Hello

Anything else to do with MoM IME
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Hammerhands
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Hello

Post by Hammerhands »

First let me say I have seen several attempt to create a new version of MOM, clones ,etc.

Let me just say you have the best version going.
Audio is nice and graphics all seems as tho im in the original.

I'll be watching this site in next few weeks to evaluate your progress.

If there is anything you would like help with just ask.
You may not know me that is understandable im OLD and been around
in the shadows for along time with MMO's and single player games.

Im curious to know what engine are you developing under?
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Implode
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Re: Hello

Post by Implode »

Hammerhands wrote:Im curious to know what engine are you developing under?
I don't quite follow you... if you mean what development tool/language, then Delphi. Everything from there up, with the possible exception of a few Direct 3D header files that someone had convereted from C++ to Delphi, I've written all of. Even all the multiplayer components don't use Direct Play anymore, I rewrote them all directly using TCP/IP sockets.

In the end I'm not just trying to write a new MoM game - I'm trying to build a game engine that will allow building other turn based strategy games using the same engine. Some programming is always going to be needed, even if its just designing new screen layouts to make games look different, but I want say 80% of the work on future games to just be building the XML files that control the engine. In theory... :)

Implode.
Hammerhands
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surprised

Post by Hammerhands »

I was certain you were using Torque 2d for several reasons
the server exe file and client builds for main reason

Ideal for this application most Torque server builds lag out around 100 connections this game tops out at 12 thus eliminating TCP/IP peer to peer
which is well known to have SYNC delays with multiplayer

This game is nice but no wheres near the project my son and I are undertaking . I need 2 more game programmers to complete this game
in next few years.. My son is slowly becoming rare around the house
Girl friend college work .. kinda expected it

I will not discuss my game thru a forum however I will thru email

I am certain if someone saw the actual game format that instantly they would say "Wow wonder why no one did that before "

anyways I always loved MOM not for the MAGIC but for the conquest
the unit building process getting that perfect stack for a node run was more fun than any other part of the game.

My point or points in the multiplayer thread was the spell of mastery comes way too late in game and additional books delay the end
it should be made a spell that comes at mid game and to be used on NPC
wizards only if still alive.
Multiplayer games should be resolved thru conquest or completion of some pregame goal
like build and hold 25 cities of population 23 or higher or create a new type of node that is like a flag in capture the flag
take these nodes and control them as a game win condition

somehow I still remain perplexed as to the ENGINE or driving force that
interfaces your work into the game and what powers the client server connection.

I had an idea for creating custom maps . produce them as SAVED games
even if not one turn is taken and allow them as selectable in multiplayer games i assume the host of the game produces the map for all thru the server but then I assume again standard gaming proceedures.

I am totally unfamiliar with Delphi I will research into it so I can comment more clearly in the future.

I am a machine code author I hate compilers I like short low memory eating operations. My son compiles now for us in C++ i used to use both Microsoft the 42 disk developer pack and Borland but the differences in nominclature drove me nuts. Visual C++ is not bad but still you end up with all those extra resources and file size is huge even on a hello world program :)


my biggest questions are this
1) game originally loaded above dos and used expanded memory
[did you alter this ?]
2) game originally looked for audio hardware in UMB region (unused by Win XP) [so how did you enable sound?]
3) do you still use the LBX files as resources in game? because those pesky headers and footers you see in file also hold keys to random (not so random) events [wouldnt you like to make to map and audio functions
use your own file formats and sources?] [do you already?] ok thats 2 questions

yes I was part of the storyboarding team before this game went to production my CIS nick of Hammerhands ie the dwarven unit hammerhand and my other Nick Ryjak became Rjak in game
my work with BBCS producing tile graphic games for BBS play open the world to what was eventually called doors .
I rewrote BBCS for ANTIC magazine admidst a class action suit against Scott Brause the author and 14x rewrite failure and the owner of the software Antic magazine .I created waht was then the very first multi user HOME BBS with 8 lines lol I made a home network using special boards i made and a 5 bit language i created to use joystick ports as network connections on 8 bit 6502 computers. Had the whole Atari community baffled at beating the non concurrent I/o limitation :)
(Until I eventually publish the work at CIS (pre internet and pre AOL)
In the rewrite i open a 4k area of memory remember we had 32 k to work with and used 4k machine code apps to run games. The hardest part was learning how to make key remappings for apple computers so under ascii they could play the game. Remember Atari had 2x the key set they had ATASCII extended ascii code on thier machines.
My first game was a space shuttle launch from the roof of the Hotel oh I forgot my bbs was graphical a Hotel with a Desk where you got your messages and floors where files could be accessed each floor had different files allowing for category sorting. You had to go to the BAR to chat.

