Desert Theater

[Allen262]

Update of the bridges. Plase note I changed the Tiberium back to Ore. You can get the Snow to Desert V2.zip at the end of the pics.

Snow_to_Desert_V2.zip

[Matt]

We added the desert tileset to http://open-ra.org/ recently. Have a look at https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/pull/2445

[Nyerguds]

Woah. That OpenRA Desert theater is pretty amazing, yes, especially the bridge tiles.

[Allen262]

Looks nice! Can it be ported back to real RA1?

[Nyerguds]

Shouldn't be a problem, with my new terrain type tool...

[Allen262]

We would still have the same color loss as we have now?

[Nyerguds]

Obviously, yes. That's a limitation of RA.

 

Well, technically, each theater can have its own palette, but since RA isn't optimized for a common block of UI colours like C&C1 is, it's highly unlikely you can actually pull off making a theater with separate palette in RA. Not without a ton of problems, at least... amongst them, the icons, which aren't separate per theater as they are in C&C95, and the special colour filters for things like shadow colours, targeting flash, iron curtain effect, etc., which are all palette remapping systems.

[Iran]

Allen could you show me a few in-game screenshots (RAED degrades graphic quality), saved as PNG (press Ctrl+S ingame if you're running cnc-ddraw and it makes a PNG screenshot) of the desert theatre. I'm interested in adding support for extra theaters (Winter and Desert) to Red Alert 1. But this won't happen in a while. I was already able to add extra colour remaps in-game and I identified the C&C1 code to load theater specific sidebar icons.

 

Are you also interested in converting the Winter theater from C&C1?

[Allen262]

This desert theater replaces snow with out needing to update the pallete but some of the color is loss. As a modder I would keep the color loss over going to the theater specific sidebar icons like C&C95.

 

I didn't do most of the desert conversion but I can do the Winter. Me, Nyerguds and White are the only ones actively working with the ra TMP fromat. A Winter theater would replace the current Temperate theater since a lot of the tile sets are the same. Also this way you more or less could make a clone the the Snow and Temperate to work as Desert and Winter.

[Iran]

Hmm, guess I'll start by adding a converted Winter theater. Would you be able to convert it? Nyerguds said when he was adding the Snow theater to C&C95 he had to set a special bit flag on all the theater tiles because the tiles would only load with the correct bit flag set for the theater. Do you have any idea if this is the case too with RA95? At a quick glance it doesn't look hard to add the winter theater to the game, but I haven't checked the way the game handles theaters to a great extend.

 

The desert theater looks pretty washed out so I guess I'll ask the OpenRA modder about his converted Desert theater if it's usable with RA95. Of course I have to fix the issues with the different palette then.

[Allen262]

I don't have to set a special bit flag in the tile set to load. Once they are in ra TMP they load fine but for terrain types is set to clear. Nyerguds had you look up the complate code for terrain types. I have to Hex Edited in the terrain types for each tile set by hand. 

 

I have the land cliffs and roads tile sets from C&C95 re-ordered to RA tile sets in .pcx fourm.

[Nyerguds]

The different palette issues aren't really solvable, Iran... they'd mean adapting ALL graphics in the game to only use a part of the palette, so you can switch the rest of it between theaters.

 

Switching sidebars and icons per theater may be possible, but the RA units and structures aren't optimized for such a thing either, so unless you switch the game to high colour mode, it's just not possible, unless you want a full units and structure set per theater, or do the aforementioned conversion to reserve part of the palette for theater switches. Both of which seem to go a bit too far, in my opinion.

 

On top of that, each theater contains .mrf files, which are remap tables for colour modifiers like the white movement flash, the unit shadow, and the iron curtain effect. All of these would have to be redone, and there are no tools for generating such things. (This appears to be C&C95 only)

[Allen262]

Got the rivers and river bridges re-ordered to RA tile sets in .pcx fourm. I'm going to try to use the land cliffs to make snow covered water cliffs.

 

Snow covered water cliffs done as well. Up to 157 pcx-es that need dumped into PCX2RMT.

[Iran]

Which tiles have you done? Could you give me a test map (with Theater=WINTER) with a few done tiles, and a WINTER.MIX file with all that's needed for the new theater (the tiles and a WINTER.PAL, maybe more)?

 

I'm asking because at quick glance it doesn't look hard to add support for extra theaters and I could code up support for it in 2 hours, was interested if when I'm done with that I'm missing something that causes the game to break or w/e.

[Allen262]

I PMed you the Winter Theater. It will repalce the temperat.

