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Design map file

The L3DT design map file (DMF) stores a number of design parameters for the heightfield, including altitude, erosion strength, sea-flooding flags, and so-forth.

The data is preceded by a 11-byte¹⁾ header containing the following information:

Field name	Contents	Length	Offset	Purpose
ASCII marker	“L3DT”	4	0	Tells L3DT and humans that this is an L3DT file. Note string is not null terminated.
Binary marker	USHORT	2	4	Tells L3DT what type of map file this is. Must be 200 for DMF.
Map width	USHORT	2	6	East-west extent of the map (number of pixels).
Map height	USHORT	2	8	North-south extent of the map (number of pixels).
Wrap flag	BYTE	1	10	See wrap flag comments for HFF

The map data itself has 10 bytes per pixel, which are explained below. The pixels are ordered in rows going west-to-east, with south-to-north row-order.

Byte pos	Data type	Description
0-1	short int	Altitude, in metres.
2	byte	Peak roughness.
3	byte	Fractal roughness.
4	byte	Cliffs/terraces strength.
5	byte	Erosion strength.
6	byte	Auto-lake strength.
7	byte	Climate ID number.
8	byte	Special type ID.
9	byte	Special type parameter.

These values are used in the design/inflate heightfield algorithm.

As of L3DT v2.4a build 15, the loading and saving of the DMF format is handled by the 'L3DTio_DMF.dll' plugin, the source code of which is (at the time of writing) available in the L3DT Plugin API. This may be very useful for those interested in importing/exporting/modifying design maps.

¹⁾ Yeah, I know this should be DWORD aligned. Next time I revise the spec, I'll be sure to remember that.

l3dt/formats/specs/dmf.txt · Last modified: 2017/08/31 06:15 (external edit)

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