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Nyerguds

1.06c development topic

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Writing isn't linear... RAM isn't exactly tape based. The game just calculates the memory address it wants to write to, and then tries writing to it. It only tries to write the actual pixels of the green corners, and that happens with a loop, one pixel at the time. There's no sense in it trying to write transparency over the image. With SHP-based animation, sure, that kind of stuff happens, but when actually drawing a calculated set of pixels? Nah.

 

Anyway, this is getting kinda pointless and off topic :P

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Ey Nyerguds. Awesome to see that this is still going so strong. Last time i mailed you about it was in 2008 to get a preview/beta test of the first version of 1.06. Haven't played TFD since a couple of months after receiving the beta test, due to real life commitments, until recently when i got the urge again.

 

Now i am busy updating to all the latest patches for TFD. I also saw CnC-draw which looked very promising, def gonna try it out for C&C and RA. Also your 1.06 patch has been much improved, a lot of fixes. Really amazing job.

 

So thanks a lot voor al je inzet, knap staaltje werk al zeg ik het zelf,

 

Groeten uit Zuid Afrika ;)

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Writing isn't linear... RAM isn't exactly tape based. The game just calculates the memory address it wants to write to, and then tries writing to it. It only tries to write the actual pixels of the green corners, and that happens with a loop, one pixel at the time. There's no sense in it trying to write transparency over the image. With SHP-based animation, sure, that kind of stuff happens, but when actually drawing a calculated set of pixels? Nah.

 

Anyway, this is getting kinda pointless and off topic :P

Just trying to learn more about the game and they way stuff works at that low level in general. I think I got it now. Good luck with these last two bugs.

Edited by Nyerguds

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Ey Nyerguds. Awesome to see that this is still going so strong. Last time i mailed you about it was in 2008 to get a preview/beta test of the first version of 1.06. Haven't played TFD since a couple of months after receiving the beta test, due to real life commitments, until recently when i got the urge again.

 

Now i am busy updating to all the latest patches for TFD. I also saw CnC-draw which looked very promising, def gonna try it out for C&C and RA. Also your 1.06 patch has been much improved, a lot of fixes. Really amazing job.

 

So thanks a lot voor al je inzet, knap staaltje werk al zeg ik het zelf,

 

Groeten uit Zuid Afrika ;)

Oh hey, yeah, been a while :)

 

CnC-DDraw is indeed amazing... which is why it'll be part of the next patch. The latest version has some features I requested, too: combined with some ingame edits (in the currently-still-unreleased 1.06c revision 2), CnC-DDraw can stretch videos, score screens and other 640x400 scenes to fullscreen, which is pretty awesome ^_^

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Yeah, i tested CnC-DDraw last night, works great so far, awesome to finally see the videos and score screens centered and full, except for the zooming bug that occasionally happens which is present in your 1.06c revision 1 fix 1 patch. Really looking forward to your revision 2 that fixes this. Is there some sort of beta test version for revision 2 up for download?

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Nyerguds,

I have more doubts about the MIX file system.

 

The way the campaign system is developed now for the actual patch is a sequel - EA , EB , EC ... XC, XD, XE - or linear , 15 missions in a row.

Now I have to deal with the old "replacement" campaigns, where people use to create missions to replace the original/factory missions.

So I have, for example: SCG03EA, SCG03EB, SCG04EA, SCG04EB, SCG04EC. This is clearly paralel and can't be put in a sequence.

 

So, what I'm planning will be let's say SCG240EA, SCG240EB, SCG241EA,SCG241EB,SCG241EC.

In practice, SCG240EA won't call SCG241EA or SCG241EB or SCG241EC. It will call, SCG240EB which is the same mission with different teamtypes and waypoints and sometimes the same map. In the other hand, doing it in this way will be more organized, apparently.

 

Still, a third option (my preferred) would be get all the EAs and make it a series like SCG240EA, EB, EC , Etc . Then, I would get all the EAs (always present) and all the EBs and that would be SCG241EA, EB, EC , Etc. I mean, whenever I have an EB I would take out an EA.

