Structure of mission files

[169th_Case]

It appears LOMAC mission files have a binary header, followed by XML-like ASCII. The latter part contains all the information concerning coalitions, weather, flights, loadouts, waypoints etc...

 

My hope is that the mission file can be edited directly to duplicate flights, add waypoints and the like without having to rely solely on the Lock On editor. Making missions with the editor involves a lot of mouse movements when making a mission.

 

So far any change I made to the ASCII part of a mission file resulted in a file that was no longer readable by Lock On. Could this be related to the binary header? Does the header contain a checksum of some sort?

 

Case

[Brit_Radar_Dude]

I'm sure I remember reading about this subject on one of the Lockon forums years ago. I think it is called something like OLE2 Compound Document Format.

 

I'm pretty sure that the mission (and campaign) files have some sort of length count embedded. I seem to recall messing about myself a couple of years ago with mission files. I found that if I edited something simple such as the mission name, then it still loaded up if the new name was the same length (or shorter??), but failed if the new name was longer.

 

Some folks back in 2004 were experimenting along the lines you discussed to make mission randomisers.

[169th_Case]

Thanks BRD,

 

When googling on the Compound Document Format I came across this link (http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums?a=tpc&s=400102&f=38610606&m=320107771), which I think is the post you referred to.

 

Thanks a lot,

Case