Mission world and lighting selection

Reference: September 1994 TFX 2.05, TFX.DAT SHA-256 2cc41a39fa95a2c9fd883c4220d7bdd9cca00c543c89b019eb270763f59d1d9a.

A mission’s world chooses regional geometry, while type chooses weather and lighting configuration. Matching the type string to a similarly named terrain grid is not how the original selects its map.

Original-code evidence

The world handler at executable file 0x79878 writes the name at relocated data offset 0x11974. The type handler at 0x799b8 uses a different buffer, 0x11960. Immediately before mission initialisation, 0x7280f builds the terrain path from world; the separate environment parser at 0x747fc receives type.

The terrain loader at 0xb0a18 splits the path into DOS components. At 0xb0a80, it explicitly terminates the basename after eight characters. Consequently, the mission spelling yugoslavia resolves to the stored yugoslav files. The common extension builder at 0xb0284 constructs the .dat, .lev and .le2 filenames.

The C++ reconstruction’s tools/check_world_selection.py executes both original command handlers, the caller’s pathname construction and the native DOS basename/extension code for all five regions. Token input, allocation and unrelated world setup are stubbed explicitly; resource loading is stopped after the filename has been constructed. This proves name selection, rather than claiming a full mission execution.

Retained grids and viewer scope

The archive contains 39 stored grid pairs, including names that resemble weather configurations. These remain useful authoring/reference data, but they should not all be described as independent playable environments. In particular, the out-of-table indices in the retained colum_d and somal_st grids do not establish a defect in the retail missions: those missions load the valid columbia and somalia regional grids.

The map and waypoint browsers now select regional geometry from a mission’s world and take lighting and schematic artwork from its type. The map browser offers separate Terrain and Lighting selectors. Its five game maps appear first; the remaining grids are explicitly labelled as archived inspection data. Old weather-named map links retain their position and lighting but select the corresponding regional terrain; ?retained=1 requests the archived grid explicitly. The C++ scene loader keeps the two selections independent and offers a developer --grid override for inspecting the retained variants.

All 128 retail mission scene declarations have also been checked against the extracted source metadata and rendered through the C++ startup path. Their numeric start Y values are already signed native coordinates; they must not be negated as positive altitudes. landed is a distinct state, and an omitted plane field remains unspecified for later mission-state inheritance.

Floating motorway slopes in the old map preview

At cell (137,113), the retained yugos_n grid selects tile 105, whose variants are m_ways1, m_ways4 and m_ways5. The latter two SSDs bind model indices 562 and 564, which resolve through ssinfo.fn to the mountain slopes mt3_s2 and mt3_s4. Their vertices are entirely above ground, so they appear as floating diagonal surfaces among the city blocks. The deterministic inspection selection picks m_ways5 at this cell.

The retail yugoslav grid selects tile 59 at the same coordinates, with the flat motorway variants m_ways1, m_ways2 and m_ways3. Neither of the suspect SSD names occurs in that regional tile table. The fault was the viewer presenting an archived grid as the playable night map; it was not a projection or polygon-depth fault. The archived bytes and slope models are left intact for inspection. The C++ game already separates world and type and needs no corresponding change.

The browser selection checks cover every stored mission declaration, all five regional grids, separate lighting/schematic selection, and both the retail and archived geometry at this cell. Native world/type selection and DOS path truncation are independently checked by the C++ reconstruction’s tools/check_world_selection.py.