[Fox]

Been working on this now that the maps have been ripped. I call it "Lite" because I don't intend to make it with all texture and sounds replacements, only the entirely new ones.

[The Commander]

Wait, when/who/how did the maps get ripped?

[Lunick]

The Commander, on 19 January 2014 - 06:42 PM, said:

Wait, when/who/how did the maps get ripped?

A guy on IRC called oasiz (oasis? I can't remember sorry) sent some sort of dump (probably the memory of the game loaded, similar to how Duke 64 stuff was ripped I think) to Daedolon and Hendricks who have been working on tools to go through the stuff. I don't really know the fancy terms but Daedolon posted some pictures of the rips he did of Nightmare Zone in the "What are you working on" thread. Fox and Nukey are both on the case now too.

[Hendricks266]

Nukey has been getting them out independently of O, D and me, though we have pooled resources and shared notes.

[Mr. Nukem Roses]

nice. i look forward to seeing it made. and playing it to

[Fox]

Lunick, on 19 January 2014 - 08:55 PM, said:

probably the memory of the game loaded, similar to how Duke 64 stuff was ripped I think

It was ripped from a memory dump indeed, however in Duke 64 case Nukey managed to hack the ROM directly.

Lunick, on 19 January 2014 - 08:55 PM, said:

I don't really know the fancy terms but Daedolon posted some pictures of the rips he did of Nightmare Zone in the "What are you working on" thread. Fox and Nukey are both on the case now too.

I myself haven't done anything, except providing some feedback on the functionality.

[Lunick]

Then who do I have to suck up to

[Micky C]

Lunick, on 20 January 2014 - 05:01 AM, said:

Then who do I have to suck up to

There are other people working on other content you know

Maybe some of that content will be released very soon

[Lunick]

Plain Simple Garek, on 20 January 2014 - 05:03 AM, said:

There are other people working on other content you know

Oh yeah, gotta love Daedolon's work.

[oasiz]

It's been a team effort in the end, So far mostly Nukey has worked independently on similar stuff to what me & hendricks & daedolon have, along with Fox providing some useful input.

Working independently has helped a bit since we came to same conclusions about some psx-port specific quirks/theories while investigating.
I have mostly just been providing RAM dumps and some minor input while D and H have been working on the better stuff.

I think we all are stuck at the same spot but we already managed to figure one obstacle out of the way from the looks of it.
Anyway, things are looking good so far, not going to say any more than that.

[Fox]

Here is some general information from the maps:

- Most of the new art is in tiles014-15, however some is replacing Plutonium Pack art.
- There are some new sounds in the range of 398+, and others replacing Plutonium Pack sounds.
- The new levels have messed up start positions, rendering multiplayer mostly unworkable. None of them has all 7 multiplayer spawns, some have none at all, and some have mixed cooperative and deathmatch spawns.

Additionally, there are unused recog sounds for the new enemies in the pmp files, which I am going to make work on this mod.

[oasiz]

Have you checked E5 stuff btw?

It seems to me that those are specially optimized for multiplayer as it even has the stock maps with some of the stuff stripped away.

90% loaded and ingame dumps should be available in the usual location.

[Lunick]

Replacing Plutonium Pak art? Is TM based on 1.3d or some wacky version of 1.4?

Do you plan on having a "Vanilla" based option and a fixed options for some of those problems too?

[Fox]

Plug and Pray use a few Plutonium Pack objects, but The Birth compatibility isn't important for this mod.

oasiz, on 20 January 2014 - 05:49 AM, said:

Have you checked E5 stuff btw?

It seems to me that those are specially optimized for multiplayer as it even has the stock maps with some of the stuff stripped away.

Unfortunately, with except for Quirk of Fate, none of them are new maps so they are not very important.

[oasiz]

The stock maps do have changes to them, for example (I think it was L9) space port has a non-functioning teleporter at the start with an "out of order" sign to it.

Not sure about the extent of changes but it seems that they dedicated E5 for MP and no other level works with MP.
Once these can be .map'ified, we can check what the changes are more closely.


Quick check from the docs we did with Daedolon seems to indicate that L3 (launch facility) L5 (Rumble) L6 (RLD) and L9 (spaceport) all have some changes to the SP counterparts.

[Fox]

WOW. I never actually noticed they were different.

[Daedolon]

Didn't you check my data overview? The four ones are different, while the rest (excluding E5L1 obviously) are just duplicates of the PSX versions of the same maps.

EDIT: For public consumption:

        Map                     X           Y           Z           Ang   Sect  NumSe NumWa NumSp  :  Decimal

E5L1    Quirk of Fate           0A 26 00 00 08 12 00 00 00 F8 FF FF 37 04 D7 00 E2 00 79 06 90 00     226   1657  144
E5L2   ¹Hollywood Holocaust     C2 85 FF FF 5D 19 00 00 00 F4 FC FF 60 01 2E 01 50 01 F9 07 6C 02     336   2041  620
E5L3   ²Launch Facility         E5 5B 00 00 3B C7 00 00 00 30 00 00 18 06 03 00 52 01 6A 07 58 02     338   1898  600
E5L4   ¹L.A. Rumble             E7 73 00 00 25 4C FF FF 00 D0 01 00 08 06 69 00 ED 00 34 06 F1 01     237   1588  497
E5L5   ²Raw Meat                ED 80 00 00 3A 42 FF FF 00 A0 FE FF B7 02 1E 01 54 01 CB 08 96 02     340   2251  662
E5L6   ²Red Light District      82 D0 FF FF 01 18 00 00 08 70 00 00 4D 01 C1 00 22 01 43 07 1B 03     290   1859  795
E5L7   ¹Lunatic Fringe          DD 15 00 00 EA BA 00 00 00 74 FF FF 0A 06 B2 00 C4 00 B8 03 9F 00     196   952   159
E5L8   ¹Death Row               00 5D 00 00 3A C7 00 00 00 48 00 00 04 06 68 00 DE 01 EA 0B 51 03     478   3050  849
E5L9   ²Spaceport               EE C3 FF FF E3 AB 00 00 00 08 01 00 60 05 1C 01 64 01 59 09 7C 01     356   2393  380
E5L10  ¹Faces of Death          F5 A2 00 00 44 82 00 00 84 B5 FF FF 95 02 04 00 D7 00 06 06 0A 01     215   1542  266

¹ Duplicate
² Unique new version

[NNC]

Approximately when can we play this baby?

