TKE

[Krom]

I have to make own controls as well, so far so good, but I did only some buttons and panels.

Another question, how did you managed to use KaM fonts (.fnt files) in TKE? What palette do they use?

If you have any questions about my KaM Remake - feel free to ask

[harold]

I cheat the fonts.. I got the picture from the graphics reader by The Barbarian and converted it to PNG with proper transparency
Major cheat, but it works fine

I'd like to find out about more those fonts files, but since it works fine already it's not really high-priority..

[Krom]

LOL, I guess I have to cheat them as well Same as with terrain tiles.
I decoded fnt files completely, but still there's no palette info in them.

Harold, how do you design game menu, do you have visual editor for all those buttons and tabs and pics, or do you write all by text in xml?

[harold]

I'm afraid I write them all in XML
Would it be faster to make a design tool and then use it..?

[Krom]

I was seriously thinking about making a wrap for Delphi form designer. It saves all data in textfile I could parse easily. I'm yet unsure, maybe I do it. After all writing a parser is quite easy. But in other hand repeating KaM design in XML (or alike) is not very hard as well. I've already started recreating KaM layout and I can say - that's only a few hours work. Of course then it comes to rigging all these buttons to game engine itself, thats another story ..

Writing own designer from scratch - that sounds like a waste of time, unless of course it's a goal itself (to write own designer), then it's good.

[harold]

Oh, I see, well I seriously doubt I can trick the Visual Studio designer into accepting XNA stuff - it contains some serious hacks based on reflection in order to do its job. It's likely that it requires a Windows Forms base-window somewhere and XNA does not come with that by default (it requires a whole load of hackish code to force it into a Windows Forms app, but it's certainly possible - I've used that in the mission editor that I started but never finished since Lewin made a better one in less time)

So I guess I'll just continue to write XML - the GUI isn't that complex anyway

By the way, I zip the XML and put it inside the exe itself - I'm not sure it's the best way but it makes it less hard to mess with (although it's certainly possible of course - but that's not bad, it allows for bug fixes by people who are knowledgeable enough yet keeps novices from destroying the program)

[harold]

Just a piece of news, we're forming ideas about how the AI should work

[Lewin]

Just a piece of news, we're forming ideas about how the AI should work

You mean the enemy AI? Does that mean that you have the village AI working?
Krom and I have done a lot on our Remake recently, and the UI is nearly done. I've added loading of the LIB files, so we can support the original translations easily. But I should post that stuff on the other topic I guess.

Well done, keep us informed and post a screenshot if you have anything worth looking at.
Lewin.

[harold]

Yup the dreaded enemy AI
Village AI is quite far but I'm not sure how far it was, we've kinda lost it until JBSnorro's PC is repaired

[MrVV]

Is there something new?!?

[harold]

Nothing that is visible
I will add the fences and the stones around fields when I'll get to it.

[MrVV]

Okay

[harold]

I put this screenshot on the dutch site because someone wanted to see some progress, well.. why not put it here too? It's not very interesting though

[Krom]

Looks good, I might be not as entertaining as another remake, but you certainly make progress and that's what is important.

Say, can I ask you about technical details again:
- How do you draw minimap, is it a stretched TBitmap, or texture or array of dots. How often do you refresh it and how much time it takes for 176x176 map. I see you don't show terrain lightning on minimap, why?
- Terrain textures - are you using own generated textures taken from KaM (40x40px per tile) ?
- Also about terrain - how do you shade it - custom shader?
- Your ideas about making water tiles animation?

If you want to ask anything from me/Lewin - sure, we'll be happy to help.

[harold]

I implemented the minimap (well did I? it looks broken ) as a texture that gets it's contents updated once in a while (which is, currently, never. but planned to be often enough so that roads and changes to quarries show up)
For the terrain I'm cheating with the textures, since I can't accurately load the original tiles - which sucks cause I bet there is water animation information in them (where else would it be?)
I shade it with a custom and broken (mountains look crappy) shader lol, I'll have to spend some time getting it right some day..

But that darn water.. I don't have it anywhere near moving.. but then, I'm not really going to get anywhere with it without knowing what's in the map texture files.. you probably know more about their structure than I do