ZED Online - a fork of the Zod Engine

[BallWin]

It's good news.
We need to think about increasing the resolution of textures and sprites.
I want to try using the "Tiled" editor to build a landscape and experiment with textures.

To change the resolution of the sprites will probably have to make additional utilities. By the way, you can still connect the notorious fire truck.

[DaMarkov]

By the way, you can still connect the notorious fire truck.

Do you have sprites for the fire truck??

Tiled editor looks good. You have my full support regarding higher texture resolution and changing the file format to support your ideas for tile brightness, elevation and so on!

[SteelGhost]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10551&p=26483#p26483

[DaMarkov]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10551&p=26483#p26483

I am aware of this thread. I though for a moment Ballwin might have animation and sprites for the turret of the firetruck.
Since the firetruck has wheels I guess there should be two frames of animation like the jeep. Also we would need the sprites for the shadow, but maybe we could use the same sprites from the jeep if that looks alright.
By the way did anyone ever make sprites for the cargo truck?

[BallWin]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=10551&p=26483#p26483

I am aware of this thread. I though for a moment Ballwin might have animation and sprites for the turret of the firetruck.

I don't. However, once upon a time I integrated the heavy tank animation into the Microsoft Liquid Motion Animation (.Olya.) This was used on the html page. The tank went from one end to the other. I didn't copy the sprite. I created animation phases on the basis of several provisions of the tank. The final animation was smooth and visually looked exactly the same as in the game. All animation frames were created in one day. This is in the absence of any experience. Tool-Adobe Photoshop (5. version), there was a Move mode.
I want say that create additional animation is not difficult.
Regarding game resources. Everything we have today is derived from binary source file and resource Expansion Kit. The developers of the original did not give us anything. All I had I gave FreakNigh to create Zod Engine. It is now available to everyone. I have nothing else, alas.
Why the truck and fire truck aren't made so far if it's that simple? Before Zod Engine we worked with DOS versions of the game. It was impossible to insert new units. This is only possible with the Zod Engine. But the community had lost interest by then. I myself have not visited this forum for several years.
Something like that.

[SteelGhost]

Something that bugged me, the Heavy's turret and chassis are incorrectly aligned in Zod Engine. The turret seems to always be on the back, when it was originally closer to the front.

[DaMarkov]

@APC: Could you test the following for me?
In the options menu (yellow menu) have "start in fullscreen" disabled. Save options. Close program. Open program. Press ALT+Return to switch to fullscreen. Test if you still have the blackscreen bug.

(There are two different code paths: for fullscreen on startup and from window-> fullscreen. I would like to test my theory where the problem is.)

[APC]

In the options menu (yellow menu) have "start in fullscreen" disabled. Save options. Close program. Open program. Press ALT+Return to switch to fullscreen. Test if you still have the blackscreen bug.

Checkbox "Start in fullscreen" disabled and using ALT+ENTER solved the bug for me (on Win10 laptop, 1980x1020). That way everything works correct. The transitions to videos-game-menu and also F5/F8 switching.
Minor bug continues - switch from direct to other doesn't rewrite black borders around screen but there are pieces of map of previous display mode on borders.


The WAVs for Zod Engine/ZED Online are coded is some different codec as the WAVs in the Z_DOS was?

As a child I had german Z_DOS and there were not only audio_files differen but also names of squads and their weapons were written different.
Grunts - Kriegers
Rifle - Geschuts
Heavy - Schwerer

[DaMarkov]

In the options menu (yellow menu) have "start in fullscreen" disabled. Save options. Close program. Open program. Press ALT+Return to switch to fullscreen. Test if you still have the blackscreen bug.

Checkbox "Start in fullscreen" disabled and using ALT+ENTER solved the bug for me (on Win10 laptop, 1980x1020). That way everything works correct. The transitions to videos-game-menu and also F5/F8 switching.
Minor bug continues - switch from direct to other doesn't rewrite black borders around screen but there are pieces of map of previous display mode on borders.


The WAVs for Zod Engine/ZED Online are coded is some different codec as the WAVs in the Z_DOS was?

As a child I had german Z_DOS and there were not only audio_files differen but also names of squads and their weapons were written different.
Grunts - Kriegers
Rifle - Geschuts
Heavy - Schwerer

YES!! Finally resolved the bug! Nice!
ZED Online and ZOD Engine uses the WAV format (no compression). Z DOS uses what they call "RAW format"- It's exactly the same as WAV put the header is missing so it's a few bytes smaller.

At some point if have to make the graphics and texts for the other four languages. I focus on other things for now, but I plan to get the german/france/spanish/italien texts & graphics in the game.

[DaMarkov]

Something that bugged me, the Heavy's turret and chassis are incorrectly aligned in Zod Engine. The turret seems to always be on the back, when it was originally closer to the front.

