Map Packs

[divisortheory]

Anyone have a link to some information about how to extract / compress game maps to and from a map pack? I want to make my own map edits.

[Faranim]

I used to use a program called ChangeTex which could read DAT files and extract the map images. Then you modify the maps, save as .DDS format, and re-inject into the DAT also using ChangeTex. You can probably find ChangeTex links on the archbell forums.

There is a free program called "DDSConverter2" which can convert basically any image type into a DDS file.

[Brandson]

All of the Zilart, COP, and TAU maps can be edited the way Faranim described. If you have Photoshop you can save directly to DXT3 with the Nvidia DDS plugin (available for free from Nvidia's website).

However, most (but not all) of the original non-expansion maps are saved in 8bit BMP format, which is more annoying to deal with. If you make the mistake of saving a map that should be DXT3 as BMP, or vice-versa, then FFXI will crash when you try to access that map in-game. There are 3 options I know of for replacing BMP maps, and they vary in level of annoyance.

1) You can save your edited map to a 512x512 8bit BMP and put it into the appropriate map dat with a hex editor.

2) You can install an old version of JRE and hope that BMP2DAT program will work for you.

3) You can use this: http://kochi.cool.ne.jp/soloplay/maigo.htm. It's kind of a quirky program and depending on how you saved your BMP, your map may not come out the way you expect. Nevertheless, I think this is the best option right now.