Eye of the Beholder VCN/VMP Explorer 0.1

I am trying to understand lands of lore vmp format. Could you confirm that is the same as eob1 ?

I am ok for background image, but for wall tile I have no result

<french>
CFOU, si t'as une idée sur la question, je préfère un réponse en français qu'en assembleur
</french>

Merci d'avance

[CFou!]

Originally Posted by oldteen

I am trying to understand lands of lore vmp format. Could you confirm that is the same as eob1 ?

I am ok for background image, but for wall tile I have no result

<french>
CFOU, si t'as une idée sur la question, je préfère un réponse en français qu'en assembleur
</french>

Merci d'avance

HI,
EOB2 AMIGA/EOB1&2 PC/LANDS OF LORE use same VMP structure except 2 bytes of each word are swaped and sometimes file is crunched using format 80 method


<french>
Salut,
EOB2 amiga, EOB1&2 et LOL PC utilisent le même format pour les fichiers VMP sauf que dans certains cas les 2 bits de chaque mots sont inversés (logique PC...) et que les fichiers sont quelques fois compressés
<french>

[takis76]

Hello my friends , I am very happy you still involved with Eye of the Beholder.

I have a lots of wallset graphics , and I am creating my Eye of the Beholder 4

I manage to extract my walls with screen capture.
But I made a lots of tricks before extract the walls.

Eye of the beholder 1 and 2 is easier than Lands Of Lore.

With one hex editor you can open .maz file and every 4 bytes you have one square.

If you put 00 00 00 00 for each square , in whole file you will have one big empty level.

Don't forget to skip first 2 bytes which are dimensions of the level.

Then find one square and put 01 00 01 00 and you will have one empty square with one loosing wall.

This levelxx.maz file must be backed up in case you made mistakes.

The levelxx.maz file loads before you enter in the level , but you must save the game before you arrive in one stair and before climb up or down.

For example , if you want to extract the wall graphics from dungeons , you must hack level1.maz file and you will have some loose walls.

Playing with bytes 01 00 01 or 02 00 02 00 or 03 00 03 00 or 04 00 04 00 etc..

You will have all kinds of wall sets.
Also you can use the vcn file from eye of the beholder 1 and rename it as dung.vcn and make backup the original.

This will mess the background graphics , but your wall sets will be correct.

I made the same with some lands of lore graphics , but the wallset was correct.

To extract the wall graphic , I used one program with name screen thief.

Eye of the beholder , capture all keyboard and you cant use screen capture program with uses sortcuts for capturing , for example press alt+c to make some capture , so this program , have an option every 10 second captures one screen automatic. Then you stay in front of each wall you want to capture and you are capturing all basic walls , without decors , westpack 0.72 can extract all wall decors , so if you have only the neat wall without decors , in all positions , the with paint shop pro , you can create any kind of wall you like.

If you want to draw a little , then you can mix up more walls and create new ones.

If you want to play with palettes , you can extract (capture the screen) in .pcx format and you can use an old drawing program with name , deluxe paint , this program is very fantastic , you can see all color palettes , and start change them and create other colors for your dungeons , and then save them in seperate .pcx files and open them with pain shop pro and you can create dungeon walls with many colors , you can create hiden brick , mix dungeon wall with mezz wall.

For funs of Eye of the Beholder 3 , there is a program with name XWE this program extracts all walls from Eye of the Beholder 3 perfect.

Also there is the Dungeon Hack which uses Eye of the Beholder 3.
You can run the game , capture one level with screen capture as pcx format.

Then load this pcx image with deluxe paint , (256 colors)
Then write the palette numbers.
Then load XWE and extruct one graphics ( wall or backdrop) but with false colors , then load it with deluxe paint , or you can fix the palette with XWE and you will have a correct backdrop.

I am creating my engine from scrarch. I have create a lots of things

Sorry about some of my graphics now appear , because my old geocities account was deleted and all posts with my pictures was lost.

If you find some way to view vcn and vmp graphics will be great , because I make a lots of work to capture one wall.

And something else , there is one game with name (Under a darksun) the developer is (Nine red shoes) and is a german Eye of the beholder clone game , but I have lost it , does any one knows about this game?

If someone wants information about my engine I can give.

Also if you are programming in darkbasic or with c++ and allegro , I can give you source code of my wall sets of my engine...

I will be very happy to discuss about Eye of the beholder creation and clones...
And any other clones you have create...
And we can share source code and find new ideas...

[Marcuz]

That's real cool!

