The Big Fat Dream17 Site News & Updates Thread

squirminator2k · 05 February 2021, 03:36

Hello! It's been a couple of years since Dream17 made the move over to Abime - and again, thank you for rescuing our site during a minor hosting crisis! - and as we don't have a frontpage for news on the site itself, I figured it would be a smart idea to start a thread where we can share changes, tweaks or new content to the site.

Here's our most recent addition:

New content packs for Worms: The Director's Cut

Last year, I completed a labor of love-slash-boredom - taking all of the terrain styles from Worms Armageddon and converting them for use in Worms: The Director's Cut. Taking the bold, colorful landscapes from WA and downscaling them for use in WDC was a real challenge, and some work better than others, but I got it done! Hoorah

I also fulfilled a long-time ambition today - a member of the WA community figured out how to crack open the graphics files in the MS-DOS version of Worms United for what I believe may be the very first time, allowing us access to the high-quality game assets for two terrains that never made it to the Amiga.

One of these, CANDY, is tantalizingly referred to in the manual for the original game. Fans have attempted to recreate this terrain for WormsDC, but this is the first time the terrain has been reproduced using the original graphics files!

The other is MONEY, which is a PC-exclusive terrain that was added with the Reinforcements expansion pack. Again, this first-time access to the original graphics allowed me to recreate the terrain, bringing it to the definitive version of the game!

Both of these packs now mean that every terrain style from the 1st- and 2nd-gen Worms games are now included in WormsDC! Both packs can be downloaded from Dream17's WormsDC downloads page as .zip archives. (Yes, I know. Sorry. But you're smart, you'll figure it out.)

squirminator2k · 08 February 2021, 07:40

Update! I've decided to collect the entire WA-to-WormsDC project on its own website. You can now download the assets in both ZIP and LhA format here!

Wavemaker · 09 February 2021, 10:49

Hey, do you happen to have any pictures or video of these in action?

darkwave · 09 February 2021, 15:03

Good stuff! Looking forward to trying them out. I remember making a Candy theme back in the day based off of PC screenshots.

squirminator2k · 09 February 2021, 17:25

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wavemaker

Hey, do you happen to have any pictures or video of these in action?

Not yet! I keep thinking I'll make a trailer, and then I find something else to distract myself with. I do stream WormsDC periodically on Twitch, and I often use the WA stuff I've put together.

squirminator2k · 09 February 2021, 17:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by darkwave

Good stuff! Looking forward to trying them out. I remember making a Candy theme back in the day based off of PC screenshots.

Is yours the one that's on AmiNet? It's very good. Some of the objects are really quite close to the originals!

darkwave · 09 February 2021, 21:29

No, they're not mine. I was young and I never actually uploaded any of my levels, I always meant to. I think I probably thought they were too rubbish. I have no shame now though so I'll dig the files out and post them up here for comparison.

squirminator2k · 10 February 2021, 07:35

For thems what's curious, I've been maintaining a thread about the WA-to-DC project over on a Worms fansite. I am considering doing one here too, if there's interest.

Valken · 11 February 2021, 01:48

Awesome work! Please keep an update thread here as I will drop in and out of EAB between projects.

Damien may need to update his collection again!

squirminator2k · 11 February 2021, 18:53

Damien should probably wait until I've finished converting everything!

Right now I'm working on the maps from Worms World Party. I want to finish those before I crack on with the speechbanks, but I've hit a snag in that the tool I've used to extract the map data considers 0,0,0 black to be transparent, even if it's not so in the game. So I may have to re-extract the maps for WWP using a different tool.

DamienD · 11 February 2021, 19:08

Quote:

Originally Posted by Valken

Damien may need to update his collection again!

Quote:

Originally Posted by squirminator2k

Damien should probably wait until I've finished converting everything!

Don't worry, Damien isn't doing anything at the moment in regards to this, and currently has no plan to

robec75 · 11 February 2021, 21:40

I loved Worms! I didn't even know it was on Amiga as well, I believed at that point commodore was already in bankruptcy.. Or maybe it's because my first Team17 game was Worms2? Mmmm...

squirminator2k · 12 February 2021, 00:10

Worms started out as an Amiga game! Worms: The Director's Cut was the last game Team17 released for the system, and it was also the game that introduced a lot of the games, weapons and features that made their way into Worms 2 onwards such as the Baseball Bat and Holy Hand Grenade.