Anyways someone liked the game idea so much several Space Shuttle sims were made in the years after I did it.

I found that changing the pallette and resolution mode of the antic in mid line produced a pixel of contrasting color as Hsync was resumed
this became the driving force of Alternate Reality (pop up windows ) lol they werent windows at all they were areas of different resolution with a border produce by my interuupt routines in the Antic code.
Some kid at Berkley found my post on CIS and used the same method to reroute the audio thru the antic for speech made an Air Traffic Controller game forget its name but when I saw how he did it I went DOH! i should have seen that.
What he did basically was use those 1000's of machine cycles the ANTIC was waiting for sync to make the next line and stuffed his code in the wait holes of processing time. I did the same basically however I modified the Antic routines to do a line in memory using a resolution and pallette change during production but the data was done on the interval of Whsync
wait on horizontal sync something the ANTIC did alot sweep on the monitor produced 15735 per second antic could do 4 mil things a sec there was alot of processing time available.

I also remember after someone install my new quarterdeck QEMM for me at work and mistyped some of the info that i found the method they had used to store the data
What really pissed me off was this was an IBM piece of software and it had my ATARI method as a protection scheme
you hit a key say spacebar $20 or dec 32 the program would load the value into a register then load $FE into accum and perfom and add with carry . the carry bit was always flagged due the add with 254 and no keystroke = to 0 or 1 the carry flag triggered a write appended action to file on disk so each keystoke became stored as well as hidden on disk during install. we used that method 3x on software from 1982 - 1986 on Atari releases .. Quarterdeck must have like my work.
anyways i published the info and continued to break thier schemes thru release 7 :) just outta spite.

Im am one of those dont want to do as others do I want to do as the micro want to do fast simple and to the point. with all the cpu speed and video capabilities and memory handling we have grown to love in past 10 years what has been forgotten is "No one will ever need more than 64k"
something Bill got from the release of 4k memory holes and ML routines that more than multiplied the power of the online computer by 100-1000's of times its previous power. Yes Bill Gates was a CIS forum browser and
still today I laugh and laugh with others from my past at how he still hasnt figured out some of the bugs in the stuff he stole was put there on purpose:)
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Implode
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Post by Implode »

Hammerhands wrote:somehow I still remain perplexed as to the ENGINE or driving force that interfaces your work into the game and what powers the client server connection.
I still don't follow the question :-) My work *IS* the game, I'm rewriting everything from scratch, using nothing from the original, writing my own 'engine' if that's what you want to call it - the only reason my version requires the original LBX files is to pull the graphics out of them. I felt it was a pointless exercise extracting all the graphics out of the original LBX files only to repack them into another format and adding to the size of the download - why not just read directly from the original LBXes? No data/text/descriptions are used from the original LBXes, that's all stored in the 3 XML files (server, graphics & language).

I had to look up what this Torque 2D thing you were talking about was, I had never of it :)
Hammerhands wrote:I had an idea for creating custom maps . produce them as SAVED games even if not one turn is taken and allow them as selectable in multiplayer games i assume the host of the game produces the map for all thru the server but then I assume again standard gaming proceedures.
Don't see why not - currently I generate the maps randomly but since you'll eventually be able to save games, you could certainly use that to save maps.
Hammerhands wrote:I am a machine code author
I used to be, I had an old 3D engine I wrote in pure assembler in the '486 days prior to Windows 95 & Direct 3D. It was pretty good and handles z-buffers and object intersections which a lot of other programmers' similar engines at the time didn't do. Of course totally obsolete :)

I gave up on assembler when I started examining the code that Delphi actually generates and came to the conclusion that it wrote just as good machine code as I could directly, and in a language that is 100x more readable. My preference is Java now, I seriously considered it for MoM IME from the start but I did a few tests and I couldn't get the graphics smooth and fast enough. I am very seriously considering porting the server across to Java though, so I can run it on Linux.

