Thank you Cyberman. I'll take a look at the MIM format.
headerless isn't surprising really. Though do you recall what the images were?
I'll try to classify all the images I found and associate them to files and directories. It will take me some time, but if you are interested in the ones I described as non-TIM, you can take a look at DIR00. I described all the images I found in that directory. You can find that info in the eighth post of this thread, but I'll make a little recount: (I used your filename nomenclature and all widths are in pixels.)
They seem to be all images that appear in the menus/mini-games options and they are logically grouped in each file, so I assume they give information on what to expect to find in each file.
F<00>007:
25 low contrast images. Chocograph targets. (width=42)
I meant, the little images that tell you where to find goodies in the world with the chocobos. I said "low contrast" because I was looking to them in grayscale and they have a palette with few colors, so in grayscale they look almost black. (I added an inverse look up "feature" to the application as it's easier to see them with a white background.) I remember I added the corresponding palettes some time ago and the colors where right.
Just look into file 007 of DIR00.
In file 008 you can find some symbols and backgrounds used in the card game, so I'd expect the rest of the file has instructions or something related to the card game.
F<00>011:
Paper-like key item background. (width=88 )
This file has only 1 image (that I was able to find) with the background where characters are displayed when you read a letter you got from someone, the ticket Vivi has when you start the game, and any other key item. (Maybe the name in English isn't "key item"?)
F<00>013:
Portraits of 10 characters. (width=32)
Animation. Passing pages of a book. (Accessing memory card.) (frames=4; total_width=176)
When I say portraits, I mean the head/face of the characters that apper in the menus. (By character in this context I mean Zidane, Vivi, etc., not letters and numbers.)
If you notice, when you are about to save and you access a memory card there is a book that passes some pages as if you were reading them. That's what I meant about the animation.
As the file seems to be related to file loading/saving, I'd say that the portraits are of the characters you have the possibility to save games with.
I don't remember if the number is limited to 10 characters when saving.
F<00>014:
Portraits of 13 characters. (width=32)
F<00>015:
Portraits of 13 characters. (width=32)
I only found images for characters' heads/faces so I don't know what they are for, but I'm pretty sure they are part of the menus as they look exactly like the 10 above.
F<00>016:
Portraits of 13 characters. (width=32)
Right-Up/Right-Down arrows and 4 other symbols. (width=48 )
The portraits are the same as above, and I didn't recognize the arrows at first, but all are symbols shown when you buy/sell stuff. The arrows tell if a particular character would be at an advantage/disadvantage if it equips a given armor/weapon/item.
So, file 016 must be related to the buy/sell stuff.
F<00>018:
"Wrong disk!!" image. (width=194 )
This one has an image that tells you to put the right disk in the drive. So it must be related to disk management.
F<00>20:
"Level up!" image. (width=112)
This one is the little text that appears over the characters that leveled up after a battle.
If you found any of those images in DIR00 (or much less likely in other directory) I'd say it's a mistake I made because I didn't know the TIM format as I should.
About the cards' monsters, world textures, weapon textures, enemies textures, field backgound/character textures, palettes and some other I have them as TIM with the header, just as you mention. I'll document it.
I have as non-TIM the images of the last directory, where Zande said there was summon data and I mentioned there where little stars and thunder (lightning really - I messed up there. Although there are AKAO bits there.)
Hey the more you give the better it is for me.
Well, I didn't say anything because I took it for granted, so that's my fault. I don't usually explain every bit of info I don't know unless I have a feeling of what it is and that's not the case with the fields in the structure above.
I'd say the more we give the better for everyone.
The reason I started working on ff9.img is because I couldn't find tools to look at the models, scenery, etc. There was little info, also. Not that I would do anything with the data, just to look what's in there. I'll probably drop it as soon as I lose interest, but at least I think there is some movement forward.
Anyway, I'd like to ask if you have any objective for this data. Not that I mind, just curious.
Some other thing I forgot to mention is that the padding for the u,v texture coordinates isn't always 0x0000. I won't know what they mean until I have some textures in the world.
I think there are 2 world maps for a reason. One is a 'walking' scale and the other is a flying scale. The world is shrunk if you use an airship visually. I'll also help beat the information into a nice readable format (check the wiki some).
That's possible. I think the world in the second file is transposed to the first file (but maybe it's rotated 90 degrees.) That would make it unnecesarilly complicated to associate data from one file to the other. But who knows, it seems to be an optimization as you say.
It's been a long time since I played the game and I lost all the savegames so I don't remember quite well but wasn't there a strange movement when you entered the airship? (I'm slowly starting to play again.)
That would be great if you entered information in the wiki as I looked there a few weeks ago and didn't find anything on ff9.
Side note, FF9 is probably one of the more visually detailed FF's. I think in the world map area's you'll notice they include anything flying in the air and chocobo's possibly as well. I've noticed that there is texture data for little airships and chocobo's in the IMG file.
I remember those images. There are some that include a small Zidane skin (for the World Map), along with chocobo's and moogle's (the one that lets you save the game.) The little airships are the ones you see when you exit the ice cave, near Dali. (I just got there.)
About the textures, I think the World Map files only include textures for the buildings and some details, but I found lots of terrain/building TIMs into file 021 of DIR01 or somewhere near. I don't know if they are used for the World Map, for the battles, or maybe both, but that would explain the lack of textures in the World Map files. (Most common textures accessible to the World, not so common textures accessible to the continents and less common defined near cities, etc.)
I even saw scaled textures so the World rendering is surelly optimized to account for the distance to the camera, but then, this is pretty common.
And I said I wasn't going to mention the WM.
