Areas: How are ground-items stored

[igi]

Anyone any idea how ground items are stored (e.g. drop an item on the floor, save, reload, the item is still on the floor (presumably. I haven't played in a *long* while)). There doesn't seem to be anywhere in the .are file these items are stored, unless I'm missing something (which I could be).

So, anyone know?

[devSin]

IIRC, they're stored as containers with type Pile.

 

If you're updating the ARE info in the IESDP, you may want to note that this

0x0030

4 (dword)

Unknown (actor type?) No apparent effect in game.

corresponds to the animation ID of the referenced object. In some AREs, the data here is wrong, but I'm thinking that either the designer was lazy, the animation didn't exist when the definition was created, or the animation ID changed before release.

 

My guess is that it's some sort of cache/load hint (so the game knows which biffs it's going to have to troll through before loading the actual CREs). Or just left-overs from unimplemented or unused IE features. The value is zeroed out when the ARE is re-created (for saved games), so it has no lasting effect in-game.

[Smoketest]

Just to answer your question, igi, such containers have no name and have type Pile (4). They and other containers are located just before the variable list near the end of the ARE file.

[igi]

Cheers for the info.

Thought there might be something nifty in it, but if the piles are unnamed, it's unlikely.