Separate carmackization ...

Utilities for editing Keen:Galaxy and Keen:Dreams levels.
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ckguy
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Separate carmackization ...

Post by ckguy »

I thought that this sounds like a useful, but not incredibly difficult project:

On my computer I have Windows XP. This means that TED5 won't work by itself, but I have gotten it to work by using DOSBox (version 0.63, I believe). However, because of the way DOSBox works, TED5 runs rather slowly - but this is only really noticable in carmackization, which runs just about as fast as it did on my old 25MHz 486, even if I overclock DOSBox and decrease the frame-update-rate.

So, I thought and tried to figure out a good way to help speed up carmackization, and I came upon this. The source for TED5 is available for download (I don't remember where, but I have downloaded sometime in the past), so I thought that someone could maybe take the carmackization functions in it could be taken out and, along with a little driver code, be made into a separate perhaps DOS-based, command-line-driven, text-only carmackization program that would run without DOSBox. So I could run TED5 through DOSBox and save the level, but *not* carmackize, and then run this separate carmackizer to carmackize the maps. I've carmackized maps on computers slower than mine (but with Windows 9x, so TED5 could be run directly) and it only took a few seconds. This separate program could maybe be even faster than that, because it doesn't need to provide that pretty graphical display that needs to be updated as it's carmackizing.

So, that's enough rambling - now, what do you guys think?

---

[edit:] Yah, I just found a link to TED5 source:
www.giffer.com/public/dos/pprgm/prgm0081.htm

[edit again:] Get it here direct:
www.giffer.com/public/dos/pprgm/Files/TED5.ZIP

Once I saw the URL, I said "yeah, that's where I downloaded it last time". Pointless item: I can't visit that site right now, because I'm at a school computer and it says "Blocked: General Pronography" ... weird ...
Last edited by ckguy on Tue Dec 12, 2006 2:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Kdash
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Post by Kdash »

Cool! Can we see this program?

Oops. Better read more carefully next time. I thought you already made it.
Last edited by Kdash on Sun May 22, 2005 6:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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grafix
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Post by grafix »

It doesn't exist yet. I did do some Carmackization code in VB a while ago - I'll try polishing it up and sending it to you. (This may take some time - I had only got to the point where it could Carmackize the whole file, not seperate blocks)
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ckguy
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Post by ckguy »

grafix5000: Sounds great if you could manage that ...
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grafix
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Post by grafix »

I hope I didn't delete it accidentally. I probably lost a load of stuff when I formatted my PC's hard drive - I'll get back to you on that one.
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ckguy
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Post by ckguy »

Some "fake carmackization" thing would be fine instead. What I mean is, the program goes through the uncarmackized map and - not compresses it - but just replaces the bytes that mean references bck in the file with whatever bytes escape those characters in the carmackized file. This would probably be easier than an actual compressor. Before a final release of my level pack, I could run the levels through the "real carmackizer" in TED5 which is slow, but that'd be okay because I wouldn't need to do that much.
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grafix
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Post by grafix »

Doing real Carmackization wouldn't be much harder than fake Carmackization. The code will probably be written in VB6, because I'm still not fully acquainted with C++.
Kdash
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Post by Kdash »

can you post a link to the actual download of the source?
The page takes a while to load, and i dont want to wait... >:-(
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ckguy
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Post by ckguy »

Something like this would be really really helpful for me to continue work on my levelpack. Even just a program that went through the MAPTEMP.CK5 and MAPTHEAD.CK5 and put them into GAMEMAPS.CK5 and MAPHEAD.CK5 replacing parts that looked like Carmack escape codes with the appropriate replacements.

I remember that gamemaps/maphead were somewhat documented in mobydoc.txt, but I don't think that the uncompressed maptemp/mapthead were in there. Do they use the same format of offsets? I also remember there being a couple of points in mobydoc.txt where Andy was not sure about something. Has anyone fully figured this out? The TED5 source above should help, but I don't have the time to go through that at the moment.
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Shadow Master
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Re: Separate carmackization ...

Post by Shadow Master »

CK Guy wrote:The source for TED5 is available for download (I don't remember where, but I have downloaded sometime in the past)
You can also find the sources at http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html, under the section "Rise of the Triad", ROTT Level Editor 5 - Ted5 - The editor Apogee used for ROTT (1106k)

I don't know if the sources are complete, but I can tell you they're mixed with binary files in the TEDSRC directory of the ZIP file. I think it should be complete with so many C source and header files.
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XkyRauh
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Post by XkyRauh »

Has there been any progress on a workaround Carmackization program? It's a real drag having to spend 5 minutes Carmackizing all my maps just for one simple change I need to test... :)
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grafix
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Post by grafix »

I just rediscovered the code I was fiddling with to try and do this, and also learnt slightly more about C/C++ in the process. I'll have another go at creating an app that does seperate Carmackization. (I could also make a program that pretends to Carmackize the maps, which would be easier and might also work. We'll see.)
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Post by levellass »

Yeah, we need (Almost) instant saving.
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Post by Shadow Master »

XkyRauh wrote:Has there been any progress on a workaround Carmackization program? It's a real drag having to spend 5 minutes Carmackizing all my maps just for one simple change I need to test... :)
Perhaps if I...
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ckguy
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Post by ckguy »

Well, whoever implements this, it would be god. It would definitely speed up my TED5 usage, and I'd probably want to work on levels more because there wouldn't be obnoxious waits.
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