Turok: Dinosaur Hunter Forums!
Turok Games => Turok Evolution => Turok Evolution Modding => Topic started by: Stinkee2 on August 28, 2015, 09:30:11 AM
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(http://i.imgur.com/6KLTYM8.png)
^Above image created by Duke64^
(http://i.imgur.com/I6gKCTc.png)
Summary
The Turok: Evolution ATR editor project aims to create an interface for modding existing levels and (maybe eventually) creating new ones.
Source Code: Github (https://github.com/TurokMods/T4Editor)
Screenshots: Imgur (http://imgur.com/a/0psos)
Downloads
Revision A (t4viewer) (http://www.mediafire.com/download/mecepmud5357r9c/T4Viewer.zip)
Revision B (t4viewer) (http://www.mediafire.com/download/rdy7fc0wpej9l7c/T4Viewer%283%29.zip)
Revision B Details (http://www.turokforums.com/turok-evolution/turok-level-viewerexporter/msg2323/#msg2323)
Revision C (t4editor) (https://turoksanctum.com/download/turok-evolution-level-editor)
(http://i.imgur.com/Wd2A08r.png)[/list]
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Wow that sounds confusing. Wish I could help but I just don't know how to do this stuff. I wish you best of luck I bet a few members here would absolutely love a sole Turok level editor!
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This is some really promising work you've got here, Stinkee2! I agree with Adon; some people, including myself, would love to see a possible level editor in the future. I've been hoping for the day that we would be able to mod Turok Evolution! Please keep us informed of your progress with your program. :D
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Welcome I did not know you were the one I tried to get a hold of at the assembler forums pretty cool that you found here before checking your assembler to. True Turok fan then. I would love to make a level for any Turok game. This ensures possibility and life for the games long after there time plus more reason to play it to when there's always something new.
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This is some really promising work you've got here, Stinkee2! I agree with Adon; some people, including myself, would love to see a possible level editor in the future. I've been hoping for the day that we would be able to mod Turok Evolution! Please keep us informed of your progress with your program. :D
When I was but a young naive 13 year old playing this game, it was a big driving factor for me to learn programming just so that I could modify this game. Of course after a while I realized the world that I had opened up and my interest for Turok did not stand up to the excitement of learning new things and building my own engines and things. But I totally understand the desire for more content for Turok.
Welcome I did not know you were the one I tried to get a hold of at the assembler forums pretty cool that you found here before checking your assembler to. True Turok fan then.
I actually went back to those forums earlier today to look for a post I remembered involving Turok 2 when I noticed the PM. I tend to float around until I find a place that feels like home, and Assembler just wasn't doing it for me. Perhaps I didn't give it a long enough chance and perhaps I didn't put enough work into integrating myself into the community. Oh well, I'm here and working on this now.
I imagine the hardest part of this whole process is going to be learning exactly what the different file types contain.
I'll post another update when I get some models loaded and on screen.
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Well hope you feel welcome here you certainly have a good presence here already with this type of post I am excited to. I can't make levels but it would be really cool to play some user made content for once. So really good luck with this!
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I don't have any screenshots yet, but I've made quite a bit of progress.
I've deconstructed the .ATI files almost completely by analyzing the patterns in the data and I now understand the rules necessary for loading and saving data into the format. This is a big step for modding and level creation.
As a bonus, I think the other formats are very similar, if not exactly the same. If they are the same, then that means that I can create a single library for loading/saving the one type of file and just send it the necessary data. This won't make much of an impact on a final product, it just means that things might be a little easier on any programmers working with this code.
Here's a brief summary of how the format works:
-In the beginning of the file, there are 4 bytes of data that are used for identifying the file format. This is nothing new, a lot of different types of files have something like this. In this particular format, the 4 bytes are 0x01 0x61 0x74 0x69, that translates to ati, which makes sense (the 0x01 is not an alphanumeric character).
After this, there is a hierarchy of data blocks. At the start of each block there is some information about the block, the "header". These block headers stumped me for a while because they weren't always the same size, and sometimes the block size was one byte and sometimes it was two bytes.. After a while I figured out that in those special cases, before the block header there was one byte that describes the header type. A header header... Anyway, I identified which bytes corresponded to which types of block headers and got that sorted out.
I'm not sure what all of the data in the block headers mean but here's an overview of the types of block headers I found
-Block header type 0 (Normal block header, no "header header")
--Byte 0: Unknown
--Byte 1: Unknown
--Byte 2: Size of block (in bytes)
--Byte 3: Length of block ID string
-Block header type 1 (header header byte: 0x82 or 0x81)
--Byte 0: Unknown
--Byte 1&2: (16-bit integer): Size of block (in bytes)
--Byte 3: Length of block ID string
-Block header type 2 (header header byte: 0x61)
--Byte 0: Unknown
--Byte 1: Size of block (in bytes)
--Byte 2: Unknown
--Byte 3: Unknown
--Byte 4: Length of block ID string
-Block header type 3 (header header byte: 0xA1)
--Byte 0: Unknown
--Byte 1&2: (16-bit integer): Size of block (in bytes)
--Byte 3: Unknown
--Byte 4: Unknown
--Byte 5: Length of block ID string
Immediately following this information is the block ID string ("ACTOR", "NAVNODE", "ACTOR_VARIABLES", ...), followed by 0x00, or "null".
Immediately following the 0x00 is a block of data with the size stated in the block header.
This block of data can contain more blocks of data like I just described, or a value or values. It could be anything really.
Here's a small example of what an ATI file contains:
+data/levels/u_jcowlishaw/screens/Attract/attract.ati
|+ACTOR Y:\Data\Actors\Widgets\Widget.atr.
| |-ID: 1
| |+Name
| | |-PressStartWidget
| |
| |+POS (x,y,z) (12 bytes, 3 floats)
| | |- 0.0, -15.1498, 0.0
| |
| |+ROT (Euler angles probably) (12 bytes, 3 floats)
| | |- 0.000061, 0.0, 0.0
| |
| |+Scale (x,y,z) (12 bytes, 3 floats)
| | |- 16.0, 2.0, 1.0
| |
| |+ACTOR_VARIABLES
| | |+W_FC
| | | |-0xFF (255)
| | |
| | |+W_TMN
| | | |-0x01 (1)
| | |
| | |+W_YLAY
| | | |-0x01 (1)
| | |
| | |+W_XLAY
| | | |-0x01 (1)
| |
| |+ etc,etc
You get the picture, it's a hierarchy of data.
If you want to see more, here's a partial deconstruction of a couple files:
attract.atr: http://pastebin.com/rwg9CdK9 (http://pastebin.com/rwg9CdK9)
pod01_03_ttjungle.atr: http://codepad.org/cinaicfZ (http://codepad.org/cinaicfZ)
If you don't get turned on by information such as this, then just wait for some screenshots to emerge once I integrate my rendering engine and have whole levels to explore. Just a few more days.
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Well, I've got some screenshots. There are no textures yet, I still have to implement a .DDS loader, but that should be easy as pie. Also it's only the static meshes.
Have a look:
Here's a perspective which I'm sure we are all familiar with:
(http://i.imgur.com/nH62xJN.png)
It's hard to tell because of the lack of textures, but this is when you first walk out into the open after killing the first sleg:
(http://i.imgur.com/Gg47NgW.png)
From above:
(http://i.imgur.com/mkcmX3c.png)
The rock on which the key-holding sleg is placed:
(http://i.imgur.com/57xQPjK.png)
Another view:
(http://i.imgur.com/xG6eTn4.png)
The end of the first level:
(http://i.imgur.com/KfgMrNq.png)
I'll post some more screenshots when I have the meshes textured.
EDIT:
(http://i.imgur.com/xR334LT.png)
Not quite, but almost. It turns out that DDS loading is not as easy as I thought... It's either the image library I'm using or the way I transfer the pixels to OpenGL.
EDIT AGAIN:
I GOT IT. I GOT IT.
(http://i.imgur.com/xzsBklA.png)
Ah ha!
(http://i.imgur.com/79muDXQ.png)
Remember this?
(http://i.imgur.com/YdCBgZz.png)
Clearly there are some problems for levels other than the first. I'll figure it out tomorrow.
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I don't pretend to understand most of the code, but I am definitely impressed. To clarify: will your viewer load static props and character models (both .atr and .mtf) as well? Your first post leads me to believe the answer is "yes," but I want to make sure. :P
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will your viewer load static props and character models (both .atr and .mtf) as well?
Indeed, I plan to support static and dynamic/animated meshes. There is some other information in the files as well regarding events, and if what I'm thinking is correct, then that stuff can be modified to affect the gameplay. If that's the case then I will have to do a lot of experimenting in order to find out what a lot of things mean. I'm afraid it will be a painstaking process when it comes to it. At the very least I plan to implement the following features:
-Windows and OS X executables (also Linux if anyone desires)
-Import 3D meshes from other formats
-Import textures for the meshes
-Export all data to common formats
-Move/scale/rotate objects
-Build lightmaps (a feature I think the Turok 4 engine has support for, judging from the presence of a "lightmaps" folder for some levels)
-Particle system creation/modification (if possible, it may very well be)
There are some limitations regarding the meshes though. Every mesh uses an index list for object rendering, and the index data type they use is a 16 bit integer, which means that there can only be up to 65,535 vertices per mesh.
I'm HOPING that there is no limitation on texture sizes, because that would mean that we couldn't improve the quality of the current textures in the game very much.
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AWESOME! I am in love with what I see and I will stay on board with this; way to go, Stinkee! :D
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This is really nice man just seeing the maps I especially like the starting place such a tease! I know there have been alot of attempts at getting some kind of level editor for Turok and to my knowledge none of them went through. This is the farthest I've seen one get hope you don't stop and keep going! Also, you could get a job doing this stuff it seems glad you are doing this first before you get to busy hehe :P
Honestly I don't think it matters if we can make the textures better or models. Turok Evolution looks pretty good as is actually, and I personally like old school better. Of course it would be awesome but its no big deal. If we had a level editor for Turok maybe we could have a user content section just as almost every other fps game of its time. Which would be amazing especially from a level design perspective ;)
Thanks keep up the work!
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This is the farthest I've seen one get hope you don't stop and keep going!
It's been less than a week, too. I hope it makes it twice as far by this time next week. I haven't been able to work on it much today because I was busy all day and now I'm kind of recovering from crashing on a couch for a few hours.
Also, you could get a job doing this stuff it seems glad you are doing this first before you get to busy hehe :P
That's the dream. Unfortunately I live in the middle of nowhere, New York. The best technology we have in this little section of the world are log splitters and ride-on lawn mowers. And as far as the people here are concerned, that's enough apparently. I'm not ready to leave yet either, but one day, I hope.
Turok Evolution looks pretty good as is actually, and I personally like old school better
Turok Evolution held the title of "favorite game" for longer than any video game before it or after it, for me. However, even the first time I played it so long ago I considered it a very ugly game. It seems kind of crude if you know what I mean. There definitely is a feel to it though that I would want to preserve. The unrealistic explosions of blood, gore, wooden chunks from boxes. The sometimes unfitting animations. The overall visual buggyness of the game. Have you ever shot a lizard or a frog at any point in the game? That's the kind of priceless thing about this game that I love.
I would like to see this game with high resolution textures and meshes without holes. And if I can find a way to enable multiplayer, that would be fantastic. More than better meshes and textures though I'd like to see some user created levels that are as good or better than the ones that come with the game.
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Yeah I really liked the creatures the snapping turtle is my favorite hehe
He is making his return now :)
http://www.turokforums.com/turok-evolution/turok-evlution-models-53/msg1162/#msg1162
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Well, I figured out the issues loading some of the level meshes. It turns out that there are a few different types of vertex data structures. The type of vertex structure for any given .MTF can be found by reading the third 32-bit integer of the OFNI (Info) block.
0 = 36 byte vertex
1 = Not sure yet, possibly for UI stuff, I encountered it while trying to load the cheats menu and haven't studied it yet
3 = 44 byte vertex (two extra floats, possibly UV coordinates for lightmaps, as this structure seems to only be present in levels with a lightmaps folder)
I've also made some not insignificant progress in connecting some of the strange unknown MTF data structures. I now know how to find corresponding textures with 100% accuracy, as well as corresponding data structures with a lot of unknown information which I'm sure will be useful in the future.
