Micro Machines v3
Welcome to the MMs file explorer.
Note: this work has been continued in MMEd, which is now much more advanced than these pages, which are left up for historical interest. Comments in these pages about planned work or unknown data may be obsolete.
I play a lot of MMv3. Probably too much. However, if you're going to do something, it's worth doing right. This project is my attempt to reverse-engineer the game data files from MMv3, in order to "know those rules", to see if I can, and for fun.
One of my main goals in this project is to decode the level files, to discover the placing of the waypoints which determine which corners you can cut, and which you can't.
Progress so far
I've now got much of the most interesting stuff decoded (although not all of it written up yet). I've got the bulk of the level layout, including flats, objects and weapons. The wapoint system has been decoded. The current main areas for further work are:
- Respawning: location and direction
- Special objects: fauna, teleporters
- Object format on PS: quite different to PC. Includes Gouraud shading & transparency. I think there may be some kind of pre-compiled collision detection mesh, which may be separate from the object's display mesh.
- Array lengths: no effort has been made yet to alter the lengths of any arrays -- e.g. to add more objects to a level, or make a level bigger.
- Sound, video and UI hacking
- Generate nice maps of the levels, with waypoint info. This will require an object renderer
Earlier comments:
Got the basics of the ANIM format (PC), but not the frame timings yet (unimportant for the main goals).
Decoded the SAMP format (PC)
Made some progress on SHET chunks (PC/PS)
The main area of progress so far has been in understanding the bitmap and the 3D object format used in the files (PC). You can now look at the car models, or some of the objects which are scattered around the levels.
Anyway, enough of my rambling, on to the files:
PC version
PS version
File spec (in progress)
There is a work-in-progress copy of the file specifications.
Small print
The files in question come from the "Levels" directory of the PC version of Micro Machines v3 or the MICRO directory of the PS version, and are copyright of Codemasters / Sold-Out software / other parties who are not me. If you believe you are a copyright holder in these files and object to this project, please email me at rich@bradders.org and we can discuss the matter.