Please can you share more info?
like, the system on which it runs?

If you would like a - minor - help with the static graphics (backdrops, in-betweens) for when the engine is ready, i would gladly provide it, time permitting.

Also, I have the almost finished wallset i have made in EoB I format there to get dust on it. Again, if you finish the code work i would gladly release it.

[edit] btw, what about the ceiling in the screenshots? plus cutting away the two upper angles of the world-view window obstacles the perspective, imho.

[frikilokooo]

It's a very interesting project.Meinaf would be interesting to collaborate with you or other people.More people=better result

Keep informed to us please!

[takis76]

Of course my friends.

I create my project with darkbasic and I have and c++ code with allegro library.
And the game is for PC.

And if you want , I can provide you and source code and if someone here knows programming , you could help me , to improve my engine and even if I have stuck , and help me to finish.

Also , I can explain you , how to extract my wall graphics manually with programs , and screen captures.

I am developing the engine from scratch and many times I have problems in some programming algorithms.

I can explain you how my engine works and how to render your own walls and how to interact with buttons levers and doors.
My engine is much better than the original.

My engine can
- Play background music midi or mp3 or wav and ambience sounds in realtime
- Spell system , you can cast spells with special rune stones in realtime
- Interactive portals , you can travel with portals , stargate like.
- The lockpicking could be more complex , you can even see the lock mechanism to hack.
- Many kinds of doors , doors not only opens vertically , but there are horizontal doors - slide doors , and even sci-fi automatic doors.
- New direction system - no old static compass , now new animated compass.
- New Automap system or magic atlas idea (Lands of Lore)
- Blade doors and other special traps.
- Pits and holes on the floor and spider webs in corners.
- Monster AI , friendly monster and evil monster.
- There are light effects , darkness , torch , dark areas , realtime lighting.
- New wall system - special torch can see magical walls , magic torch.
- New inventory system - like lands of lore , scrolling icons and items in slots.
- Money system and market places - Gold coins , Silver Coins , Copper Coins , vault.
- You can buy a home and work when you are not playing Eye of the Beholder.
- Indoor and outdoor places , auto map , and overland map.
- Video clips and Cut scenes
- New Spell book.
- 3D sounds and new horror atmosphere.
- Food and water system , you must feed and drink your character not just a create food spell , there is not create food spell , you must take care of your players.
- Hardware accelerator graphics 16bit colors and 32bit colors.
- The dungeons , rooms and places now are more beautiful , no more empty boring corridors , there are decorations as furnitures , tables , chandeliers , statues , altars , candelabras , fireplaces , libraries. (Remember Dungeon Master 2 and Lands of Lore 1)
- Special effects , particles , levelup effect, and new adventure score system.
- Experience points and new leveling up system with percentage bars.
- Now you can have mana points.
- There will be an level editor and you can transfer your 2 members from Eye of the Beholder 2 and Eye of the Beholder 1.
- Day circle , day , night.
- Adventure system , with quests - sub quests and non linenear story - different endings , good ending and bad ending.
- Realtime Lighting effects , shadows.


Look one little book I have create which explains how things work in my wall engine...


One disadvantage is , you have only 2 players in your party and you can carry only 1 NPC (Lands of Lore)


And it is not necessary the engine uses the exactly same file formats from original Eye of the Beholder. Some of the existing tools , would be very useful , and if you like to use some drawing program and clear some graphics manually you can do fantastic things.

The best programs for graphics capturing and drawing especially for Eye of the beholder games are: (My opinion)

XWE 1.11 or XWE 1.15
Deluxe paint
Paint Shop Prp 5.5 pr 6
Westpak2 0.70
Game File explorer
Enc80 from wikipedia

These programs are the best for wall extraction.

I never used .vcn or .vmp decompilers to extract my graphics , because I can't understand the file format.

The best programming Languages to Greate your own Eye of the Beholder are:

Darkbasic Professional
Dev-Cpp with Allegro game library or visual studio 6 or higher.

So , if someone have ready made any wall extract program from vcn and vmp , give me and I will create many different mixed types of beautiful walls for your Eye of the Beholder.

This is the 1 part of my post because attachments was not fit....

[takis76]

The second part of small intro idea...

Sorry for too many files , but I split them in smaller files , because they doesn't fit in only one post....

And see some light effects

[takis76]

And look my engine in action....

I would like to upload my engine but I can't upload it here

Please increase my upload capacity....

Thank you....

