Staredit Network > Forums > SC1 Terrain > Topic: SCMDraft Clipboard Data
SCMDraft Clipboard Data
Apr 4 2015, 1:12 am
By: A_of-s_t  

Apr 4 2015, 1:12 am A_of-s_t Post #1

aka idmontie

I'm working on a SC Terrain related project, and I figured I'd jot these notes down in the forum. Sorry if it's old news to everybody, I'm just getting back into the game:

When you copy terrain squares in SCMDraft, the clipboard data looks like the following for one tile selected:

52 52 45 54 00 00 00 00 01 00 01 00 B0 4D

The first 32 bits of the above hex is just SCMDraft related and I'm not exactly sure what it represents (in ascii it is RRET).

The next 32 bytes seem to always be 00 00 00 00. Maybe I'm not doing anything special enough to cause those bits to change.

The next 32 bytes are descriptions of the size. 01 00 01 00 is a 1x1 square, 02 00 02 00 is a 2x2 square.

Every 16 bytes after that are terrain values.

Now what is interesting is that SCMDraft let's you use the shift button to copy some weird shapes. Here I am copying a 2x2 and a 1x1 block:



Here is the hex for that copy:

52 52 45 54 00 00 00 00 | 03 00 02 00 11 4E 12 4E | FF FF 21 4E 22 4E 23 4E

So the first 2 sets of 32 bits don't change.

The next set of 32 bits describe that we have a 3x2 block. And then each set of 16 bytes describe each tile, going across the rows. The FF FF is a special tile to SCMDraft that means NOT A BLOCK or something similar.

The reason I am looking into this is I'm trying to find a better way to share terrain rather than just sharing huge, unsearchable maps.



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Apr 4 2015, 2:37 am O)FaRTy1billion[MM] Post #2

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"RRET" (or "TERR") is probably just's SCMD's way of specifying "This is a block of terrain".
FFFF would just mean "use existing tile" or "none"


Based on your question in the shoutbox, are you trying to figure out how to get the tileset tile from these 16-bit values in SCMDraft? The high 3-nibbles (0xFFF0 >> 4) specify the *.cv5 group index, and the low nibble (0x000F) specifies which one of the 16 tiles from that group.



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Apr 4 2015, 2:45 am A_of-s_t Post #3

aka idmontie

Quote from O)FaRTy1billion[MM]
"RRET" (or "TERR") is probably just's SCMD's way of specifying "This is a block of terrain".
FFFF would just mean "use existing tile" or "none"

Yeah, these are no big deal to work with. I didn't even think about the endian-ness of the hex.

Quote from O)FaRTy1billion[MM]
Based on your question in the shoutbox, are you trying to figure out how to get the tileset tile from these 16-bit values in SCMDraft? The high 3-nibbles (0xFFF0 >> 4) specify the *.cv5 group index, and the low nibble (0x000F) specifies which one of the 16 tiles from that group.

Ok, that clears that up, I was going to ask about that next in the shoutbox, thanks!

Just to clear it up, I'm getting the raw clipboard data from SCMDraft so that I can generate a picture from it.



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[10:31 am]
NudeRaider -- blessed innocent soul knows nothing of the strife we had before EUDs were discovered :teehee:
[2026-6-23. : 3:29 am]
DarkenedFantasies -- Probably just didn't care. For example, at some point before release, they've updated the graphics of some of the Protoss buildings (Forge, CyberCore, Citadel, Observatory, Arbiter Tribunal), but instead of properly re-rendering them with edited 3D models, they did crappy copy-paste jobs on the rendered graphics.
[2026-6-22. : 8:35 pm]
Ultraviolet -- :wob:
[2026-6-21. : 11:38 pm]
Symmetry -- :wob:
[2026-6-21. : 4:56 am]
Ultraviolet -- I suppose we'll likely never know, but my guess would be that they already saw it operating successfully and there was no monetary incentive to finish the original work. And the dev cycle in old school Blizzard was so hectic, it's possible it just got forgotten about after the original game got released. Plus there's an element of existing MPQ files that were packaged with the original discs becoming outdated if they updated it. And it's not like they remade the original MPQs, they just made new ones for BW specifically
[2026-6-21. : 4:26 am]
Oh_Man -- so that makes me think maybe the theory they are unfinished is not true and its a deliberate design decision, coz why not finish them wen ur making brood war?
[2026-6-21. : 4:25 am]
Oh_Man -- the thing is thos buildings are from classic. that means they went ahead and made brood war without ever finishing the 'unfinished' buildings
[2026-6-20. : 6:15 pm]
Ultraviolet -- Yeah he's talked about a lot of that stuff in his casts before. It seems plausible. Especially knowing how Blizzard of yesteryear operated.
[2026-6-20. : 3:47 pm]
NudeRaider -- to clarify: couldn't recall the behavior for every single Protoss building but I was aware the disparity exists.
[2026-6-20. : 3:43 pm]
NudeRaider -- Contained nothing new for me. Didn't know all building's behavior, but very much all unit's. Also Terran balance whine - also nothing new :lol:
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