Muzkat · 12 February 2021, 12:43

I remember perusing your Team 17 site many years ago. Lovely to see it back!

squirminator2k · 13 February 2021, 07:49

Can't get rid of us! We're like a bad penny.

squirminator2k · 14 February 2021, 02:06

Training + Time Trial maps from Worms World Party have just been added to the WormsDC conversion site!

Boy, Team17 cut a lot of corners making these maps. I had to resist the urge to fix a lot of their cock-ups and just convert them as-is. There might be big weird gaps where you think the transparency is broken. Nope! Team17 put the map like that into the game. Wow, and also yikes.

Anyway, go download that and all the other WA-to-WormsDC packs available so far!

squirminator2k · 15 February 2021, 06:03

The single + multiplayer mission maps from WWP are now available for download, meaning every single map from WA and WWP (barring single-use maps that wouldn't work for regular play) have now been converted!

The next phase is to finish up the speechbank conversion. The easy part is converting the files to .IFF audio files. The tedious part is going in and renaming them. I should probably just build a script for that, huh.

Reido · 15 February 2021, 10:21

This looks great, will try out later!

squirminator2k · 16 February 2021, 07:24

More speechbanks have been converted! Africaan, Danish-Pyrus, Double-Oh-Seven, Drill Sergeant, Dutch, English, Finnish, Formula One, French and Geezer are now up to download.

Just ZIPs for these ones for the moment - LhA archives take longer to assemble, and I haven't had the time tonight. I'll get to those probably tomorrow or Wednesday. (Update: LhAs are now available)

I've radically sped up my WAV-to-IFF pipeline, so I fully expect to have all of the WA speechbanks converted before the end of the week!

(Also, not to make a big thing out of it, but I've added a link to both my PayPal and my Amazon Wishlist to the bottom of the project page should anybody feel like supporting this nonsense.)

squirminator2k · 17 February 2021, 05:15

And that's all the speechbanks done. You can now play WormsDC using a number of comedy speechbanks, as well as the localized speechbanks from WA. Finally, WormsDC can be played as it was always meant to be played - with Swedish voices.

05 February 2021, 03:36	#1
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	The Big Fat Dream17 Site News & Updates Thread Hello! It's been a couple of years since Dream17 made the move over to Abime - and again, thank you for rescuing our site during a minor hosting crisis! - and as we don't have a frontpage for news on the site itself, I figured it would be a smart idea to start a thread where we can share changes, tweaks or new content to the site. Here's our most recent addition: New content packs for Worms: The Director's Cut Last year, I completed a labor of love-slash-boredom - taking all of the terrain styles from Worms Armageddon and converting them for use in Worms: The Director's Cut. Taking the bold, colorful landscapes from WA and downscaling them for use in WDC was a real challenge, and some work better than others, but I got it done! Hoorah I also fulfilled a long-time ambition today - a member of the WA community figured out how to crack open the graphics files in the MS-DOS version of Worms United for what I believe may be the very first time, allowing us access to the high-quality game assets for two terrains that never made it to the Amiga. One of these, CANDY, is tantalizingly referred to in the manual for the original game. Fans have attempted to recreate this terrain for WormsDC, but this is the first time the terrain has been reproduced using the original graphics files! The other is MONEY, which is a PC-exclusive terrain that was added with the Reinforcements expansion pack. Again, this first-time access to the original graphics allowed me to recreate the terrain, bringing it to the definitive version of the game! Both of these packs now mean that every terrain style from the 1st- and 2nd-gen Worms games are now included in WormsDC! Both packs can be downloaded from Dream17's WormsDC downloads page as .zip archives. (Yes, I know. Sorry. But you're smart, you'll figure it out.)

16 February 2021, 07:24	#19
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	More speechbanks have been converted! Africaan, Danish-Pyrus, Double-Oh-Seven, Drill Sergeant, Dutch, English, Finnish, Formula One, French and Geezer are now up to download. Just ZIPs for these ones for the moment - LhA archives take longer to assemble, and I haven't had the time tonight. I'll get to those probably tomorrow or Wednesday. (Update: LhAs are now available) I've radically sped up my WAV-to-IFF pipeline, so I fully expect to have all of the WA speechbanks converted before the end of the week! (Also, not to make a big thing out of it, but I've added a link to both my PayPal and my Amazon Wishlist to the bottom of the project page should anybody feel like supporting this nonsense.) Last edited by squirminator2k; 16 February 2021 at 17:55.

