either may or may not be used by the game. It's really hard to say here, sorry - you'll have to experiment with it to see how it works out.

- Agetian

 

@ Cujo: The field you're talking about seems to load its value from the 2000-2999 bank in "rules\stat.mes" and "rules\stat_enum.mes". It has numbers for the races you listed, so I'm apt to think that the game can make use of all of those. Once again, you'll have to experiment here: check those mes files out (they *are* parsed and loaded by the game) and try setting the races you want. Basically you can try adding new numbers to both stat.mes and stat_enum.mes and then assigning the newly created race to a NPC. Then see what happens...

- Agetian

 

I think most of the fields are already updated in ToEEWB, anyway - those before the model are speed (walk) and speed (run)...

- Agetian

 

I'd like a list of all available feats for NPC's in protos.tab. I know most are in there already, but whirlwind attack seems to be missing and there may be others missing.

 

Whirlwind Attack is in there, it's called "feat whirlwind attack". The trick is - once again game uses a dual set of feats, one from within temple.dll, and one from the feats.tab file. PROTOS.TAB has references to both of these, for example, a creature can have a feat called "Whirlwind Attack" (per temple.dll) and also a feat called "feat whirlwind attack" (per feats.tab). Unfortunately, as of right now I don't know what to believe more, since feats.tab is indexed and the indices are read in the temple.dll as well (AND parsed). So, ToEEWB tries to "balance" here and include the feats that will most probably work (in v1.6 it loads the set from feats.tab by default, there's a file called ToEE World Builder.ftd which is a duplicate of feats.tab for ToEEWB). If you know some feats that don't *work* because they have a different name in temple.dll that is used *instead* of the one in feats.tab, feel free to add it to the FTD file (then, send that file to me as well for approval, and I may consider including it in the next revision of ToEEWB). So, it's (as always) not as easy as I'd like it to be.

- Agetian

 

Shortly after posting that post I tried "feat whilrlwind attack" it worked - no ctd's, but I don't suppose you know how I can get my guy to perform the whirlwind attack? I didn't see an entry in strategy.tab that seems to cover it.

<one step closer to a whirling dervish of death! Mwa ha ha ha!>