Let's celebrate with some screenshots:
(http://i.imgur.com/IMSpKxq.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/g6VrPRu.png)
What do you know, this thing actually has an inside.
(http://i.imgur.com/3wPDIzZ.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/HgD1ozS.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Z6OcS6G.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Y4wMKPm.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/w2kFEdf.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/ta0HMa9.png)
I guess the shelf on the wall in this room which the grenade guy stands on is a dynamic object? I wasn't expecting that.
(http://i.imgur.com/b5uWHbd.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/JKF3dTD.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/TJp0rJK.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/CElci8o.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/OVsrsdB.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/BHs0AZE.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/lEBV0l3.png)
I think this is the main menu screen, the file is titled "frontendbackground.atr".
(http://i.imgur.com/D018BSE.png)
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I am absolutely loving this did I say that yet? Really nice work history in the making in my eyes
I <3 <3 <3 this !
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Thank you so much for this tool my friend! Im going to try it! I really want to remake this in UE4!
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Wow! I'm impressed. Great work.
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Really nice work history in the making in my eyes
I hope you're right about that, because this is taking a minimal amount of effort for me compared to other things I've coded. Perhaps my future will not be as eventless and depressing and homeless as I had previously projected. I've never worked with a professional programming team in the actual games industry before so I have almost no reference level for how skilled I am.
Did you mean that I'm developing a nice work history, or that this is history in the making?
Thank you so much for this tool my friend! Im going to try it! I really want to remake this in UE4!
You're welcome. I'll post the windows/os x binaries and a quick set of instructions in the near future so that anyone who wants to look at things can have that chance without having to wait until it's done. Currently all you can do with it is fly through the level and look at stuff, but it is pretty cool to see how things look from perspectives not normally achievable through the game.
And thank you everyone who has said encouraging things about this project. Feels good man.
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One question, where I can download the viewer?
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Nowhere yet. If you're on a Mac then I can get you a version as soon as I get it working again, it's currently in a broken state between not having support for actor instances and having support for actor instances.
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I've made progress!
The program can now successfully load all types of formats except for the skeletal animation files (.AMC), unless I'm forgetting something.
Some notes on the formats (PC version):
-.MTF static models only
-.ATF animated models (only?)
-.ATR actor definition files (meshes, textures, actor properties referenced/defined here)
-.ATI actor instance data (only present with level files, defines actor placement, rotation,scale, and some other things I haven't figured all the way out yet)
Since I started this project with not much knowledge about the formats, my code is full of experimental and messy stuff and it's not optimally structured. So I'm going to rewrite the loading code and try to remove all of the bugs I can and then after that I will add support for displaying (not animating, yet) the animated meshes (tal'set, enemies, animals, dinosaurs). After that's completed I'll see what I can do about editing and saving the files again in a way that the T4 engine can read without crashing.
Enjoy these screenshots. Or don't. Some of them reveal some never before visualized (for the public) information such as camera placement, enemy "cover" positions, possibly enemy path markers? I'm not entirely sure what the green things are yet.
(http://imgur.com/UHsmXIj.png)
(http://imgur.com/e0t8dso.png)
(http://imgur.com/Wd2A08r.png)
(http://imgur.com/TFZjLmG.png)
(http://imgur.com/iR3SNj3.png)
(http://imgur.com/HHHH9V5.png)
(http://imgur.com/omLUHtq.png)
(http://imgur.com/fvYgVak.png)
Don't mind the Z-buffer fighting in the following images, or the rainbow textures. The rainbow is an animated color gradient texture that my rendering engine uses when objects that require textures are rendered without textures. Apparently there is a water plane with a texture and another one without one, I'm not sure what that's about either.
(http://imgur.com/AE33CvE.png)
(http://imgur.com/JVW83o3.png)
I also found this in the first level, I don't think I've ever seen this gun in the game before.
(http://i.imgur.com/7X6Iac7.png)
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Probably was a prototype of the minigun
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This is really amazing Stinkee you are awesome at this. I doubt anyone has seen this stuff before from this perspective, besides the development team of course. ^^
Also, its both. Your making a great work history plus making history. I am sure if you finish this and possibly some other stuff for Turok you could land a job somewhere since no one has really broke the universe of Turok coding and level editors etc etc. So its both keep it up!
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I can load most levels now complete with all of the static meshes and dynamic actors that are contained within it. I'm having some trouble with the index lists for the .ATF files though, you'll notice in each of the character models there will be some stretched polygons. I'm not entirely sure how the index lists (Header type CBUS) work yet.
Unfortunately I won't be able to have level/actor editing capabilities until I understand and can rebuild all of the data in any of the files exactly the way that the original engine tools did. I think I can do it, I might need to get back in contact with some people from Acclaim otherwise it could take a while if I don't get lucky.
Anyway, I've taken a bunch of screenshots for peeps to look at.
(http://i.imgur.com/MH3xBTd.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/lR50op0.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/8mgAF2a.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/msM62Ke.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/vvLIenj.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/0y825jj.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/DBf173m.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/I6gKCTc.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/O3Nsshm.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/izUzcIf.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/jAJruVX.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Irwz68s.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/8VNbt8X.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Xgfbvwc.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/C7j9odC.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/G6BYOps.png)
Here's a funny thing that happened:
(http://i.imgur.com/RNcp2iH.png)
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^ Well, I know what I'm going to have nightmares about for the rest of the month...
Dude, this is crazy awesome what you're doing here. Keep up the good work!
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Don't worry Stinkee take your time :) its amazing I don't think another word could quite explain this.
^ Well, I know what I'm going to have nightmares about for the rest of the month...
Yes nightmares of Tal'Chest :P
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I am amazed to see how much work you've accomplished in such a short time. Very impressive! It's really neat to see pinpoint locations where everything has been set at in each level. Especially with that unused minigun, what map is that placed in?
Also, are there any placements for ambient sounds in any of the maps or did the developers code them in?
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that unused minigun, what map is that placed in?
Also, are there any placements for ambient sounds in any of the maps or did the developers code them in?
Actually, the mini gun thing seems to be in more than just one level. I've noticed it in the very beginning of a few levels now.
Also, There are some meshless actors which I think might be for things like what you mentioned. Of the meshless actors I know for a fact there are lights, I haven't bothered yet to connect those to my rendering engine for authentic Turok lighting. I have to explore the .ATR files for the meshless actors before I can know what they are and display them properly in the viewer, unless some things are named descriptively enough to give hints.
Something tells me that the programmers just hard coded the ambient noise functions to play throughout each level regardless of player location. I think that the actual audio file name must be listed somewhere, somehow within the level definitions, but I haven't seen any references to it.
The apparent lack of evidence of sound information could be evidence of the possibility that sounds are referenced by a unique ID number rather than a descriptive name or file name. If you check the sounds directory all sounds in the game are named using numbers rather than more descriptive names. There could have been some internal enumeration or external data file that associated these numbers with actual game events, the original level editor could have used something like this to give the level creators the ability to choose what sounds to use for what.
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I Am intrested to see what happens to the indians at the beginning of the level with the baboons before the slegs kill them
What part of which level is that? I haven't played the game through in a long time.
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It's the third level of Chapter 1; I guess it'd be pod01_03_ttjungle? At the player spawn, there's a river that must be followed around to the left, and on the bank just before the waterfall, there are Sleg Scouts pumping some River Villagers full of bullets.
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It's the third level of Chapter 1; I guess it'd be pod01_03_ttjungle? At the player spawn, there's a river that must be followed around to the left, and on the bank just before the waterfall, there are Sleg Scouts pumping some River Villagers full of bullets.
"Hah hah hah. We don't even need weapons!"
I remember that part. I thought he meant Slegs killing baboons. I'll upload a screenshot of that scene when I get back to my code.
EDIT:
(http://i.imgur.com/BMwAdT3.png)
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Nice progress!
Maybe you could make it into a whole game editor?
If you need any help with anything, I'm up for it.
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Nice progress!
Maybe you could make it into a whole game editor?
If you need any help with anything, I'm up for it.
That's the plan, Stan.
It wouldn't hurt to have a second programmer, I'm using C++. You'd need to install cmake in order to generate the project files if you use one of the supported IDEs. Everything is already portable from OS X to Windows so that wouldn't be a problem. You also of course would need to have Turok: Evolution installed. The tool takes a .ATR file and the path of the Turok installation as arguments. The ATR file can be anywhere, it doesn't have to be loaded directly from the Turok data directory.
Another thing I could use more help with is figuring out what the majority of the data means. It's usually pretty easy to identify some kind of structure among the bytes of data using a hex editor, but once I figure a block of data out I still have no idea what most of the values mean.
So if you want to do either of those things then I'll send you a link to a github repository that contains all of the code.
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Yeah teamwork can make the dream work sounds cliche ha but think about it whenever there is winning there is a team :P Well Stinkee progress is really good whether you hit a wall or not I appreciate what your doing keep it up :)
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I've compiled the tool for windows and attached an archive containing the program, a brief instructional text, and a .bat file to make running the program more convenient since it's technically a command line tool.
All you should need to do is copy the level .ATR file which you want to load into the directory named "Resources" and rename the file to "Test.atr", then run "Run.bat". If that doesn't work, check if your installation of Turok: Evolution is in "C:/Program Files (x86)/Turok Evolution". If it's not, update Run.bat with the path that Turok is installed to. It must be in quotes.
Depending on how many actors are in the level (including bushes, enemies, animals, trees, etc), it might take a minute or two to load, but typically for me it loads in seconds. Let me know how it works out. Don't hesitate to post screenshots of anything you find curious or interesting.
The controls are simple, WSAD for moving around and use your mouse for rotating the camera.
Oh and sometimes turning the camera left/right is inverted, because the camera spawned upside down. I'm not sure why this happens yet, but if it happens to you, do this:
Turn around horizontally ~180 degrees, turn vertically ~180 degrees. Then just look around to relocate the level.
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I've been playing with this off an on today, and I've been enjoying your work. Excellent job! Of course, I keep trying to open non-level .atr files, hoping that one will work, but alas. :P
I haven't found anything weird yet, but I love how the Brachiosaur in "Jungle Hunter" is just kinda floating outside of the level boundaries. You keep floatin' on, buddy.
You said to let you know when we find a level that crashes the viewer, so in the interest of small-ish post sizes, I'll refrain from copy-pasting the full output log and just tell you that Pod 12's sc-12-b crashed. There were a couple of others, but I didn't write them down and that one's the only one I remember off hand.
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I'm glad you're enjoying it. There are some pretty funky placements of things I've noticed. In the one multiplayer level with the trains there is a cage floating way off in nowhere. My only guess is that that is used as a moving part and is placed when the engine initializes the level. I wonder if it is used to drop on opponents? I didn't see that in the PS2 version anywhere.
Thanks for the information, I'll get to debugging and report here if I find anything interesting worth sharing.
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Nice progress!
Maybe you could make it into a whole game editor?
If you need any help with anything, I'm up for it.
That's the plan, Stan.
It wouldn't hurt to have a second programmer, I'm using C++. You'd need to install cmake in order to generate the project files if you use one of the supported IDEs. Everything is already portable from OS X to Windows so that wouldn't be a problem. You also of course would need to have Turok: Evolution installed. The tool takes a .ATR file and the path of the Turok installation as arguments. The ATR file can be anywhere, it doesn't have to be loaded directly from the Turok data directory.
Another thing I could use more help with is figuring out what the majority of the data means. It's usually pretty easy to identify some kind of structure among the bytes of data using a hex editor, but once I figure a block of data out I still have no idea what most of the values mean.
So if you want to do either of those things then I'll send you a link to a github repository that contains all of the code.
Look I made an account!
Since I hopped off skype I'll post here. I actually think I'll have to personally give read / edit access to the repo or make it public, since it's private at the moment. Maybe we should make a seperate repo with the renderer binaries pulled in and just the turok editor source code with some simple cmake config files and maybe even bat scripts to simplify the project generation process. Also I'm not sure if we're ready to unveil the renderer source code yet with no documentation and such, the build process and potential errors could be too obscure. Another reason would be to keep the renderer repo clean and populated only with tests and engine code, since the code might change and break old projects we only want working binaries in the viewer.
