Kilkakon

I've done some more testing tonight. And the results are... weird. I decided to try a control sample: the original WW frames. I converted them from WSA to PCX frames using XCC, and then converted them back into a WSA using WsaSet. And it worked. I was able to quit and restart the campaign 8 times without crashing (I gave up at this point). The only oddity I noticed was that when the WSA ended C&C gave a brief flash of pink over Africa--this doesn't happen with the originals. And to confirm, I put mine back in and got a crash on the third playthrough, with the error message "The instruction at 004d8295 referenced memory at 01018000. The memory could not be written". What makes my frames crash and not WW's? What causes the pink flash?

Time for an update! Bam! Had a bit of a delay due to getting mopey but not having enough cuteness in my life as well as the whole wsa thing just not working out at this stage. That means the campaign map is still not ingame! I will do my best to try and get things going and provide Blade with some more information after this post. I decided to go ahead with the Tear-gas Tank and put it into the game! But of course for that we need a cameo and I didn't just want to recycle the flame tank's existing one. I decided to dig up the scan's from Nyer's archives... ...and colourise it! This is the result: I also have managed to make a start on finishing off those maps, in this case Jacko's contest submission! As his map was so barebones I had to make some decisions myself about how I wanted things to pan out. I decided to move the airstrip and have it as a mission critical structure hat the player owns--I hope you all enjoy the map when it's done! It might be on the easier side but oh well, we can have a few maps on the easy side, haha. I've also done some testing and managed to get a video or two ingame (tested with a raichu boy and a YR vid). So the good news is that while the campaign map might be in doubt for the time being, the videos should be fine. I'm still in the process of storyboarding and writing a script but watch this space!

Ah well it's easy enough to dodge, just use Multi1-6 for the production structures. It's still quite odd though.

Thank you Matt I just ran into this today, again At least I only wasted one hour scratching my head this time!

Okay that was totally my bad. It looks like XCC can open these WSAs, I must have been recalling my experiences with Red Horizon. Sorry for misremembering, my brain has died tonight. Conversely, if XCC _can_ open these what does that mean? It means they are probably very close... is XCC built to handle compression that C&C eventually chokes on?

Looks pretty fun I like the new terrains being incorporated into missions Do you mind throwing a credit into your credits list for my technology centre buildup?

Did some more testing today to try and eliminate the problem, by putting some of the original files back in to see what's causing this. As we know both the new pal and the new wsa crashes on second playthrough of the animation. First I replaced the new pal with the original pal from my old C&C install. This improved things: I got a crash on the third playthrough, although black pixels did pop up. Finally as a control test I replaced my wsa with the original C&C wsa. I occasionally had a few palette flash but otherwise I saw no problems, being able to play it through 7-8 times without any problems (I stopped at that point, it did not crash). Does this help narrow things down?

Very strange. Your one is identical to mine now, at least the one I generated with your more recent version. How did the pink sneak in there? XD

This is like looking in a mirror for me. XD Tanya? Nadia? Eva?

I can confirm I am using the same command line. I didn't use the palette generator at first, but I was getting some nasty black pixels because of the water being different to what XCC says is the normal palette (when I use right click -> copy as as shown in my previous screenshot).

I gave it another go and didn't seem to notice any change (still pink, still crashed on second map viewing, although after I clicked on Egypt funnily enough). I'll attach the source pcx frames here as well, not like anybody can steal 'em for anything useful haha.

Do you get the crashes as well if you bring up the map a few times? I made a map with a time,1,win trigger and just restarted the campaign a few times. Very odd. Does this mean it's a WSASet issue? Or something with the palette generator? scb01ea.zip

Okay that's odd. What is XCC doing to me haha. Does my WSA work in your clean install Nyer?

With all the technical problems I've had with the campaign map, time for a bit of dialogue! What do you think about the idea of the tear gas tanks being buildable? They have the standard chemical spray weapon (in classic C&C terms) with double shot. Would this be balanced? Should it be slower than the Flame Tank? More expensive? Your comments are welcome If it's not going to mesh well it can stay as a non-buildable hero unit like the Recon Rover, so no biggie either way :laugh: The regular Flame Tank is better in this mod due to less anti-tank in general and is $700. As a fun note, the map pictured was started by me and then taken up to 11 by MattAttack purely because he wanted to!

