Sonarpulse

Nice post! Anyways, any progress lately converting over to hifi's asm system?

Oh ok, now it makes sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_Network_Graphics#Color_depth

I think we agree. PNG is a format that supports a number of colorspaces, including 8-bit palleted. I am just wondering whether a good loss-less saving routine might detect that the image to be saved (be it from a screenshot or whatever else) only contains 256 unique colors, and therefore could use PNG's 8-bit palleted colorspace instead of the usual 24-bit RBG or 32-bit RGBA modes. Were the routine to accurately ascertain this, I would expect it to use that colorspace without prompting the user. The fact that you found the PNGs of the screenshot to be smaller leads me to believe the PNGs tested were in fact 8-bit palleted. This surprised me as that I didn't think most programs were that smart. Anyways this is terribly off topic. Sorry to bring it up.

I mean, is your average PNG implementation able to detect a limited number of colors and make a pallet accordingly? PNG supports 8-bit palette-based bitmaps just like GIF. Alternatively it doesn't and does 24 bit or whatever but do to PNG's superior compression the resulting file is still smaller.

I believe if you scroll across the map and tell a dog to attack, it will sprint all the way too. AFIAK dogs sprint one they have a target (they might even be a projectile during that phase).

https://github.com/Sonarpulse/CnC-Red-Alert Since I posted I have myself forked hifi's repository to do some architectural changes, and add the ability to build mix files too so everybody can patch assets or code with equal finesse. I don't know too much reverse-engineering, or just about anything about RA's executable workings. But I have some idea now about how hifi's patcher works, and would be glad to help you merge you changes if you want.

Well, test or not I was pleased to see it. Glad to here that your will be taking the open source assembly route (with hifi's exePE I assume?) its the best way IMO to ensure your work ever goes to waste.

OK, I accidentally deleted the objects from github when i just meant to redo the history, so it's going to take a while to upload, but I now have a complete original, counterstrike, and aftermath branches. That means is the next step is to incorporate the 3.03 patch changes. If anybody knows anything about what goes where I'd love to hear it. Then the last step is to get git to export the diff original and counterstrike not as a patch or diff file, but as a directory only containing the changed files.

(continued from http://forums.cncnz....-xpvista7-3264/) OK, the big upload is finally done and people can now look at https://github.com/S...e/CnC-Red-Alert and see something interesting. I'm not done merging it all together, but it will eventually look like this: Master---root-directory (and default branch) |--Mixdata----All game assets, more or less |--Mixer------A nice command line tool to make the mixes |--Patchdata--hifi's pseries assembly patchs \--Patcher----hifi's pseries assembly patcher I'll use a series of chained makefiles which will assemble the *.MIXs and patch the game (or download Arda instead). NB: I read about something called git-subtree which basically will allow us to spin off each of these subdirectories into projects of their own if the need arises. That is why I am no longer planning on using git submodules. So now for my first question: should I just have "red alert" and "red alert with expansions" as mix build options? Or should I also prepare builds for each expansion by itself? Edit: Question 2: Are expand1 and expand2 stored directly on the expansion disks? I don't see them.

Well, donating you fixes isn't a one-off thing. You can always tweek things later. It would simply be a collaborative effort.

OK, git get's pretty slow with big binary files, especially with things like mix files and tarballs which trade quantity of files per size of files, so am going to split the history of the data branch into two seperate unrelated branches (to be concatenated when git is faster hopefully). It will look like this: Backup-Branch------------------------------------------------------------\ | | | | ISOs Unpacked_CDS redalert.mix+main.mix_sub-mixes_extracted All_mixes_extracted Mix-Branch--------------------------\ | | | | | All_mixes_extracted_(again) [Later revisons] Also, I might split the utility code so we would have: /-------------------------------------------------------------\ |Repository: Red Alert | |-Branch: Backup -- (same as above) | |-Branch: Patch Data (branch) -- Hifi's red alert asm snipits | |-Branch: Mix Data (branch -- (same as Mix-Branch above) | | | |-Branch: Master | | -Subtree: Patch Data | | -Subtree: Mix Data | | -Module: exe Patcher/master | | -Module: XCC Utilities/console_app | \-------------------------------------------------------------/ /-------------------------------------------------------------\ |Repository: exe Patcher | |-Branch: Hifi's tool, not the snipits of asm | \-------------------------------------------------------------/ /-------------------------------------------------------------\ |Repository: XCC Utilities | |-Branch: console application (to be made) | |-Branch: GUI (clone of original svn) | \-------------------------------------------------------------/ thread about my git project is continued here: http://forums.cncnz.com/topic/16989-red-alert-git-repository/

Well, the upload is going to take hours, but so far all good.

Well, I started on my project. https://github.com/Sonarpulse/CnC-Red-Alert it's nominally a fork of hifi's project, but I am going to create a new branch that will assemble Main mix, and then use http://git-scm.com/book/ch6-7.html to merge them. So in the end there will be two sub-directories /data (basically an automated recreation of what I did with my mixfile torrent) and /patch (corresponding to hifi's work), and the game will be built in the root directory.

What we really should do is make a repository to "build" all the data from scratch. Make a folder for each mix file, and a make file that compiles the mix. Making a command line tool to make mixes would be pretty easy as the XCC Utilities are open source. I might fork Hifi's P-series repository just for this purpose, and add on option that avoids modifying the executable so Arda can be used too. This should help with the fact that it's getting increasingly difficult to set up a "compleate" Red Alert install. Of course, once it's all made a fancy-schmancy NSIS installer is always nice, but seeing that RA can be made to no longer rely on the registry, is probably not that important

Well, all those games are made by id, which is famous for releasing their source.

Yeah, real gameplay changes are usually avoided in a patch like this. However, there's nothing wrong with adding an *.ini option and letting people modify the missions if they please.

If your patch is assembly and/or hex editor hacking, you should add your fixes to https://github.com/hifi/ra303p

The trick I always used, i think, is if you make them aim the turret away, and then have them target the infantry again, they will also shoot rockets. This makes my think that mammoth only uses rockets if the turret is not already aligned—which would also make the first shot that more likely to be missiles. Besides targeting infantry, this trick is also useful because rockets sail over walls while shells don't.

It might actually be worth a shot, because I did just what you want: all movies (but TLF) in one mix folder. Delete movies2.mix (it's tiny and just has 2 censored videos and might make it so movies1.mix doesn't load), and unmounted the CDs.

No, but it's a start.

https://github.com/CCHyper/HyperPatch-for-Tiberian-Sun

you can put them in one movies mix, but you still need two executables, until Arda + p-series find and standardize a new video indexing system. Also, how exactly did my mixes "not work at all". I don't want to force them on y you, but I would like to now what the problem is so I can fix it / help others with it.

https://thepiratebay.se/torrent/6567207/Optimized__.mixs_%28v1%29_for_Command__amp__Conquer__Red_Alert I made this a while back. It should be very complete and have everything you need.

has there been any releases since the original? I sometimes forget to jump to the first unread post, but if so Arda's homepage might be out of date. Also, shouldn't this thread and the RA p-series thread be moved to the RA command and patch sub forum? especially since they explicitly take up the mantle of Hyper's work?