WIP: Post-Apocalyptic RPG Update 1.5
Moderators: Ice Cream Jonsey, joltcountry
-
Garth
-
RetroRomper
- Posts: 1926
- Joined: Mon Jun 21, 2010 7:35 am
- Location: Someplace happy.
With Wasteland 2 making the rounds, this WIP game feels far, far more relevant than it did four years ago (though I'm sure it is fabulous regardless of how "in" the current vibes says a specific genre is).
Though when I think of genres that require entrees, I wasn't reminded until recently that late 80's style adventures needed more games. So at the very least, the idea of this WIP is intriguing and worthy of a bit of my time, hopefully there is something to be seen of it by this time next year!
Though when I think of genres that require entrees, I wasn't reminded until recently that late 80's style adventures needed more games. So at the very least, the idea of this WIP is intriguing and worthy of a bit of my time, hopefully there is something to be seen of it by this time next year!
-
Garth's Equipment Shop
- Posts: 638
- Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:55 pm
- Location: Festering Foothills
- Contact:
-
Biffsnot
- Posts: 16
- Joined: Sat May 31, 2008 6:36 pm
- Contact:
Hello all.
As an FYI (I am sure many could tell already due to the spam links on the signature line of the 'Alice Mayer' post) that this Alice Mayer is not me :wink:
It was kind of funny to see an email sent to me by the board about a new post to my topic, and it turns out to be someone promising to make 'great strides' on my project.
Anyway, I have been rolling around the idea of continuing this game for a while (long before the news of Wasteland 2, which I had missed until Garth let me know about it). I love the ACK system, bugs and all, and enjoy the old-school editing aspects of it. As it is, I have done all of the work of painstakingly, via screenshots, cutting out the tiles of Wasteland all those years ago, so I may as well do something with it.
I can't believe the original post was from 2008. /sigh
Anyway, my main focus as of late has been fiction writing, and my goal is to really do some great stuff with stories and novels. I think working on something like this will only help with story design skills, character growth, and all the rest of the skills needed to write great fiction. I will need to devote most of my (limited) time after long, mind-numbing hours of wage-slavery needed to pay the bills, to writing fiction and trying to improve my craft, but I think I can swing working on Hallam as well.
Hell, it would be cool to add 'Game Designer' to my list of achievements, even if I secretly know I used a creation kit :wink:
As an aside, I think anyone who creates a game in any way, whether they hand-code it on an Atari 800 computer using Assembly language, or uses a kit of some kind, is still a game designer. It is still the design that makes or breaks a game. Hell, in real-world game companies, the game designers no longer even touch coding.
And since I am blabbing on here... I was messing around with the graphics file for the character graphics, since I wanted to see if I could edit them outside ACK due to the limited editing functionality on that particular screen, and I found that they are raw bitmap files. No headers, just bytes for color data, and the palette isn't included in the file at all. By using a hex editor (HxD, which is free and awesome) I copied the bitmap header info from an actual bitmap into the character graphics file, and got it to load up in an image editor.
Why I mention this at all is that some enterprising coder, with some very basic knowledge of C#, Python, or whatever, could whip up some external utilities to edit certain things outside of the editor... Or at least convert the images to bitmaps so they can be worked on in Gimp or Photoshop, and then strip the headers off and replace them in the proper folders.
Anyway that was a hell of a lot more than I intended to post.
See you all around.
As an FYI (I am sure many could tell already due to the spam links on the signature line of the 'Alice Mayer' post) that this Alice Mayer is not me :wink:
It was kind of funny to see an email sent to me by the board about a new post to my topic, and it turns out to be someone promising to make 'great strides' on my project.
Anyway, I have been rolling around the idea of continuing this game for a while (long before the news of Wasteland 2, which I had missed until Garth let me know about it). I love the ACK system, bugs and all, and enjoy the old-school editing aspects of it. As it is, I have done all of the work of painstakingly, via screenshots, cutting out the tiles of Wasteland all those years ago, so I may as well do something with it.
