Heightfield file revision

In the not too distant future I will be revising the HFF format specification to v1.1. The changes, which will be fully backwards/forwards compatible, will allow HFF files to contain auxiliary pixel data in much the same way as the WMF format currently does. With this change, the HFF format can be used to store the design map and water map also, thereby replacing DMF and WMF.

If the prospects of a format change worry you, let me allay those fears. Firstly, L3DT will continue to support the 'old' DMF and WMF formats. Secondly, any existing code that can read a HFF 1.0 file will be able to read a HFF 1.1 file that contains a heightfield. Furthermore, any code that can read a WMF 1.0 file will be able to read a HFF 1.1 file that contains a water map. Happily, this means that L3DTVi2 will continue to work without any changes.

I will publish the spec in the coming weeks, and the updated L3DTio_HFF plugin will be included with L3DT v2.4c.

Maybe that's not such a good idea. Instead I think I'll introduce a new tagged binary file format to store all the arbitrary data (and include georeferencing!). Much thinkering still to do, however.