True3d Engine / Sony .wld file format

While quite a bit is already known (see Windcatcher's WLD File Reference), I wanted to document my attempts at leveraging other games and files to further define the format and share some interesting things I found along the way.

Topics

• Games and programs that utilize variants of the .wld file format
• Small .wld file snippets that can be processed by WLDCOM.EXE
• Kaitai Structs to document the formats and generate parsers

Reminders

Various things I need to add or have come across but havn't documented yet:

• Reorg parsers into their own category.

• Create section for ascii files found in global4_chr.s3d

  • *.mdf
  • *.sps

• ASCII source file exts found

  • .mdf - material definition (file?)
  • .sps - sprite simple
  • .sph - sprite hierarchical
  • .adf - actor definition file?
  • .ant - (unk - included instead of a .sps)
  • .dep - file dependency
  • RtK has a whole slew of new file exts for different compressed objects.

• MapEdit function FUN_0041a810 generates an ascii "TANARUS3D Preview World" .wld

• GameGen

  • MapEdit string: // Source File Type: GameGen
  • https://www.bloomberg.com/press-releases/1996-05-15/pyrotechnix-and-viacom-new-media-sign-development-and-licensing (mirror)

  • True3D is a Windows 95, real-time, 3-D game development system with data import support for 3D Studio(TM), Alias(TM) and GameGen(TM).

  • "This is our second major development deal using the True3D technology," said PyroTechnix President, Sinjin Bain, referring to last week's announcement regarding a development and licensing deal with Sony Interactive.

• Ascii .wld snippets w/ hexdump of corresponding bin. Something like this

• DAG hierarchy

TL;DR

I've found that WLDCOM.EXE and other files could be used to expand the public understanding of binary .wld files and the ascii format they were generated from.