Parse a compiled file with ruby?

Chris Fullmer · 28 Nov 2010, 05:42

I am looking to make an importer for an old 3d format called b3d. It is a compiled file format. How would I tackle something like this with ruby? Here is a link to the .b3d format specs:

http://www.blitzbasic.com/sdkspecs/sdkspecs/b3dfile_specs.txt

Known unknowns :

I don't quite know how to parse a file that I don't know how to read.
I don't know what a "chunk" is.

I'm sure there are dozens of "unknown unknowns", I'm sure I'll get to those once I get started.

So is this going to be hardder than I am imagining? I was hoping I could figure the basics of this out in the next day or two - is there any hope?

Chris

Chris Fullmer · 28 Nov 2010, 08:56

Hmm, looks like I won't need this. I can use .obj for this project it looks like. I'm still interested in the topic, but its not something that is very urgent or has any priority for me at the moment. Thanks,

Chris

Jim · 28 Nov 2010, 14:37

Hi Chris,

This code snippet reads a binary 3ds file using Ruby and writes out an ascii .obj file.