For all those who don't know me and are probably wondering why I just popped into existence, hello I'm djdduty. I'm a long term professional and hobbyist programmer who has worked on some projects with Stinkee in the past, including our current renderer project (Even though he's done most of the work since I've been lazy as far as hobby coding has gone lately). Keep in mind the turok viewer / editor is ENTIRELY him, I dropped out of existence for a month or two and have no part in it. That said I would like to help on the project since you all have made me personally excited, seeing as how you all are looking forward to a potential modding tool so much, it seems like a big deal to you and I love being a part of things especially for a community like this.
Hopefully this forum post ensures that I live up to my words and I remain motivated.
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Welcome! And hell yeah we are looking forward to this! Thanks for coming to help Stinkee. Even though he is moving really fast with this. The more help the better! And more interesting people is great.
Btw Stinkee really nice work so far damn dude that fast progress. I mean I didn't expect what you have so far un till a few months.
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Welcome! And hell yeah we are looking forward to this! Thanks for coming to help Stinkee. Even though he is moving really fast with this. The more help the better! And more interesting people is great.
Btw Stinkee really nice work so far damn dude that fast progress. I mean I didn't expect what you have so far un till a few months.
Well I mean, he doesn't really need my help as you can see so far. But I'm just offering to do so since it looks like a lot of fun to work on and he always gets to have all the fun!
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Yes join in on Stinkee's fun, plus if you two worked together before then that is great :D Really though, the more help the better on this project. Its moving along in a lovely manner. If people are able to produce user maps for Turok it will be a first I believe, or am I wrong?
Either way I know some people of this forum and even outside of it will be grateful and it will help ensure eternity in Turok whether they release a new game or not. Good luck breaking the last bits of code that is needed!
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Yes join in on Stinkee's fun, plus if you two worked together before then that is great :D Really though, the more help the better on this project. Its moving along in a lovely manner. If people are able to produce user maps for Turok it will be a first I believe, or am I wrong?
Either way I know some people of this forum and even outside of it will be grateful and it will help ensure eternity in Turok whether they release a new game or not. Good luck breaking the last bits of code that is needed!
I'll leave the file parsing to Stinkee, he's always been way better at serialization than I have and I would have a lot to catch up on the file formats with his current progress.
I can expect to do interface work, object manipulation, rendering, optimization, that type of stuff. As an example currently there is a lot of optimization stuff that never got put into the renderer and so the viewer seems to be suffering from less than ideal frame rates despite the lack of any real dynamic shaders (if anyone has noticed this). I never got around to finishing the culling code, for example, but that would speed it up by an extremely significant amount. I won't go in to details now but once we get a repository set up specifically for this project I'll probably have a huge amount of tasks on there, having a plan keeps me organized.
I am a pretty busy guy as far as schedule goes, so it might be a few days before I have anything to show, but I'll try to organize a plan with Stinkee later today.
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Hello djdduty, I see you've met my Turok friends. I'm glad you've taken a liking to this project. Plenty of fun to go around. Of course now that you're here I have to admit that in earlier posts I referred to the rendering engine as "mine" simply because it was easier than saying "the rendering engine my friend and I built". But in fact it was a joint effort, not just me.
In other news, I have made contact with one of the engine programmers from Acclaim during the Turok 4 days. I'll report back if I find out any new and useful information about the Turok 4 engine (Quagmire engine?) or the game files.
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Hello djdduty, I see you've met my Turok friends. I'm glad you've taken a liking to this project. Plenty of fun to go around. Of course now that you're here I have to admit that in earlier posts I referred to the rendering engine as "mine" simply because it was easier than saying "the rendering engine my friend and I built". But in fact it was a joint effort, not just me.
In other news, I have made contact with one of the engine programmers from Acclaim during the Turok 4 days. I'll report back if I find out any new and useful information about the Turok 4 engine (Quagmire engine?) or the game files.
Just because I'm at work doesn't mean I'm not on skype, you can chat with me there as usual if you have messages directed at me. And don't worry, I understand / don't care about how you refer to the renderer, you've done most of the work anyway.
If you've started documents / graphs on the headers and format of the file types, it'd be awesome if we can start some documentation on de-serializing their file types, and include any useful information from them there? I've seen you layout some things in a couple posts here but maybe we should gather that into a usable reference resource or something that any programmer can use.
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So other then just Turok Evolution, you are actually creating an entire engine but making it able to work with Evolution at the same time? Funny name for it to :P
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So other then just Turok Evolution, you are actually creating an entire engine but making it able to work with Evolution at the same time? Funny name for it to :P
No, We're not coupling the engine with Turok specifically in any way. Basically a few months back Stinkee and I set out to create a renderer. We had made entire game engines before and we always get caught up in certain features so we set our goals a bit differently, this time we were going to make JUST the Renderer with all the abstraction, flexibility, and modern rendering features like physically based rendering that it would need to be easily plugged in to any project or engine down the road, for any programmers, not just us. So far it's going really well other than me slacking off.
Long story short Stinkee decided to use it in this project because it would save a lot of time, which means we get to develop both of them alongside eachother but the Renderer itself doesn't actually have anything to do with Turok, that's just the code Stinkee wrote on top of it to parse all the game files. We can't really use the Renderer to it's full potential in this project because the basic rendering style of Turok Evolution so you can basically disregard the Renderer, but maybe we'll play around with something in the future.
I don't think we've said the name of the Renderer anywhere. "Quagmire" engine was referring to the original Turok Evolution Engine. Our Renderer is called "Silk", a bit odd but we like it.
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The Quagmire engine was also the name of the engine Acclaim used for some of their sports titles, starting with NFL Quarterback Club '98, I believe.
EDIT: Was it Quagmire that was used for Evolution? I'd always assumed they'd heavily repurposed the Turok engine. Again.
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The Quagmire engine was also the name of the engine Acclaim used for some of their sports titles, starting with NFL Quarterback Club '98, I believe.
EDIT: Was it Quagmire that was used for Evolution? I'd always assumed they'd heavily repurposed the Turok engine. Again.
Stinkee said he did some digging around in the binary and found a reference(s) to Quagmire, so I assume so. He would know more about this since he discovered it.
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This is really good! Well I plan to open the level viewer over this weekend so I can't wait for that. If I see anything unusual I will let you know. Keep up the good work. Good luck, please, and thanks :)
That's great you guys are working on a full rendering program. So is this going to also help programmers with reverse engineering on other projects and stuff of that manner? Silk is a cool name to btw.
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Greetings comrades. I've updated the original post in this thread to make the status of this project more clear in less time than it takes to browse the posts and collect the information yourself. I hope this is acceptable. It's also for me to keep track of what is done and what needs to be done.
I haven't made much progress on the binary side of things in the past few days, I've been working on preparing the rendering engine for a more clean user experience so that you can hopefully browse and edit levels without dealing with ridiculously low frame rates. While I've been working on that, djdduty has been working on preparing the rendering engine for the creation of the tool's user interface as well as helping me with increasing the frame rates. These changes will be available for observing in the next revision which I'll add to the original post as soon as it's ready.
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This is just me being curious, but is Revision A different from the version you posted a few days ago? And would it be possible for you to write up some patch notes whenever you post a new version?
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This is just me being curious, but is Revision A different from the version you posted a few days ago? And would it be possible for you to write up some patch notes whenever you post a new version?
Nope, it's the same build. And yes I can do that, good idea. The next revision is almost complete so I'll update the post probably later today with the new build and a change list.
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Nope, it's the same build. And yes I can do that, good idea. The next revision is almost complete so I'll update the post probably later today with the new build and a change list.
I'm most likely going to break the repo later today / this weekend with all my changes to the UI Manager, so let me know if you want me to wait and create a build first. But if you've finished the new input code then I should be able to resolve the undoubtedly huge list of conflicts in a reasonable amount of time and rebuild with some ui stuff, I'm sure some ui statistics output would be useful to have and used for feedback. If you want I think we should just wait to make the build (to avoid updating constantly) for a little longer.
We might even be able to eliminate the command line arguments / needing to place the atr file in the binary directory with the inclusion of a state that asks for the turok path and a level selection list, but again it would push a build back into the weekend, it's up to you if you want to wait.
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Something I made for this out of fun.
I know its not there yet but I can dream :P
(https://duke64nukem.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/turok-evolutionle.jpg)
Keep up the good work!
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@Duke64: Well my friend, at least we are very close to that!
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That looks great Duke! Hopefully we will be able to work with an editor soon! :D
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Yep and thanks to :P but even if it were to be unsuccessful I don't mind its already pretty cool viewing, but its like a teaser feels like its there hehe no pressure. But Stinkee showing up and trying his hardest and having help from djduty and encouragement from you all here is good enough :) Time is valuable hehe spending it on Turok.
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Well yeah a hole lot was done so quickly and we witnessed it. Awesome so far :D
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Okay, quick update for you guys since it's now the end of the weekend.
Currently Stinkee and I are working on Silk (The rendering engine), and as that is the core of the viewer / editor it means direct improvements there as well. We are adding some much needed features and performance fixes. When a new build is posted an actual changelog will be made, but for now I'll tell you what we are working on, just to keep you in the loop. Throughout the week we finished up object Culling to cut down on the number of draw calls each frame and thus increase performance, it's not the most streamlined culling at the moment but it's much better than before. This weekend I started on re-doing the little UI code we had to make it in to something usable, I got a little carried away with it but we are back to a nice code interface, so UI stuff should be up and running quickly. Also we relocated some input management code so that we can more easily use that in the future. At this very moment Stinkee is finishing up a new feature, that is the post processing steps. This means that we can now add things like FXAA and other neat post processes, but might not affect T4Viewer so much beyond that.
Stinkee still has a long way to go on figuring out the various file formats, so exporting files might be a little while off. The next big improvements you guys should see are ui, importing files directly into the viewer rather than having to use command line arguments and weird file placement, and visual changes. Soon we will try to emulate the Turok lighting and make some more performance improvements as well. We're also going to move the Viewer into it's own repository that anyone is free to view and contribute to if you want, but we're waiting until we stop overhauling silk all the time as it would be a pain to have to constantly update the library binaries.
Anyway, sorry for the slow-ish weekend, time really does fly some times!
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That sounds like quite a bit was done again, great job! Technical outcomes are normally slower then visual. Especially when the technical stuff effects/improves the visual side of things as well as the inner core stuff :D I just hope you know, we don't just support the T4 viewer/level editor we also support Silk or whatever you guys do :)
Also, nice picture Duke it rocks :)
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Holy shit! this is really awesome I wish you all luck! Even I would like to look into level making for this man. I have always wondered why there was absolutely no level editor or mod tools for any Turok game :/ The viewer is freaking awesome.
(sorry for cussing but this rocks)
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Nice progress!
Maybe you could make it into a whole game editor?
If you need any help with anything, I'm up for it.
That's the plan, Stan.
It wouldn't hurt to have a second programmer, I'm using C++. You'd need to install cmake in order to generate the project files if you use one of the supported IDEs. Everything is already portable from OS X to Windows so that wouldn't be a problem. You also of course would need to have Turok: Evolution installed. The tool takes a .ATR file and the path of the Turok installation as arguments. The ATR file can be anywhere, it doesn't have to be loaded directly from the Turok data directory.
Another thing I could use more help with is figuring out what the majority of the data means. It's usually pretty easy to identify some kind of structure among the bytes of data using a hex editor, but once I figure a block of data out I still have no idea what most of the values mean.
So if you want to do either of those things then I'll send you a link to a github repository that contains all of the code.
I'd have to find my T4 disk, then. Defiantly something I could work on, on my free time.
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The jungles, nature, and trees of this game are also lovely. Being able to view them like this is unique, thanks Stinkee keep up good work
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Do my eyes deceive me ? You got to be joking this is awesome! You surely could get a job like this dude, please keep it up please!
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Progress update time, time is flying.
It's been a bit slow, Stinkee and I are still re-working a lot of things in the renderer. Again, it is mostly features that won't affect very much in the turok viewer since it all has to do with better rendering quality such as post processing and deferred shading. However, I feel it is necessary to get the renderer interface really nailed down before we start a big project with it and have to refactor code as we go. T4Viewer will already need some maintenance to get it running correctly again with all the changes we made but hopefully we can bring you guys another build soon as promised ( before I so rudely suggested on waiting until UI was done... my fault on that :P ).