[oasiz]

When it's done..

As I said, we are close with the maps but there are some vital omissions that need fixing, along with custom enemies / art / sound / etc.. that need to be implemented.

Don't worry, things are looking good at the moment (at least in the map department). We just want to make sure that everything is in order and not just release some quick hack.
Most of all, we want to document and understand how this works, while ~98% of the data is the same with the maps, the way the map gets loaded from the PMP isn't.

[Hendricks266]

The only issue with maps is that the on-disc data seems to have this pre-applied to it, and these two sprites deleted:

        else switch (DYNAMICTILEMAP(PN))
            {
            case GPSPEED__STATIC:
                // DELETE_AFTER_LOADACTOR. Must not change statnum.
                sector[SECT].extra = SLT;
                break;

            case CYCLER__STATIC:
                // DELETE_AFTER_LOADACTOR. Must not change statnum.
                if (g_numCyclers >= MAXCYCLERS)
                {
                    Bsprintf(tempbuf,"\nToo many cycling sectors (%d max).",MAXCYCLERS);
                    G_GameExit(tempbuf);
                }
                cyclers[g_numCyclers][0] = SECT;
                cyclers[g_numCyclers][1] = SLT;
                cyclers[g_numCyclers][2] = SS;
                cyclers[g_numCyclers][3] = sector[SECT].floorshade;
                cyclers[g_numCyclers][4] = SHT;
                cyclers[g_numCyclers][5] = (SA == 1536);
                g_numCyclers++;
                break;

For reference:

#define SS  sprite[i].shade
#define PN  sprite[i].picnum
#define SA  sprite[i].ang
#define SLT  sprite[i].lotag
#define SHT  sprite[i].hitag
#define SECT sprite[i].sectnum

GPSPEED can be reverse-engineered from sector extra, but cyclers[] has not been found yet.

[Daedolon]

Since we're using RAM dumps as we haven't figured out how the compression works on the PMP files... yet, we also need to make sure we're using accurate dumps for each map.

It's kind of a situation where you could quickly slap stuff together and have playable maps but they would not be accurate. So we're going back and forth to make sure everything is correct.

[OpenMaw]

What about the resolution situation? Weren't some of the TM sprites dropped down in resolution to accommodate the Playstation HW? Will that work out alright if only the new content alone is ported?

[Fox]

That's not a problem. But there are new Sector Effectors and stuff, so it will be a bit problematic to play without Eduke32.

[Hendricks266]

Update: http://hendricks266....almeltdown.html

[NNC]

oasiz, on 20 January 2014 - 11:10 AM, said:

When it's done..

As I said, we are close with the maps but there are some vital omissions that need fixing, along with custom enemies / art / sound / etc.. that need to be implemented.

Don't worry, things are looking good at the moment (at least in the map department). We just want to make sure that everything is in order and not just release some quick hack.
Most of all, we want to document and understand how this works, while ~98% of the data is the same with the maps, the way the map gets loaded from the PMP isn't.

Thanks.

[Nukey]

We have a thread now?

I just cracked the map decompression earlier today. Far as I know, that's pretty much a knife to the heart for the PMP format. The rest should fall quickly. For my part, I was only interested in dumping a 1:1 decompressed copy of the maps. Not particularly interested in the rest of the file format.

Now there's something or other about missing Cycler arrays... I suppose I could prod around a bit more.

Hopefully this stuff is appreciated, I don't even like the PSX port.

[Lunick]

I appreciate it a lot

[Micky C]

Step 1: Wait for Nukey to make a post after an absence.
Step 2: Have Lunick reply directly after.
Step 3: Make a post myself with steps
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit!

Nah seriously, this entire thing is a huge victory for your team and the Duke community. It's like expanding the frontiers

[Nukey]

I should probably clarify that I had very little involvement in the team's progress. I just got a message last week indicating that some map header info was found in the PMP files and progress was being made. My curiosity was provoked and I started working on it independently soon after. I managed to make a few complete map dumps via the RAM method, but the team was able to make their own accurate RAM dumps very shortly after, with or without my help.

I will take credit for the PMP decompression, though. That was a pain in the arse.

Fox, on 20 January 2014 - 05:44 AM, said:

Here is some general information from the maps:

- Most of the new art is in tiles014-15, however some is replacing Plutonium Pack art.
- There are some new sounds in the range of 198+, and others replacing Plutonium Pack sounds.
- The new levels have messed up start positions, rendering multiplayer mostly unworkable. None of them has all 7 multiplayer spawns, some have none at all, and some have mixed cooperative and deathmatch spawns.

Additionally, there are unused recog sounds for the new enemies in the pmp files, which I am going to make work on this mod.

Fox deserves team credit just for posting stuff like this ^ I barely even looked at the maps after dumping them.

[Hendricks266]

As of yesterday, Daedolon, oasiz, and I were able to pull all the maps out of 85%-loaded RAM dumps that are identical to the ones Nukey extracted from the PMP. I'm not sure if the team is willing to share the maps publicly or not.

Our method is still useful because it can pull maps out of the running game sort of like DNDEBUG, allowing us to determine hitpoint values of enemies and other things.