Tile Set Compilation?

[Lightning Hunter]

I noticed there are a lot of new tilesets that have been released the last few years, and I was wondering if anyone has them all compiled in a download somewhere?  I was thinking of changing the theater of some of the missions in my upcoming "Mega Compilation" to use a few of the new sets like Jungle and Barren.  However, I can't find download links for any of these tile sets.  I have jungle.mix already in my Red Alert folder (Don't know where I got it), but it crashes the game when I set a mission theater to "Jungle".  Maybe I have an outdated version?

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

Edit:  I also just realized the barren tileset is also in my Red Alert folder, but it also crashes the game.  Does anyone know why they won't work? I attached the crash dump, although I'm not sure it will help.

[Messiah]

CNCnet's RA should have most of the theaters. Otherwise take the exe I used for Discovert Ops mod, it can read all theaters including Cave. I also have all theaters in that mod, but I modified them for my purposes.

[Lightning Hunter]

CNCnet's RA should have most of the theaters. Otherwise take the exe I used for Discovert Ops mod, it can read all theaters including Cave. I also have all theaters in that mod, but I modified them for my purposes.

 

Thanks Messiah!  You are the only person who has responded to my posts in the last 3-4 days.

 

The .exe file included with your campaign does in fact fix the tile set crashing issue! Are there any other changes with the exe file that I should be aware of?  I don't want any of the 300+ missions I have already compiled in my Mega Compilation to be negatively affected.  I don't know why there are so many versions of ra95.exe floating around out there...

 

What are the changes you made to the tile sets?  I see that all of them are different file sizes.  Before I include your versions, I would like to know if any of the other maps using these tile sets will be affected. They need to remain as the authors intended them to be.

 

By the way, can I include your Discovert operations in my upcoming Mega Compilation?  The Mega Compilation is simply all known missions and campaigns conveniently packaged so they appear in the custom mission menu and work together without conflicts (so people don't have to swap one campaign in & out at a time).  All credit is given to the original authors of course (I keep all readme files intact and correctly labeled to correspond with each mission).  Your campaign should work flawlessly as long as there aren't any custom sounds (custom sounds won't work with the other missions in the compilation, since it will change the sounds of ALL the missions).  If your mod only has shp files and rules, then it will work fine.

[Messiah]

On 4/7/2017 at 8:03 PM, Lightning Hunter said:

The .exe file included with your campaign does in fact fix the tile set crashing issue! Are there any other changes with the exe file that I should be aware of?  I don't want any of the 300+ missions I have already compiled in my Mega Compilation to be negatively affected.  I don't know why there are so many versions of ra95.exe floating around out there...

This exe is that one someone made for Tschokkys cave theater, problaby from the most recent stable beta of PortableRA. It has more options than the official CNCNet one and adds the possibility to add new units, weapons and sounds etc, too.

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What are the changes you made to the tile sets?  I see that all of them are different file sizes.  Before I include your versions, I would like to know if any of the other maps using these tile sets will be affected. They need to remain as the authors intended them to be.

 

My desert has a different tree set, all other theaters only contain additional tiles and sprites. They should be compatible with all other missions.

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By the way, can I include your Discovert operations in my upcoming Mega Compilation?  The Mega Compilation is simply all known missions and campaigns conveniently packaged so they appear in the custom mission menu and work together without conflicts (so people don't have to swap one campaign in & out at a time).  All credit is given to the original authors of course (I keep all readme files intact and correctly labeled to correspond with each mission).  Your campaign should work flawlessly as long as there aren't any custom sounds (custom sounds won't work with the other missions in the compilation, since it will change the sounds of ALL the missions).  If your mod only has shp files and rules, then it will work fine.

You can do of course, but DO may not work properly as it requires exactly this exe and all other files, so you have to try first if its working anyway. I added some new sounds by rules ini, but I didn't remove or overwrote any.

Earlier versions of DO were just a map-pack + mix files, which often crashed the game of some people because they used another version of RA or CncNet overwrote some files. Even the usage of the RedAlertLauncher sometimes caused problems so I had to kick out all unnessesary files and made a standalone configuration which should work for most people.

[Lightning Hunter]

You can do of course, but DO may not work properly as it requires exactly this exe and all other files, so you have to try first if its working anyway. I added some new sounds by rules ini, but I didn't remove or overwrote any.

Earlier versions of DO were just a map-pack + mix files, which often crashed the game of some people because they used another version of RA or CncNet overwrote some files. Even the usage of the RedAlertLauncher sometimes caused problems so I had to kick out all unnessesary files and made a standalone configuration which should work for most people.

 

I already plan to use the .exe file you gave me, so that should not be a problem.  I noticed there is a different version of "Expand3.mix" and "Expand4.mix" in your zip file than the ones I have.  The ones in my folder have mission files that yours do not have.  What I will have to do is extract all the contents of your expand.mix files and repackage them using the mission converter, so there are no conflicts.  I will fully test everything to make sure it works.  Before I make a release, I can even send the compilation over to you if you want to test it.  I could use a beta tester anyway!

 

Edit:  By the way, why is there a snow.mix file and temperat.mix file with your campaign?  Have the official tilesets been modified? Also, what is changed with interior.mix?  I am not sure I want to include modified versions of the official tile sets, unless I can be sure they won't affect any other missions.

[Messiah]

The most recent version of DO shouldn't have any mission files in the Expand mixes. I could do some beta testing, but I won't have time to play all RA missions created in the last 20 years I guess.

Interior got water tiles and ore. I have to fix another thing in interior: arro0003 doesn't appear ingame (some old bug), I have to change the name of that file and fix the map.

temperate has the most new stuff, like railroads, new river/shore pieces and stuff Allen has done before. I don't know if my snow package is already included.

