Messages

1

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: August 29, 2020, 07:45:53 pm »

A small update for anyone who may be interested: I've just discovered that it's possible to enable a basic debugging mode which creates several log files:

• Creature.plc
• events.plc
• mapgen.log
• mapplace.plc
• objects.plc
• region.plc
• Section.plc
• Wizard.plc

This is made possible with a very simple EXE patch using a hex editor; simply change the value at offset 0xD59CA from 0x75 to 0x74 and the above files will be created when you start a game and then quit.

Edit: in case it wasn't obvious, the file in question is Chaos.exe

2

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: April 08, 2020, 01:50:29 pm »

I have successfully managed to re-create the sprite extraction routine as a JavaScript plugin which is more suited to my use case. I have uploaded it here.

Massive thank you to Nikita_Sadkov again for sharing your work.

@Nikita_Sadkov: would you object to me including the C files in the repository for the sake of posterity? I would of course make sure it's clear that you're the author.

3

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: April 01, 2020, 07:33:54 pm »

In future I will setup a personal site written in my own programming language - Symta, which is especially geared towards the shared nothing architecture.

Cool - I searched online out of curiosity and saw this: https://github.com/Tanami/symta - is that your repo or just a coincidence?

Unfortunately when I try compiling the sprite extractor it now complains that there are undefined references (e.g. fileSize, readFile, pngSave). It could be because I'm still new to this, but is it possible there are still missing files that are required for this to work?

4

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: April 01, 2020, 01:37:30 am »

Wow, that sounds like a lot of hassle. Do you still share your code online anywhere (e.g. GitLab, SourceForge)?

I just noticed that fmt_spr.c requires the file "common.h" in order to be compiled. I'm new to C programming, but I'm guessing that's a custom file you made which contains helper functions (such as "times" and "picNew")? Could I trouble you once again and ask for this file?

The .cfg decrypter works perfectly, so thank you again for that.

5

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: March 31, 2020, 07:43:49 pm »

Yeah. The github got banned to due to the one repository having a WIP version of a book touching US immigration policy. Apparently a lot of people don't support open borders and they mass reported me. GitHub then just banned me outright, instead of that single repository, to avoid any controversy.

No way; that's ridiculous… sorry to hear that. I did wonder if it had been banned due to some kind of copyright issue but that's just depressing. I was going to ask about re-uploading it to my own profile but I understand if you would prefer I didn't.

Anyway, thank you very much for sharing your work. After being put on lockdown I re-installed Magic & Mayhem for old time's sake and felt like seeing if I could tinker with any of the game files. I've only recently become familiar with reading files at the byte-level as I primarily work with front-end tech, so this will be incredibly helpful to further my understanding of low-level programming.

Thanks again, and take care.

Edit: just noticed, who/what is "SNV" (mentioned in the opening comment of fmt_spr.c)?

6

Programming / Re: Magic & Mayhem Engine Open Source Clone

« on: March 30, 2020, 08:54:34 pm »

The decompressor is ready and added to [GitHub link]

*.map files were compressed too, although LZ77 algorithm isnt as good as ZIP, which made me think that they aint compressed, because ZIP was able to future compress them. Magic & Mayhem engine also supports RLE and uncompressed files in place of LZ77, which should be great, because no need to write LZ77 compressor to mess with maps and savegames.

So now we have known:
1. graphics format.
2. *.cfg/*.map/savegame compression format.
3. most of game configuration is plain text

still unknown are:
1. anim file formats.
2. map format.
3. various nuances of drawing nicelsy shaded isometric view with these sprites.

Just came across this thread after searching online and am gutted to see these GitHub links are no longer available. Would you kindly reconsider uploading the source?