Hired Guns for CD32??

[Doomer]

Originally Posted by UnnamedCourier

; 31 not used

It's light in AGA.

[UnnamedCourier]

Originally Posted by Doomer

It's light in AGA.

Ahh, that's interesting. A lot of comments in the file are quite old for that point in development, it still has the comments for the removed Psionics skill and how it would change the power of psi amps.

[Cherno]

struct map_cell3 has a member "light:1", which is either a ceiling light or a lit cell. At least I assume it is either of these things

In further news, looks like United Aerospace Corporation did some biological weapons experimenting on their own on Graveyard!





I cheated a bit on the Cacodemon and Arachnotron to get the red and blue shades. It becomes repetetive making all monsters either brown or grey

[gimbal]

I like the cacodemon, looks more menacing/devilish than the original Doom palette.

[Cherno]

Some iconic guns from Aliens...

[UnnamedCourier]

Haha, that's neat.
I've been playing around trying out different compilation options. In theory you can disable the CD32 flag and be able to compile the OCS game from the latest sources, but that doesn't seem to actually work. Rolling the source back to the code found in oldsource.lha works and compiles the 39.26 version of the game. Unfortunately it works fine, but none of the music plays and the executable is about 10kb smaller. All other sound effects work fine, it's just the music.
My aim with this was to compile a version of 39.26 with the password copy protection turned off. This works perfectly, but again all builds I make just come out with no music working.
I also tried to get the map editor permutation going. For that you need to compile with the Demo and Editor flags enabled. This then results in a compile error that the file is too big, but if you enable the Download flag (not sure what this supposed to do, the source for that seems to suggest some sort of downloading files from a local repository?) that skips the size check and it works. Having said that, running the executable from the map editor icons then runs, but it halts at a grey screen and then you get an error pop up. Snoopdos doesn't show it trying to run anything, so I don't know what I'm missing.
CD32 versions compile perfectly, I just can't get 39.26 to work correctly. I keep meaning to compile with the Cheat flag, that has lots of interesting stuff like recording steps for a rolling demo and some kind of in-engine debug/map editing mode.

[Cherno]

For my part, I have been making slow but steady progress on figuring out the map data structure. The basic things like block types, water levels and player start positions were easy. More difficult are the things that are not stored in the main cell array because they are limited in size: Monsters, buttons, items, and so on. My modus operanti so far has been to use the map editor to create two maps that are exactly the same save for one single thing, like a different monster at a certain position, and then comparing both binaries in a hex editor. The mapedit, mapstructure and equates source code files have not been too helpful because they don't give any information regarding the adresses where data is stored.

[UnnamedCourier]

That's a good idea. I managed to workout how to hack up the demo characters to have the cut items by studying the format of the inventories in the source, I dunno if there is anything similar to maps anywhere in the code (I guess not).
Actually, speaking of maps, do you know what this icon in the editor means?



The white block shapes here. These are new in the AGA version of the first map in the game, I'm not sure what they added here. Also is it possible to see what is already set on a tile in the editor? I need to sit down and learn it properly, but it doesn't seem to tell you what is already on a tile unless I'm missing something? I wanted to check what items are placed where on some levels, I reckon map 22 is probably the earliest map in the game so would be interesting to see if the junk items in that map there correspond to the demo items, and also there's at least one corrupted healing item you can get in the retail game that I'd like to investigate what it is.

[Doomer]

Originally Posted by UnnamedCourier

Also is it possible to see what is already set on a tile in the editor?

I run editor 3 years ago, but remember to use "Pick" button and select square on map. P - panel, white square - light.

[Cherno]

That's right, it's the ceiling light. Interestingly, even in the old editor release, it was possible to place these. If a cell is set to have no block, one can select a puddle as the last Floor type. If the cell is set to have a stone block, instead of a puddle the light is the last Floor type.

[UnnamedCourier]

"Pick" worked, thanks. Weird they stuck ceiling lights in there. Also it seems most of the junk items in map22 do seem to be deliberate. There are a couple of weird unused items included as well that I will look into at some point.

[Doomer]

Originally Posted by UnnamedCourier

"Pick" worked, thanks. Weird they stuck ceiling lights in there. Also it seems most of the junk items in map22 do seem to be deliberate. There are a couple of weird unused items included as well that I will look into at some point.

As Cherno says, placement is strange but smart. Light is as floor, so placed level up on floor and see on ceiling in bottom level, in that way you can place any floor, grass puddle under light. Today first time open AGA maps and earlier I thinking all outside light is set via light bit, but its added automaticly. Fill all Z=19 with wall or specific squares to disable outside light in that places.

