Elder Scrolls Forum: NIFLA - Update: Month Two

NetImmerse File Format: Liberation Association (NIFLA)

Greetings!

Well it's been two months since NIFLA started! In fact I'm writing this as the day ends in my time zone. We also had some other interesting news that coincidentally occurred on this same day, so I thought it would be great to throw an update on the board.

First the more incidental news... Although the group sat in obscurity for a week or more as I attempted to collate some minimum dosage of content for the group before making an "official" announcement, the group has been around two months now!

At the tender age of two months the group also, right on this day, surpassed a minor milestone. Today we hit and broke a group membership of fifty! As I write this we currently have fifty-two members registered. (Of course some may or may not be duplicates due to people signing up multiple email addresses, but probably not too many. I'm not going to sweat the small stuff anyway.)

For those of you who may be wondering WTF NIFLA is I suppose a short summary is in order. NIFLA stands for "NetImmerse File Format: Liberation Association".

BTW I don't suppose I ever explained the colon or why NIFLA isn't NIFFLA, if that's the full name. Well, they're related. The group is devoted to the "NIF" file format characterized by that file extension. But the official name of the file format is the "NetImmerse File Format". So in a way we're really the "NIF Liberation Association", but that name wasn't descriptive enough so I put the name of the file format it-self in there in place of "NIF" and added the colon to help hint at it not being a direct acronym. So, if our acronym seems out of whack, don't blame me. ;p Personally, I like it. I suppose that's just a piece of trivia, but there it is.

NIFLA is all about opening up the NIF file format so that people who don't have access to 3d Studio Max can make models for games like Morrowind. I've been immensely frustrated with this since I was originally introduced to the game and community, and I guess I felt like there wasn't any reason the community couldn't fix it ourselves. I knew we had smart, dedicated individuals out there. Knowing full well that my meager coding skills weren't even minutely up to the challenge I figured what we really needed was just to get some people together and have a central location for storing files. So that's what we got.

We aren't doing anything illegal, there's no warezing or even talk of it in the group; just a good clean attempt to FIX a major problem for the modding community.

Thanks to the efforts of many we've also hit another milestone. I don't want to come off seeming too proud here; after all it was not my doing. All I've done is put people in touch with each other for a specific purpose. So, I want to specifically thank Omar and everyone else who has been active in the group for all the help and support they have provided, but especially Taharez for hanging in there with us and actually doing what amounts to most of the work. I would also really like to thank cris_cgs of Assimsoft.com for dropping in and offering the use of his code and research.

The milestone I'm speaking of is Taharez's first alpha release of a NIF export plug in for Milkshape 3d. Now for the disclaimer... Keep in mind it's merely an alpha... version 0.1 in fact, according to T's reckoning. ;p But I thought he deserved a great BIG thank you just for getting us this far so soon!

There's a ton of work left to go, and plenty to go around, but that's what the group is for. I encourage people to test out the plug in and post reports to the group. Bugs, feature requests, whatever... Open discussion in the group can only help. Don't expect Taharez to drop everything to work on your pet peeve or pet feature, and I'm sure we'll all get along. Most of us have real lives in the outside world, so I'm sure we all know not to set unrealistic expectations.

Well, I mainly just wanted to give an update about the group since I have refrained from even mentioning it for so long. It turned out to be quite a bit more interesting than I thought it would be, thanks to Taharez! (Your timing is impeccable.)

This is merely the beginning for us, but what a beginning! I'd say we have one hell of a good start.

So, if you're interested, and you don't know how to get there just follow the link at the top of this post or the one in my sig down below.

Thanks again,

--------------------
-mannon

NetImmerse File Format: Liberation Association (NIFLA)
Help bring creative freedom to more modders by liberating the NIF model file format.

Post Extras:

NIFs with External Textures:

string "NiSourceTexture"
Long 0
Long -1
Long -1
Bool 1 (1=external / 0=internal)
string "<Texture-Name>"
Long 5
Long ? (1 or 2 in All NIFs I checked)
Long 3
Bool ?

String "NiMaterialProperty" Or alpha, etc.

NIFs with internal Textures:

string "NiSourceTexture"
Long 0
Long -1
Long -1
Bool 0 (1=external / 0=internal)
byte 1
Long ?
Long 5
Long ? (1 or 2 in all NIFs I checked)
Long 3
Bool ?
String "NiPixelData"
...
Array (The texture-data)
...
String "NiMaterialProperty" Or alpha, etc.

000004C0: 00 0E 00 00-00 FF FF FF-FF 13 00 00-00 4E 69 54 NiT
000004D0: 65 78 74 75-72 69 6E 67-50 72 6F 70-65 72 74 79 exturingProperty
000004E0: 00 00 00 00-FF FF FF FF-FF FF FF FF-00 00 02 00
000004F0: 00 00 07 00-00 00 00 4C-14 50 0C 00-00 00 03 00 L¶P
00000500: 00 00 02 00-00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00-B5 FF 00 00 Á
00000510: 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00
00000520: 00 00 00 00-00 00 00 00-0F 00 00 00-4E 69 53 6F ¤ NiSo
00000530: 75 72 63 65-54 65 78 74-75 72 65 00-00 00 00 FF urceTexture