(Another) Zelda Ripping Project!

[JamesO2]

So scenes look like this right:

Code:

spot07.zar
spot07_0_info.zsi
spot07_1_info.zsi
spot07_info.zsi

What I'm saying is that sometimes when I bring the numbered info .zsi files into HxD, sometimes they're just flat out missing the `cmb` string I'm supposed to be looking for. The other other thing is that sometimes, even when I get both numbered info zsi extracted, I'm missing textures. References to those textures could potentially be in the non numbered info zsi files since it's supposed to just link the two numbered ones together in the game.
If I open the .zar in hxd I can see references to other stuff like this:

Code:

cmab�������qdb�������������    ���
���������
���������ctxb����€���<
��À���T
��p���l
��Ð��„
��p��œ
��H@��Ä
��H@��Ø
��H@��ð
��H@����H@�� ��H@��8��H@��P��H@��h��H@��€��H@��˜��H�
�°��ROOM0\spot07_00_d.cmab��ROOM1\spot07_01_d.cmab��ROOM1\spot07_01_a.cmab��ROOM1\spot07_01_c.cmab��..\..\scene\Spot07\demo\spot07_show.qdb�.\name\spot07.ctxb��.\name\spot07_usen.ctxb�.\name\spot07_euen.ctxb�.\name\spot07_euge.ctxb�.\name\spot07_eufr.ctxb�.\name\spot07_usfr.ctxb�.\name\spot07_eusp.ctxb�.\name\spot07_ussp.ctxb�.\name\spot07_euit.ctxb�.\name\spot07_eudu.ctxb�fm_l_07_txt.ctxb

I can see all these files because of the rom dump, but I don't know what they are yet. I assume some have more content I'm looking for and not just game logic. 

No clip doesn't do any exporting, what I mean was it loads in all the game objects and stuff in their spawn locations and renders materials correctly. So there could be some useful logic there for the Melty utility. I don't know if it's mounting any of the stuff mentioned above or not. Probably has to be in order to be spawning characters and stuff in their proper locations.

Right. I think I understand what you mean.

The ZAR files just stands for "Zelda Archive". And to my knowledge, these files are just a proprietary zip-like archive format Nintendo uses. Normally, you'd need to extract the ZSI files from within the ZAR. But if you are already seeing the ZSI files directly, it means the ripping tool you used already extracted them. So you can just ignore the ZAR files for now.

You can check this site for more technical info on the file formats: https://wiki.cloudmodding.com/oot/3D:File_Formats

The numbered .zsi files contain each "room" or "culled area" in a scene. For example the Pirate fortress in MM contains these rooms:

Code:

z2_pirate_0_info.zsi
z2_pirate_1_info.zsi
z2_pirate_2_info.zsi
z2_pirate_3_info.zsi
z2_pirate_4_info.zsi
z2_pirate_5_info.zsi
z2_pirate_6_info.zsi
z2_pirate_7_info.zsi
z2_pirate_8_info.zsi
z2_pirate_9_info.zsi
z2_pirate_10_info.zsi
z2_pirate_11_info.zsi
z2_pirate_12_info.zsi
z2_pirate_13_info.zsi
z2_pirate_14_info.zsi

When I extract each CMB from these ZSI, I haven't noticed any missing textures or anything. So if you're seeing missing textures or other issues, this may be a specific difference in OoT3D that I haven't see in MM3D.

My goal was only to get the scene files out of MM3D, so personally I'm not familiar with whatever differences there might be in OoT3D. All I can really say is that yeah, I did notice some of the water textures missing on the few scenes I tried to load in for OoT3D. I'm definitely not an expert in this stuff.

As for the other files:

The non-numbered ZSI files such as "z2_pirate_info.zsi" or "spot07_info.zsi" in your case, to the best of my knowledge do not contain any sort of 3D geometry data. So you probably won't find CMB headers there. I haven't personally gone into researching these files yet, but I believe you are right in that they are a sort of "meta file" that wrangles all of the other ZSI scene models together into one cohesive map. My guess is also that these files are what contain the list of actors/objects for a scene (IDs, xyz pos, xyz rotation, xyz scale, etc) and any other non-mesh data for a scene (music, etc).

Since it just stores positions for pots, enemies, rupees and stuff, it won't actually have any mesh/model data in it. Its probably just some sort of array format. I don't really know.

And yes, as you also mentioned, NoClip does correctly load in all these objects on their website. I don't know how they do that, you'd have to ask them.

---

One other reason you might be seeing missing textures/data in some of the files for OoT3D is simply because its missing/corrupt. For example, in MM3D there is a scene called "spot00_0_info.zsi" which, when attempting to extract the geometry, is just an empty file. My personal notes on it are this:

Doesn't load anything, but this shares the filename with Hyrule Field from OoT. Its probably leftover data.

So in MM3D, there are remnants of Hyrule Field data in the game, but it contains no actual geometry data. It was likely either left there when they ported the OoT3D engine over to work on MM3D. Or its possible that its left over data from when the original N64 devs worked on MM. Its hard to say without information directly from Nintendo or Grezzo devs. But there are some files that are literally just junk data, or partially deleted data that wasn't fully removed.

I can't say for certain that's what you're running into here, but its something to keep in mind for sure. I'm just trying to imagine all possible scenarios for what you might be seeing. Someone else might have better insight into this stuff though.

Best of luck getting it sorted out. And if you do figure it out, let us know what it was.