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Oh its okay you guys take the time that is needed to make this perfect while setting up your rendering. Hey, the technical stuff is a high priority for this kind of stuff so no need to apologize or rush. From the way it looks, Stinkee kicked out some stuff earlier on to keep us interested for awhile at least for me. Thanks for an update dude.
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Like Dinomite say, I recommend you to conservate the old versions. One question, the level viewer also open fly levels?
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I found my T4, I'll check out the source.
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This is pretty awesome, I personally would rather a editor for Turok 1 or 2 but hey I will take it for this to. Don't get me wrong I love Evolution also. I just like the classic games more :) Hope that this goes through guys keep going :)
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I bet they already thought of putting older versions in archives or something similar ;) But yeah it is a good idea.
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I like someone does this to turok 2 to. i would do if i knew anything about programing but i don't :'(
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Hello everyone, sorry for the lack of activity.. The lacktivity. I am just experiencing a little bit of a side effect of too many programming binges too close together. When I spend too much time in the zone it is kind of hard to get back into it once I take a short break. It's been slowish. As djdduty said, we've been working on the renderer lately. We haven't forgotten about the Turok viewer, though. I don't have much to offer you in terms of progress on the viewer, but I have two screenshots of a turok level using our new deferred renderer with SSAO and antialiasing enabled. It doesn't mean much for this project, but it's kind of interesting to see how things look. These by default will not be enabled for the viewer when I release it, since it would not be accurately displaying the Turok level as it will appear in game, however if anyone would like I could make it possible to enable post processing effects.
(http://i.imgur.com/AJpb12E.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/vwsp6cK.jpg)
Here are those two scenes again without using any post processing:
(http://i.imgur.com/27PgT0q.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/WWo7DoW.png)
There are obviously some erroneous regions of those images, but it's still in the works.
I won't make any promises for later this week because I know how time just slips away from me, but expect the next update to have some new features that everyone can enjoy.
I Think you should archive old versions of the program. Alot of old programs and games did it like for example Sonic Robo Blast 2.
By that do you mean the code? We use a code repository for all our source code which pretty much means that we indeed have old versions archived. Other than that, I planned on leaving all of the built packages pinned to the original post even as new ones roll out.
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It is okay to take your time in fact good things don't just happen overnight. Keep it up man and good luck with your render engine to, I also look forward to see how that turns out. If it helps with Turok Evolution then its pretty good I imagine.
I want to go swimming in that water hole gators or not :P
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The post processing actually makes it look pretty damn good actually 8) I can recognize/remember these shots because there early on in the game. I wonder where the baboons are, are they shoved in a corner or are they just respawn actors that activate upon trying to get the key?
Hello everyone, sorry for the lack of activity.. The lacktivity. I am just experiencing a little bit of a side effect of too many programming binges too close together. When I spend too much time in the zone it is kind of hard to get back into it once I take a short break. It's been slowish. As djdduty said, we've been working on the renderer lately. We haven't forgotten about the Turok viewer, though. I don't have much to offer you in terms of progress on the viewer, but I have two screenshots of a turok level using our new deferred renderer with SSAO and antialiasing enabled.
I know the exact feeling one day I am neck deep into something then I get so much done that i'm overwhelmed so I take a break and then it becomes hard to get out of that break but you will be fine :P You have already done so much in such short time and thanks for the efforts.
Question: Would said renderer be of any use or help to get Turok 1 level viewer to be a level editor?
It is okay to take your time in fact good things don't just happen overnight. Keep it up man and good luck with your render engine to, I also look forward to see how that turns out. If it helps with Turok Evolution then its pretty good I imagine.
I want to go swimming in that water hole gators or not :P
Duke if you go swimming in there you might not come back out lol But true great things don't develop themselves and they also don't happen over night :)
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I come bearing updates this day, glorious updates.
I have written the code to save the actor transformations, and made a simple way to move objects around. In the current build, you can only translate dynamic objects. No rotations or scaling yet, and only dynamic objects because most of the static objects are huge and caused annoying problems when trying to click on small things. Once there is a UI there will be an option to enable static object selection. There will also be a way to rotate and scale objects of course.
Controls:
-W: Forward
-S: Backward
-A: Left
-D: Right
-Left Click: Select/drag dynamic objects (Must hold button down)
Warning:
Remember to back up the .ATI file of the level you're editing or else you'll need to reinstall in order to put it back to its original state, or PM someone for a clean copy.
Notes:
-In order to enable antialiasing, rename "FinalDeferredPass.mtrl" to "FinalDeferredPassNoFxaa.mtrl" (It's hacky, I know)
-It's kind of difficult to place actors precisely due to the way the camera works and the actors translating just a little bit when you click on them.
-Some actors are "immune" to being moved around, they are automatically moved somewhere else when the level loads. Trees and plants seem to always work, as do power ups and weapons. Some enemies can also be moved.
-This is all kind of crude at the moment, but I figure it would be worth it to let this out now as a kind of... appetizer.
-It is possible to "break" the game by moving objects. I discovered this by placing a dinosaur on the bridge at the start of level one.
Here are some screenshots:
These two are from a level I edited and then played on
(http://i.imgur.com/pEXHNKv.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Ge3ZATf.png)
The mysterious intro screen lizard:
(http://i.imgur.com/mvmG0d9.png)
I've never seen one of these guys up close
(http://i.imgur.com/PRQAglv.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/2WEFpHe.png)
I placed him at a wall so that as soon as the level starts he will explode.
(http://i.imgur.com/NNUcemb.png)
I'll add the build files to the original post of this thread.
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Wow Stinkee, simply amazing job so far I honestly still can't believe this is close to happening. With Turok on the rise with the HD remakes and now a possible level editor for Turok Evolution? I am stunned and shocked at the sudden jump for Turok :D Well so far thanks so much for your efforts here can't wait to check it out omg yeah I can see you added some stuff to the start of the first level xD Well I see great things coming from and for this... you rock :P
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(http://i.imgur.com/pEXHNKv.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Ge3ZATf.png)
Do these use your post processing effects? Btw amazing work man seriously.
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Do these use your post processing effects? Btw amazing work man seriously.
No, those are in-game screenshots. In the future I would like to explore the possibility of "baking" the ambient occlusion onto high resolution textures for each level, but this would require duplicating all of the textures used in a level for each level. So it would require a lot more space on the hard drive. It could be worth it though to make the game look better.
Also thank you, there's more to come.
Here are some features I am expecting to have implemented in the next build:
-Easier and more precise actor movement
-Easy way to rotate/scale actors
-Ability to load new actors and place them throughout the levels (might be very tricky)
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Damn looks like I check the thread at the right time. Hey dude this is super work! love those screenshots I am going to check it out man. Thanks for keeping up with this.
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...
(http://i.imgur.com/pEXHNKv.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/Ge3ZATf.png)
I couldn't help it, I wanted to see what the ambient occlusion and fxaa contributed to this scene... I got a little carried away but it works surprisingly well other than some exagerated halos (I turned the contribution and radius WAY up), I think we were stressing in our test cases too much.
(http://i.imgur.com/iLAWFx2.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/uoxT0j9.jpg)
(http://i.imgur.com/0ZUeufA.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/An69Hju.jpg)
It takes away most of the flatness that turok feels like it has, this scene doesn't even have lighting and it looks good. I like it. If you guys would like Ambient occlusion available as a post process let me / us know, it isn't the most optimized at the moment so we need to spend time optimizing it in order to make it more practical, and we can have some sort of interface for enabling them later on?
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So do to some *cough* unfortunate circumstances *cough* the culling and speed improvement that we mentioned was accidentally not working in the build at the moment, but this gives me a chance to show you guys what we mean by speed improvements through some screenshots!
Below is a side by side comparison of the render data before and after the culling takes affect, hz is just a fancy way for programmers to try and sound smart when they really mean fps. The millisecond calculation doesn't line up because that's going by the current frame, whereas the frame rate is the average frames per second over time.
(http://i.imgur.com/amm25vm.jpg)
Also, UI! (Coming soon)
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I like the effects added to it, just looks better I think you should do both versions if possible. But either way the frame rates are much better with the effects. So overall I think that should be the deciding factor. But you know maybe some people want it how it was, me personally I would prefer it to be with the post processing, effects, and fast frame rates. This just made my day :)
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I like the effects added to it, just looks better I think you should do both versions if possible. But either way the frame rates are much better with the effects. So overall I think that should be the deciding factor. But you know maybe some people want it how it was, me personally I would prefer it to be with the post processing, effects, and fast frame rates. This just made my day :)
The added post processing effects actually slow the program down considerably, or we would have them enabled by default. The frame rate increase is due to the fact that before we were rendering every object in the scene all the time, and now we only render what's on screen. This feature will be enabled all the time no matter what as it doesn't change anything visually and it provides large performance gains. The post processes aren't optimized, so they bring the frame rate down all the way to 40 frames a second or so on my computer(down from 400fps), but if there is interest we can work on optimizing them.
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The added post processing effects actually slow the program down considerably, or we would have them enabled by default. The frame rate increase is due to the fact that before we were rendering every object in the scene all the time, and now we only render what's on screen. This feature will be enabled all the time no matter what as it doesn't change anything visually and it provides large performance gains. The post processes are really optimized, so they bring the frame rate down all the way to 40 frames a second or so on my computer(down from 400fps), but if there is interest we can work on optimizing them.
That sounds like a good idea to make it only render whats on screen rather then the entire environment you are in. If it doesn't change the visuals and speeds up the games quality then that's surely the way to go with this. I personally like the idea of keeping it original because I think we would rather have this sooner then later plus it makes less work load on you guys. If anything work on that post processing stuff after all is well and in place for what you have planned. But it doesn't hurt to add that especially if optimized, either way I am sure people will be happy. This is very exciting to watch grow, love the work guys keep it up please!
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... I personally like the idea of keeping it original because ...
That's the idea, we are really just playing around with some modern rendering techniques to see what it looks like and add the features to our renderer, but the plan is to keep the original look. Currently Stinkee is investigating their lighting model to accurately re-produce their lighting and all the original shaders so that it looks more accurate. I am continuing to investigate performance of everything to see if I can make it even faster for everyone, but don't worry the basis for saving more advanced changes and the user interface is also in the works.
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Sounds good man! I wish I could program and be apart of this in helping 8) But programming is very hard to learn without years of focus for it. Either way it is really up to you guys we will be pretty much happy either way. At least I know I will be :) This rocks honestly, just think about it there has never been a way to create anything for Turok ever. We are talking about since 1997 this is far to long. So really I look forward to this kind of thing.
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Sounds good man! I wish I could program and be apart of this in helping 8) But programming is very hard to learn without years of focus for it. Either way it is really up to you guys we will be pretty much happy either way. At least I know I will be :) This rocks honestly, just think about it there has never been a way to create anything for Turok ever. We are talking about since 1997 this is far to long. So really I look forward to this kind of thing.
You just have to believe in yourself. :) I know you can do it
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Speaking of the lighting, I have a question for either or both of you: how broken is the PC version's lighting? It's something that's always bugged me. All of the foliage looks like it's fullbright, the muzzle flashes don't reflect onto the environment, and some textures, like the temples in Chapter 6, are glowing pretty obnoxiously (http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/turok/images/d/d4/Animalia_%2828%29.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150505023334). The console versions don't have these problems. So I'm wondering, since you guys are poking around in the game's files anyway, what's different with the PC version? Was it that there was some code that never made it during the porting process, or is something just not checked to "yes"? :P
EDIT: Also, I think maybe Revision A was re-uploaded in place of Revision B. Unless I'm just missing something, which is entirely possible. :V
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Speaking of the lighting, I have a question for either or both of you: how broken is the PC version's lighting? It's something that's always bugged me. All of the foliage looks like it's fullbright, the muzzle flashes don't reflect onto the environment, and some textures, like the temples in Chapter 6, are glowing pretty obnoxiously (http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/turok/images/d/d4/Animalia_%2828%29.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150505023334). The console versions don't have these problems. So I'm wondering, since you guys are poking around in the game's files anyway, what's different with the PC version? Was it that there was some code that never made it during the porting process, or is something just not checked to "yes"? :P
The temples in Chapter 6 are like that for me as well and I thought it was some sort of texture error. I have also noticed some environment lighting doesn't match up in most of the levels either. It could be that the port to the PC was rushed and not thoroughly tested before release. Hopefully the community might be able to come up with some sort of fix for some of these bugs!
