KaM Remake -> Multiplayer Demo out!

[Krom]

In the end that means for mapmaker to write as many different texts as languages used

Multilang for missions - don't know, why not, but later on.

Mission texts - I guess they could be a standalone LIB file, so to append them to game LIBs. (and it doesn't really matter if all these files will be as files or packed into one gzip archive)

[Lewin]

My idea was that missions would also come with a LIB file for each language (if there are customised messages that is) which would contain custom messages, briefings, etc.
So a mission might have:
battle.de.lib
battle.en.lib
battle.pl.lib

and the game will automatically select the one that matches the language of your version.

But Krom may have other ideas.
Lewin.

[harold]

That sounds almost exactly like my idea, except I'd use simple txt files with "1 string per line" for easy editing (why make it harder?)
If you'd change that to battle.en-EN.lib and battle.pl-PL.lib etc it would be (nearly) compatible with TKE as it is
(the double identifiers can be needed for differences between en-GB and en-US etc)

[Krom]

Yes, that sounds good
Could be a set of plain-text files with 1message per line (or per ID) as harold suggests. Though en-gb en-us is a bit superfluous imho

[harold]

Though en-gb en-us is a bit superfluous imho

Tell that to an Englishman
nl-NL and nl-BE are also quite different

[harold]

So Krom, any progress on the water? I might resort to taking screenshots of TPR but that's an evil cheat that wouldn't sit well with me..

Oh and you probably know this, but there doesn't appear to be a standard ILBM animation in those texture files. In fact there don't seem to be any standard ILBM (nor even IFF) chunks in them at all. So what the heck? I don't get it - aren't they ILBM after all? Irfan View claims ILBM support but can't load them..

[Krom]

I did took 50 screens from KaM, ~30 were unique, still they didn't covered water flow even 50%
This cheat is inevitable ...

[harold]

I hadn't thought there were so many different frames for it.. this makes it even harder..

[Krom]

Either it's a very long loop, or each tile has a different frame-count ... Doesn't makes it simplier ...

[Krom]

Okay, I put some more effort into this issue and I can summ up:

Default waterflow animation consists of 8 frames (slow and fast water are the same)

Some elements have only 3 frames of animation, but in combination with waterflow loop they make it total of 24 frames (water weeds, swamps)

Now waterfalls - they seem to have 5 frames, which makes it kinda hard to rig with the rest of animation

All in all that gives 120 possible combination. Since Water/Weeds/Falls are combined in some tiles it means that either we need to make a shortcut and limit number of frames to some reasonable count, so to loop dozen of terrain textures or invent a way to combine/generate animation steps from given 8+3+5 frames.

I prefer 2nd idea for Remake, this way it could be 3 sets on independent terrain tilesets with alpha masking the animation. I will prepare these in some time and can make them public for usage in other remakes and/or map editors.

[harold]

I actually thought the weeds could only be combined with normal water and not with waterfalls but I could easily be wrong
That doesn't sound too bad but I guess I'll have to add an other layer then lol, oh well easy enough
A real pity they didn't use a normal format for those texture files that would have saved a lot of people a lot of effort..

[Nick]

i don't know if its smart that i interfere here between u 2 devs :p
but maybe its easier to create water from scratch? Just by yourself on your own feeling... or would that only be harder?
i don't know, just an idea.
Maybe even some people are willing to make tiles or so...

[Krom]

Currently we are aiming at cloning KaM 1:1 with some improvements and new features. Thus we need to decode tile data or at least try to emulate it using what we can access.

In fact it's an interesting quest/puzzle to figure out how it was made and how can we make it by ourselves on modern hardware and technology.

Still it's a nice idea to create some tiles from scratch, cos after all one of new features could be support for custom tilesets

[FallenLeader1]

could you build a hard to use single player cheat system? make it hard enough to discourage using but add it to help the not so smart people like me.

same question for the other kam remake. didnt want to post there as well.

[Krom]

I guess both TPR cheats will remain and maybe we add something for the fight missions. Games without cheats are boring ))

Also it would be nice to add some easter eggs, but we need to discuss that with Lewin much later on..