Gods reverse engineering

[Suthriel]

Originally Posted by JohnnyWalker

For anyone who isn't aware there are now tools for: The Chaos Engine, Speedball II (at least to play), Magic Pockets, Cadaver and many more

http://bringerp.free.fr/RE/

Brilliant stuff

Originally Posted by Kroah

Thank you for your kind words.
Nothing would have been possible without the initial work of outstanding people from this era.

Hello there,


i just registered here, because i wanted to thank you, Kroah for creating this amazing tool and Gods Viewer Especially that it extract all the sprites and tiles, and allow complete noobs with zero clue about programming (especially if it´s not on PC ^.^ never had Amiga, PC only) to throw them into other programs and see what happens.

Well, if you throw your extracted sprites into an AI Upscaler, and then... let´s say... into Unreal Engine, then this can happen.




https://www.deviantart.com/suthriel/...nder-879766088

Hope you like it and can forgive, that its not Amiga stuff


Also a big thanks to JohnnyWalker for his post with that link, otherwise i would have never seen Kroas tools in the first place.


Have a nice day

[jotd]

Nice!

BTW someone already put the tiles in unreal engine to remake Gods (steam). The result is great, except for the main character that looks like shit, and it kills the rest of the visuals.

Fortunately there's also original gfx mode... and the same 4 over-explored levels. Not even new levels what a shame (I didn't even buy that game on Steam)

[Suthriel]

Yeah, i have seen that remake, and i really disliked it´s modern more CGI look. For me, it could not capture the original aesthetic. It´s the same when all companies jumped on the early 3D graphics, just because they were new, like Monkey Island 4. Imo, some games don´t need realistic (3D) graphics, some just work better with more stylized comic looks.

That´s why i am quite happy, that some AI Upscaler can do quite a good job with upscaling the original sprites, cuz with that, you can keep the original look, just polish the edges and smoothen out some colors.

Maybe i should experiment a little bit more with that and dig through some Unreal Engine tutorials ^.^

[jotd]

there was a (now dead) project with pseudo 3D extruded tiles & enemies. It was beautiful and I can't find it on YT but it was 100 times better looking than this remake

[Suthriel]

That sounds interesting, do some pictures still exist? I only stumbled over one fanart image, where some pixelart indidevs created an interpretation of Gods, and even that looked way better than the official remake. They should have hired them instead.

This image:



From those group:

https://twitter.com/imoregames/statu...44739727495168

Well, for now, i think i continue to vomit ...import... stuff into Unreal engine, and see, what happens

[jotd]

it's nice fanart!! And no, I should have bookmarked the video as I can't find it now.

[Suthriel]

Aloha again,


it just so happened, that i continued to throw GODS stuff into UE Here is a tiny clip, how it looks like right now


[ Show youtube player ]


Have to say, it is pretty funny, but the sad part is, that Unreal Engine is not really 2D friendly, with it´s massively outdated (or not updated) Paper2D (most 2D games rely on this).


Well, for now, have fun and a nice day ^.^




PS: Is here some sort of Fanproject corner somewhere in this forum? This thread is meant for reverse engineering, and i am not doing this, more like recreating or throwing a fan project together.

[Suthriel]

Greetings again

just some tiny update on my lil Gods fan project... and little it is indeed, thanks to some unexpected problem with massvie impact un my game building ability. Well, first a tiny clip on what is working so far, which is not much.

[ Show youtube player ]

(i love those headbanging candle lights ^.^ probably just a wrong setup for their animations, but somehow they look cool)

As it turned out, Unreal Engine 4 seems to not like it, if you want to build a game with something else than a Capsule Collision for your characters. And unfortunately Gods works better with a simple Box Collision (just check how far you can go over an edge, without sliding down or falling).
However, UE4 character built in character presets are hardcoded with capsule components ONLY, and no chance to change that, unless i download the source code, edit this part in the source files (written in C++, if i understand this correctly, and i have zero clue about any C), and compile it.
This also means, that all the movement presets, which make it easier to create those chars and how they move and interact with the world, won´t work either, since they are also linked to that capsule, and accept nothing else.
You don´t even get access to the movement and velocity functions, if you decide to just build a regular character from scratch with identical components, because... reasons.

Worst part is, every tutorial about making 2D games tells you, use this char preset (or it´s 2d equivalent, which uses this char preset as foundation and build up on it), use the capsule. Tons of questions are online about how to change it to a simple box collision, but no working answer. Just the enlightenment, that box collision and this character preset is an absolute Noob-trap, and i agree with that


Also, i wonder how Bitmap Brothers realized the animation state machine for this game. I was surprised to see, just how much different poses and transitions the hero have (total of 27 animations, at least in my version), because there are not only all his normal poses, but there is also an animation for switching from one pose into another.
Those tutorial characters all just have 4-6 poses , and with that, it´s easy to build the logic. But with up to 27.. things get a little bit messy and buggy

Whatever, have fun ^.^

[UnnamedCourier]

Hi, I thought I would try and collate some of the findings from the likes of Kroah and JOTD on The Cutting Room Floor. Does anyone have a map rip of the "4 AM mix" demo of the game, either Amiga or ST? I noticed the ST version stil has the otherwise removed flaming torches on the wall so would probably be the more interesting one, as far as I know the Gods Viewer tool can't show it?