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Speaking of the lighting, I have a question for either or both of you: how broken is the PC version's lighting? It's something that's always bugged me. All of the foliage looks like it's fullbright, the muzzle flashes don't reflect onto the environment, and some textures, like the temples in Chapter 6, are glowing pretty obnoxiously (http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/turok/images/d/d4/Animalia_%2828%29.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20150505023334). The console versions don't have these problems. So I'm wondering, since you guys are poking around in the game's files anyway, what's different with the PC version? Was it that there was some code that never made it during the porting process, or is something just not checked to "yes"? :P
Judging from some information I've found in the shader files (Turok/data/effects/) I'd say that the lighting is very limited in terms of functionality. It seems to me that even though they have files and naming conventions that suggest they have support for point lights, the shader code I've seen and the files I've analyzed suggest that, in the PC version at least, there is only directional lighting and ambient lighting. I think I also saw something about "self luminance" somewhere, and if that's the case then I'd imagine that's a factor behind that building lighting up. Otherwise my next guess would be a light map error. I'll post more information about this investigation into the lighting methods once I discover it.
EDIT: Also, I think maybe Revision A was re-uploaded in place of Revision B. Unless I'm just missing something, which is entirely possible. :V
Does it select things when you click on them? I am almost certain that I uploaded the correct file. I'll test it once I get back to my PC.
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Alright, so the revision B I uploaded was indeed a copy of revision A, I fixed it in the first post, here's the link http://www.mediafire.com/download/rdy7fc0wpej9l7c/T4Viewer%283%29.zip (http://www.mediafire.com/download/rdy7fc0wpej9l7c/T4Viewer%283%29.zip)
I have rewritten the loading code now that I understand the format a little better than when I started, and now all of the data that can be understood can easily be modified and saved to the .ATI files (where the actor transforms and other actor instance specific data is located).
And more good news: from the looks of it, the actor variables data structure contains A LOT of meaningful data that can easily be manipulated once we write the UI code.
Here are some examples of data that can now be modified:
-The maximum radius around an object that sounds emitted from it can be heard from
-"Close range distance", seems to be only present in enemy actor variables, possibly the maximum distance that melee attacks will be successful with
-Health (health at spawn maybe?)
-Maximum health
-Whether or not the actor ignores the player
-Whether or not the actor will attack when "provoked"
-"FDMULT", possibly damage multiplier?
-"COLLIDES", possibly whether or not the actor is included in the physics simulation
-"ALWAYSRUN", possibly whether or not the actor runs everywhere rather than walks
-Rotation speed around the y axis, used for ammo and other pickups which normally rotate slowly above the ground
-Light color
-Light intensity
Here is a list of actor data for anyone interested in seeing where I'm getting all of this from: http://m.uploadedit.com/ba3k/1443897237976.txt (http://m.uploadedit.com/ba3k/1443897237976.txt)
Edit:
(http://i.imgur.com/csOZArz.png)
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From what I know things are moving great here instead of just viewing it, you can interact and trust me just looking at models is a big tease I know. Interacting is a great sign. I really look forward to the stuff you are implementing. Thanks because I really would make some levels for sure keep it up. But the project has been very interesting to follow so far :)
Did you post them yourself there? These guys are funny here :P
(https://duke64nukem.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/tev.png)
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From what I know things are moving great here instead of just viewing it, you can interact and trust me just looking at models is a big tease I know. Interacting is a great sign. I really look forward to the stuff you are implementing. Thanks because I really would make some levels for sure keep it up. But the project has been very interesting to follow so far :)
Did you post them yourself there? These guys are funny here :P
I placed them there just for fun. Also, I think I now have the ability to actually add other actors to a level. My next updates will be to the UI. I plan to add a nice scrollable view of every actor in the game. Something like this:
(http://media.moddb.com/images/games/1/1/233/gmod10_props.jpg)
That could be used to select actors to add to a level. This is fine for editing existing levels, but it won't get REALLY interesting until I find a way to import meshes from 3D editors to make new objects and new levels.
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I'm hoping I'm not showing you anything you don't already know about, but I noticed that sometimes the Viewer decides that it only wants to render the part of the model that is furthest away from the camera. I don't really know how else to explain it other than saying that the nearest faces turn invisible.
As some examples, this (http://i.imgur.com/5AVzfOb.jpg) is from pod02_03_flighttraining, and this (http://i.imgur.com/cajiFLn.jpg) is from pod01_01_ttjungle (it's way more noticeable when you're actually floating around the model). Again, sorry if you already knew about this, but I thought that I'd bring it to your attention.
Also, I'm super excited for a Garry's Mod-esque actor menu.
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I'm hoping I'm not showing you anything you don't already know about, but I noticed that sometimes the Viewer decides that it only wants to render the part of the model that is furthest away from the camera. I don't really know how else to explain it other than saying that the nearest faces turn invisible.
As some examples, this (http://i.imgur.com/5AVzfOb.jpg) is from pod02_03_flighttraining, and this (http://i.imgur.com/cajiFLn.jpg) is from pod01_01_ttjungle (it's way more noticeable when you're actually floating around the model). Again, sorry if you already knew about this, but I thought that I'd bring it to your attention.
Also, I'm super excited for a Garry's Mod-esque actor menu.
No need to be sorry, feedback is important. I didn't realize that it was that way until after I uploaded it. It's a very simple fix and I think djdduty may have already fixed it as it doesn't look that way for me anymore. That was my fault I think, I was messing with glCullFace and forgot to clean up after myself.
Once I implement a better method of moving objects around I'll upload another build.
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I Dont wanna sound weird but could you possibly do a test of the maximum actor limit in a level by placing a HUGE amount of monkeys in the level and firing it up later?
That'll make for a great screenshot. Though, recent discoveries lead me to believe that there is no limit on the number of actors other than available RAM. I do want to do that now just because, once I implement the ability to add/duplicate actors.
Also, here are some screenshots of the UI I've been working on:
(http://i.imgur.com/eBrR8m2.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/m0i3M97.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/6eyjQoS.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/gI6De0e.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/yQxypqb.png)
The values you see are not yet editable, but they provide some neat insights to how the game works.
In the future these values will be easily changeable by clicking on them and just entering a new value. They will also be saved to the level to be tested with the game.
After that, a better move/scale/rotate tool, and the ability to add/delete actors I think it would be accurate to say that the project is more than half way completed.
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Closer and closer man keep it up. This is really awesome it just gets better each time dude. You know I bet people could even edit an existing map in the game and change it so much that it would be hard to notice just saying :) But the UI system looks user friendly, I mean just the look of it seems simple your really good at this stuff seriously.
(https://duke64nukem.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/tev.png)
haha lmao got to admit its crazy seeing that you are able to move actors around as your own will.
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Also, here are some screenshots of the UI I've been working on:
(http://i.imgur.com/m0i3M97.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/gI6De0e.png)
The values you see are not yet editable, but they provide some neat insights to how the game works.
In the future these values will be easily changeable by clicking on them and just entering a new value. They will also be saved to the level to be tested with the game.
After that, a better move/scale/rotate tool, and the ability to add/delete actors I think it would be accurate to say that the project is more than half way completed.
Excuse me if I don't sound to bright UI is user interface right and allows you to control many aspects of how the level and actors operate? Sorry not the best on knowledge on programming or developing games. But I am learning because of people on this forum :P Anyway love how it looks now.
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Excuse me if I don't sound to bright UI is user interface right and allows you to control many aspects of how the level and actors operate? Sorry not the best on knowledge on programming or developing games. But I am learning because of people on this forum :P Anyway love how it looks now.
Correct, UI is user interface. Really I should be calling it a GUI since it's graphical, but I figure UI sounds cooler and isn't incorrect. Welcome to the amazing world of programming. Let me know if I can help at all.
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The new content that is posted in this thread every time I view it never ceases to amaze me. What started as a viewer is already now close to adding new things to existing maps. Do you have plans to give the ability to create entirely new maps with this program in the future?
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The new content that is posted in this thread every time I view it never ceases to amaze me. What started as a viewer is already now close to adding new things to existing maps. Do you have plans to give the ability to create entirely new maps with this program in the future?
I'm not sure how long things like this usually take, It does seem to be moving along pretty quickly with the exception of the week or two where I was doing nothing. And I do plan to add that functionality in the future. I'm not sure how it will work with the actual game though, new levels might have to go in place of an existing levels.
Another thing I plan to do is see what I can do about enabling the multiplayer capabilities. I imagine that it might be a data driven thing, meaning I can change the menus up to get it to load a multiplayer level with a game mode even without a second or third or fourth player. That's as far as I expect it to go though, the rest is probably in the game's code unfortunately. So we would only be able to get to fight AI in multiplayer mode and they'd probably never actually play the games. Just try to kill you.
If that's not a viable option, there must be some .ATR data in the menu files that means "Load this level when selected". If that's the case, then we might be able to get a main menu option for loading user created levels, which would be cool.
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This is nothing short of amazing :) dream coming true.
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I am still really unhappy with the frame rate, I constantly pester Stinkee about it. so you guys probably won't see much from me in the way of visual improvements, I'll be busy investigating and possibly re-doing our back end rendering for a while until I'm satisfied that there isn't some core problem eating up frame time.
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Take your time. Better late than never.
Exactly this ^ plus we aren't going anywhere :P There hasn't been a Turok editor since 1997 so even another year or so wouldn't even hurt take as much time as you guys need really :)
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Progress update:
I've updated part of the loading/saving code to make it even more forward-compatible with still unknown data block types.
I've also started working on both the object manipulators and the garry's mod style object loader. Here are some screenshots:
(http://i.imgur.com/xzWEqFl.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/5TSAGbz.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/8jyJgt3.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/budDjbu.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/v0lh9W0.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/M1K609z.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/JTCgMzo.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/IjFiyrG.png)
As you can see, it's still quite messy. I'm still working on it, when it's done the objects will be centered and viewed from an angle that makes them more easy to see. They also won't be upside down.
The list on the right is a list of actor types (named ACTOR_CODE in the .ATR files), and when you click on them the grid on the left displays all of the objects in the game with the same actor type. This was the easiest and most sensible way for me to sort the large amount of objects and make them easier to find. Interestingly, there are exactly 100 types of actors. The range of types is wide and gives me hope that the levels that can be made with this tool will be at least as immersive and intense as the actual game levels.
Here's the state of the object manipulator
(http://i.imgur.com/jYPoqH4.png)
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Wow! every time I check back here you are making mile stone updates my man.
Progress update:
(http://i.imgur.com/JTCgMzo.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/IjFiyrG.png)
Here's the state of the object manipulator
(http://i.imgur.com/jYPoqH4.png)
These 3 images are beauties! Looks like enemy placement and enemy spawn points...This is just getting closer and closer and its so exciting. You guys rock!
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It is very exciting seeing the dinosaurs and weapons in this format Stinkee!
(http://i.imgur.com/xzWEqFl.png)
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I Noticed it said "Clubpickup" in one of the pictures. Thats very odd seeing how you never pick up the club ingame. You start with it instead.
It gets more odd as you go through. I've seen some clown heads and rubber ducks, and this weird little cartoonish character called "JINX"
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But the clown was the best part about Evolution. :V
(http://i.imgur.com/GM0bfux.jpg)
Jinx was the original name for Acclaim's Vexx. Why a couple of Vexx models got packed in with Evolution is a mystery (probably the same reason for all of the random test models: nobody bothered to delete them :P ).
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I am really loving that actor browser so far, do you think it would be possible to have a sound browser implemented with the program as well?
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I am really loving that actor browser so far, do you think it would be possible to have a sound browser implemented with the program as well?
It's only possible if I can find out how the game references the sound files. As you may know, all of the thousands of sound files are not named descriptively at all. They're not even in separate directories. Not only that, but the actor files don't use filenames for sounds like they do for references to texture or mesh files. I haven't seen too much of how they do it so far, but if I can figure it out I would like to make some kind of sound browser thing.
