Separate carmackization ...
Separate carmackization ...
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?
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[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 ...
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.
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.
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.
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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Re: Separate carmackization ...
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)CK Guy wrote:The source for TED5 is available for download (I don't remember where, but I have downloaded sometime in the past)
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.
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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