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[Sowelu]

Mostly because I'm not overhauling the interface (yet).

Job #1 is a faithful reproduction of everything I can reproduce.  I'll be content here when all the major UI and features from the original game are in, even if not all the cards or advanced plot is implemented yet.  Only after I've got that stuff working, do I want to start messing around with new interface stuffs.

I mean...For one thing, even just moving up to 640x480, I'd either have to stretch or replace all the card backgrounds or letterbox it.  80 pixels is a lot of space to fill up with random creative stuff.  Concept art for what it SHOULD look like eventually is pretty cool, but...I don't have the art resources to change it yet, and I don't know what interface changes I want to make!

(Maybe I could include the date + clock on the adventure-card screen...maybe I could show a world-map picture of the area surrounding the location, and the name of the place...)

I welcome ideas and scribbles for a later interface overhaul :D

[G-Flex]

I mean...For one thing, even just moving up to 640x480, I'd either have to stretch or replace all the card backgrounds or letterbox it.

Won't you have to stretch them anyway if you're displaying the pixels 1:1? Maybe there's something I'm not understanding here, but the old 320x200/640x400 video modes don't even have square pixels (which is obvious since the pixel ratio isn't 4:3 but they were displayed on 4:3 displays, and I've played enough DOS games to know that's the case), and I'm not sure how you would handle that properly, and am honestly curious.

Job #1 is a faithful reproduction of everything I can reproduce.  I'll be content here when all the major UI and features from the original game are in, even if not all the cards or advanced plot is implemented yet.  Only after I've got that stuff working, do I want to start messing around with new interface stuffs.

That's fair enough, provided you try not to code yourself into a corner where doing so would be prohibitive or wasteful or anything. But yeah, that is a pretty good point.


I'm quite surprised you guys managed to even get save importing done so far. That's pretty impressive!

[Sowelu]

True.  They must've already been displayed with non-square pixels, so when the art was drawn, it was created with that fact in mind.  If I want to reproduce the effect properly though, I'd need to take an image that is 320x200 and stretch it to 320x240, which would make all that beautiful pixel art look fugly.  So, this reproduction is 83% as tall as it should be.

Heh.  As for the saved games:  http://wallace.net/darklands/formats/dksaveXX.sav.html  The format is dead simple, and as I implement new features (IE, items aren't implemented yet), I add 'em to the converter.  And it does convert to a better format too, btw; I'm not being excessively faithful.  Like, my clock has minutes instead of just hours, and equipment will respect that you're not wearing all three Plate:V q35 at once, etc.  Right now all it really does is name and stats though.  :V

Just about the only thing I don't plan to support eventually is "being inside a location which is not a town".  My messages do not map 1:1 with the original, so I can't track that oh, you're saved on a card at a door with a riddle in the mines.  I figure that if you're in a city, you'll load into main street, and otherwise you'll load in the wilderness outside wherever.  Randomized things like saints recipes etc will be randomized differently.  And I probably...probably...won't support events, so all your current quests will go away.  (I'm going to re-do quests completely anyway.  How many freaking silver maces and Tarnhelms are there, anyway?  There is SO much more potential.)

[Sowelu]

New version:  20101120b

I didn't get around to actual skill tests in this version, yet.  No combat changes.  There's a very few places where the backgrounds aren't correct in-town, but I think you'll be happy with it anyway.

I think I'll move on to world map next, actually, just to get this program back up to "status quo".  Quadko's old project (that I'm cribbing from) did cities + world map, so I might as well assimilate all that before I do more.

[Sowelu]

So, uh...I got sidetracked.

olemars, do you have any interest in continuing your export shenanigans?

Anyone, do you have interest in translating the cards from the original format to .xml?  The text is easy to get to, but you can't really get anything else out of the original format.  The new format is a bit verbose due to being XML but not too awful; you'd be saying what card links to what other card, what picture to display, and what controls the random chances on uncertain-result actions.


Also, given a fully-functional engine, I'm still wondering if it wouldn't be awesome to write an alternate game on the same engine, set in a similar era, maybe still including alchemy and saint-analogues...except set it in China, or Japan, or something.  I don't know TONS about those historical settings, but with a lot of research I think it could be pretty awesome (there is great historic lore to draw on, and plenty of eras where life sucks for the general populace just as much as it does in Darklands, thus lots of virtuous deeds to do).

[Sowelu]

We picked up another guy.

His character creation is gorgeous, and although I haven't seen the source yet, it looks like he REALLY knows his stuff.  His chargen stuff is faithful to the original and ties into my first combat engine, plus he updated the combat engine to use real numbers and formulas, and shoved a ton of other data into XML besides.  He even did all kinds of crazy stuff like put descriptions in the XML for the alchemical components and stuff...

I'm going to see if we can't merge the two versions together and figure out where we're going from here.  I haven't touched it in a while but this sure is progress.

Oh yeah, and it saves the characters you create.

[Mephansteras]

Glad to see that this project isn't dead!

[Sowelu]

I'm going to see if Ben wants to keep ripping the original assets, or if he wants to move to new graphics wholesale.  The latter will take longer, but it's the direction he's moving in somewhat and I wouldn't argue (as long as it would end up getting done--that's the hard part).  Not sure if he'd be up for tiles and sprites.  Hey olemars, what's up, buddy? 

[olemars]

Been bogged down with work the last few months so I haven't really been able to think much about this. My day job is programming too, so when shit gets heavy I sort of "forget" all spare time projects I might be able to get back into it now though, plus I'm on sick leave a few days due to a throat infection which means I will be bored and looking for something to do.

[Sowelu]

Oh believe me, I understand the "bogged down with work" and "day job is programming" thing.  There's a reason I let this thing gather dust for a few months.    But after a while, side projects become good ways to clear your head again.  Sorry about the throat infection, though.  Bleh.

I forget, did you ever end up releasing the source code to your sprite ripper?  No rush (we can make do quite well with just the binary!) but it would be neat to have.

[Lord Dullard]

Posting to follow. Darklands = love.

[olemars]

Oh believe me, I understand the "bogged down with work" and "day job is programming" thing.  There's a reason I let this thing gather dust for a few months.    But after a while, side projects become good ways to clear your head again.  Sorry about the throat infection, though.  Bleh.

I forget, did you ever end up releasing the source code to your sprite ripper?  No rush (we can make do quite well with just the binary!) but it would be neat to have.

Sorry, got distracted by shiny objects.

I did indeed push my source code to bitbucket, it's available here. I've also added the latest binary build to the project downloads, no need for google docs anymore. Right now I'm picking up the threads where I left them, which was battleground tiles. I have the basic grasp of some of them, but it's like there are multiple formats for the things... There's also something that looks like battle maps, which is interesting but not particularly useful I guess.

[Sowelu]

Totally awesome!

The remake project is also up on Bitbucket now.  Need to dig up a link when I get home tonight.  I think we're going to try and merge the data exporters into the game itself, so there's no intermediary step of "export to files" in there.

Thanks Olemars!

[a1s]

How is project going?

[RedKing]

Nice...would love to see a remake. I actually *am* a historian (B.A, 1993) and have a fair amount of personal library regarding medieval Europe and the HRE, so if you need any historical details/questions/scenarios, etc. send me a PM.