Ambermoon open source remake in progress

[alexh]

I may have mentioned this before but there is an open-source remake of Ambermoon in progress which should bring this awesome Amiga RPG to many other platforms including Windows and Linux.

It is being headed by an enthusiast called Pyrdacor, and he's making great progress, it's still pre-alpha but already way ahead of the previous attempt, the respectable Amberworld.

https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoon.net/releases

There is lots of interesting information here about file formats etc.

https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoon

I've been maintaining a list of bugs reported in v1.07 for many years

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

And many people such as Metallic, Hexaae, Maynef have been diagnosing and fixing them.

I am keeping an eye on the project, participating where I can and trying to steer the development to create tools which will allow easy back-porting of bug fixes he discovers to the English v1.07 and German v1.05 Amiga versions.

If you're an Amiga Ambermoon fan, maybe with a bit of free time, Pyrdacor is asking for experienced Ambermoon players to contribute to understanding the last few features of the game. Take a look, just for fun:

https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoon.net/issues/51

I do hope this will become a fully playable version of the game with potentially improvements over the original.

[Jield]

I love this game! I follow each Ambermoon project with pleasure and wish good luck. When is the third part?

[alexh]

The tools being developed by Pyrdacor will allow anyone with even an ounce of C# knowledge to fork and modify the game to produce a new adventure.

He is not creating an editor... but you will be able to quickly and easliy change maps, graphics, events and text strings.

Translations to other languages should be easy for example.

[Jield]

I wonder if the improvements can be made to the Amiga version. If the tool was simple, I could try translating the Amiga version.

[Jield]

Originally Posted by Jield

I wonder if the improvements can be made to the Amiga version. If the tool was simple, I could try translating the Amiga version.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Jield

I wonder if the improvements can be made to the Amiga version. If the tool was simple, I could try translating the Amiga version.

The game has already been translated into French by dlfrsilver using tools MUCH harder to use. If he can do it anyone can

[grond]

Wow, this is really good news. Perhaps we will get softscrolling in the 2D maps at last...

[alexh]

Originally Posted by grond

Perhaps we will get softscrolling in the 2D maps at last...

Not in the Amiga version but possibly in the C# version. Join the conversation and ask for it.

[Overmann]

Aboslutely fantastic! I'm still hoping it's spiritual successor, Albion, will someday find it's way to the amiga, but this is also very cool

[alexh]

You can play the Albion Amiga demo which was created before they canned the Amiga version. The 3D is very similar to the final game

[Jield]

Here's the Albion demo for the Amiga. I think it requires an AGA chip. A Albion port to Amiga would be nice.

[Overmann]

Oh yes, I've played the demo and it is very cool, but it's not the same as playing the full game :P

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by alexh

The game has already been translated into French by dlfrsilver using tools MUCH harder to use. If he can do it anyone can

Of course, it was such a piece of cake

[alexh]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

Of course, it was such a piece of cake

It was an incredible feat to translate the entire game using the tools you had.

It really is much more simple with Pyrdacor's tools. It extracts and fixes all the text files automatically. Removes all non UTF-8 characters, garbage at the end of text files etc. Editing text is as simple as... editing text, the tool changes all the string lengths automatically. It can even re-compress in LOB format so they fit back on the original disks.

The data checkers he created found bugs no-one ever reported. Large areas of the map in permanent darkness due to wrong map flags, bosses who don't have the boss flag set so they can flea during a battle making the game impossible, and lots of others. (Mainly cosmetic but interesting non-the less)

I scripted english spell checking on the extracted files and found lots of untranslated bits never reported or patched before and spelling mistakes.

A cool discovery where two rooms have two text files both identical in German but not in English because they were translated on different days / by different people.

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by alexh

It was an incredible feat to translate the entire game using the tools you had.

It really is much more simple with Pyrdacor's tools. It extracts and fixes all the text files automatically. Removes all non UTF-8 characters, garbage at the end of text files etc. Editing text is as simple as... editing text, the tool changes all the string lengths automatically. It can even re-compress in LOB format so they fit back on the original disks.

The data checkers he created found bugs no-one ever reported. Large areas of the map in permanent darkness due to wrong map flags, bosses who don't have the boss flag set so they can flea during a battle making the game impossible, and lots of others. (Mainly cosmetic but interesting non-the less)

I scripted english spell checking on the extracted files and found lots of untranslated bits never reported or patched before and spelling mistakes.

A cool discovery where two rooms have two text files both identical in German but not in English because they were translated on different days / by different people.

interesting. Well anyway, you know that the engine has nasty bugs in it.

The interesting thing, is that his tool will maybe allow to reimplement the missing part due to text flag errors.

In the french version, i have reinstalled the missing part.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

The interesting thing, is that his tool will maybe allow to reimplement the missing part due to text flag errors.

Which "missing part"? Which "text flags" (Technical information, which file, which sub-file, which text block, strings)

In v1.07 English there are one or two zero sized text blocks (1Map_texts.amb/001 and 1Map_texts.amb/016) which caused crashes OR bits of text to be missing / not displayed. They are usually not zero sized in v1.05 German. The text can be translated and inserted.

There were also places where the end of text-block characters were missing, or text block lengths were wrong. (2Map_texts.amb/105/003.txt, 3Map_texts.amb/153/010.txt, NPC_texts.amb/03A/007.txt) Again causing crashes or incorrect text to be displayed, or not displayed. (It was YOU who I recorded as having found the last one of these bugs on 8/5/2013)

Things like these are automatically fixed in Pyrdacor's tools. Where sub-files or text blocks are missing it can't "make it up" but it warns you about them and you can insert replacement text blocks.

Other places where special markup like ~SEX1~, ~RUNE~, ~NORM~ had typos and these are going to be automatically checked for errors in the future.

[dlfrsilver]

I mean the story part between the gnome/dwarf and his mother on the kire Moon.

In the english beta, this part doesn't appear.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by dlfrsilver

I mean the story part between the gnome/dwarf and his mother on the kire Moon. In the english beta, this part doesn't appear.

Yes you reported this bug on 05/08/2013. The text isn't missing, it just doesn't get displayed without a patch. The bug is in file NPC_texts.amb sub-file 03A, text block 7. The wrong string length in the header (text-block length $0164 should be $015F, unwanted garbage at end of textblock, missing end-of-text-block marker ($00) at the end of the text-block.

This bug and ones like it are automatically-detected flagged for manual checking (e.g. remove any garbage at end of string) and lengths auto-corrected by Pyrdacor's tools.

[dlfrsilver]

ok nice to know !

[meynaf]

Originally Posted by alexh

The data checkers he created found bugs no-one ever reported. Large areas of the map in permanent darkness due to wrong map flags, bosses who don't have the boss flag set so they can flea during a battle making the game impossible, and lots of others. (Mainly cosmetic but interesting non-the less)

Do you have a full list of these bugs ? F.e. I've never read about wrong map flags before.