I can't believe the original post was from 2008. /sigh
Anyway, my main focus as of late has been fiction writing, and my goal is to really do some great stuff with stories and novels. I think working on something like this will only help with story design skills, character growth, and all the rest of the skills needed to write great fiction. I will need to devote most of my (limited) time after long, mind-numbing hours of wage-slavery needed to pay the bills, to writing fiction and trying to improve my craft, but I think I can swing working on Hallam as well.
Hell, it would be cool to add 'Game Designer' to my list of achievements, even if I secretly know I used a creation kit :wink:
As an aside, I think anyone who creates a game in any way, whether they hand-code it on an Atari 800 computer using Assembly language, or uses a kit of some kind, is still a game designer. It is still the design that makes or breaks a game. Hell, in real-world game companies, the game designers no longer even touch coding.
And since I am blabbing on here... I was messing around with the graphics file for the character graphics, since I wanted to see if I could edit them outside ACK due to the limited editing functionality on that particular screen, and I found that they are raw bitmap files. No headers, just bytes for color data, and the palette isn't included in the file at all. By using a hex editor (HxD, which is free and awesome) I copied the bitmap header info from an actual bitmap into the character graphics file, and got it to load up in an image editor.
Why I mention this at all is that some enterprising coder, with some very basic knowledge of C#, Python, or whatever, could whip up some external utilities to edit certain things outside of the editor... Or at least convert the images to bitmaps so they can be worked on in Gimp or Photoshop, and then strip the headers off and replace them in the proper folders.
Anyway that was a hell of a lot more than I intended to post.
See you all around.
-
Garth's Equipment Shop
- Posts: 638
- Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:55 pm
- Location: Festering Foothills
- Contact:
A bot that targets forum threads with WIP in the title and attempts to impersonate the OP author? :o What will they think of next? Who the hell are these people who waste so much effort developing their ad-bot AI? Anyway I am glad this bot necro-posted here and triggered that thread update email to be sent to Biffsnot because now this WIP has a more recent progress report from the real OP author! :D
-
Garth's Equipment Shop
- Posts: 638
- Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:55 pm
- Location: Festering Foothills
- Contact:
-
Garth's Equipment Shop
- Posts: 638
- Joined: Fri Dec 05, 2008 5:55 pm
- Location: Festering Foothills
- Contact:
Sometimes I miss things that I really should have or wanted to respond to. Your last post here Biffsnot is a good example.
This part...
This part...
By character graphics did you just mean the tiles and by screen with limited functionality did you mean the tile editor? If so I am very sorry for not responding sooner and saving you all that work with the hex editor! I edit all my tiles outside of ACK in my favorite graphics editing prog (the latest version of Photoshop usually) and simply save my tiles in a size and format the ACK import utility will accept. If that is not what you meant please elaborate so I can try to be more helpful. If it is what you meant try my suggestion and if you need more specific guidance I am ready and willing to give it.I was messing around with the graphics file for the character graphics, since I wanted to see if I could edit them outside ACK due to the limited editing functionality on that particular screen, and I found that they are raw bitmap files. No headers, just bytes for color data, and the palette isn't included in the file at all. By using a hex editor (HxD, which is free and awesome) I copied the bitmap header info from an actual bitmap into the character graphics file, and got it to load up in an image editor.
This is still a very cool idea even if your problem was solved by my response above. Like I said I edit all my tiles in Photoshop (and I have been using GIMP more often as well as I get more used to it), but I am still very much into the idea of any sort of ACK automation.Why I mention this at all is that some enterprising coder, with some very basic knowledge of C#, Python, or whatever, could whip up some external utilities to edit certain things outside of the editor... Or at least convert the images to bitmaps so they can be worked on in Gimp or Photoshop, and then strip the headers off and replace them in the proper folders.