[Iran]

Okay I added support for loading the winter and desert theaters. Could you try porting more of the C&C95 tiles to the desert theater? Basically instead of being a snow to desert conversion could you try making all C&C95 desert tiles available? The palette actually looks okay.

 

How far is the winter theater conversion?

[Allen262]

The desert theater has every C&C95 tile desert that RA1 will support. The rivers, bridges and shore from C&C95 don't fit into RA1 at all, the are shaped wrong. Vesa Piittinen did convert some of C&C95 bridges and I removed them and made my own from RA1 to replace them. The only thing in the RA1 desert theater I haven't been able to full convert to desert is the Trees. Evey thing else is now desert right down to the civ buildings from C&C95.

 

Also the Snow.mix can NOT exceed 1.02 MB. If a Snow.mix at or over 1.03 MB is used in your RA1 won't load the theater. All of the buildings and unit will load on the map but the ground it self is all back. If I use the Snow.mix that is at or over 1.03 MB in the Westwood made 3.03 it crashes at game start and give an error box with codes.

[Iran]

What happens if you add the C&C95 desert tiles that don't fit into RA1? Are there any issues with the tiles being shaped wrong if the map is made for these desert tiles (instead of renaming the Theater= keyword in the map file)?

[Allen262]

If one were to make a desert map from scrach they could use the rivers and bridges from C&C95 but the river and and bridges arn't complate. None of the shore lines from C&C95 were converted. I started updating Vesa Piittinen's Desert Theater before your patch was know to me (2008-09) and was ment to change snow to desert with out needing to edit every snow map in RA1.

 

There was no way tell now to add a new theater to RA1 and there is still no editor to make use of this new theater. So it make more since to have the desert use the same tile shapes as in snow. This way some one could use RAED and make the map using the Snow Theater than once done save the map than open the map with Notepad and change the Theater=Snow to Theater=Desert.

 

I can change the water cliffs to look more desert like since the land cliff and water cliffs are almost the same but I have no way to do the beaches.

 

Vesa Piittinen's Desert Theater

http://ra.nv17.com:8000/misc/sc-desrt.zip

[Iran]

Yeah, I figured that. I could add support for both the Snow2Desert theater you have now and a ported C&C95 desert for who ever feels like making a new map using it. Do you have any interest in doing the latter? Also what more does the winter tileset need? There's probably a bunch of OpenRA modders who can help port stuff and/or add new graphics based on the desert/winter tiles, for stuff that RA95 has but C&C95 doesn't.

 

I've been testing the new theaters with people and they seem to work fine.

[Allen262]

It prob best to conver the Desert that Vesa Piittinen myself have made to work in RA1 as desert. The C&C95 is missing so many things. The only thing that this desert is missing as the C&C95 style beaches. For me to convert the C&C95 rivers alone I would have first color mach them to current desert than come up with grid system to map out what each square in the tile is (rock, road, clear, river etc).

 

The winter is much better. All of the tile sets it uses are the same as RA1. All of the land clifs, rivers, small river bridges, water clifs and snow patchs are done. All trees and building are done as well. I sent you them in PM. I'm woing on puting snow on the larger bridge and some snow on beach tile sets.

[Iran]

Yeah the winter tile set is a lot easier. Would it be possible to convert the vegetation from the desert theater? I'm trying to contact the guy who did the desert conversion for OpenRA, seeing if he's interested in helping. How well are the current desert rocks done compared to the CnC95 ones? I guess it's best to finish winter first and then do some of the easy stuff for desert.

[Allen262]

The C&C95 desert theater had little vegetation. 4 Trees total. 1 is already in the current desert (t08.sno). The other 3 I need to make sure that the base of them is in the impassable square. C&C95 has some rocks that are .shp based. I think you talking about those as I already converted the .tmp based rocks from C&C95. Some of those rocks could be used in place of trees.

 

By trying to add the trees from C&C95 and some I converted from TS I went over 1.02 MB. All of the buildings and unit will load on the map but the ground it self is all back. Also the winter I'm working on is at 1.01 MB. There is no way I can update the beaches with out going over 1.02 MB with it as well.

 

Theater load fail pic and mix below.

Failing_to_load_Desert.zip

[Iran]

Can you replace some of the trees or other files for the vegetation?

 

Edit: Nyerguds told me he had to edit a place where the memory was allocated for each theater or something, I probably need to do the same. Could you give me the file that's giving you issues?

[Allen262]

It not one file. It any time that the snow.mix excees 1.03 MB It won't work. The mix is attached in my a post above.