Hacking: Open Contribution Thread

[Hungry Horace]

check the gem locstions and dungeon entrance files in the exported data i sent you.... some of it looks like it might be that!

would love to know more abiut mouse input and how icons are "trigggered" asthis would be useful for patching the WHDload slave for CD32 pad control.

great to see new investigation going on. i must confess i am mostly interested in editing the game binary rather than memory data though!

[MadMunky]

You should check out Cheat Engine with something like winuae it allows you to track and edit memory in real time which makes it pretty easy to find out what's going on it also has features to show what the asm code is doing and what writes and reads memory locations maybe it will help with the binary data

I'll try map out most of the data I posted its all stuff like what screens displayed which direction the player is facing what character portrait is displayed

[MadMunky]

Horace: Did you ever try and recreate bloodwych?

[MadMunky]

Horace, you have all the item graphics?

[Hungry Horace]

re-create Bloodwych?

I have a very basic walls/pillars only version of Bloodwych that runs from AMOS, but that's about it... I also figured i would only try to re-code the game in AMOS myself (for potential expansion) if i had a documented re-sourced version of the original code, so that i could ensure the gameplay alogarithms were identical!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6y6xfmCrwck

As for gfx... i probably have all the grafhics in IFF (amiga) format, but mostly as screen-grabs from my Action Replay... i think i do also have some of the "untouched" (ie. not coloured by the game) somewhere, but it might take me a while to dig that out!!

[MadMunky]

I have most the graphics in there raw format from the ST version (same as you un-coloured)

http://postimage.org/gallery/bx2luikw/dd77bd0b/

I was more after them in a format 01.png = coinage etc.. Its no big deal I'm going to try make a massive sprite sheet pre-colored of all the images from the ST version

As for recreating the game, I was just interested how you do all the drawing in 2D I've only ever done work in 3D which does all the hard work for you. Even if we don't have 100% source for bloodwych if you have ever played RTC (Return to chaos) on the PC which is a Dungeon Master clone it was done as best guess to emulate the feel of the original and you could never tell they didnt have the source.

So far I've getting some good progress with my editor, im working on the character editor at the moment hence why i need all the items all the code works I've just got to do the GUI (which makes it nice and easy grabbing images when you can change them as the emulator is running )

I'll post up the image sheet I create once its done.

[Hungry Horace]

i must have them all in an AMOS bank format.... (from my editor) .... i could probably export them to small IFF/ILBM files for you?

[MadMunky]

If you can without too much effort it would be good to compare

here's all the bloodwych items..

http://postimage.org/gallery/84gtz5qo/50cefc4e/

[MadMunky]

Quick little peek at my Mapper so far.. (ignore the gfx glitch in Steem think I've had it running too long)

http://youtu.be/G5Wd3s3KhDA

So far it supports all Formats PC/Amiga/ST (Real Time on Amiga/ST)
Pocket Editor
Displays Monsters/Non Party Characters

To Do...
------
Fix Character editor to add full Character Stat/Spell editing via GUI (Code is done)
Detect if game has started or not (Extra bytes to compensate for)
Fix locations of characters in the editor to match Bloodwych
Display Party location on the map

Mapper
--------
Add switches/scripts
Add Objects
Add Monster Details
Allow Editing (Write changes back to memory and make GUI)
Extended Level fixes and editing
Saving to file
Realtime updates (Timer)
Speed Fixes

Look into Mac/Linux support for realtime editing, currently I use Windows ReadProcessMemory and WriteProcessMemory so I need to find alternatives for other OS's

[copse]

Even if we don't have 100% source for bloodwych if you have ever played RTC (Return to chaos) on the PC which is a Dungeon Master clone it was done as best guess to emulate the feel of the original and you could never tell they didnt have the source.

I'm not so sure.  I'm pretty sure I looked over the source of RTC back when it came out, and it was a disassembled.  You could tell this by the labels that were still present, e.g. lbC00012FC or whatever.

I think a good first step to a Bloodwych resourcing, would be to simply fix up all the absolute addressing and make an executable.  Don't worry about understanding the game.  Once there's an executable, then anyone who comes along can work with a version that can easily be reassembled and debugged and the like.

[MadMunky]

I dont know enough about assembly to be able to do that, copse you seem to know what your talking about so is there any chance you would do this as it would be grate to have this..

As for RTC I didnt think there was ever the source code released?

http://www.ragingmole.com/RTC/
5. Do you have the DM / CSB source-code...?

...usually accompanied by "...and will you please send me a copy too?".
No...and no. As mentioned before, I have written RTC myself entirely from scratch without reference to the source-code. Please don't ask me for a copy as I don't have one!

[copse]

I dont know enough about assembly to be able to do that, copse you seem to know what your talking about so is there any chance you would do this as it would be grate to have this..

No time.  You'd be best to ask at EAB.

As for RTC I didnt think there was ever the source code released?

Ah, maybe I have it confused for another remake which had the source code.  Still, I'd be surprised if the guy really wrote it from scratch.

[MadMunky]

Horace any chance in a write up on how to parse though the scroll data,

If see it goes 0000,0026,004E

So the text will start at 00 then 26 bytes is the next scroll etc..

After the last one at 222 (00DE) What does the next one mean (01,27) Is this next the next level or tower?

Also wanted to ask about switches, how do you work out what switch is linked to switch action?

[Hungry Horace]

Horace any chance in a write up on how to parse though the scroll data,

If see it goes 0000,0026,004E

So the text will start at 00 then 26 bytes is the next scroll etc..

After the last one at 222 (00DE) What does the next one mean (01,27) Is this next the next level or tower?

Also wanted to ask about switches, how do you work out what switch is linked to switch action?

I will try and answer some of this tomorrow!!

[Hungry Horace]

After the last one at 222 (00DE) What does the next one mean (01,27) Is this next the next level or tower?

you will see from my other post, this is answered now - you just need to read 0127 as a 'word' not a byte.