>> my biggest questions are this
>> 1) game originally loaded above dos and used expanded memory [did you alter this ?]
Since its a Windows app with no dos code/dos-style memory usage, it can use the whole of memory available to Windows.

>> 2) game originally looked for audio hardware in UMB region (unused by Win XP) [so how did you enable sound?]
There's a TMediaPlayer component in Delphi which in the background is what produces the sound. I forget the actual Windows API calls that TMediaPlayer itself does, I can check if you like.

>> 3) do you still use the LBX files as resources in game?
Graphics - yes. Sound - no (XMI and VOC are too awkward). Data - definitely no, I want it to be user-editable in the XML file. So if someone wants to make the spell of mastery only a rare spell, or change the stats or costs of any units or spells, they can do so.
Hammerhands wrote:yes I was part of the storyboarding team before this game went to production my CIS nick of Hammerhands ie the dwarven unit hammerhand and my other Nick Ryjak became Rjak in game
So... are you saying you worked on the original MoM? :shock: What/where/who is CIS? CompuServe?

Implode.
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Ortemus
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Jay Barnett multiplayer/scenario builder

Post by Ortemus »

Hammerhands wrote:
I had an idea for creating custom maps . produce them as SAVED games even if not one turn is taken and allow them as selectable in multiplayer games i assume the host of the game produces the map for all thru the server but then I assume again standard gaming proceedures.



Jay Barnett wrote a multiplayer/map editor program 9 nine years ago. I bought it for $20 - It's disappointing though because the multi-player shell/editor/scenario player requires more EMS than MoM itself.

You would have to disable your CD drive and jack up your EMM386 drivers to use it.

One very 'sweet' feature Jay Barnett included in his program was you could disable the 'SoM' before play.

-Matt
Hammerhands
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well

Post by Hammerhands »

before there was an internet as you all see today
we had modems and phone lines and BBS's home computers
that we could call and 2 subscriber based systems
Compuserve Information Services
and GE Genie
Basically the programmers shared ideas and techniques thru forum posts
such as we see today [here for example]
but back then there were no set routines [function calls] we wrote machine code to perform operations as the community worked on these independently and shared thier code routines evolved that became the standards for what now is called COMPILERS
In the beginning years before the TV screen output and Cassette storage medium we got to carry around lots of cards with holes in them or tape about 1/2 wide made of paper and feed the strips into readers
and we got our output from printers
anyone ever see basic games like TREK it was 10x10 map of a game where you destroyed or died in space battles however all you had
was * a star _ empty space + a ship or ships . it was done on a printout
each turn a new page on printer back then we were destroying trees by the thousands just debugging :)
Earliest outputs to screens were done in NTSC monochrome
later PAL SECAM and NTSC color was added but we got 4 colors
usually black white a red or blue or green light and one dark or i should say actually varing hue and luminance didnt really become a factor until we got to 10 colors.
The invention of a chip called the Antic and its partner the GTIA used in atari systems basically pushed the world into COLORFUL games with action and sounds. The Antic produced 4k memory regions of 1 and 0's the GTIA turned them into colors and detected collisions.
The Antic was a processor so you could use it like a micro when the output of data was on hold something that occured often back then. Only 15,735 lines per second NTSC format and large areas of the screen output were BLANK. Into the blank areas went player missiles or sprites as Commodore called them. These were bit maps though not called BMP's
that came many years later. You could draw a car with 4 tires on it and change the tire pi(9bitmap)by altering the horiz position of the PM or Sprite. It would move onto the viewable screen during the period when the Monitor (or TV) was BLANKING the phosphor for next repaint. Back then it seemed very complicated but today it seems so simple and low tech :)
Today Video cards do so much work and handle operations that would have taken old style computers with machine code routines days to perform what a video card does today million of times per minute.
We never would have even considered 32 bit color information back then
if lucky we could get an operating system in place and have 32-48 k of Ram avail for code and picture data. To use 4 memory locations per pixel would have made the picture very low res.

