Mini-engine progress

[onkelm]

Awesome !

So just to make it clear for me - you startet your work at April 5. this year till now - lets say 6 month - and you reverse engineered/decompiled CIV4 as a single person show ?
Where have you been the last 20 years ?

 

[f1rpo]

And I've deciphered the FPK archive format, as I didn't see it anywhere. It's just a simple list of file records with ROT-1 "encryption", with file addresses and sizes.

Rotated by one character - what on earth ... Or maybe such toy ciphers are more widely used than I imagine. The multitude of "/eet" in the fpk files is striking – if one knows what to look for.

 

[<Nexus>]

Rotated by one character - what on earth ... Or maybe such toy ciphers are more widely used than I imagine. The multitude of "/eet" in the fpk files is striking – if one knows what to look for.

I'm curious. What does that mean?

 

[Gameboy2396]

Had a brainwave. I can just put reverse engineered/decompiled code in a different repository. Problem solved. So release code should have its pathfinding.

Decided to also begin on audio support. Here's an image of it:

Audio is IMA ADPCM. Decoded then played using SFML. SFML for a console game.

Hey, question. Yeah, I know you have a lot on your plate, but: Is this audio a higher quality than the original game? Because when I dug into the game's files, I noticed that the quality of music, for one example, is surprisingly high, but the bitrate or something in-game is lower. Are we able to get that full HD quality of audio here in this engine?

 

[snowern]

Awesome !

So just to make it clear for me - you startet your work at April 5. this year till now - lets say 6 month - and you reverse engineered/decompiled CIV4 as a single person show ?
Where have you been the last 20 years ?

Initially an unrealistic idea of having a headless simulation for AI. Then initial TUI. Then made a Skyrim mod. Then decided to finish it off. After wondering why it wasn't done already. Relatively easy compared to everything else out there.

Rotated by one character - what on earth ... Or maybe such toy ciphers are more widely used than I imagine. The multitude of "/eet" in the fpk files is striking – if one knows what to look for.

It's a bit low-effort compared to I Of The Dragon. They had an *8-byte XOR.

I'm curious. What does that mean?

bsu]ufssbjo]sftpvsdft]dsbc]dsbc/eet -> art\terrain\resources\crab\crab.dds

but: Is this audio a higher quality than the original game?

The audio system appears to be configured for 22050Hz in AudioDefines.xml. Naturally, I'll run at whatever SFML does.

 

[Scandal]

Concerning the replay screen, would it be possible to add "first N turns" instead of every option being "last N turns"? Not possible to really gauge what was happening during early game from it, as everything gets skewed by the late game.

Also, could you share a link to your Skyrim mod, if it's not private. Always interesting to see work from a pro.

 

[snowern]

Concerning the replay screen, would it be possible to add "first N turns" instead of every option being "last N turns"?

That's vanilla behaviour. Graph shows [0..N] turns.

Also, could you share a link to your Skyrim mod

It's the True Dragons mod. One of those mods I had to do to my programmer art standards because nobody else did.

Now, soundscapes. Those ambient sounds you get over cities and jungles. There appears to be another Civ4 bug. Seems like a bug. If you look at a jungle plot, and then look at an adjacent plot with an improvement on it, and no jungle, the jungle soundscape will continue. Civ4 appears to hang onto the last valid soundscape if CvPlot::getSoundScriptId returns -1. This also happens if you scroll away from visible terrain.

Footsteps appear to be triggered by NIF animation, so I won't be doing those.

 

[<Nexus>]

I really don't want to derail the topic but here's a (not so) random thought:
Is there any chance to code a quasi-spherical map for the game?

 

[snowern]

I really don't want to derail the topic but here's a (not so) random thought:
Is there any chance to code a quasi-spherical map for the game?

What is a quasi-spherical map?

 

[<Nexus>]

What is a quasi-spherical map?

I meant spherical map that may not be exactly a sphere but feels like one.
And I'm not talking about torodial wrapping but some smarter solutions, maybe something like a projective tiled map:

 

[snowern]

That's a peculiar thing. It flips across the axis you're moving along. Which means that if you scroll horizontally, the world would appear to flip upside down.

 

[1SDANi]

Maybe a game rule for toroidal maps where all tiles on the same longitude are counted as adjacent if there is no tile north or south of them? Could be added as a mod, but would be fun to have as an official option, I'd def be up for making it as a PR when it goes open source.

 

[Gameboy2396]

Maybe a game rule for toroidal maps where all tiles on the same longitude are counted as adjacent if there is no tile north or south of them? Could be added as a mod, but would be fun to have as an official option, I'd def be up for making it as a PR when it goes open source.

Definitely the good thing we can do is to alter the game to how we want. Features, leaders, graphics, gameplay, technicalities, so on. But I bet we’ll get this open source in no time flat considering the rate of work our awesome @snowern is working at.

 

[snowern]

graphics

Graphics graphics graphics!

I've got audio running well now. It almost sounds like you're playing the real thing. Turn message sounds, tech slash sounds, soundscapes, popup sounds.

Doesn't look like you're playing the real thing though. Graphics!

 

[Tabris]

Graphics graphics graphics!

I've got audio running well now. It almost sounds like you're playing the real thing. Turn message sounds, tech slash sounds, soundscapes, popup sounds.

Doesn't look like you're playing the real thing though. Graphics!

As an artist this makes me REALLY excited. Would love give better graphics for some mods I play.

 

[snowern]

As an artist this makes me REALLY excited. Would love give better graphics for some mods I play.

Somebody just needs to get started. Just a bunch of meshes, some textures, bit of lighting. A realtime update loop. But what engine capabilities would be needed for better art?

 

[Tabris]

Somebody just needs to get started. Just a bunch of meshes, some textures, bit of lighting. A realtime update loop. But what engine capabilities would be needed for better art?

I would have to know more about modding Civ4 itself to say for sure but it's my understanding that some elements have hardcoded resolution, right? Would be interesting to be able to work with higher resolutions and polycounts. Modding the UI and the appearance of the map are things I might mess with in the future but it's beyond my abilities currently.

 

[snowern]

The UI is one thing that would need to change. Make the thing scalable. If we're lucky, we can start with vanilla textures.

When it comes to terrain, because support for galactically sized maps would be ideal, more detailed terrain meshes would be possible, as terrain would have to be streamed anyway.

 

[Tabris]

That is awesome. I'm sure the C2C guys would love map related stuff. They have been working on their side in having two maps at once as means to have a Earth and a Space maps although there is still much work to be done on that regard. As time goes by and I can work on making my own UI textures I would love to make an UI that is less... Windows XP looking.

 

[Gameboy2396]

Definitely a priority on our side is to spread the word, especially to C2C devs. The gameplay in C2C is too overwhelming and too much to take in at once for me personally, but the user interface, such as the research screen, tech discovery window, etc., is absolutely top notch. There's already great talent out here, and plenty of it.