SW:SA

[Anitarf]

Not sure about auto-leveling the X-wing, for me a major plus of this new system is that it is full 3D without an obvious correct direction. Besides, in my experience, the map gets considerably less disorienting with a bit of practice.

Anyway, I haven't posted in a while, but I've continued to work on the map in the meantime, so here's an update. I've added enemy turrets to the map, so you have something to shoot at which you can actually hit. :) As you can see from my to-do list, objects don't yet take damage so you can't destroy the turrets yet, but at least you can do some target practice.

[iNfraNe]

So far the turrets are hitting me more than I'm hitting them ;) I guess thats fine, tho :D

[Anitarf]

Are you trying the map from this thread or the one I pastebinned with the experimental camera? Because I think that camera, which turns in the direction you're turning, makes it a lot harder to aim well. I always release the turn button too soon with the new camera. I'm seriously considering scrapping this idea and keeping the original camera that always points in the same direction relative to the fighter.

[Anitarf]

After a few more camera experiments, I went back to the original camera. It seems to work best.
I've also finally implemented damage and fighter respawning. I've also placed some more turrets so the map is more challenging to play.

When talking to iNfraNe, he gave me the idea of generating the terrain randomly, like Rao_Dao_Zao does. The more I think about it, the more I like the idea, so I think I'll be looking into that next.

[iNfraNe]

It's getting along nicely now :) I really like the turrets alot! I'm looking forward to the map actually having an objective :)

[Heins]

Hey, how's it going with this? :)

btw the movement system is a bit bitchy but eh.
'just trying it to get a handle for it.

Also have you considered adding some fast paced BG music just to make you crap yourself out while firing at things and be fired upon?

Originally Posted by Anitarf

Also, we need to figure out MIDI music again. I remember we added the SW theme as background music to the original map back in the day, really added to the atmosphere and didn't increase the file size dramatically.

Please do :)

Originally Posted by iNfraNe

So far the turrets are hitting me more than I'm hitting them ;) I guess thats fine, tho :D

I feel you :p

[Anitarf]

Thanks for your interest. I've been a bit slow to continue working on this, because the next item on my to-do list is randomized terrain and I don't really like to start coding until I have a good plan of how I'm going to do it. I did some thinking in the meantime so I am close to having that plan, and once I do I should have the code done quickly.

I did already try implementing the MIDI music but it sounded worse than I remembered it, so I removed it again. Maybe the problem was in the tracks, as far as I could tell they were original movie soundracks converted to MIDI and so they sound odd when the MIDI instruments don't match the originals. If I had a track that was written specifically for MIDI, perhaps I'd get better results.

[Rao Dao Zao]

Originally Posted by Anitarf

Thanks for your interest. I've been a bit slow to continue working on this, because the next item on my to-do list is randomized terrain and I don't really like to start coding until I have a good plan of how I'm going to do it. I did some thinking in the meantime so I am close to having that plan, and once I do I should have the code done quickly.

Well, if you need any help with procedural generation you know where to come... at least, for advice on what not to do!

Originally Posted by Anitarf

I did already try implementing the MIDI music but it sounded worse than I remembered it, so I removed it again.

Maybe you used a different sound bank with better samples in it? I know the Windows default one is a bit shaky, but I'm sure you can get more realistic ones... out there... somewhere... (I think my last sound card came with a slightly nicer one, actually.)

[iNfraNe]

The problem is a bit... once you start upping the quality, up goes your filesize. By a lot. Perhaps by modifying the soundbanks to use only exactly what's needed it would be possible... but still. I think we'll either have to stick with no sound, or crappy sound.

[Anitarf]

If I remember correctly, we already used a pruned sound bank back then, but I'm not 100% on that; I do know that we had 2 different sound banks; not sure if that was just because we were replacing the original WC3 ambient tracks. (Note: I don't think you actually have to do that. MIDI sounds are still sound handles, you can create them from any midi file, it doesn't have to be one of the preset environmental sound filenames. Although I'm not sure how it chooses which sound bank to use, is that written in the MIDI file?)

The problem is that the midi files we have seem like direct conversions of the original soundtrack that uses a full orchestra, so pruning didn't help much because the bank still had to contain a bunch of instruments. If we had a low-instrument version of the theme (like a piano version or something like that, made to be played on one instrument), we could use a custom low-quantity high-quality bank.

BTW, I did a quick google search and found something better. At this link, the #1 theme sounds to me like what we have now, while the #3 and #4 versions of the theme sound much better.

[iNfraNe]

I have a high-quality piano plugin. It's 30 gig. I'm not sure thats gonna help ;) But midi track #3 is totally acceptable for me :)

[Rao Dao Zao]

Originally Posted by Anitarf

Although I'm not sure how it chooses which sound bank to use, is that written in the MIDI file?

No, MIDIs don't contain any soundbank information. In Windows they go straight to GM.dls, other players I guess might use different custom soundbanks. In WC3 it's most likely done by either one bank per tileset, or a something to bank mapping in a SLK file. I seem to recall there are very few banks, so I'd put my money on a SLK being involved.

[Anitarf]

I've checked, both are true. There is one bank per tileset, and the MIDIs are linked to them in a SLK. I was incorrectly remembering that you can make a MIDI-based sound in WC3 using any file path, you can't, what you use instead of a path is a sound label which corresponds to an entry in the MIDISounds.slk table. That table then stores the directory name, track name and bank name for each label.

The question is, can we overwrite this slk by importing a custom one? That way, we could make more than two tracks share the same bank. Alternatively, we could put all the tracks into a single file and then play the sound at different offsets to get the random shuffle feature.

I think a far bigger challenge than getting it to work in WC3 would be to produce the track and bank files in the first place. If you wanted to use a minimal number of instruments, you'd need to write the tracks yourself, anything you can get off the internet just wouldn't work since different tracks can use different instruments, so even if you find tracks that individually don't use many instruments in the end you can still end up with a huge bank if you want to support all of them.

But who knows, maybe iNfraNe would like the challenge of writing some SW inspired music. ;)

[iNfraNe]

Originally Posted by Anitarf

I think a far bigger challenge than getting it to work in WC3 would be to produce the track and bank files in the first place. If you wanted to use a minimal number of instruments, you'd need to write the tracks yourself, anything you can get off the internet just wouldn't work since different tracks can use different instruments, so even if you find tracks that individually don't use many instruments in the end you can still end up with a huge bank if you want to support all of them.

But who knows, maybe iNfraNe would like the challenge of writing some SW inspired music. ;)

Like I said: making a soundbank that sounds even close to real instruments is far beyond the mapsizelimit. Thus sticking with an "undressed" version of the normal database is probably best. Furthermore: making a less instruments version of a midi song is probably fairly simple, unless the arrangement isn't quite up for it.

But: is this worth the effort? I highly doubt it. It won't sound much better I think.