[REQ] Chaos Engine

Doubt it, that's the sort of thing developers use today :-)

Dose anyone need cheats for chaos engine 1? for lots of cash is tttttttttttt

[Qube]

I've attached the AGA Thug char sprites. Ripped from the save state, I rotated the palette slightly, found a close match, then recoloured from a screenshot. The sprite only uses 16 colours. Very strange..
Q;

[Ultron]

AFAIR each set was given 16 colours of the 256 pallete? So it's "normal".

(I think it fits the spirit of a fast AGA release, this was not done by the BB's, so the artist they brought in probably just selected the sprite tiles, recoloured some colours, and saved them back without changing a single pixel; then as each sprite tile morphed into different colours, it's look more "colour rich", this was just a AGA re-release money-grab anyway, no graphics were redone - I'd have loved to see Dan Malone having a go with so many colours, unfortunately, it never happened.)

[Joe Maroni]

here is a shot of the settings for the tiles...try it yourself with learning by doing...

good luck...

[Qube]

Agreed Ultron, it does appear it was a quick AGA conversion. The graphics seem to be similar to the SNES, each set of sprites only using a 16 colour palette. The were just recoloured slightly to look nice.

Thanks x_to, you'll notice that some colours come out incorrect, so you have to tweak the palette to fix em. I've also noticed the tileset changes ever so slightly between levels in the same world.

Wonder where Dan Malone is these days..?

ps. I've attached world 1 tiles for whoever wants em, collected from all 4 world 1 tilesets, some dupe tiles still need cleaning out I think. Someone may find it useful. Palette seems ok.

[Ultron]

Originally Posted by Qube

Wonder where Dan Malone is these days..?

AFAIR he went to work into a Belgium company after leaving the Bitmaps, uncanny, but there you go.

If i don't misspeak, he did several works for either US or Canadian modern game companies, not ingame i think, probably conceptual or cover art. Dan Malone first tried a carrier in Comics in the UK with the whole 2000ad mags, and didn't make it so ended up in game GFX, that's why he had such a peculiar style (and, truth be told, was head and shoulders above everyone else at the time), so 16 and 32 Amiga palletes aside, he can mix it up in the regular illustration work world.

I last remember his work associated with a big PC gaming company on the other side of the pond, but as of now, can't remember which one it was.

[Mœbius]

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/s...operId,137537/

Incase anyone was interested in what he did.
Talented man.

[JohnnyWalker]

Why were the 256color versions of Bitmap games so butt-ugly? It seems like they took the cool colourpalette and made it all cOloUrfUl, for no good reason. It would have been better if they'd just smoothed out the gradients.

Anyone know what happened to the brains, Eric Matthews? Or indeed, the Bitmaps themselves??

[jotd]

Hi,

I have found the way level maps are stored from the CD32 version.

The files x1CHAOS.CAS (x = E -> P) contain level data. The file is split in sections.

At offset 0x40 you find width and height of the map, then 0x200 (I would say max tile index), then a 16 bit word containing the altitude and the tile code.

The tile code seems to be coded from 0x0 to 0x1FF. The rest of the value is the altitude.

The problem is that tile code has almost no relation with the order of the tiles in the Ultron rip. I had to do a conversion table (which took me ages because I had to compare tiles to actual screenshots).

The problem is: all tiles are not ripped. A lot of them are missing. For instance, all wall tiles containing pipes are missing. I ripped some from the original game, but that's too tedious if some more unripped tiles arise.
And I'm not talking about other worlds of this level, where further tiles are loaded (the big pipes where some monsters appear).

Anyway, here's a sample of my work. I have tried GfxRip and GfxRip deluxe and failed to rip anything. I lack experience.
If someone can come up with a full rip of level 2 tiles (I understand that all 4 levels must be ripped and the tiles must be gathered, with possible dupes, but I already saw that in Gods and managed OK), I'll try to complete it (and HOL will have the level maps for this game, and second step: I'll try to code a remake for this game).

[gimbal]

Do the sprites have to come from the CD32 version? If you can use the regular OCS version then you (and possibly other people) can use the settings detailed in this thread to do the ripping.

Awesome work by the way!

[Joe Maroni]

nice work, jotd...

i´ve done a short view on the map data and it looks like there are some collision bits hidden inside the values..

what do you think ???

