Talk:Cosmo Tileinfo Format

A question; is this page named correctly? The data in the files ACTRINFO.MNI and PLAYERINFO.MNI does not go with any tiles per se, but sprite data. The data is stored in a manner that makes use of 8x8 blocks of EGA data, but that is a storage format. These are more like sprite headers.

There is in fact a separate file that stores tileinfo information, for the 8x8 masked and unmasked tiles, such as whether they are sloped or not. I think this would be better named as tileinfo.

As another note, the CARTOON.MNI data used in the story screens also has its own header consisting of 22 * 8 byte entries like the 'tileiinfo' here but lacking the first offsets to the 'structures' since each picture is well... one picture, not an animation.

I think some revisionis in order over the cosmo 'tileset' format naming. When you can use 'tiles' for sprites, something's amiss -Endian? What are you on about? 21:52, 9 December 2010 (GMT)

Yes, quite right. I think this was done early enough before there was a clear distinction between sprites/actors and tiles, however I think it is also related to the sprite and tile graphics being stored in the same format. Please go ahead and rename the article pages as you think is best. I am not sure what you mean about CARTOON.MNI - looking at the files do you mean CARTINFO.MNI is not in this format? You might be right there. If the file format is similar enough this page should be updated, otherwise go ahead and create a new page. I think most of this stuff was documented working backwards from old code which is why there are some inaccuracies. I will be fixing these and the other pages as I implement the formats in Camoto, but please feel free to make corrections in the mean time. -- Malvineous 23:51, 9 December 2010 (GMT)

*Cricks* Right. Well there are two basic graphics formats, regular fullscreen EGA loaded all at once (Seriously, it's just copied into memory.) and everything else as the 8x8 format. The complexity of the 8x8 file determines the heaader it has. (The INFO.MNI file) Most files are laoded all at once and have no header file, the story images are a set of individual images and have a header consisting of 8x entries (Since the game doesn't need to know how many frames are in the 'actor structure' and the sprites, being most complex have the 8x entries plus 2x entries pointing to the 'actor structures' It's all just a modification of the same format (The game even has 'actor structures' in the executable giving for example the h/w of the level background.)

My point being that this is a form of data storage, possibly something that could be called 'tiled EGA data', but it's not something specific to tiles, it covers nearly everything in the game, like the raw EGA data is for Keen 1-3 (Only the finale screens are different in that case...) Cosmo has an actual tileinfo file. I'll get on to setting all of this up (And documenting the cosmo tileinfo format, I just made an editor for it.) as soon as I get back home, I'm out at the moment.