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Great job so far though Stinkee this is great, I can't give much programming advice I am not into deep for that i got out while I could.. but I understand some of it xD. Its a bit much for me because I am to busy seriously but if you make it possible to make levels I will show you something :P Thanks for hard work keep it up.
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It's only possible if I can find out how the game references the sound files. As you may know, all of the thousands of sound files are not named descriptively at all. They're not even in separate directories. Not only that, but the actor files don't use filenames for sounds like they do for references to texture or mesh files. I haven't seen too much of how they do it so far, but if I can figure it out I would like to make some kind of sound browser thing.
Since you already need part of it for the actor browser, would you be willing to make a separate model viewer once you have everything up and running? Perhaps with viewable animations and the ability to add accompanying models (weapons, helmets), if it's not too much to ask? :P
(let's just lob more things to do at stinkee)
But seriously, I'm incredibly excited by all of this. Thank you for your work!
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Since you already need part of it for the actor browser, would you be willing to make a separate model viewer once you have everything up and running? Perhaps with viewable animations and the ability to add accompanying models (weapons, helmets), if it's not too much to ask? :P
(let's just lob more things to do at stinkee)
But seriously, I'm incredibly excited by all of this. Thank you for your work!
Do you mean just for the animated models or for any model in the game?
I'm not sure yet where the actor accessories come in, I mean whether they're added through the game's code or defined in the files. If they are defined in the files then I will write the code that will give them their accessories in the viewer. Otherwise I can make it a manual process in a separate model viewer. I know that the accessory attachment points are defined in the actor files along with some skeleton and animation information. So animation viewing is definitely possible and I plan to implement it in the future. That will come after the next revision.
I like when people suggest things. It makes me feel like what I'm doing isn't a waste of time. I'm excited as well, mostly to see what people do with it but also because I love this game and I want to get just a little more life out of it if I can. The PC version is a less quality product than the PS2 version. I think that with a tool like this we could improve it enough that it actually becomes worth playing for me.
It would be a dream come true if I could somehow enable online multiplayer. Unfortunately I think the best we could possibly get would be "multiplayer" with a constant flow of enemies from enemy generators placed around the maps. Even that might be a stretch depending on how much is hard coded into the game.
I've been taking a break for a few days by the way, I haven't made much progress since my last screenshots.
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I meant a viewer for every model, but I'll take what I can get. :P And I'm sure enabling multiplayer is possible somehow; the PC version's just the Xbox version deep down, right? It might take entirely more code work than you might be willing to do, but still. :V
If you ever figure out how the sounds work, I wonder if it'd be possible to mod a replacement for the PC version's music? It's... of fairly poor quality.
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I meant a viewer for every model
Do you mean like a stand alone application specifically for viewing the game models close up and independently? But also have it able to show animations for actors that are animated as well as have the ability to equip them with various attachments? I just want to be clear on what you want.
I wonder if it'd be possible to mod a replacement for the PC version's music? It's... of fairly poor quality.
That is definitely possible. That's a good idea actually, someone could probably even rip the music from the PS2 game disk.
Edit:
Oh also, I have some screenshots of my progress after the past few nights.
(http://i.imgur.com/KMaKD2n.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/0k4XyVy.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/UnPjES7.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/QReMk2v.png)
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Do you mean like a stand alone application specifically for viewing the game models close up and independently? But also have it able to show animations for actors that are animated as well as have the ability to equip them with various attachments? I just want to be clear on what you want.
It doesn't really matter, I guess. I was originally thinking a stand alone application, but if it's easier to run it in the main Viewer, then that's perfectly acceptable. :P
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I could add a button to the window in the screenshots for opening a window with a larger view of the object. The new window could also have some stuff for selecting animations to view and adding accessories to character actors. Then after viewing/adding accessories to the actors, they could be imported to the scene if desired.
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A few months ago I played through the three console versions to investigate the claims of console-exclusive content for the wiki, and I couldn't find anything. If anything had been cut, it was likely smaller things (bugs, birds, etc.), as all of the other (readily noticeable) creatures/enemies were accounted for across the board.
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A few months ago I played through the three console versions to investigate the claims of console-exclusive content for the wiki, and I couldn't find anything. If anything had been cut, it was likely smaller things (bugs, birds, etc.), as all of the other (readily noticeable) creatures/enemies were accounted for across the board.
The Uintatheriums from the second lake from level 3, chapter 1. Those are only in PC, Gamecube and Xbox
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Interesting. Must've missed it, if that's the case. :V
Super Late Edit: Loaded the game up and briefly played through Chapter 1. Looks like most of the baboons from Into the Jungle, most/all of the birds from Jungle Hunter, and the Doedicurus from Hunter's Peril are also missing. Granted, when I played through all of the console versions, I was mostly investigating claims that the Tenontosaurus was replaced by the Parasaurolophus in certain versions, but this is a crazy oversight on my part. :P
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Oh also, I have some screenshots of my progress after the past few nights.
(http://i.imgur.com/KMaKD2n.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/0k4XyVy.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/UnPjES7.png)
(http://i.imgur.com/QReMk2v.png)
So is this a menu and you can select which model to import into a map?
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So is this a menu and you can select which model to import into a map?
Yes. On the right is every ACTOR_CODE used in every .atr file. I've alphabetized that list since the screenshots. It was the easiest way I could think of to organize the thousands of objects that there are.
I haven't actually written the code to import the actor into the level yet, but assuming it's as straightforward as I'm imagining, I can have it done in a few days if I get back to work soon. Once that is done all I have to do is fix the rotation tool before I can release another revision.
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Its great to hear and the menu does look awesome though I like the look of a clean interface there you got so far with this so far nice job :)
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Stinkee2 for president 2015 8) I vote
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Wondering if there is any progress lately stinkee can't wait to see more :)
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With the amount of work done on this project and the way you have handled it on your own mostly honestly tells me you could land a job with this somewhere. Maybe if Turok 1 and 2 do good on steam/gog they could be interested in bringing this one to steam also. Of course it all depends on where the rights of this game are but from the looks of things Acclaim/Iguana still owns there rights to previous titles and they only don't own the rights to make new Turok games.
Anyway, keep up the hard work man I honestly could see this getting ported one day to and with all the work you already got done on it I could see them using you as lead developer on the project(maybe Night Dive). Sure its a long shot but hey got to think big :) Even if it doesn't go that way at least all of us can be satisfied playing/editing this game. Thanks for your work man
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Hey everyone, sorry for the extreme lack of progress for a while. I've sort of lost my momentum. It happens occasionally. Hang tight I'll be back sometime. Thanks for not losing interest!
Unfortunately given my work patterns, the way I kind of drop off the earth every now and then, I don't think I'm lead developer material for anybody. I don't know if being paid would help either. It's just me. I don't see programming as a job really, it's more of a thing that I do because I love it. It's weird though. It's like.. sometimes I get a kind of creative block and I don't have any internal programming coach to snap me out of it. So I can go on not programming indefinitely until something inspires me.
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten this project or you all. I just need some time to get my fire lit again.
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No need to rush either and breaks are fine to buddy never want to over do it and wear yourself out. I'm sure its alot of work. What you done already to me seems like a hole lot! If i can move models around in a map now that's pretty big. Pretty much ppl could be almost redesigning the levels some like this :)
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Very awesome project,
I was making an dynamic object placement/position editor based on 2D overhead view of the maps back in 07 due to the fact myself and 3D programming don't currently get along.
Seeing this and seeing life in Turok: Evolution in general after the work I put into it in the past is a breath of fresh air, I've been reversing a lot of the structures so if there's something you don't have yet let me know, I've also posted a file full of the object data on the forum here.
Hopefully we can all work together to bring Turok: Evolution HD+MP to life :)
P.S.
I noticed your post here:
http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/greetings-any-turok-1-or-turok-4-fans.41079/#post-605128
I made a similar post and spoke with ASSEMBLER about the Quagmire engine source before he did the huge acclaim dump.
Hey everyone, sorry for the extreme lack of progress for a while. I've sort of lost my momentum. It happens occasionally. Hang tight I'll be back sometime. Thanks for not losing interest!
Unfortunately given my work patterns, the way I kind of drop off the earth every now and then, I don't think I'm lead developer material for anybody. I don't know if being paid would help either. It's just me. I don't see programming as a job really, it's more of a thing that I do because I love it. It's weird though. It's like.. sometimes I get a kind of creative block and I don't have any internal programming coach to snap me out of it. So I can go on not programming indefinitely until something inspires me.
Don't worry, I haven't forgotten this project or you all. I just need some time to get my fire lit again.
And I understand completely, I've had a similar "writers block" with my Halo 2 project ( http://www.thedefaced.org ) I call Project Cartographer which aims to improve the halo2 PC multiplayer as well as restore it's functionality because Microsoft shut it down.
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Very awesome project,
I was making an dynamic object placement/position editor based on 2D overhead view of the maps back in 07 due to the fact myself and 3D programming don't currently get along.
Seeing this and seeing life in Turok: Evolution in general after the work I put into it in the past is a breath of fresh air, I've been reversing a lot of the structures so if there's something you don't have yet let me know, I've also posted a file full of the object data on the forum here.
Hopefully we can all work together to bring Turok: Evolution HD+MP to life :)
What have you discovered about the formats? Right now I think I've got a problem with reading indices of animated actors. You may notice some stretched polygons between some of the actors.
(http://i.imgur.com/BMwAdT3.png)
(Note: I've fixed the bad rotations on the foliage since then)
I'm a bit intimidated by the task of writing a whole new engine just for Turok multiplayer, which is what I'm sure it would come down to, but with some help I think it would be very doable.
Also, Do you know anything about the way the game indexes sounds?
P.S.
I noticed your post here:
http://assemblergames.com/l/threads/greetings-any-turok-1-or-turok-4-fans.41079/#post-605128
I made a similar post and spoke with ASSEMBLER about the Quagmire engine source before he did the huge acclaim dump.
I forget what I said in that post, and I'm getting a gateway error when I try to visit the page even by looking it up on google. I think I read a post recently that said something about someone asking him not to release the source code that he found. How unfortunate.
And I understand completely, I've had a similar "writers block" with my Halo 2 project ( http://www.thedefaced.org ) I call Project Cartographer which aims to improve the halo2 PC multiplayer as well as restore it's functionality because Microsoft shut it down.
That must have been very frustrating and disappointing. I'm sorry you got shut down.
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I think there's been a lot of mis-understanding when you were reading my post.. So I'll clarify.
What have you discovered about the formats? Right now I think I've got a problem with reading indices of animated actors. You may notice some stretched polygons between some of the actors.
(Note: I've fixed the bad rotations on the foliage since then)
I'm a bit intimidated by the task of writing a whole new engine just for Turok multiplayer, which is what I'm sure it would come down to, but with some help I think it would be very doable.
Also, Do you know anything about the way the game indexes sounds?
What I've discovered about the formats has more to do with the stuff you're not specifically interested in like scripted events and such due to the fact I needed some of it to create my Multiplayer Modification, but I'm willing to assist in figuring out the things you're lacking and the whole thing is pretty simple to reverse.
I was not talking about writing a whole new engine and I've made an entire multiplayer (Online) modification for Turok: Evolution before, I just lost the code and stopped working on it after 2012 and that was something I was working on, on and off since 2007.
I have no idea how the game indexes sounds I know how the menu systems work so far, but I can figure that out and get back to you as I'm not just opening the files in hex editors and guessing but reverse engineering how the game actually loads the data in it's engine.
Assembler Games
The source was released for Quagmire engine it's just outdated in comparison to what Turok: Evolution is actually based on so a lot of the new implementations aren't there and the information like ATR loading or god files is very specific to Turok itself so you won't find anything about those file formats from what I've seen.
There's not even actor objects/classes in the released engine source.
https://ia802707.us.archive.org/23/items/acclaim_discs/Quagmire_PSX_DREAMCAST_N64_devtools.iso
At this point in time I'm sure you know more about the ATR/ATI file formats then I'm aware of, but with the reversing knowledge I've got I'm sure I could be of some assistance.
I'm also curious if you've checked this link out yet,
http://www.turokforums.com/turok-evolution/turok4-god-aka-gameobjectdata-txt/
That must have been very frustrating and disappointing. I'm sorry you got shut down.