 

Another direction to take would be getting all these campaigns and organize them after SCG340, getting some time for us to think about it better.

 

So, I kinda stuck, or I'm not getting something in all of this.

Anyway, comments needed.

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CnC-DDraw is indeed amazing... which is why it'll be part of the next patch.

Relatedly, I'd like to know if it'll be possible to disable CnC-DDraw in the next patch?

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Solo: If a campaign ACTUALLY has alternates, then sorry, but I see no way to support that, since it would require a selection screen of some sort. But personally I haven't seen any fan-campaign that actually HAS alternates; they're just copies to fill all possible map choices when replacing the campaign. So you better check that first. Most people don't like making alternates for one mission, since it's twice the work while most people playing the campaign won't even notice.

 

Yeah, i tested CnC-DDraw last night, works great so far, awesome to finally see the videos and score screens centered and full, except for the zooming bug that occasionally happens which is present in your 1.06c revision 1 fix 1 patch. Really looking forward to your revision 2 that fixes this. Is there some sort of beta test version for revision 2 up for download?

Yeah, but not public. I'm kinda trying to finish the patch at the moment though, to release it. You can send me a mail or see if I'm online in the Gmail chat though, and I can give you the link :)

 

I assume your "zooming bug" refers to the covert ops briefing screen zooming in? Well basically, cnc-ddraw is set to activate zoom mode if the area outside the top left 640x400 block is blank (well, actually it only checks pixel #641 on the top row, but whatever, it works :P). But there's a difference between "blank" and "black"; "blank" is actually the game's transparency colour, but obviously it's black when used on the background layer. I've fixed the briefing screen in revision 2 so it clears that background with real black instead of blank, which disables cnc-ddraw's zooming ;)

 

Relatedly, I'd like to know if it'll be possible to disable CnC-DDraw in the next patch?

I'm not really sure why you would want that. All extra features offered by cnc-ddraw can be disabled (including windowed mode), and cnc-ddraw itself fixes a bunch of crashes and colour errors, and gives the game a screen capture function (ctrl+s).

 

At this moment, in my internal version, cnc-ddraw can be disabled it in the setup tool, but since cnc-ddraw completely removes the need to run the game in any compatibility mode, I'm seriously considering changing that.

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... personally I haven't seen any fan-campaign that actually HAS alternates; they're just copies to fill all possible map choices when replacing the campaign. So you better check that first ...

 

Well, if that would be the case, at least in most of the campaigns, it will narrow down a lot of work.

Yes, I'll check it out and I'll post a specific message in the SP thread about these campaigns.

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I'm not really sure why you would want that. All extra features offered by cnc-ddraw can be disabled (including windowed mode), and cnc-ddraw itself fixes a bunch of crashes and colour errors, and gives the game a screen capture function (ctrl+s).

 

Well on my setup, cnc-ddraw gives me unplayably low fps. I poked hifi about it on IRC quite a while back, and he said he can't really do anything about it due to my hardware being lacking or some such.

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Well, he did include a faster renderer in the latest version... maybe you can experiment with that?

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Well, he did include a faster renderer in the latest version... maybe you can experiment with that?

Just tested the latest one and it was still slow, found a couple of bugs as well, guess I'll report 'em at some point :P

Edit: Actually I tested some more and the software renderer works perfect, it's just the default OpenGL one that's slow for me.

Edited by Nyerguds

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So.. exactly what hardware are we talking about here? I got quite an old PC myself (cpu: AMD Athlon 64 3200+), but I don't have any problems with the game's speed.

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It's a laptop, dual core Intel Celeron P4500 @ 1.87 GHz with the integrated Intel HD Graphics. Must be the GPU that's the problem because as I edited in my earlier post, the software rendering works perfect.

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It's a laptop, dual core Intel Celeron P4500 @ 1.87 GHz with the integrated Intel HD Graphics. Must be the GPU that's the problem because as I edited in my earlier post, the software rendering works perfect.