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08 February 2021, 07:40	#2
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	Update! I've decided to collect the entire WA-to-WormsDC project on its own website. You can now download the assets in both ZIP and LhA format here!

09 February 2021, 10:49	#3
Wavemaker Registered User Join Date: Jan 2020 Location: Poland Posts: 46	Hey, do you happen to have any pictures or video of these in action?

09 February 2021, 15:03	#4
darkwave Registered User Join Date: May 2004 Location: UK Posts: 262	Good stuff! Looking forward to trying them out. I remember making a Candy theme back in the day based off of PC screenshots.

09 February 2021, 21:29	#7
darkwave Registered User Join Date: May 2004 Location: UK Posts: 262	No, they're not mine. I was young and I never actually uploaded any of my levels, I always meant to. I think I probably thought they were too rubbish. I have no shame now though so I'll dig the files out and post them up here for comparison.

10 February 2021, 07:35	#8
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	For thems what's curious, I've been maintaining a thread about the WA-to-DC project over on a Worms fansite. I am considering doing one here too, if there's interest.

11 February 2021, 01:48	#9
Valken Registered User Join Date: Feb 2009 Location: Amiga Posts: 465	Awesome work! Please keep an update thread here as I will drop in and out of EAB between projects. Damien may need to update his collection again!

11 February 2021, 18:53	#10
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	Damien should probably wait until I've finished converting everything! Right now I'm working on the maps from Worms World Party. I want to finish those before I crack on with the speechbanks, but I've hit a snag in that the tool I've used to extract the map data considers 0,0,0 black to be transparent, even if it's not so in the game. So I may have to re-extract the maps for WWP using a different tool.

11 February 2021, 21:40	#12
robec75 Registered User Join Date: Feb 2021 Location: Milano/Italy Posts: 5	I loved Worms! I didn't even know it was on Amiga as well, I believed at that point commodore was already in bankruptcy.. Or maybe it's because my first Team17 game was Worms2? Mmmm...

12 February 2021, 00:10	#13
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	Worms started out as an Amiga game! Worms: The Director's Cut was the last game Team17 released for the system, and it was also the game that introduced a lot of the games, weapons and features that made their way into Worms 2 onwards such as the Baseball Bat and Holy Hand Grenade.

12 February 2021, 12:43	#14
Muzkat Into the Wonderful Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Earthrealm Age: 42 Posts: 1,426	I remember perusing your Team 17 site many years ago. Lovely to see it back!

13 February 2021, 07:49	#15
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	Can't get rid of us! We're like a bad penny.

14 February 2021, 02:06	#16
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	Training + Time Trial maps from Worms World Party have just been added to the WormsDC conversion site! Boy, Team17 cut a lot of corners making these maps. I had to resist the urge to fix a lot of their cock-ups and just convert them as-is. There might be big weird gaps where you think the transparency is broken. Nope! Team17 put the map like that into the game. Wow, and also yikes. Anyway, go download that and all the other WA-to-WormsDC packs available so far!

15 February 2021, 06:03	#17
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	The single + multiplayer mission maps from WWP are now available for download, meaning every single map from WA and WWP (barring single-use maps that wouldn't work for regular play) have now been converted! The next phase is to finish up the speechbank conversion. The easy part is converting the files to .IFF audio files. The tedious part is going in and renaming them. I should probably just build a script for that, huh.

15 February 2021, 10:21	#18
Reido Registered User Join Date: Feb 2013 Location: Dublin/Ireland Posts: 403	This looks great, will try out later!

17 February 2021, 05:15	#20
squirminator2k Dream17 / PortsCenter guy Join Date: Aug 2004 Location: Los Angeles Age: 37 Posts: 311	And that's all the speechbanks done. You can now play WormsDC using a number of comedy speechbanks, as well as the localized speechbanks from WA. Finally, WormsDC can be played as it was always meant to be played - with Swedish voices.

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