EvilEngine/JSP

JSP
JSP
Type	RenderWare
Games used	Battle for Bikini Bottom The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie The Incredibles Rise of the Underminer Ratatouille Prototype
Source code	xJSP.h

JSP is an asset type which defines a 3D model. It's a RenderWare binary stream file. There are two types of JSP: the normal (model) has a format much similar to a DFF and is stored in the BSP layer. They can be opened by RWAnalyze and other tools that work with RenderWare models. GTAModding has a lot of useful information regarding this format. The other format is used for visibility and collision data and is very different from a normal JSP/DFF, but still follows the layout of a RenderWare binary stream file with four custom sections and is stored in the JSP Info layer.

Format (Visibility/Collision JSP)

Section header format

This is the standard format for RenderWare section headers.

struct __rwMark
{
  unsigned int type; // section type
  unsigned int length; // section size
  unsigned int libraryID; // renderware version
};

Section 1 (BSP Tree)

This section contains a k-d tree, used for collision checking.

__rwMark mark; // type = 0xBEEF01

unsigned int magic;
unsigned int numBranchNodes;
unsigned int numTriangles;

xClumpCollBSPBranchNode branchNodes[numBranchNodes];
xClumpCollBSPTriangle triangles[numTriangles];

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	u32	magic	"CCOL" (little-endian, PS2/XBOX) "LOCC" (big-endian, GameCube)
0x04	u32	numBranchNodes	Amount of xClumpCollBSPBranchNode entries
0x08	u32	numTriangles	Amount of xClumpCollBSPTriangle entries
0x0C	xClumpCollBSPBranchNode[]	branchNodes
0x0C + (0x10*numBranchNodes)	xClumpCollBSPTriangle[]	triangles

struct xClumpCollBSPBranchNode
{
  unsigned int leftInfo;
  unsigned int rightInfo;
  float leftValue;
  float rightValue;
};

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	u32	leftInfo
0x04	u32	rightInfo
0x08	f32	leftValue
0x0C	f32	rightValue

struct xClumpCollBSPTriangle
{
  unsigned short atomIndex;
  unsigned short meshVertIndex;
  unsigned char flags;
  unsigned char platData; // BFBB
  unsigned char detailed_info_cache_index // TSSM-RatProto
  unsigned short matIndex;
};

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	u16	atomIndex	Atomic index in all JSPs combined
0x02	u16	meshVertIndex	Vertex index in atomic's mesh
0x04	u8	flags
0x05	u8	platData / detailed_info_cache_index
0x06	u16	matIndex

Section 2 (JSP Info)

This section contains rendering info for all of the RW Atomics ("nodes") in the other JSPs.

Version 3 (BFBB)

__rwMark mark; // type = 0xBEEF02

char idtag[4];
unsigned int version;
unsigned int jspNodeCount;
RpClump* clump;
xClumpCollBSPTree* colltree;
xJSPNodeInfo* jspNodeList;

xJSPNodeInfo jspNodeList[jspNodeCount];

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	char[4]	idtag	"JSP\0"
0x04	u32	version	Always 3 in BFBB
0x08	u32	jspNodeCount	Amount of xJSPNodeInfo entries
0x0C	u32*[3]	-	Always null (0), used internally as C++ pointers at runtime
0x18	xJSPNodeInfo[]	jspNodeList

struct xJSPNodeInfo
{
  int originalMatIndex;
  int nodeFlags;
};

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	s32	originalMatIndex
0x04	s32	nodeFlags	Used to toggle various rendering states: 0x2 - Toggle Z-Buffer write on/off. Starting state is on. 0x4 - Toggle Cull Mode between Front/Back face. Starting state is Back.

Version 5 (TSSM - RatProto)

__rwMark mark; // type = 0xBEEF02

char idtag[4];
unsigned int version; 
unsigned int jspNodeCount; 
RpClump* clump;
xClumpCollBSPTree* colltree;
xJSPNodeInfo* jspNodeList;
unsigned int stripVecCount;
RwV3d* stripVecList;
unsigned short vertDataFlags;
unsigned short vertDataStride;
xJSPNodeTree* nodetree;
xJSPNodeLight* nodelight; 

xJSPNodeInfo jspNodeList[jspNodeCount];

int numBranchNodes;
xJSPNodeTreeBranch* branchNodes;
int numLeafNodes;
xJSPNodeTreeLeaf* leafNodes; 

xJSPNodeTreeBranch branchNodes[numBranchNodes];
xJSPNodeTreeLeaf leafNodes[numLeafNodes];

//This is the same as Section 3 in BFBB
unsigned int stripVecCount;
RwV3d stripVecList[vertCount];

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	char[4]	idtag	"JSP\0"
0x04	u32	version	Always 5
0x08	u32	jspNodeCount	Amount of xJSPNodeInfo entries
0x0C	RpClump*	clump	Always null
0x10	xClumpCollBSPTree*	colltree	Always null
0x14	xJSPNodeInfo*	jspNodeList	Always null
0x18	u32	stripVecCount	Always null
0x1C	RwV3d*	stripVecList	Always null
0x20	u16	vertDataFlags	Always null
0x22	u16	vertDataStride	Always null
0x24	xJSPNodeTree*	nodetree	Always null
0x28	xJSPNodeLight*	nodelight	Always null
0x2C	xJSPNodeInfo[]	jspNodeList	Array of xJSPNodeInfo entries
	s32	numBranchNodes	Amount of xJSPNodeTreeBranch entries
	xJSPNodeTreeBranch*	branchNodes	Always null
	s32	numLeafNodes	Amount of xJSPTreeLeaf entries
	xJSPNodeTreeLeaf*	leafNodes	Always null
	xJSPNodeTreeBranch[]	branchNodes	Array of xJSPNodeTreeBranch entries
	xJSPNodeTreeLeaf[]	leafNodes	Array of xJSPNodeTreeLeaf entries
	u32	stripVecCount	Amount of array entries
	RwV3d[]	stripVecList	Vector3 array of pre-calculated vertices

struct xJSPNodeInfo
{
    int originalMatIndex;
    unsigned short nodeFlags;
    signed short sortOrder;
};

