More questions about the X that BZII is compatible with...

[mrtwosheds]

MTS, what if I add the dummy frame in GSL prior to saving in GSL X format. Would that work?

If your conversion to .x is doing what mine does, no it wont. It will still un-parent everything.

{
Parenting in .xsi is done with these curly bracket things...

               }
            }
         }

[OvermindDL1]

Okay, first of all, sorry for the double post, but I am typing this up over probably an hour period as I go through the file and how BZ2 executes it, someone may post before me and I do not want my edit to be skipped.  Now on to the file.

First of all, the top line version "xof 0302txt 0064", only "xof 0302txt " is read, the "0064" is not, does not hurt anything, just is worthless.  Ditto with the comment (the hash(#) line), does not seem to hurt anything, but is worthless anyway.
Now, the first thing that could hurt things, the whole header section:

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Header {
1;
0;
1;
}
Is *NOT* read by BZ2, and as such it is missing an entire coordinate system, looks like you need to put in an XSI version 1.0 style coordinate system like this:

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CoordinateSystem {
0, line 1
0, line 2
0, line 3
0, line 4
0, line 5
0, line 6
}
Obviously do not put the "line #" in there, BZ2 will choke on that, that is just so I can describe them.  As with XSI the format is this:
If "line 1" is NOT 1 AND "line 6" is NOT 5, then flip the model on the Z-axis,
If "line 4" is 0 then flip the model on the X-axis,
Else leave the model as-is, normal XSI description.

Hmm, from what I can see, the rest of it 'looks' fine, seemed to go through it fine, you do not have any texture definitions (GSL's exporter maybe?) so there is no texture, but that is easy to fix, just add this to the bottom, but before the } of the Material definition you want it in, with the proper spacing to make it pretty of course (but not required), the file has the texture coords fine, so it looks like GSL just did not put out the texture for some reason, either way, for a .X style texture put this at the bottom of the Material section before the last brace (}) as stated:

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TextureFilename {
   "myTextureName.dxt/png/whatever"
}
And that looks like it should work...

Do note, if you had your Sphere a child of the Cube or something, it isn't now, so if it was the .X exporter is probably broken in GSL too, but moving a few braces can fix that too, should not strictly be necessary as it looks like it should still appear in the right place...
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[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Another discovery I made is that GSL is also capable of saving scenes in the X format along with the default .scn format that TS uses. Don't know is that is of any usefulness. Some utilities like 3DEX can read the file completely, but with BZ2ME only the first object is loaded. In order to see it all the objects must be attached somehow, i.e., parented, unioned, etc.

My goal, however, is to continue the search for a suitable 3d modeler that supports the BZII X format. If one exist then I'll find it and post a link on where to download it. Question, would anyone out there by chance have a sample BZII compatible X file that I could study? I would love to get my hands on a sample to examine it in notepad. Also, it would be useful to compare that with the version that GSL supports. If the 2 samples are similar enough then perhaps some editing magic could be applied to make the GSL version more compatible with the X supported by BZII. Tanks, BNG

[mrtwosheds]

I just have those I created from .3ds with 3dex v155.
They are more compatable than the version saved by lithunwrap, with a bit of x2xsi and some tweaking I get them working.
You might want to try searching other site's like time disruptor for old info, seems that allot of people found different ways round the same problem.

[OvermindDL1]

.X models were a horrible format, format changed often, had no real capabilities, etc... so things tend to implement it a hundred different ways.  As stated though, BZ2 reads the .X files just like .xsi files sans the few differences I found out and listed earlier...
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[BNG Da BZ Fool]

Tanks guys, quite a bit to chew on, but very helpful information to get a better handle on understanding how BZII likes to have things formated in the right places. Still feel that the BZII X format has some potential if a suitable 3d modeler can be foundd.

Say, I wonder if an earlier X exporter designed to work with an earlier version of Blender might do the trick? I seem to remember a site that had older versions of B3D and a number of X exporters as well...I'm off to see the wizard...the wonderful wizard of OZ.