Worldlc.bgl format

[Guest misho]

A while ago I read something about an utility called tmfdecompress. It was supposedly possible to decompress Worldlc.bgl file (in particular) and save it as an image.I need to do just that, I'd like to be able to visually edit the Worldlc.bgl file in an image editor (since all the landclass entries are byte values, this would be a simple 8-bit image, although rather large) and then save it back to bgl. Is that possible in any of the wide variety of tools we have at our disposal? Essentially, I need a tool just like MS's TMFViewer, except with the ability to edit and save.Conversely, if anyone knows the format of worldlc.bgl, I'd be willing to give it a go.

[Guest christian]

Hi Misho,Jim stopped distributing tmfdecompress because of possible abuse.What I did a long time ago was taking screengrabs using TMFViewer and mosaicing them back together in photoshop which is a bit of work, but can be done.I pretty much know the format except the compression algorithms. There is a header followed by the data and a LOD tree. However, the data is compressed in various forms. It's possible that it's simple RLE compression, but I've never gone into detailed research...Cheers, Christian

[Guest jimkeir]

Hi,As Christian says I withdrew tmfdecompress amid concerns it could be used to get at commercial data in some BGLs. I'm really not sure where MS would stand on allowing that kind of access to *their* data, but I suspect they wouldn't be impressed.Just out of curiosity, why do you need to decompress the existing stuff in order to change it? You can overlay new data on top of the existing data easily enough.Cheers,Jim

[Guest jollive]

I change the water

[Guest misho]

Hi Jim,I completely understand the reasons, trust me. I was hoping that I would be able to "draw" the landclass on a large (global) scale, just like painting into a bitmap file. I am working on a project that requires global changes on the grand scale. I thought applying a brush onto a bitmap file would provide a lot of coverage - that is all. Overlaying onto the existing data is not an option in this case... I am only interested in modifying worldlc.bgl, not in any third party payware. Thanks for the help in any case. I will look at it more closely and try to figure out the format.