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	s32	originalMatIndex
0x04	u16	nodeFlags
0x06	s16	sortOrder

struct xJSPNodeTreeBranch
{
    unsigned short leftNode;
    unsigned short rightNode;
    unsigned char leftType;
    unsigned char rightType;
    unsigned short coord; 
    float leftValue;
    float rightValue;
};

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	u16	leftNode
0x02	u16	rightNode
0x04	u8	leftType
0x05	u8	rightType
0x06	u16	coord
0x08	f32	leftValue
0x0C	f32	rightValue

struct xJSPNodeTreeLeaf
{
    int nodeIndex;
    int leafCount;
    RwBBox box;
};

struct RwBBox
{
    RwV3d sup; 
    RwV3d inf;
};

Offset	Type	Variable	Description
0x00	s32	nodeIndex
0x04	s32	leafCount
0x08	RwBBox	box

Section 3 (Pre-calculated Vertices, BFBB GCN only)

This section contains a list of vertices extracted from every mesh in every JSP's atomic combined. This is used for collision checking on BFBB GameCube only.

__rwMark mark; // type = 0xBEEF03

unsigned int vertCount;
RwV3d verts[vertCount];

struct RwV3d
{
  float x, y, z;
};

Section 4 (Extra Info)

Not present in BFBB.

__rwMark mark; // type = 0xBEEF04

char idtag[4] = "JSP\0";
xBox bounds;

struct xBox
{
    xVec3 upper;
    xVec3 lower;
};

Jason Hoerner's information on the custom JSP

JSP is actually self-named after me.  It stands for “Jason Space Partition”, a replacement for the “Binary Space Partition” supported by RenderWare.  It was based on RenderWare’s BSP format, but the key difference was that my version referenced external data also used for rendering, rather than storing a complete separate copy, saving memory.  And I wrote more efficient tool code to generate it, and runtime intersection code, but that’s more of an optimization, rather than something that directly affects how the format works.

The BSP/JSP format itself is a KD tree with overlap regions, used for spatial queries (like player collision or shadow intersection).  You can look up how a KD tree works on Wikipedia or whatever – I’ll try to explain the specifics of the overlap regions.  Here’s a diagram:

The overlap region is defined by a pair of axis aligned planes (you’ll probably see two floating point numbers, kind of close to one another), which divide space into three regions, left, right, and overlap.  There is another value (probably 0,1,2 integer) that selects which axis it represents.  The blue triangles all go in the right branch of the KD tree, while the green triangles all go in the left branch.

When doing a spatial query, if your query is entirely to the right of right plane, you only need to go down the right branch of the tree.  If your query is entirely to the left of the left plane, you only go down the left branch.  If your query touches the overlap region, you need to go down both sides of the tree, because some triangles on both sides could be intersected.  If you’re doing a long thin query (like a ray or capsule), you can clip the ray or capsule to the overlap plane before recursing (which makes it smaller for the next query).

Regarding DFF, besides the JSP replacing BSP, and some post optimizations specific to PS2 command buffers, we didn’t do anything with the DFF importer, and used what RenderWare created verbatim.  So I can’t give details on the contents or import of a DFF.  But hopefully those basic details of the KD tree implementation will help some.

The editor we used for the game was called the “EvilEditor”, and I didn’t do any work on it myself.  It was named after Evil Dead, the first game Heavy Iron worked on, which was before I started working there.  I did do a lot of work on its successor, the “GoodEditor” (which was used for all of Heavy Iron’s post RenderWare games).  I can tell you all 3D geometry was built in Maya, and the EvilEditor itself was only used for object placement, setting object parameters, and scripting.

The scripting was all event based, there was no actual scripting language.  Objects could send events to other objects, and an FNV hash of the string name of each object was used as an identifier for the object to send it to.  Maybe searching for things that look like hashes (obviously not floats or integers) will make it obvious where events are present in the code.  The game included a system where updates of distant objects were turned off for performance, including a feature where you could group objects to all update together.  The “group update together” feature was used to ensure synced objects (like moving patterns of Tikis) would stay in the same pattern, and dependent objects (like teleport box pairs) would activate together.

I did the collision system.  It includes an outer sphere which does “move and de-penetrate” (let the character move and go inside triangles a bit, then try to push him back out), and an inner sphere which attempts to do continuous capsule based collision, so when moving very fast, he hopefully doesn’t go through anything, but obviously speed runners have figured out how to break that!  The outer sphere categorizes primitives as if the player is a cube, and picks the nearest collision along each face of the cube, and solves for where to place the character that’s outside of any collision.  With lots of special cases to try to make it not jitter, and hard to get stuck (if you compare to Scooby Doo, the previous game where I didn’t do the collision, that has nasty jitter).  I think Patrick has a second smaller sphere for the head, but I’m not sure…

Anyway, that’s the stuff I thought of for now, I’ll let you know if I think of anything else interesting…

--Jason