[Cherno]

I mentioned this in the comments section under Mael's youtube video for the Urban Development map, but I will repeat it here: In one of the alleys, when a character comes near the trees a squirrel drops drown from above and ambushes him or her. This was accomplished by placing an egg in the air (they apparently are not affected by gravity), making it hatch by a trigger on the floor, and setting the egg to be erased after hatching. Quite a cool use of the game's features, and I can't think of another enounter like this. It's as if the squirrel actually drops down from a tree

[Cherno]

I spent the last weeks reverse-engineering the Hired Guns map data structure. I managed to catalogue pretty much everything, but one thing eludes me: I can't seem to import panels or horizons in the map editor. When I try to do so, I get an "Could not open file!" error, and in the background (workbench) a small window opens with the message "ilbm2raw: Can't open ram: panels.ilbm". I wonder if someone knows how to do it?

Edit: Another mystery is the placement of the fusion ring receptacles on the Spaceport map. On the four cells, monsters are placed with eggs set to never hatch, with the monsters being Leadihl I-IV plus a Sentry Gun I. Maybe the game is hardcoded that the fusion core thingies always spawn instead of these monsters on map 21, or an End map?

[UnnamedCourier]

Originally Posted by Cherno

I spent the last weeks reverse-engineering the Hired Guns map data structure. I managed to catalogue pretty much everything, but one thing eludes me: I can't seem to import panels or horizons in the map editor. When I try to do so, I get an "Could not open file!" error, and in the background (workbench) a small window opens with the message "ilbm2raw: Can't open ram: panels.ilbm". I wonder if someone knows how to do it?

If you check the source code for the map editor it looks for ILBM2RAW in a folder called c inside the folder it's actually in (i.e. not C: ).
If you run it from the complete map editor package in test/hiredgunseditor it works fine as it has the complete needed folder structure. The map editor as it was released before is not the complete package, it's just the compiled executable and the source, the real map editor was never released and is in the above directory, using it from there (or copying it all elsewhere) fixes some problems like the panels and also makes the online help and the map viewer tool work.


I don't know about how the fusion core items work, not had time to look into it. I spent time a little while ago trying to compile the game with the Cheat compile time option on, but the CD32 built would just freeze when starting the game, and the OCS build was just too big to compile.

I did some more poking about in the demo and source, and found that actually the broken bottle and brick are not truly useless items. They're actually low tier melee weapons! Of course hand to hand combat was never implemented, but they are still set as hand to hand weapons even in the final game.

I also found that there was a stun grenade weapon that never got past the most basic stages of being put into the game, and similarly there was a "sentry gun control" object that is only left in as an item type.
Finally there are a few cut psi amps in the demo that don't do much. However, one of them is "float" which uses that odd status icon of the winged character that is still in the final game. I know this came up before but I thought a final game psi amp used it, but actually I wonder if it was just leftover from this cut amp.

[Cherno]

I still can't make it work. These are the steps I take:
1. Execute "Test\HiredGunsEditor\HGEdit"
2. Project -> Import -> Horizons -> Select "Maps\Editor\Horizons.ilbm"
-> Errors

[UnnamedCourier]

What errors do you get? I hadn't tried it with horizons before, but did just now and it definitely worked, it makes several horizon.bin files in RAM:. I'm running the editor from its original location in the source files with the MakeAssigns icon run (that just assigns 3dgame: to that directory, think this makes no difference).

In this case the source shows that actually for horizons it just looks for ilbm2raw in the same directory as the editor itself confusingly, unlike the code for converting panels that looks in c/ilbm2raw. Looing at them, they claim to both be version 3.1 of the software, but one of them is much bigger, so I don't know if that is a crucial part of the puzzle or not (likely one is just compressed).

[Cherno]

The error messages are described above. I made a video showing what I do:

[ Show youtube player ]

Does it matter that "RAM" is named "Ram Disk" on my workbench? I never encountered any problems with it before but maybe that's a problem here? I also have no MakeAssigns icon anywhere.

[UnnamedCourier]

The name of the disk doesn't matter as long as the device itself is called "RAM:", but to be honest I thought it wasn't possible for it be called anything else. Can you run something like Snoopdos and see what it is looking for or going wrong on?

I checked it again now, the HiredGunsAssign isn't necessary at all. The only thing I could think of is maybe the path is too long? Try making an assign closer to the maps start from that? Weirdly it seems like it is failing to copy the source file to RAM: which is odd. Perhaps try copying the horizons.ilbm file to RAM: by hand first and see if that gets it working?

[Cherno]

I copied the horizons and panels files to RAM and it indeed works, even though I get the following errors/messages which quickly pop up and then disappear:

horizons


panels


But I' happy now since it works now Thanks!