I didn't get shut down, what I meant was I've been lacking motivation to work on it due to the fact I went on a binge programming and reversing knocked a crap ton of stuff out and the now I'm just at a standstill unsure if I even want to work on it any longer.
Part of that has to do with the fact I was doing the development alone no one else involved knew any C/C++ nor assembly so it was quite boring.
What I meant when I said Microsoft shut it down was that they disable the original multiplayer functionality and my modification/hack brought it back in a new way so players could continue to play the game together even after it was shut down.
I also hooked various engine functions in order to make new game variants/game types like GunGame which halo has never seen before.
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Ah, okay. Sorry for the misunderstandings. My mind is in another place.
How did you manage to enable online multiplayer? I assumed that support for that was basically nonexistent since they greyed out the menu option. Also, I am interested in the scripting data as having the ability to change the behaviors of things would be absolutely useful in the level editor.
I just looked the file you posted, it could be very useful to me for decoding even more data more easily. I wish we had access to the files #included from it as well. It would be a GODsend.
Let me know if you'd like to see the source code I use for loading ATI/ATR/MTF files.
I can figure that out and get back to you as I'm not just opening the files in hex editors and guessing but reverse engineering how the game actually loads the data in it's engine.
What tools do you use to do this? I have IDA Pro but I haven't learned how to use it effectively yet.
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A level editor and multiplayer could be pretty nice and co op mode if it was possible. I don't want to over reach but all of that would surely revive this game better then it was before.
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A level editor and multiplayer could be pretty nice and co op mode if it was possible. I don't want to over reach but all of that would surely revive this game better then it was before.
I've seen various info about co-op in the engine, if it was in the actual game on other consoles (Xbox specifically) we could easily re-enable it and synchronize AI data over the network as well after completing the basic Multiplayer stuff.
Ah, okay. Sorry for the misunderstandings. My mind is in another place.
No problem.
How did you manage to enable online multiplayer? I assumed that support for that was basically nonexistent since they greyed out the menu option. Also, I am interested in the scripting data as having the ability to change the behaviors of things would be absolutely useful in the level editor.
There was no "Online" functionality previously, what I did was first enabled the split-screen multiplayer (This is a port of the Xbox Original version) so the code for the multiplayer split-screen is still there.
I reverse engineered the player structures, including the information needed to spawn the player's object using it's constructor which causes the player to actually be placed on the map then once you know the offsets of the flags that control things like jumping, animations, shooting etc you just synchronize it over the network and manipulate it using an injected dll.
Beyond that I disabled the split screen rendering (HUD elements, and separate view port), the camera was left in-tact due to the fact we were using the x/y of the camera to determine where the player should be shooting and just synchronizing the fire action, it was horribly synced and I need t come up with a better method to handle this in the future.
The only way anything was synchronized in the past was via constant while loops rather then hooks around things like damage functions which is when I should've synchronized the data but I'm starting to wonder if it'd be better to build a snapshot of information and send that.... I've got some obvious research to do there.
Right now the state I'm at is I'm attempting to track down the main rendering loop in the engine again so I can disable the split screen rendering stuff,
There are graphics issues that come along with enabling the split-screen multiplayer (all players are invisible, I have no idea why I wasn't the one who fixed it previously) though they're visible in the death camera so I'm not 100% sure what's changing but I think it's a rendering setting.
Here's the video I've posted in the other thread I created about the Multiplayer functionality.
There are tons of bug fixes I applied the first time I did this, like a fix for the pistol zoom crash which I've already re-done again, a fix for the spider mine crash, as well as the invisible players.
I just looked the file you posted, it could be very useful to me for decoding even more data more easily. I wish we had access to the files #included from it as well. It would be a GODsend.
Let me know if you'd like to see the source code I use for loading ATI/ATR/MTF files.
That'd be pretty cool, so far the way I handled it was just writing a 010 template and doing manual modifications I just started working on this all again last night and stumbled across this forum,
So far what I've modified is I've replaced the MainMenu's "Cheats" option with the Multiplayer screen atr and then modified MultiplayerJoin.ati to disable the 3rd and 4th player's input removed the "back" definition from player 2 as it technically has no ability to control the menu option then forced it to select a player to begin with as if a second player had already completed the join action once you've reached the menu and is ready to play.
Then there was some trickery with the player 1 that had to be done to allow them to select their player.
What tools do you use to do this? I have IDA Pro but I haven't learned how to use it effectively yet.
IDA Pro, OllyDBG, and memory tools like http://www.memoryhacking.com and Cheat Engine in order to find player objects faster in memory.
I.E. search player's health, break point on write access to the area of memory and then reverse engineer the offset to determine the base player object pointer
Which I've just done and it's allowed me to determine the x,y,z cords of the player position in real time as well as their camera position so far just by guessing information.
Not only that but watching the memory change in real time you can easily determine things like current weapon, ammo, scaling information, animation indexes, 'firing' and etc.
P.S.
I believe I've added you on Skype Stinkee.
Update
I also made a video demonstrating the rendering issues maybe with your knowledge of 3D/D3D/OpenGL programming you can provide some insight on possible theories of why this would happen and ways to fix it,
http://www.turokforums.com/turok-evolution/pc-version-multiplayer-online-modification/msg3140/#msg3140
EDIT:
I'm also curious if you've looked into the .tre files or their format at all I decided to grab the Game Cube and Xbox copies of the game and it seems they each pack all of the game's data into these archives, I could attempt to figure it out but don't want to re-invent the wheel if it's been done.
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There are a lot of people asking for this game on the steam Turok discussions.... Might want to keep it up man its getting a lot of demand
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Night dive publishes games I mean even on the store page it says Night Dive is the publisher. Kaiser is the developer but it still says Iguana Entertainment. So if anything a few names could be in the credits like in t1 it has developer credits additonal level design and quality assurance people. if Night Dive published it wouldn't be a bad thing though. Something like getting the rights to publish a game could be pricey. I think if you all really make this game better and what not maybe it will grab interest to use you guys work and marked as the dev team? But you should keep your sources hidden besides a few ppl who work on it so you can keep this hardwork within the group here.
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But you should keep your sources hidden besides a few ppl who work on it so you can keep this hardwork within the group here.
Yeah guys since Turok is becoming a bit more available with its rights and stuff I got to agree with this. People aren't nice they could just take your work here.
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Still hoping your in gear or at least still motivated buddy. Made so much progress here.
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Still hoping your in gear or at least still motivated buddy. Made so much progress here.
Me to dude
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I hope this is still a thing as well! Let us know how things are going. :)
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Hello everyone, I am alive. For a while after my last update I was kind of worn out from programming too much. Then I got a job so I've been kind of busy during the week. I'm sorry for not posting in so long. I'm glad to see that there has been developments in other areas. The future of T:E mods looks positive.
I plan to continue work on my editor, though I'll be a bit slower than I was previously. I'm going to create a github repository or two for my code so that other people here can use it.
Before I address the bugs that I left off with I want to write a more straightforward and intuitive interface for loading/editing the Turok formats so that other people here can easily use it for whatever they want to do. I want to create a separate library and repository for this.
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Hello everyone, I am alive. For a while after my last update I was kind of worn out from programming too much. Then I got a job so I've been kind of busy during the week. I'm sorry for not posting in so long. I'm glad to see that there has been developments in other areas. The future of T:E mods looks positive.
I plan to continue work on my editor, though I'll be a bit slower than I was previously. I'm going to create a github repository or two for my code so that other people here can use it.
Before I address the bugs that I left off with I want to write a more straightforward and intuitive interface for loading/editing the Turok formats so that other people here can easily use it for whatever they want to do. I want to create a separate library and repository for this.
Maybe try porting the graphics rendering away from silk, there seems to be a good amount of performance issues in that engine. I would say use Bearclaw2 but I haven't open sourced that... It should be simple to make a renderer for that though, there's nothing special going on really.
Edit: Silk isn't open source either, no licenses setup, so you can't share that yet anyway, My bad. If you would like me to open source it so that you can share the editor let me know, you did most of the work in silk anyway.
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Maybe try porting the graphics rendering away from silk, there seems to be a good amount of performance issues in that engine. I would say use Bearclaw2 but I haven't open sourced that... It should be simple to make a renderer for that though, there's nothing special going on really.
Edit: Silk isn't open source either, no licenses setup, so you can't share that yet anyway, My bad. If you would like me to open source it so that you can share the editor let me know, you did most of the work in silk anyway.
If I don't rewrite the rendering I'll keep the Silk part closed source and only have the non-rendering code accessible. Unless you don't mind having it open source, but it doesn't really make a difference for me. I'll just write some kind of a wrapper class that hides the Silk functionality.
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I can understand being worn out man it happens to the best of us I myself was inactive for some time around here and was working on other mods which I'm now taking a break from doing to work on this, besides that I had a lot of personal shit going on and I also was working a 9-5 when I started this (now I'm contracting).
It also doesn't help when there's no actual team working on something luckily you've got djduty haha I'm sure it helps sometimes to have someone else to talk to who fully understands the stuff you're doing.
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Hey guys nice to see you its its been awhile hope all is well. Great to see you guys are still interested in working on Turok Evo :)
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Hello everyone, I am alive. For a while after my last update I was kind of worn out from programming too much. Then I got a job so I've been kind of busy during the week. I'm sorry for not posting in so long. I'm glad to see that there has been developments in other areas. The future of T:E mods looks positive.
I plan to continue work on my editor, though I'll be a bit slower than I was previously. I'm going to create a github repository or two for my code so that other people here can use it.
Before I address the bugs that I left off with I want to write a more straightforward and intuitive interface for loading/editing the Turok formats so that other people here can easily use it for whatever they want to do. I want to create a separate library and repository for this.
Sounds great and its good to know this project is still in mind here, glad to hear from you again guys. I'm still interested in this no matter how long it takes. It really hasn't been that long though so just keep it up :)
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Sounds great and its good to know this project is still in mind here, glad to hear from you again guys. I'm still interested in this no matter how long it takes. It really hasn't been that long though so just keep it up :)
I might try to talk stinkee into making the Turok file serialization code into a separate library for use instead, so that other projects can be done using the Turok assets, and also so that the code will be a bit cleaner.
That would also make it independent from any library, like silk currently, so that it's easier to share and also easier to use by other programmers if there are any here who want to make use of the files.
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I really hope to see a Turok evolution map even I wish to make one and if there was a working mp the two would collide perfectly also. But of course i'm also interested in SP levels but even simple mp maps would be awesome. But again I wish to say something about time, to put things in mind. Some fan made projects like this take years and years and years but it seems were almost on a brink here. This hasn't been to long yet at all my friends, but its awesome when your at work and you have done great.
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I've started a code repository so that anyone can use my source code to write their own programs to interface with the Turok formats if they wish. The repository is https://github.com/mdecicco/T4Loader (https://github.com/mdecicco/T4Loader) and I also put a link in the original post.
Currently it's pretty limited since I started writing it all over again, but give me about a week and it'll be able to open/save all actor data and all level data. Once I'm done with that I'm going to do a quick rewrite of the actual editor I've been working on using the new code I'm writing now. It might be kind of buggy at first but I want to get something out as fast as possible that you can all use and experiment with.
There is something that I need some help with though. I've learned that there are about a thousand different types of variables that can be modified in the actor files... I do not expect to learn how to use all of these but I plan on making a hierarchical data editor that will allow us to modify any actor variable and any other data in the files, even if we don't know what it is. Using this we can mess with one thing at a time to see how it affects the game. Then maybe we can make a new thread and post our findings so that I can make the editor use the data better.
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I've started a code repository so that anyone can use my source code to write their own programs to interface with the Turok formats if they wish. The repository is https://github.com/mdecicco/T4Loader (https://github.com/mdecicco/T4Loader) and I also put a link in the original post.
Currently it's pretty limited since I started writing it all over again, but give me about a week and it'll be able to open/save all actor data and all level data. Once I'm done with that I'm going to do a quick rewrite of the actual editor I've been working on using the new code I'm writing now. It might be kind of buggy at first but I want to get something out as fast as possible that you can all use and experiment with.
There is something that I need some help with though. I've learned that there are about a thousand different types of variables that can be modified in the actor files... I do not expect to learn how to use all of these but I plan on making a hierarchical data editor that will allow us to modify any actor variable and any other data in the files, even if we don't know what it is. Using this we can mess with one thing at a time to see how it affects the game. Then maybe we can make a new thread and post our findings so that I can make the editor use the data better.