[jotd]

Originally Posted by Joe Maroni

nice work, jotd...

i´ve done a short view on the map data and it looks like there are some collision bits hidden inside the values..

what do you think ???

Not sure. Maybe more like the altitude. If player is on this altitude, then he can move to the position, else, no. Stairs must be a special case.

Anyway, I've worked out the tileset directly from game files, using Ultron partial tile rips, and for level 1, by directly pasting the file contents into the .uss file (because all the tiles are not loaded for each level: the only way to get all tiles is to rip from the game file (LEVELxBAK.BIN).

And it works! I have done the work for all 4 worlds of level 1, 2 & 3and it's 100% perfect, thanx to you guys, and gfxrip, and the CD32 version which uses files

I've got a little problem with levels 4-3 & 4-4 but it will be sorted soon.

[Dastardly]

So is a remake on?

[gimbal]

Amazing! Absolutely amazing work!

I would really like to know how you reverse-engineered the game files, what steps did you take?

[jotd]

Originally Posted by gimbal

Amazing! Absolutely amazing work!

I would really like to know how you reverse-engineered the game files, what steps did you take?

thanks!

@Dastardy: I don't know about a remake. If I could figure out fully the format of the level file, my idea would be to create a level editor for the original CD32 game. Which would allow the new levels to run on amigas and WinUAE !!! But if the levels are code-driven it will be harder or at least editing possibilities will be limited.


Well, about reverse engeneering, I focused on the only files that were not graphic data, the .CAS files. I figured out that the files came in chunks (header, block 1 size, block 2 size, etc...). To know which chunk contained the level data, I took a snapshot of a bottom right corner of the map within the game, and tried to see if the data sequence (from the end of the chunk) matched the tile repeat sequence. I found that if tile xxx has code yyy, the location of the yyy value was exactly where tile xxx repeated on the line. I searched more and found nb rows & nb cols at start of the data chunk in the file.
Then I used gfxrip on the LEVxBAK.BIN files using the game palette through USS or BMP files. It worked, and the offset of the tiles matched the map layout: voilà.


I still have to figure out the other data chunks. It must be monsters, bonuses, start points, exits... I'll check with a simple level (1.1) and will see if I can guess most of the stuff by comparing to the level we know. I refuse to resource the game. Too hard.

[jotd]

I checked the level data files. Apart from map data (which I could figure out except for the collision/altitude/flag bits), even for the first world of first level which is very simple, there are a lot of other chunks with a lot of data. Too hard to figure out.

I read in this thread things like "rotated palette" and "recolored from screenshots". How this is done?
With the CD32 files I know exactly where each sprite is, no need to scan all the memory, and no need to wonder if it's loaded. But I miss the colorpalette. And you are right, it uses 16 colors for each sprite independently, a simple way to make the game color rich without changing the backgrounds. That's why it's hard to find.
But if Ultron could rip Thug sprite from memory, I think it's even easier from the CD32 files.

If I get all the sprites, I may go for a remake

[Joe Maroni]

can you please provide us with all maps of the game..??

i would upload them to HOL...

sadly i didn´t have the CD32 version and can´t look at the files too...

[blindfold]

Yes, I too would like to get some, but before it gets to HOL - sorry, but I don't like the idea of marking maps (It could pass, if for example while showing on page some mark was added by PHP). So I'm lurking here in cyberspace and waiting for my prey.

[Dianetix]

You say your thinking of doing a remake.... I know Chaos Engine was ported to MS-DOS etc so I assume you were going to make Chaos Engine for the Amiga Emulators?

If you are, then good luck m8, I hope it works out for you. :-)

However for those of you who would like to do not so much a remake but a sequel, heres a little bit of news….

Im a programmer by profession (yes, back in the Dragon/Spectrum/Amiga days ;-) ) and I was in contact with the Bitmap Brothers a little while ago over a release of another program. If anyone is interested, I was looking at producing The Chaos Engine 3 from original game development notes.

The Bitmap Brothers produced a Chaos Engine 2 which was rushed and was not well liked by the games fans, but there was another idea for a sequel that never saw the light of day. I wanted for a number of years to produce that sequel and Im sure that I could get BB on side with it (and yes I am serious).

So…. Anyone interested in having a go at chaos engine 3?

Let me know.