Nyerguds

So, I've recently been working on fixing up an old school project of mine; a fun little tactical RPG game. The game, simply called "Battle Game", is a simple RPG, loosely based on the HeroQuest board game, with a hero whose task is to clear all enemies on each level. You 'throw' two dice to get action points you need for walking and attacking, you get gold and experience from killed enemies, and leveling up gives you level points that can be distributed over skill sets like strength, magic, evasion, accuracy, etc. Between game levels you end up in a shop where you can buy potions, weapons and spells, and where you can repair your armour if it's damaged. The original assignment asked for the traditional "battle mode switch" when attacking an enemy, but since the assignment also had magic spells with a "range" property, this seemed rather ridiculous. The result is a game where the level's terrain is a tactical battlefield. Any enemy will consider attacking you if he can see you and has enough action points to both get to you and attack. You can physically run away from enemies during battle, and you can fire spells and duck behind the walls. Be prepared to get chased though. The AI is quite smart. The game can be downloaded here. Note that in this newer version I seriously upgraded the "w" (use weapon) and "s" (use spell) keyboard shortcuts, so they automatically scan for nearby enemies to attack. I also completely rewrote the algorithm that calculated the line of sight between two creatures. This algorithm is used to determine if an enemy can be attacked with long-range spells, and if an enemy monster would try to attack the player. I posted more info about it in the CNCNZ thread. In fact, it's kind of a giant info dump.

Should be better than DNFE

I can fix the savegame bug, btw. I fixed it in C&C1. Basically, you have to make a copy of the first run init of the sidebar, where it sets all positions, and execute that on each savegame load.

Not a clue.

well it's not about being picky... the game has methods that read in the game folder, methods that read in the mix files, and general methods that read in both. But what you're telling me means it actually tries to read TWICE, once in the mixfiles and once in the game folder, depending on where it does or doesn't find the briefing. C&C uses the general "read everywhere" method for nearly everything, including even the high scores file, which is never in a mixfile.

That seems strange. I know the way C&C looks for files, and it shouldn't matter whether the file is in a mixfile or in the game folder.

So, a briefing section in the mission ini itself doesn't override the mission.ini briefing? Odd.

Out of Memory errors are usually due to corrupted mixfiles, or due to the game trying to read mixfiles of a non-C&C1 type. Have you been doing anything modding-related with your game?

I think you have to remove the Digest section in the ini for it to work.

So, um... what's stopping you from mounting ALL isos before starting the game? Or does DOS RA only see the first CDROM?

woo, and in a week or 2 I release 1.06c rev2 and all of this is irrelevant again btw, lol at the "WINE IS NOT AN EMULATOR!!!" part

Well, for those who don't like it, I refer you to the Tab For Whiny Bitches Sound Options tab

Original boxes are always rare

I think it's either right-clicking on the setup file and selecting Run as Administrator, or setting it in the compatibility options of the file's settings window.

I made a reeeeally simple guide for installing RA on 64-bit systems. You can find it here: http://www.commandandconquer.com/forums/showthread.php?253-How-to-install-Red-Alert-1-on-64-bit-systems It's literally 3 steps. Make folder on disk, copy some CD files to it, patch with the 3.03 patch installer I made

That's kinda dangerous... especially if you got a really large resolution. All C&C games have trouble with displaying maps when the screen resolution is larger than the actual map size.

All of these options are gone in the 1.06c revision 2 installer; they're all in the setup tool now. The only thing the installer will ask is the language, and probably the resolution. These odd options were mostly added because of people nitpicking about not liking some hidden/removed stuff I reactivated. Original C&C has no grenade throw sound, but the game does contain one internally. So I enabled it. So people whined about it. So I made an option to remove it, to make the game as it was originally. I later got a similar complaint about the blooper reel credits music I added as score theme after finishing the last campaign mission. My advice: if you don't want to be bothered by those options, simply leave them on their defaults. And you might want to stay away from the "sound" tab in the setup tool of the next version... there's a reason it's called "tabForWhinyBitches" internally in the programming XD The new setup tool has loads of useful options too though, including switching between LAN and CnCNet on the "multiplayer" tab of the setup tool. So, no more messing with dll files; it's just changing a radio button option

Hmm, talking about that... Tore, if you see this, can you change my occupation on the staff page? I'm actually working as programmer now.

Woooah, that's pretty epic Besides the fact you don't see the passengers, but meh, not like you can really do that anyway In that animation, the top side seems to mirror in the last frame though. Please fix that

The vqp files are used to generate the in-between pixels when stretching the videos from the original DOS RA 320x200 to RA95's 640x400. There was some problem with the original, yes, so I generated a new one. Gordan Ugarkovic (who made the VQP encoder) gave me a tool that can do that. And yes, I replaced the campaign videos by the TLF ones. If I remember correctly, the readme file specifically says that too.

The .dat is the actual game exe file. The only difference in the TLF one is that modified videos list. The TFD version of the TLF exe applies a no-cd patch to the .dat before starting it. The non-TFD one makes sure any no-cd is undone when starting it. That's all.

..and "tiberiam" plain doesn't exist

Not like the bugs in high res are that much of a problem -_-

RA can only play videos that are in its internal videos list. Since I edited that list in the exe, no other exe besides the TLF one will show these videos. There is a First Decade executable included in the pack; that one is no-cd.

I don't really see how the inbuilt game lobbies could be "replaced" by an external program. It's not like you can remove them. After all, for meeting up with more than 2 players you'll always need the game channels, even if hifi would manage to hook the system up to the wchat launch system somehow. As for "packing a a complete CNC95 Edition", I think that'll probably work the other way around; 1.06c revision 2 will have cncnet support built into its setup tool.