[TCD]

Either use 'The Zone!' (found in the upper right of this page) or the EAB file server : http://eab.abime.net/showthread.php?t=43633

[takis76]

And I am writing the intro music from the beginning , I will play it with synthesizer with new organ and strings and true thunder effects..

(This is an idea , like eye of the beholder 2 intro music but this will change)...

Edit: May I create my own folder and I upload things there?

[TCD]

Originally Posted by takis76

May I create my own folder and I upload things there?

Yep. I will then move it over to the file server area and create a folder for it in 'Misc/Various'. Might do it tomorrow, since I'm off for today though.

[kriz]

Cool stuff! I tried it here but got an error;


___________________________________________
ERROR in
action number 2
of Create Event
for object Game_Loop:

Error defining an external function.

..

This is on a pentium4 winxp machine.

[takis76]

Might you have errors , because this was created with game maker and some runtime libraries of game maker does not exist in your computer , I will upload other version of my engine to see it better , sorry , but I didn't had upload capacity.

I will create one good folder in the amiga server here and I will upload good stand alone files to see the engine in action from c++ or darkbasic stand alone..

which file did you run and receive this error , I will help you to fix it and see what I have create , I know you will have some little errors , until configure your systems and run the engine well...

In my computer all works well , because all of these languages are already installed...





In fact , I have create the engine in many languages , in c++ , in play basic , in darkbasic , in game maker....

[kriz]

Just running the exe file I get when unpacking the files.

[Lord Riton]

@Takis76

Relly BIG and IMPRESSIVE work you have done here !


Tell us when a playable version is out, i want to play EotB IV !




p.s. good idea to make world maps with HoMM3 editor

[takis76]

Hi ,

Today , I create one directory with name takis76 on server , and I uploaded one engine demo test.

but I tried to download from this URL and didn't worked!!

[no direct links to the file server allowed]

I uploaded the file with FTP client program , but how someone could download my files without need to log in to the server.

Thank you

@Kriz what file did you test and had error?

Tell me to fix it and try to run it in other computer , might runtime libraries missing...

@Lord Riton

Yes , with heroes 3 map editor you can create good overland maps....

[TCD]

Please, no direct links to the file server. If you need direct links, just upload it to a free file host, like http://www.sendspace.com/. Moved the file to 'Misc/Various/PC'.

[takis76]

@Markuz

[edit] btw, what about the ceiling in the screenshots? plus cutting away the two upper angles of the world-view window obstacles the perspective, imho.

What do you mean?

In my world view , my left and right corner is not square (Remember Dungeon Hack), you can change this and you can make it like ark , or square like eye of the beholder. (I will put an option to this). (I made it for cosmetic purpose)

About my ceilings and floors , I am mixing Backdrops , and my stairs , if you see , are compatible with all backdrops.

The original stairs from Eye of the Beholder are not compatible with all backdrops so you erase some of the straircase graphic.


I removed some old attachments because I didn't had enough space...

I have to say , these corners are good for cosmetic , but if you want to capture graphic from screen , are not good , for example the problem capturing wallgraphics from dungeon hack...

--------------
I created one account in sendspace.com and I will upload my good playable stable versions of my engine. Or I will use the zone.... , until my engine become a game.

[Marcuz]

In my opinion, the archway thing is not really a good idea because of the perspective of the world you see through the game, with the exception - possibly - of Dungeon Hack where:

- wallset were not complex (meaning each wall "face" was a single unit with no element continuing to the next one) differently from EoB 1, for instance where you had theories of bricks. But i may be wrong and there may be exceptions: i don't remember all the wallsets from DH.
- there were no outdoors, so the archway may have been a coherent choice.

It is not ugly, per se, its just encumbering, like an obstacle to the world view.
When you, for instance face directly a wall, with other walls at the left and at the right side of it, it is odd to have an archway over your head, which would instead mean that you would be positioned actually one square removed from the wall, looking through an arch.
But it's your engine and work, so do what you prefer!

On the same account, from your description of the game, anyway i see that you intend to move quite far from the original D&D concept, with mana and everything, and it's a bit of a let down to me, but hey, if it works, it's cool.

Originally Posted by takis76

The original stairs from Eye of the Beholder are not compatible with all backdrops so you erase some of the straircase graphic.

Actually, are you sure? why not? they occupy one whole square as the ones from EoB 2 and 3, surely no more?

[TCD]

The demo works here, but it flickers horribly on Windows 7 X64 and I had to kill the process to close it. Not sure I've seen any of the new features in this one?