Notably, the original palette for that WSA does. My dark green is pink in the original file, index 41. That's the XCC Copy to clipboard of the original file. I can also confirm I can't take a screenshot with Ctrl+S during the cinematic and I'm running ddraw. Just screenshotted some normal gameplay to be sure XD

Yeah I definitely did that... that's the method I use to take my normal screenshots and nothing seemed to appear in the directory. I'll double check that when I get home to make sure I'm not doing something stupid. My C&C machine is XP incidentally. I did attach the source files on the previous post, although yeah I can see why having the ingame palette would be probably the most helpful thing.

I tried getting a screenshot with ddraw but it would not work. Must be an ingame only feature? Or the transition blocking keyboard presses. RE: Nyer's palette generator. This is what I used but I am not sure if I hit ignores fades to 0. I can certainly try this tonight. Thanks for looking into this everyone.

Posting this here. Not sure it's relevant to your tool or it's my mod that's at fault so if it's in the wrong place, sorry! For Blade and Nyerguds' eyes primarily: I managed to import the stretch palette, however it seems to not have worked 100%? I'm getting a lot of pink instead of green here: I also get this crash the second time I open the map in the same execution of C&C: EDIT: Just to throw a spanner in the works, just managed to get it to crash on the third time and not the second with references 004d8295 and 01018000 respectively. It's quite possible that it's something I'm doing wrong. I can verify I have a custom palette in my pcx that doesn't seem to be recognised by the game, despite me having the -p switch on. Yes I have -l switch on as well. Not sure what files you need, so attaching the pcx frame shown there, the wsa and the stretch pal. hearth_a.zip

As far as these compliments go, keep 'em coming! :yo: Good to have some hype as I try to knock this mod out of the ball park in a month! I've got some time tonight so I'll have a crack at the colouration I think for the campaign itself. I won't give spoilers though, so you'll only see the "before the world goes to pot" world map ...that Commando line doesn't actually work as my mod doesn't have the commando XD Whoops.

Yeah sandbags are a crutch! Haha. I refuse to use them. Forgive the necro post but this: I feel stupid for not thinking of this when I had to fix up Goatmessiah's map XD I suppose I hadn't thought of credits trigger as I've never used it but hey (used some offmap reinforcement shenanigans)

Yup. Still not sure how it went wrong. If I compare my animation to the original one, like all the teals for the landscape are darker in the original, and a few of the cloud pixels are black in the original, so I get black splotches. For this one I'm fine using the original palette but for the next one I'll need to learn how to change the palette properly.

Extracting the frames of the original in the first place. :O I right clicked and exported as PNG (as that's what Red Horizon wanted) and got the wrong colours. But it is easily fixed, I just have to go through my now PCX files and reimport palettes.

Wow guys. I think this is honestly the most positive feedback I've received for anything I've done ever. XD Thank you all so much. I'm working hard as I can to try and get this done! I can reveal that well, on Friday I realised I'm running out of time to actually get this done this year! With the necessary promo and web work that needs to be done after finishing the mod (for conversation's sake let's say that takes a month) I basically need to get this all wrapped up by the end of November. Definitely doable, just need to remain committed Here's the specifics of what's left to do: Finish off the AI for the submitted maps (Jacko's contest entry, Goatmessiah's contest entry, my own Japan vs. Russia map Complete the campaign transition as you can see above Put together the cinematics Cast some voice actors (Need British EVA) Beta testing perhaps? Ah makes sense. Thanks for the technical explanation. I did find Nyer's tool which allowed me to have fun breaking the palettes a bit (it's a bit of guesswork working out which palette goes with which wsa haha). I will need to use it when I tackle the territories as I have more factions in my game, need more colours on my map!

Thanks for the support Inq I appreciate it. <3 Today I spent some time trying to work out the WSA format and getting my world map into it. It was a lot of trouble using a few different tools (Red Horizon was rubbish, but WSASet worked!)--still not perfect due to XCC mangling up the palette a tad but definitely close to getting something working. I wonder if I can make all of the faction colours appear Will have to investigate these WSA files a bit more.

One passenger? Let me guess, a suicide bomber?