You have very good eyes! I never noticed that! It's actually quite hard to align everything correctly (I don't know how freaknigh did it for all tanks without going crazy).
I actually had to program a small routine just to be able to change things.
With that being said, here is how the heavy tank looked like in ZOD Engine + some screenshots I took from Z DOS + my slightly improved version.



I will have to take more screenshots from Z DOS and compare all 64 combinations. That's the only they to get is precise.
Anyway, I think it already looks much better.

[APC]

DaMarkov, in v0.1.5 the main menu checkbox "Start in fullscreen" will work the same way as ALT+ENTER?
The "direct copy" mode saved in main menu will switch the native Windows display resolution to ZED Online specified resolution and switch back after end of the game and arrival to the main menu?
With correctly working orange MENU button, this would be my person the most expected improvements of the next release. It would improve and simplify the startup of the game to the playable state a lot (as for me).
Last weeks I also appreciate the "Quick Battle" button, which KISSMAD proposed and you created.

[BallWin]

I will have to take more screenshots from Z DOS and compare all 64 combinations. That's the only they to get is precise.
Anyway, I think it already looks much better.

Cool. It's definitely better than it was.

[APC]

DaMarkov you alligned the turret to the middle of chassis. I think SteelGhost complained the turret should be in the front part of chassis instead of back part of chassis. It should remind more T34 tank as Nashron tank-killer.

[APC]

Bug where tank again crosses water. Desert 2vs2 MP map.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1mujYv ... nTeLVD4EzH

On DaMarkov online server I experienced also 2 parallel mouse cursors. In some areas of screen they were less distant to each other as in other areas. Both cursors were red, but only one changed sprites and influenced the robots. In Singleplayer I didn't experienced it.

After ALT+TAB return to game (the message press F7 to unpause was there) the controls worked like original Z controls, and not Starcraft controls. Using SHIFT sometimes one waypoint was possible to make, not more. Usually just first waypoint was final waypoint (as in original Z control mode) and other waypoints wasn't possible to create.

[BallWin]

for DaMarkov
How's the map editor coming along?
There's hard work to do. Remember I talked about transition tiles? This is only one kind of connection between tiles. Most have a preference for docking with other tiles in the direction of 0-45-90-135-180-225-270-315 degrees. Some have a short list of suitable tiles. Others are a long list. All options can appear with the same or different (very different) probability. Some options are possible only under certain conditions. And so on. The developers make an additional makeup map for the texture. It is used in the level editor. There, each tile is arranged much more complicated than the tile in the game map. It stores not only graphical information, but also a diagram of interactions with other tiles. Without this information, it is impossible (in my opinion) to create a brush tool for drawing in the level editor. With the installation of the tile changes the tile under the brush, but also the next. The condition of compatibility of tiles among themselves should always be observed.
Very well if you have this broke a.
If you haven't done it yet, maybe I can help.
I made a tool to analyze the level map and collect statistics for texture tiles.
How it works. An additional color map of the texture is used for visual observation.
==
Each texture has 480 tiles (numbers 0...479). The analyzer searches for the connection between the tiles. Something we can see with our eyes. Left image links, right level in the mode of overlay information from the analyzer:

Statistics on the use of tiles (numbering from left to right 0-479). The higher the bar, the more often this number is found on the map. This is useful for highlighting basic surface types.

You don't really need this tool itself. You need a description of the relationships between the tiles. The analyzer searches all levels of a given planet. The result is now issued in text form, as example:

[151] ----------------------------------
*** tile[151]
<right> weight/idx_texture { [1, 261] [3, 1] [3, 152] [5, 3] [6, 3] [6, 3] }
<top-right> weight/idx_texture { [1, 241] [3, 1] [3, 132] [5, 3] [6, 3] [6, 3] }
<top> weight/idx_texture { [11, 7] [13, 6] }
<top-left> weight/idx_texture { [1, 66] [1, 132] [2, 46] [3, 2] [7, 5] [10, 6] }
<left> weight/idx_texture { [1, 86] [1, 152] [2, 66] [3, 2] [7, 5] [10, 6] }
<bottom-left> weight/idx_texture { [1, 120] [1, 289] [1, 195] [2, 110] [2, 86] [5, 3] [10, 6] }
<bottom> weight/idx_texture { [2, 1] [2, 193] [7, 4] [11, 6] }
<bottom-right> weight/idx_texture { [1, 282] [3, 1] [3, 172] [5, 2] [5, 2] [5, 3] }

Here a discussion of the relationship of the tile with the number 151 on the texture. Each line contains all possible variants of neighbors in the directions. At options 2 [ how many times have you met combination - i.e. the probability, and the number of the option in the texture].
If you're interested, I could put the results of the work on all the planets in a text file on Github.