Ambermoon open source remake in progress

[alexh]

The next release of the remake of Ambermoon has solved a bug which I first saw discussed here on EAB in 2013.

Originally Posted by prophesore

If you hire and lay off [Gryban] he says that you'll find him in Godsbane but he is not there. Mystical Map does not detect him. This is just a big error."

In Ambermoon Player-Characters data is stored in the AMBR file party_char.amb. This file is a multi-file container with one sub-file per character. Each player-character has a world map index (location) of where they go when you do not recruit them when you meet them or where they go should you release them from your party

The format of the sub-file for each character is described here :

https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoo.../Characters.md

The world map index field has been named "Character-bit-index"(?!) at offset 0x1C.

Each map has 32 possible characters like NPCs on them. So divide that value by 32 to get the map index. The value for Valdyn is 0x2400 and so his map index is 288. And ta da! This is the tavern in Burnville. Same for Selena. Take 0x22c2 and divide by 32 and you'll get 278 which is the Sylph cave.

Gryban's Character-bit-index is 0x0000 but apparently it should be 0x35c0 (The world map index of Godsbane)

http://eab.abime.net/showpost.php?p=...postcount=535]

Interesting huh? Well I guess not for everyone.

The fix can be back-ported to the Amiga version which uses the same file.

This bug like all others is recorded in technical detail here :

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

[DamienD]

Originally Posted by alexh

Interesting huh? Well I guess not for everyone.

The fix can be back-ported to the Amiga version which uses the same file.

This bug like all others is recorded in technical detail here :

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

It would be awesome if once every bug has been fixed they can all be applied to the Amiga version; floppy disk and hard drive installed

[dlfrsilver]

Originally Posted by DamienD

It would be awesome if once every bug has been fixed they can all be applied to the Amiga version; floppy disk and hard drive installed

I fully agree with you.

[alexh]

Originally Posted by DamienD

It would be awesome if once every bug has been fixed they can all be applied to the Amiga version; floppy disk and hard drive installed

The spreadsheet has a column which shows which fixes have been applied in the Meynaf patch. Most are already in there.

The problem with the floppy disk version is that the files once decompressed don't fit back on the disk. The new developer has created what he believes to be an equivalent packer that the depacker in the Amiga exe can decompress but I don't have the time to test.

[Pyrdacor]

Hello guys. Finally I managed to create an account here.

First of all I want to say thank you to all of you who provided valuable information about Ambermoon and its data structures. My current work was based on all of that. I created a github repo just to gather all those information at a central point and store it for the future there: https://github.com/Pyrdacor/Ambermoon

With the help of a bunch of enthusiastic people we managed to reveal even more information.

I am not a Pro regarding Amiga. My strength lies in imperative programming and data analysis I guess. But I will try my best to help making the Amiga versions better as well.

The Ambermoon.net project is quiet advanced already. The next big chunks to implement will be places (merchants, etc), the mystic map interface, camp window, level up window and logic, window for locked doors/chests, day-night-cycle, skies and light and music. Then after some finetuning it should be done. The rest is already working.

The project is open source so if someone wants to join or can provide some information I would really appreciate it.

Since I started the project I dove deep into the data. So I think I have quiet a good understanding of the internals of the data. This includes the data hunks of the executables like AM2_CPU, AM2_BLIT, Ambermoon_intro and Fantasy_intro. I also implemented an Assembly Deploder and a File Deploder (FImp) as well as a Hunk reader to get to the assembly data. This is important to load items, UI graphics, intro graphics, game messages, UI texts and specific palettes.

So if you have any questions about how to fix or track down a specific bug, I might help.

Feel free to contact me here, on github (Issue tracker) or via email: trobt@web.de

Thanks again for keeping Ambermoon alive over all these years.

[Pyrdacor]

Originally Posted by alexh

The world map index field has been named "Character-bit-index"(?!) at offset 0x1C.

If you wonder why I named it this way: The reason is that it is no real "world map index". It is the index of a bit. The savegame stores 32768 of those bits. 32 bits for each map for a total of 1024 possible maps. So the bits for map 288 (Burnville tavern) start at bit index 288*32=9216. So bit 9216 in the savegame would (de)activate the first character on this map, bit 9217 the second character and so on. Valdyn is the first character (data-wise) on that map. So to (de)activate him in Burnville the bit 9216 must be change. 9216 in hex is 0x2400. This is exactly the value at 0x1C in his character data.

[Pyrdacor]

Originally Posted by DamienD

It would be awesome if once every bug has been fixed they can all be applied to the Amiga version; floppy disk and hard drive installed

This is my goal too. Along with finishing the remake of course.
When Ambermoon.net is in a state where it won't consume so much time, I will work on some more editors and tools to ease bugfixing and/or improving the data.