[Lightning Hunter]

The most recent version of DO shouldn't have any mission files in the Expand mixes. I could do some beta testing, but

 

No, I don't mean the expand mixes that come with DO.  I mean the expand mixes that came with the RA1Installer.  Those particular expand mixes contain mission files.  If I use your mixes, it will overwrite them - so I will have to extract/separate the contents to avoid conflicts.

 

I won't have time to play all RA missions created in the last 20 years I guess.

 

Haha, yeah of course not.  I just meant if you want to test your own missions and just browse a bit through the menu.  Any testing at all would help.  You don't have to play through any missions at all, but just make sure they load, etc.

 

Interior got water tiles and ore. I have to fix another thing in interior: arro0003 doesn't appear ingame (some old bug), I have to change the name of that file and fix the map.

temperate has the most new stuff, like railroads, new river/shore pieces and stuff Allen has done before. I don't know if my snow package is already included.

 

Are there any changes to the official tiles?  Obviously, it is critical that all 300+ missions appear as intended without bugs/changes in the official tile sets.  If you fix the interior tileset, upload it so I can include it in the mega compilation once it is finished.

[Lightning Hunter]

I compared the tilesets side by side, and the only modifications to official tiles I could find was to the "ice01-ice05.tem" in Temperate, and "electro.tem" tile in both Temperate and Snow.  I haven't found any missions that use the ice tiles with Temperate, and the new Electro tile doesn't affect anything in particular.

 

My BIGGEST concern, however, is "redalert.mix" that I just noticed in the zip archive of DO.  This replaces an OFFICIAL 24mb file with a 6mb file.  That worries me a lot.  Is the new Redalert.mix file really necessary?  I see a bunch of beta ships and stuff in there, and .pal files named stuff like "snow_vtx.pal", "intr_vtx.pal, and temp_vtx.pal.  What are these files, and are they even used by DO?

 

Edit:  Also, Main.mix is included in the archive, which overwrites a 433MB file with an 11.8mb file.  I am certainly not going to be including these files with the Mega Compilation, because they overwrite official game files that can mess up someone's install.  I will try testing DO without these files to see if it works.  If it does not work, I will have to leave DO out of the compilation.

[FunkyFr3sh]

Just run cncnet once and it will download all tilesets. Don't include tilesets from a mod with your mission pack, it will break multiplayer games

[Lightning Hunter]

Just run cncnet once and it will download all tilesets. Don't include tilesets from a mod with your mission pack, it will break multiplayer games

 

Yeah, I was just now thinking about that.  The only custom file that will be included with this compilation is the .exe file (renamed), so there are no conflicts.  I don't want people to get any message prompt to overwrite files when installing the compilation.  I know that would put me off...  I won't be able to include Discovert Operations as a result, because it just has too much custom content that may conflict with other stuff.  I am really hoping the modified .exe file that comes with DO does not have any other bugs.  I noticed this in the readme file of "known bugs":

"When abort a mission and start another mission, exit the game or the ini settings from the previous map were still loaded"

 

I wonder if the .exe that comes with the RA1installer has the same issue or not.  I don't want to introduce any new bugs with a modded .exe...

 

I sure wish someone could include the new tilesets with the RA1Installer version of the exe file, even if it is a different .exe file only used for SP.  That way, I don't have to worry about other modifications messing up the game.  Funky, you talked about not wanting to add tilesets to the RA1Installer because of possible multiplayer bugs being introduced - but what if a new .exe was made just for SP?  That way, it doesn't matter if it breaks multiplayer stuff.  At least then I would be able to use campaigns with custom tilesets.

 

Edit:  Erm, I can't connect to cncnet.  It gives me some message about my nickname already being in use, then it kicks me from chanserv.  I tried changing my nick, but still the same error.  Funky, can you zip up the tilesets for me used by cncnet?  I need Desert, Winter, Barren, Jungle, and Cave (I think that is all of them).

[FunkyFr3sh]

Can't make any new .exe atm, bigger changes are not possible

 

http://downloads.cncnet.org/updates/cncnet5/winter.7z

http://downloads.cncnet.org/updates/cncnet5/desert.7z

http://downloads.cncnet.org/updates/cncnet5/interior.7z

http://downloads.cncnet.org/updates/cncnet5/jungle.7z

http://downloads.cncnet.org/updates/cncnet5/barren.7z

http://downloads.cncnet.org/updates/cncnet5/cave.7z

 

[Lightning Hunter]

Can't make any new .exe atm, bigger changes are not possible

 

No problem, you have already helped me a lot!  I will try to make use of the modded .exe with DO, and see if there are any negative side effects.  If so, then maybe then we can come up with another solution later.

 

Thanks for the tilesets, and all the help.

 

Edit:  I just realized this modded .exe file fixes the shuffle music bug when loading a saved game.  Maybe this is a good version or ra95.exe to use for SP after all. :O

[Messiah]

You can put the modified theaters inside the mix file for DO, so if it works they are read with that specific campaign only. Main and redalert mix I use are from irans minimum installer, without any music and videos.

 

Otherwise....

FunkyFresh, maybe you can have a look into my theater files and check if you can use them officially for CNCNet RA. I also see your cave.mix doesn't contain any craters.

[Lightning Hunter]

You can put the modified theaters inside the mix file for DO, so if it works they are read with that specific campaign only. Main and redalert mix I use are from irans minimum installer, without any music and videos.

 

I don't think this works.  I tried putting the theater mix files together with "sc-40-discovert", which is what I named your campaign file - and the new tiles don't work.  Your missions had missing tiles.  I don't think the game knows how to use tiles for only specific missions.  It either gives priority to one file or another, depending on the location of the file.  I think it is the same with .aud files.  The only files I know of that can work with specific missions are .shp files.