[SOLVED] Is BAM V2 supported by ARE background animations?

[argent77]

I have a BAM V2 file that I want to use as background animation for a couple of maps (in BG2EE). Unfortunately I can't get it to work. The game is always crashing whenever I try to enter the map. Changing flags or setting width/height fields doesn't fix it. Is this format even supported?

 

Edited May 1, 2018 by argent77

[Roxanne]

I have a BAM V2 file that I want to use as background animation for a couple of maps (in BG2EE). Unfortunately I can't get it to work. The game is always crashing whenever I try to enter the map. Changing flags or setting width/height fields doesn't fix it. Is this format even supported?

 

Your *changing flags" did include the flag 15 called PVRZ reference?

It is the only other thing except width/height I can see.

But I never saw a Bam v2 in an area file and never tried one myself.

[argent77]

I changed pretty much every flag, including bit 15. Except when bit 13 (WBM) was enabled the map always crashed. Enabling bit 13 simply ignored the BAM resource. (And bit 14 is still a big mystery.)

BAM V2 is needed because of alpha transparency. Unfortunately there is no BAM editor available yet that supports alpha channel in BAM V1 palettes, NI included.

If nothing else works I can probably use raw pvrz files (each BAM sequence consists of only a single frame). But that would require to create several dozens of files in place of a single BAM with several dozens of sequences. Not something I'd like to use if there is another way.

[argent77]

Well, I solved it by coding a WeiDU BAM generator to generate the desired BAM V1 file with alpha palette.

I still hope BAM V2 will be more widely supported in future EE patches. It looks like this format can currently only be used in UI related contexts.