I also want to create an optional advanced version with better balancing and some other improvements that can be done purely data-based. This could be based on the bugfixed version then. And localization is another point. Would be awesome if we manage to create Ambermoon for more languages. The tricky part about languages will be the assemblies which contain a lot of messages and UI texts too. But we might find a solution for that as well.

[DamienD]

Heya Pyrdacor,

Welcome to EAB

Firstly, well done with all this

Originally Posted by Pyrdacor

This is my goal too. Along with finishing the remake of course.
When Ambermoon.net is in a state where it won't consume so much time, I will work on some more editors and tools to ease bugfixing and/or improving the data.

That would indeed be awesome, cheers.

[Pyrdacor]

Originally Posted by DamienD

Heya Pyrdacor,

Welcome to EAB

Firstly, well done with all this

Thanks a lot. Glad to be here.

[Valken]

Welcome to EAB Pyrdacor!

I grew up with RPG's, especially 3D dungeon raid types which lead me to 3D FPS! Look forward to your work and updates!

[Pyrdacor]

@Valken: Thanks!

@Alex: About the bug with wrong map flags on two lyramion world maps. You can easily get the coordinates from the map index. There are 16x16 lyramion world maps. Each is 50x50 tiles in size.

So the column of the map is (MapIndex-1) modulo 16. The row is (MapIndex-1) divided by 16 (rounded down).

To get the offset in tiles (in-game world coordinate) you have to multiply the map column and row by 50.

So it affected maps 00D and 094.

00D is 13. MapColumn = 12 mod 16 which is 12. MapRow = floor(12/16) which is 0.

So x is 12*50=600, y is 0*50=0.

Same for 094 which is 148.

x = (147 mod 16)*50 = 150
y = floor(147 / 16)*50 = 450

Edit: Oh I almost forgot. Coordinates in Ambermoon are 1-based.

So the final coordinates are:

Map 00D: 601, 1
Map 094: 151, 451

[Nobby_UK]

70 odd Meg for a 9 Disk game ???

[alexh]

Originally Posted by Nobby_UK

70 odd Meg for a 9 Disk game ???

How much of that will be the Windows C# redistributable libraries etc.?

[Pyrdacor]

The problem is the NET framework. There are versions of around 20~30 MB now that require NET framework to be installed beforehand.

[Pyrdacor]

And it contains 2 languages of the game. Including the Amiga assemblies as they contain texts and graphics. So without all the stuff the real code is only a few MB in size.

[Pyrdacor]

FYI: I started fixing the original game data (english mostly but also german). I continue my work based on the meynaf english patch and for german on AMINET + Slothsoft patch.

I already fixed most stuff that was already fixed somewhere by someone. This includes fixing the door in Sansrie's tunnel, fixing the golem that was flagged as "PartyMember", fixing Reg hill giant's missing boss flag, fixed Gryban's spawn location and many text issues. I also fixed all wrongly used occurences of HE and HIS in the english version and replaced it by ~SEX1~ or ~SEX2~.

Now I started to fix previously unfixed bugs. I already fixed two corrupted wind gates which look stange after repairing.

So I guess in a few days I will have fixed most of the reported bugs besides code bugs (like crashes that are not data related).

I will release a new game data version for german and english soon.

[Neil79]

How far are we along to completion of said project?

[Pyrdacor]

There's only bugfixing left. I want the first release to be completable without crashes or major issues.

I can't tell for sure but it won't take very long I guess.

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Just added the missing teleporter in gadlon (stairs back to the lowest level).

[alexh]

The bug reports (and fixes) by Myself, Michael Bonisch, MetalliC, Hexxae, Meynaf, prophesore, st-h, Daniel Shultz, Simone Bevilacqua, Kermit, Thallyrion, and Pyrdacor are all being examined by Pyrdacor to be turned into two new datasets (English/German) for Ambermoon.net

The bonus is these two fixed datasets will be able to be used by the Amiga Versions too.

Pyrdacor now knows the internal data structures as well as anyone ever did, probably better than the original authors did.

Bugs that were reported 20 years ago but no-one knew what caused them, or how to fix them are being fixed in minutes. Kudos to Pyrdacor.

[pixSCN]

Originally Posted by Pyrdacor

There's only bugfixing left. I want the first release to be completable without crashes or major issues.

I can't tell for sure but it won't take very long I guess.

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Just added the missing teleporter in gadlon (stairs back to the lowest level).

Thanks for making a rewrite of one of my favourite games!

Just a quick question, though. Is it possible, somehow, to run the fullscreen mode in the native desktop resolution? Seems like it changes the resolution when I press f11. Not a big problem, but it makes all my programs rescale and jump around, from one screen to another (I run on two screens).