Your game objects and the external data (such as sounds and graphics) are stored in files on your computer. This chapter describes what file formats are supported by the engine. If you have your data in another format, you’ll have to convert it to one of the natively supported formats first.
WME uses four file formats for storing the graphics:
BMP files - The BMP (bitmap) format is very common and can be created using almost any graphical editor (including the MS Paint program which is part of the Windows distribution). WME supports 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit and 32 bit color depth for the bitmaps. A disadvantage of the BMP files it the fact they are not compressed and so they may take up a lot of space, but since the resulting WME packages are compressed this isn’t really an issue.
TGA files - TGA (Targa) files are similar to BMPs. As opposed to bitmaps, TGA files can be slightly compressed resulting in smaller file size. But a major difference is support for the alpha channel. The alpha channel is an invisible layer stored within the image. This layer specifies the opacity of the image which is extremely useful for game graphics. Note that WME only supports the alpha channel effects when running in the "accelerated" mode. WME supports 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit and 32 bit color depth for the TGA files, with or without an alpha channel.
PNG files - PNG (Portable Network Graphics) is a modern graphics format. PNG files use efficient lossless compression and similarly to TGA files, they can contain an alpha channel. WME supports 8 bit, 16 bit, 24 bit and 32 bit color depth for the PNG files, with or without an alpha channel.
JPG files - JPG is a format designed for storing photorealistic images. It uses lossy compression therefore the resulting images are usually much smaller than other formats but for the price of losing quality. JPG images are only suitable for images without any transparent areas, i.e. you can use them to store solid background images, but DO NOT use them for sprites or other partially transparent graphics. It won't work.
WME supports two file formats for storing the sounds and music:
WAV files – WAV format is commonly used format on the Windows platform. It’s supported by almost all sound editing programs. WME only supports uncompressed (PCM encoded) WAV files.
OGG files – Ogg Vorbis files are compressed sound files, similar to the popular MP3’s. Unlike MP3, the Ogg Vorbis is an open format and it provides better sound quality. That’s why it becomes more and more popular and many sound programs adopt it as well. You can find various tools for editing/converting OGG files at the Vorbis website.
WME does NOT support MP3 files.
WME uses the license-free Theora codec for playing full-motion video. Read more about Theora in this chapter or visit the official Theora website.
There is also legacy support for videos in AVI format, but AVI playback has some limitations compared to Theora. The video stream can be compressed by any codec, but you must ensure the end user will have a correct codec installed on his/her computer. It’s better to use a video codec, which is a part of the standard Windows installation. The audio stream must be an uncompressed (PCM encoded) sound. WME isn’t able to handle compressed audio streams in AVI files.
WME is able to display subtitles when playing the video. The subtitles must be in the SUB format.
Starting version 1.3 WME supports 3D characters. WME supports the Microsoft X file format for 3D characters. X exporters exist for most major 3D modeling packages. See the 3D characters chapter for more information on X file creation. The binary Milkshape 3D format (MS3D) is also supported for backward compatibility with previous WME versions (MilkShape 3D).
Among the characters, WME requires a so-called "hidden geometry file", which defines walkable areas of a scene as well as 3D lights positions and cameras to be used by WME. This file needs to be stored in 3DS format, originally introduced by the MS-DOS versions of 3D Studio. The 3DS format is commonly used and can be exported by most 3D packages nowadays. For WME you will need a 3D program capable of exporting geometry, lights and cameras into a 3DS file.
Among the standard file formats described above, WME uses number of custom file formats to define its native objects (actors, scenes etc.). These are simple text files and can be easily edited by any text editor. Because some of the WME objects tend to be very complex and it’s too complicated to edit them “by hand”, the WME development kit provides advanced tools for editing certain types of objects. Currently there are tools available for editing the game scenes (SceneEdit) and the sprites (SpriteEdit). More tools will be probably available in the future (e.g. a tool for editing actors).
All the other WME files need to be edited by hand using a text editor (for example the Windows Notepad). This chapter will briefly describe the common syntax shared by all of those definition files.
For example this is a definition of a window object:
WINDOW
{
NAME = "test_window"
TITLE = "Test window"
X = 100
Y = 100
WIDTH = 210
HEIGHT = 160
FONT = "fonts\outline_white.font"
BUTTON
{
NAME = "button1"
TEXT = "Test button"
X = 80
Y = 60
WIDTH = 50
HEIGHT = 30
; this line is commented out
}
}
This definition describes a window object. The window is positioned at the position of 100, 100 and it’s 210x160 pixels big. Its title is “Test window” and its internal name is “test_window”. The window contains one button at the position of 80, 60 etc. As you can see, the definition is very easy to understand. It consists of an “object” block (the WINDOW { … }), and this block can contain definitions of various properties of the object (e.g. X = 100). As you can see, the object block can contain a definition of other objects (like the BUTTON block in our example).
All the objects used by WME are defined in a similar way and will be described in detail later in this document. See the demo project for more examples.
Notes: