how do maps, vmaps, mmaps and dbc files work?

[nobr]

Greetings everybody,

I'm a newbie to mangos and I'm really curious about this. I have no problem in compiling and deploying. But could anyone tell me the differences between the following extracted files: maps, vmaps, mmaps and dbc? and how do they work?

Many thanks:-)

[shlainn]

Short answer: Read the code, read Wowdev wiki, read the old forums, read stuff!

Slightly longer answer:

dbc contain client database data. they are used to look up various stuff like area names, creature models, and more

maps... are maps. The files contain the terrain height map as well as water data for the landscape.

vmaps are used for line-of-sight calculations. They contain data about the various world objects (trees, houses, ...). so if the core needs to determine if you can shoot through an object, it uses vmaps

mmaps are movement maps. they are used by the core for npc pathfinding.

Shlainn

[nobr]

Short answer: Read the code, read Wowdev wiki, read the old forums, read stuff!

Slightly longer answer:

dbc contain client database data. they are used to look up various stuff like area names, creature models, and more

maps... are maps. The files contain the terrain height map as well as water data for the landscape.

vmaps are used for line-of-sight calculations. They contain data about the various world objects (trees, houses, ...). so if the core needs to determine if you can shoot through an object, it uses vmaps

mmaps are movement maps. they are used by the core for npc pathfinding.

Shlainn

Got it, thanks!

[lillecarl]

Short answer: Read the code, read Wowdev wiki, read the old forums, read stuff!

Slightly longer answer:

dbc contain client database data. they are used to look up various stuff like area names, creature models, and more

maps... are maps. The files contain the terrain height map as well as water data for the landscape.

vmaps are used for line-of-sight calculations. They contain data about the various world objects (trees, houses, ...). so if the core needs to determine if you can shoot through an object, it uses vmaps

mmaps are movement maps. they are used by the core for npc pathfinding.

Shlainn

Tricky question, why cant mmaps and vmaps be "merged". Or maybe even maps, i do not see why all this should be separate files as they pretty much contain "lookalike information"?

If maps only contain height, then how come i see the vmap height doing .gps? And vmaps contain the shape and distance of all object/terrain in the entire world, doesnt mmaps as well? But in a different more detailed format or something, i read about recast/detour but i didnt pick very much up,

Regards

[evilatwow]

While they all work on the same data (map geometry data), the final result is quite different as far as I understood. Sure, you could merge all that data into one file format, but why would you do that? A change required for one of feature would mean that you'd have to check/update the other feature's code too.

Remember that both vmaps and mmaps can be enabled/disabled in the settings independently, so that alone is a good reason to keep them split. No need for me to generate mmaps for hours when I have it disabled, for example.

[Cazadal]

Is there a way to create VMaps/MMaps?

Any tools or programms?

For example specially for BWL or another special map. :-)

- Cazadal

[bsmith]

Cazadal, just refer to the contrib folder in the server source code, you will find some utils include the maps, vmaps and mmaps extractor, respectively, they are: ad.exe, vmapExtractor4.exe and MoveMapGen.exe

Is there a way to create VMaps/MMaps?

Any tools or programms?

For example specially for BWL or another special map. :-)

- Cazadal