In the good ol days, we couldnt display more than 4k of memory at a time, with careful positioning of the data in banks so that we didnt cross a boundary with the data. Although the micro could access any location at anytime by changing the high and lower order indexes at the micro prior to a read or write command the video hardware was restricted to 4k windows of the whole whoolping 64k.

I can recall being places in my youth where major changes in our world were taking place. Major in that simple small advances were cascading like ripples on a pond after a single stone is cast into it.

It wasnt enough back then to have an idea, the world needed to see the idea in action. So the guy who wanted to make a lifelike picture of his kids
had to work thru the painful 10-12years of hardware and software evolution until his idea to create a lifelike picture was possible.

Many of us stayed working most of the time for small or NO rewards on pushing the enviroment forward. It was called a hobby.

One good example was this. I had purchased an Avatex 1200 baud modem to see if the speed would improve my BBS operation. Because I had built a system of 8 Computers using 8 phone lines and omg 32 quad density floppies and several 10 meg harddrives(running in serial mode like a floppy)thanks to HP their floopy bios for there industrial computers actually worked with Italian made 10 meg harddrives. This was just prior to the 186 computer release the Olivetti.

Anyways I eneded up with alot of these modems and as the broke down I learned more and more of how they worked. I modified 4 of them so that 2 shared a single phone line. By modifying the 1488/1489 gate caps i forced 2 modems to send what is best described as 2 mono audio signals on a FM carrier. I also had to make front end circuits to split outgoing and combie incoming data to a single port. Back then you could only use 1 port at a time called NON Concurrent I/O. Anyways heres the story.

I contacted Hayes modem company and got a guy named Jack Supra who told me he was a vice president in the company. I sent him the protypes and detail of how I made it work. I also explained that loss of 1488/1489 gates was very high as I was creating odd currents between the chips in the crude way I forced them to work. But it worked just not for very long.
About 3 months following that event I recieved a SUPRA modem 2400 with a hand written serial #3 on the bottom.
Apparently Mr. Supra had left Hayes and started his own company. I recieved a modem with no charge or enclosed letter of anykind. I never heard from Mr. Supra again.
Now the real funny part it cost over $400 per phone line to get a clean enough dial tone and line quality to use it and the 7 others I had purchased. And very few people could use 2400 baud for years to come.

Anyways I can recant story after story if you all had 50 years to listen. The simple truth is its all old news I may have lived thru it and had my feeble brain working at 200% to understand some of it but I was there and it was fun while it lasted. Marriage at the late age of 27 and the 5 kids that followed and all the school I went to to learn and help push the TV industry into what has finally begun.. HDTV lead me away from Computers as my main focus. The money in TV is just so much better.
But I do have practical real experiance in writing in many languages on computers. Basic of course from along time ago Machine code on 8 bit 16 bit and 32 bit systems. C Pascal Modulo 7 and several C+ and C++ compilers. HTML of course every geek learns that. But most of my enjoyment comes from working with audio and video files to make them load faster or look or sound better than the original.

In every project I have ever been a part of with programming the general consensus was I was a natural at creating a look and feel that was more appealing than anyone else on team could produce. I expect more from a program so I work longer on fulling my expectations.
aggelon
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Post by aggelon »

I've just discover this site and not read it yet but...

MoM:IME seems to be GREAT GREAT GREAT !!!!

You will can get my help for feedback and error log !!!

I absolutely have to go now for personal reasons, but I'm going to come back soon.

Thank you very much for IME !!!

Thank you to Master of Magic Page for linking you !!!

Bye,
Have to go,
Agg.
inquisiteur
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Post by inquisiteur »

Man, you didn't answer implode's question : did you work on the original mom ???
Hammerhands
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Post by Hammerhands »

LOL no we had other projects going at that but i did
work the story board I think i mentioned that before
and I did call them and tell them the biggest problem with the LBX bug
was the atapi CD driver that was current then
there was an error if the CD was slave drive

they decided it would take too many man hours to direct
people to reconfigure there Win 3.1 boxes to use the secondary
master setup.. not to mention alot of clones didnt have dual HD ports back then .. had to buy an IDE paddle board for that

so in the end the patch fixed it by accessing the LBX from the HD
instead of the CD .. wasnt much of an improvement

funny about 3 months after they patched the retail release
a new atapi driver came down with error in interupts for slave drive
corrected
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