[jotd]

i can provide a map rip yes. on my phone now. you need a png?

[UnnamedCourier]

That would be great if you could! I really wanted to see what - if anything - is out of bounds in the demo. The PC version of the demo is also based on the ST version, I found.
Something else I noticed that is not written up yet is that the there is a preview in Zero magazine that shows early sprite sheets, including the cut scorpion enemy, and also a different type of flying enemy that seems to not be in the game at all (in the same picture here).

[Cherno]

It's been a while sicne the problem of the capsule collider was described above, but I had some success using a series of raycasts running parallel with the character, serving as a hitbox of sorts. This was a third-party plugin for Unity, but the basic principle should be viable in Unreal Engine as well, maybe there are 2d frameworks available?

Edit: Just for the fun of it: Sega Genesis cover.

[UnnamedCourier]

Urgh I hate that artwork! That is something I also looked into, it was only used for the American SNES and Genesis releases, the Japanese ones still used the original fantastic Simon Bisley artwork. Even worse, there are sites like Mobygames claiming that garbage above is by "Simon Bisley (uncredited)". I'd imagine he'd be horrified of anyone thinking that junk was by him.

[gimbal]

It's not THAT bad, it's just weird with the disproportionate arms and hands. A little too cartoony for the style of the game itself, but we have to remember that console games back then were marketed towards kids.

[UnnamedCourier]

Yeah, but one of the really clever, cutting edge things the Bitmap Brothers pushed for with their games was the synergy with other pop culture. You had an indie game with "underground" indie music and in this case, artwork from an celebrated comic book artist on the box. It was really ahead of its time and something that would culminate with e.g. Psygnosis' Wipeout games. The box for Gods is extremely striking in its design and really stood out at the time.
They must have been gutted when some American exec told them "the kids won't like that!" and stuck on some turd that looks like it was copied off the wall of a fun fair ride instead.

[jotd]

find the 4am mix map in the zone

[UnnamedCourier]

Awesome, thanks! I didn't realise you could get through the wall to the right; I did wonder if it was possible. Shame they have obviously deleted all the old Level 1 stuff, you can still see the trapdoors are in the same place as the real level if you compare them.

[UnnamedCourier]

I updated the page on Gods and also added one for the demo versions of the game (which have some odd changes between them).
One thing I noticed as well is there is the game's text in the Objects files (most easily found if you get the Gods Viewer program). There seems to be some unused stuff in this, most notably a very rude description of the Familiar, a silly description of the Starburst item ("It goes zzzzap") and what may be an unused item ("tablet roll reveals clues" - or is this just a description of the hint items found in the game?).
Anyone looked at this file before? The text is very broken up, but I'm not sure this is because these are simply old text that has been overwritten, or if there is some kind of other encoding used. It seems consistent across game versions for the most part.

Edit: Just found there is some unseen and amusingly rude stuff in the weapons files, too.

[gimbal]

Nice page! I remember playing that demo (and falling in love with the game); I can remember that when you get to the door leading to the outside area it takes forever for the score to count up compared to the release version.

Don't know if you care, but there is a minor textual problem in there:

The Atari ST version has "balls" on the top of ladders. These is odd

Should be either "This is odd" or "These are odd".

[Suthriel]

Originally Posted by Cherno

It's been a while sicne the problem of the capsule collider was described above, but I had some success using a series of raycasts running parallel with the character, serving as a hitbox of sorts. This was a third-party plugin for Unity, but the basic principle should be viable in Unreal Engine as well, maybe there are 2d frameworks available?

Yeah, there are raycasts too, and i ended up using them (or rather their big brother), after running into other problems, that stemmed from problems with how the collisions were set up in all those tutorials (via overlaps and "end overlaps", this caused some unexpected problems with trapdoors).

Unreal Engine offers raycasts in several variants, the simplest being the Linetrace, which uses a regular line. However, there also exists the box trace and a sphere trace, which trace in those shapes, allowing to basically trace everything within a certain area/volume, and the box trace is what i am using right now.

(and i really have to build everything from scratch, since almost everything from those tutorials does not fit here or causes problems in the long run, since Gods uses a way more complex Hero, together with no real physics, more scripted stuff, as it seems).


Hopefully, i can post a more meaningful update soon, where more stuff is working. And out of curiosity (and since this is the reverse engineering section ^.^) is there somewhere a datasheet with the values of all those items, weapons and powerups available?