Reverse engineering of Wipeout 3 SE

[aybe]

EDIT

Here is the suite of 4 utilities to unpack PBPs for WO3:

• a GUI app that will process a folder of many PBPs
• individual command-line tools to deal with PBP, CMP, TIM
• (the UnpackCMP and UnpackTIM also work for Wipeout 1/XL/PC)

here: https://github.com/aybe/WXX-Rebirth/releases/tag/latest (check README.TXT)

There won't be anymore updates as I think they are mature enough : they successfully produced nearly 40K files (all WO3 versions).

---

Houston, we have track data !!!



After much struggling with those command-line utilities, here's finally some result !

There's still a lot to be done but this is motivating nonetheless.

[Xpand]

You're doing an amazing job man! Congrats!

[aybe]

Thanks

[tigrou]

Great job. I'd like to help but don't from know where to start.

Anyway: which track is this ? (I'm not a Wipeout3 fan at all, I mostly played WOXL and W1 (a little bit)).

I can't find it there : http://wipeout.wikia.com/wiki/Wipeout_3

Also why are textures like that (flat single color) ?

[Ace3000]

That's one of the Prototype tracks. You get them by completing certain things (I know it has to do with single race mode).

Also, the "flat colours" are part of the Prototype tracks art style. There are about 6 Prototype tracks in total, all of them have that minimalistic style except for a couple.

[aybe]

Great job. I'd like to help but don't from know where to start.

Anyway: which track is this ? (I'm not a Wipeout3 fan at all, I mostly played WOXL and W1 (a little bit)).

I can't find it there : http://wipeout.wikia.com/wiki/Wipeout_3

Also why are textures like that (flat single color) ?

I am going to publish a new tool and an Excel file prolly within 2-3 days, currently working on the spreadsheet to try identify what is what and so on ... the new tool is way better/faster, what used to take nearly 30 mins now barely takes 2 mins -> the extraction of every PBP. I manually checked WO3SE and it pretty much recognized 99% of files, there are 39530 files BTW And the tool is a GUI, no more command line , just choose input/output folders and watch it extract.

The plan:

• find which PBP is which track
• try attack the hintful ones (proto 2, 3)

Also I should get this 3d vertex picker up as I guess it'll be mandatory because while plot.ly is great to quickly preview data, it doesn't show much infos.

[aybe]

Quick update

The new unpacker:
snap0815.png

A track's vertex data:
snap0816.png

Will post the unpacker soon !

[tigrou]

@aybe : its getting interesting, I hope you keep working on it !

Note : on wipeout central the W3 tracks drawings looks really precise.



I would not be suprized somebody already found a way to parse track format...

[aybe]

1/
I didn't notice there were HQ drawings for the non-prototype tracks

2/
For WO3, see my final release of the tools:
https://github.com/aybe/WXX-Rebirth/releases/tag/latest

They will also work for Wipeout 1/XL (for CMPs and TIMs), make sure to see the README.TXT first !

3/
I haven't really made any progress in WO3 beside fine-tuning and finishing the above tools, like I've seen you enhancing the WebGL experiment recently, I am focusing on it to get WXX-Rebirth on par with it first.

I've finished the loading of textured models and the surroundings such as packing textures:

snap0824.png

snap0825.png

snap0823.png

I am close to get the same LOD that there's in the experiment, the next big step in comparison to the experiment will be to object-ify scene objects so they can be used in a game.

4/
Regarding formats of Wipeout 3,

• I'm pretty convinced the vertex data is the same since it's on PSX
• Objects now are presents and there should be indices pointing to them, unpack a track's PBP and search for strings such as CUBE, you'll find them

When you unpack a PBP you will see that:

• 4 small files with lots of blanks
• probably track-related data
• track vertices
• probably billboard stuff since textures are right after
• track sections or something
• track textures
• 2 groups of ship-related data (depends though)

Do not hesitate to share your findings or ask for help, multiple pairs of eyes are likely to help in deciphering all this mess.

5/
Basically once I reach about the same rendering as in the experiment I will take some time for WO3.

PS: in the WebGL experiment, do you know what the track faces and sections are representing ? thanks

[Xpand]

Track faces are the triangles created by a set of three vertices. Their format is something like this:
You have a set of vertices:
vertex0
vertex1
vertex2
vertex3
...
vertexn

your faces are, in a generic way:
face(i): {index of vertex ,index of vertex,index of vertex}

example:
face1: {0,1,2}, uses vertex0, vertex1 and vertex2.

About the track sections I think it has to do with how to know what track section is a corner, what track section is the starting line, what track section is the pits, where the speed/item pads are, etc. probably for both texture placement and game logic