Expect contributions form me, I've recently learned a lot about reverse engineering byte data! What do you think about using the QT library for the editor? It's cross platform and has all the widget features the editor would need?
Currently I'm spending my free time trying to get the new version of the software started but then I'll have some free time, hopefully.
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I made a pull request, https://github.com/mdecicco/T4Loader/pull/1
With that change you can use premake5 to generate project files that will build the library binary for inclusion into other projects. If you use premake in your own project you can even include this premake5 to automatically include the loader library.
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Wish that I understood source codes and what not but i feel its to hard to just learn for me. But thanks a ton for continued work towards an editor and stuff. Maybe it will be the only Turok editor
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I've started a code repository so that anyone can use my source code to write their own programs to interface with the Turok formats if they wish. The repository is https://github.com/mdecicco/T4Loader (https://github.com/mdecicco/T4Loader) and I also put a link in the original post.
Currently it's pretty limited since I started writing it all over again, but give me about a week and it'll be able to open/save all actor data and all level data. Once I'm done with that I'm going to do a quick rewrite of the actual editor I've been working on using the new code I'm writing now. It might be kind of buggy at first but I want to get something out as fast as possible that you can all use and experiment with.
There is something that I need some help with though. I've learned that there are about a thousand different types of variables that can be modified in the actor files... I do not expect to learn how to use all of these but I plan on making a hierarchical data editor that will allow us to modify any actor variable and any other data in the files, even if we don't know what it is. Using this we can mess with one thing at a time to see how it affects the game. Then maybe we can make a new thread and post our findings so that I can make the editor use the data better.
Thanks very much Stinkee for this and djdduty really nice to see and it gives me hope. It seems I had a github account already so I followed you guys and Permanull on there and of course all the projects themselves to.
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If anyone IS interested in contributing, I've started a repository for a QT based editor using the T4Loader library here: https://github.com/djdduty/T4Editor (https://github.com/djdduty/T4Editor) I've just started it and haven't had much time to work on it, but hopefully it blossoms into something great!
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If anyone IS interested in contributing, I've started a repository for a QT based editor using the T4Loader library here: https://github.com/djdduty/T4Editor (https://github.com/djdduty/T4Editor) I've just started it and haven't had much time to work on it, but hopefully it blossoms into something great!
Since getting a hold of my old friend he had also reminded me that he had created a Map editor using blender scripts if you're familiar with python you can find em here,
http://www.mediafire.com/download/u3he8m6vh97ci0t/BlenderTurok.rar
Not sure if they'll offer anything you two don't already know but I know he was able to load MTF properly and such.
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If anyone IS interested in contributing, I've started a repository for a QT based editor using the T4Loader library here: https://github.com/djdduty/T4Editor (https://github.com/djdduty/T4Editor) I've just started it and haven't had much time to work on it, but hopefully it blossoms into something great!
Niice dude can't wait to see more.
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Damn good work please do more :(
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Stinkee and I have both been pretty busy with work lately, so we of course haven't had time to work on my hobby projects sadly. I got a bit restless and decided to finally jump back in to something at least, so I rebooted this project. It no longer relies on our game engine (Silk) but unfortunately that means that it has gone backwards in progress significantly.
Currently I have ported over Stinkee's parsing library and have a scene mostly rendering correctly, You'll all be glad to know that it is WAY faster than it was previously.
If you don't know how to read performance numbers, it was previously running at around 80 or 90 fps on my machine, which means it took about 12 milliseconds per frame.
The total frame time in these screen shots is between 1.1ms and 4ms(although that one was an outlier, I haven't observed it being that slow since.) Which is aproximately 250fps - 900fps (VSync is on, so it's locked at 60fps, that's why it says 59.xx up there). It won't run this fast when it's done, as there will be UI and other things, along with the fact that my computer is a bit beefier than most, but you should be able to expect smooth performance on almost any computer.
(http://i.imgur.com/gblCiC5.png)
Transparency still needs to be fixed, some times there is a visual artifact that I suspect has to do with sorting.
Here it is without any transparency.
(http://i.imgur.com/sh4t4PE.png)
I still have to figure out why actors in the world aren't loading / displaying and then I have some work to do before a release.
Current TODO:
Fix dynamic objects to display in the world properly (Probably has something to do with the object transform making them somewhere offscreen?)
Create a proper camera implementation.
Port windowing and input to SDL.
Implement imGui rendering for basic gui support.
Resource management.
Create proper scene classes and add the ability to modify scene objects.
At that point it will be caught up with where it was previously, and real progress can be made!
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If you're curious to see a close up now, there is some pretty good anti-aliasing and texture filtering going on.
(http://i.imgur.com/GWSWOix.png)
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I guess I spoke too soon, sorry for triple posting.
I fixed actor rendering and placement, although they remain untextured for now.
Rendering time went up to ~4ms per frame constant, so that's in the 250 FPS range. It will get better again once I can get around to optimizing it (instancing meshes instead of re-loading, uploading, and rendering them, same with textures, and optimizing state changes).
(http://i.imgur.com/NDV9Fgh.png)
They do not currently rotate correctly, but they scale and re-position properly.
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Well buddy i still have a beta build of your windows UI version of the program! Does this version allow for adding new spawns?
At the moment, it's just back to "viewer" rather than "editor", meaning that unfortunately no. You currently cannot modify or create Actors it just renders what is known in the ATR file. This version will run on Windows and Mac OSX as well, I'm just developing from linux so that's why it's a linux window.
Scene modification will come when I implement a real scene graph, so that I can properly map actors into a tree, but Stinkee's saving code is still there so it shouldn't be difficult to pull that over when the time comes to save modifications.
Since you have that older version still, you'll be able to compare the speeds of each!
Oh, and I completely forgot, if anyone wants to see / modify the source code, it's located here: https://github.com/djdduty/opent4 (https://github.com/djdduty/opent4)
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Still excited about this. Sometimes changes are tedious but worth it. New images look great man.
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Keep it up I hope good things for this still any updates perhaps?
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Keep it up I hope good things for this still any updates perhaps?
Yes please don't call quits on this guys. Maybe we didn't respond all the time but always watching waiting. Hoping something comes up also
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Pretty awesome.
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I'm trying not to call this quits, Stinkee and I are both swamped with work. At our company we are the only 2 programmers doing about 5 coder's worth of work right now. I honestly have not had time to work on this since I posted those last screenshots, it is entirely open source though so if any other coders want to hop in and start making improvements we're all for it! I can't say when I will be able to work on this again, sadly :'(
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We can wait for YEARS no worries. Do what you must do, good luck on your other projects too.
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Nice video of the editor! Here's hoping that work will continue!
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Nice video of the editor! Here's hoping that work will continue!
Please, when you have time, try to do some work on it with djdduty. Hes been MIA on forums and skype for quite a while. Busy life i suppose. He's had some personal issues and such which i wont get into out of respect and privacy but yeah hes just working really hard to earn his pay and has no time for himself.
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Man really hope that it keeps going it would be epic af making evolution levels and we know fr sure Duke64 would have maps.
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Nice video of the editor! Here's hoping that work will continue!
Please, when you have time, try to do some work on it with djdduty. Hes been MIA on forums and skype for quite a while. Busy life i suppose. He's had some personal issues and such which i wont get into out of respect and privacy but yeah hes just working really hard to earn his pay and has no time for himself.
It's not nearly so serious as all that! I've just busy with work like most people. We've been in crunch time for... basically a year now. We have 3 programmers working on the new projects (including Stinkee and I) at work now so things are a bit more easy. It's as simple as that I haven't found motivation to work on this project yet to jump back in to it all considering the overwhelming amount of work I predict every time I look in to it, been focusing on other hobbies more instead.
I promise you guys, this project is ever-present in my mind box with all my open projects! (Although this isn't technically my project :D)
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I figure I better post here in case anyone here is not on the discord chat.
Michael (Stinkee) and I have both been in the discord a ton lately, and he especially has been working like a madman on this. We've made pretty significant progress and it has all the functionality it originally had (modifying actors and saving the map) now, but better than before by far. It still needs a lot of bug fixes and features added in but it is getting there.
In the image below the blue-hued object is the selected one.
(https://i.imgur.com/KHlTJzn.png)
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I figure I better post here in case anyone here is not on the discord chat.
Michael (Stinkee) and I have both been in the discord a ton lately, and he especially has been working like a madman on this. We've made pretty significant progress and it has all the functionality it originally had (modifying actors and saving the map) now, but better than before by far. It still needs a lot of bug fixes and features added in but it is getting there.
In the image below the blue-hued object is the selected one.
(https://i.imgur.com/KHlTJzn.png)
There's quite a few people not in the discord here yeah. I'm in there but wanted to say I have been enjoying the progress rides of the editor and the mp stuff too, good stuff.
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Really cool. Looks like guys are picking things back up!
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I just managed to make the editor able to duplicate actors. That brings it one large step closer to being usable.
(https://i.imgur.com/VN1zGlz.png)
Modded the dinosaurs to attack the player
(https://i.imgur.com/xEgWxkd.png)
Modded the dinosaurs to be so light that you could run into them and send them flying into the air
(https://i.imgur.com/2qQzmOR.png)
A screenshot of the new editor
(https://i.imgur.com/izcgWO3.png)
I'll give much more details here once it's ready for a first release.
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I just managed to make the editor able to duplicate actors. That brings it one large step closer to being usable.
(https://i.imgur.com/VN1zGlz.png)
Modded the dinosaurs to attack the player
(https://i.imgur.com/xEgWxkd.png)
Modded the dinosaurs to be so light that you could run into them and send them flying into the air
(https://i.imgur.com/2qQzmOR.png)
A screenshot of the new editor
(https://i.imgur.com/izcgWO3.png)
I'll give much more details here once it's ready for a first release.
Great work dude damn. once this gets in the hands of Turok mappers will be really cool! And yeah I don't use discord dudes so hope you keep updated here.
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Getting closer
(https://i.imgur.com/S8kj5fD.png)
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Update: Actors can now be spawned into levels by dragging and dropping them from the actor panel at the bottom
(https://i.imgur.com/7Ckobi5.png)
There's still more work to do, the game crashes when trying to load certain actors added with the editor but this is good progress.
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Update: Actors can now be spawned into levels by dragging and dropping them from the actor panel at the bottom
(https://i.imgur.com/7Ckobi5.png)
There's still more work to do, the game crashes when trying to load certain actors added with the editor but this is good progress.
Wow that's really cool. I'm not much of a mapper myself like others or 64 but id'e enjoy going through something like this. Even if it was just to mess around it should be fun. Keep it up! I may not have been around when you first started this but really enjoying the progress. I see a trex!
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Where is the raining slegs?? xD
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Where is the raining slegs?? xD
Here are the three videos I uploaded showing the enemy spawners at work:
I spawned one in the sky and set it to spawn a few different types of enemies, but it might be able to spawn non-enemies as well
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Where is the raining slegs?? xD
Here are the three videos I uploaded showing the enemy spawners at work:
I spawned one in the sky and set it to spawn a few different types of enemies, but it might be able to spawn non-enemies as well
WTH how are you doing that?? lmao
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A surprise video to reward my viewers for staying with me even after a long leap of absence.
Credits to Michael Decico for making this funny map in his spare time.
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Turok Evolution models that were extracted by Stinkee 2 zip: https://turoksanctum.com/download/turok-evolution-models-obj/
(Note not all are perfect) There can be flaws on certain ones and some stuff that could be cleaned up on the model manually a bit.
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Let's hope Stinkee has another come back push some day. Things like this are energy draining but they were making some great progress. I still hope to see custom models being able to be imported one day.
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Hey guys,
i want to know if there is some sort of map editor for Turok Evolution ( where you can change the enemies numbers and locations )
Thank you very much for your answers ^^ :ninja:
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There is a broken incomplete one that was made by Stinkee2 and Djdduty. Don't bother with it in its current state. :(
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Oh.. well sad but i still appreciate their effort :D
Thank you for your reply and see you around
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Oh.. well sad but i still appreciate their effort :D
Thank you for your reply and see you around
No worries, I'm sure they'll get around to updating it one of these days. ...I hope! :o