 

Check if you are using the Intel Drivers, not the Microsoft Defaults for that one... It warps OpenGL to DirectX (dirty, huh)

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Check if you are using the Intel Drivers, not the Microsoft Defaults for that one... It warps OpenGL to DirectX (dirty, huh)

I am using the intel drivers. Other games work fine (well, as fine as you can expect from an integrated GPU)

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Ey Nyerguds, one little "glitch" i noticed in 1.06c rev 2 beta 8. The cnc-ddraw.ini file gets copied to whatever location i put my shortcut to C&C95.exe too, if i put the shortcut on the desktop the cnc-ddraw.ini gets copied there, if i put the shortcut in my start menu the cnc-ddraw.ini gets copied there, etc... you get the picture.

 

This "glitch" doesn't happen with RA and the high resolution patch together with cnd-ddraw, so my guess its a specific C&C95 1.06c problem. I forgot if this happened with the 1.06c rev 2 fix 1 patch as well :P

 

Anyway, so far so good, except for one crash i reported here: link.

 

I love the remixed music btw, a real keeper for me.

 

Cheers,

 

Spin.

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Ey Nyerguds, one little "glitch" i noticed in 1.06c rev 2 beta 8. The cnc-ddraw.ini file gets copied to whatever location i put my shortcut to C&C95.exe too, if i put the shortcut on the desktop the cnc-ddraw.ini gets copied there, if i put the shortcut in my start menu the cnc-ddraw.ini gets copied there, etc... you get the picture.

 

This "glitch" doesn't happen with RA and the high resolution patch together with cnd-ddraw, so my guess its a specific C&C95 1.06c problem. I forgot if this happened with the 1.06c rev 2 fix 1 patch as well :P

 

Anyway, so far so good, except for one crash i reported here: link.

 

I love the remixed music btw, a real keeper for me.

 

Cheers,

 

Spin.

 

It's fine here on Lubuntu 11.04 and Windows XP Professional. You forgot to tell your OS. If it is Windows 7, well, probably one more of those UAC issues?

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Sounds more like a "current directory" issue. Does it still happen if you change the working directory of the shortcut to point to the game's folder?

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Sounds more like a "current directory" issue. Does it still happen if you change the working directory of the shortcut to point to the game's folder?

 

That solved it, thanks for that neat little trick. I'm on Win XP SP3 btw.

 

Cheers,

 

Spin.

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Good find. The next version of cnc-ddraw should read and write the configuration file to the dll's directory, or better yet to the executable which called it's directory. (in case let's say, WINE users (most likely accidentally) make cnc-ddraw an override for more than CNC.)

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Good find. The next version of cnc-ddraw should read and write the configuration file to the dll's directory, or better yet to the executable which called it's directory. (in case let's say, WINE users (most likely accidentally) make cnc-ddraw an override for more than CNC.)

 

Well... It wouldn't be possible. CnC-DDraw isn't only for Command & Conquer. Doing it will broke all other games compatibility, unless all .EXE names get listed.

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Ey Nyerguds, one little "glitch" i noticed in 1.06c rev 2 beta 8. The cnc-ddraw.ini file gets copied to whatever location i put my shortcut to C&C95.exe too, if i put the shortcut on the desktop the cnc-ddraw.ini gets copied there, if i put the shortcut in my start menu the cnc-ddraw.ini gets copied there, etc... you get the picture.

 

Ahh, I see. It's easy to fix, if I just specifically request the folder the program exe is located in. Thanks for pointing that out.

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pichorra: no, the dll should be perfectly capable of retrieving the location of whatever exe called it, or at least of its own location. The new cncnet dll can even access the command line parameters given to the game on startup. I'll tell hifi about this, anyway, it's a pretty silly bug.

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Finalzero:

-The error is actually in the font, and not in the stored text. But I've done a big update of all the game fonts now to correct that, so it'll be fixed in the next version.

-I'll make sure the "eingeladen" is changed in the next version.

 

Solo: Desert theater indeed only has split3.

 

Im a little bit late but I wanted to thank you for the support Nyverguds. :)

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