nancygold: D&D Stronghold Decompilation Progress

Настроение:	accomplished
Entry tags:	gamedev

D&D Stronghold Decompilation Progress
Finally I was able to recover all the files and make grab process working again.

Apparently the LBM files I produced were indeed non-conforming.
Since they are in newer format, while Stronghold used the original Amiga one.
So while the DOS Deluxe Paint is able to load, the other software can't.

The original sprite sheets also had special markers, which I had to reproduce.
And I'm lucky, the ST.EXE had most the frame positions hardcoded.
Instead of using these frame markers.

But it is now possible to mod the game assets.
For example, translate it into Russian or Nigerian.

Anyway, I'm the first person in 30 years seeing the bellow message.

Winner winner chicken dinner!!1

That function indeed has 2200 lines!
But the original was too huge to fit in one segment.
So Cathryn broke it into 3 functions, each 2000 lines.
I had to go through all 3, collecting all the sprite cuts

(Добавить комментарий)

	(Анонимно) 2024-07-13 16:49 (ссылка)
	who is Cathryn ? (Ответить) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	nancygold 2024-07-13 17:41 (ссылка)
	https://www.google.com/search?q=cathryn+mataga (Ответить) (Уровень выше)

	nancygold 2024-07-13 17:43 (ссылка)
	https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathryn_Mataga (Ответить) (Уровень выше)

	(Анонимно) 2024-07-13 21:16 (ссылка)
	>I'm the first person in 30 years seeing the bellow message. Why is that? Data corruption can't trigger it? (Ответить) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	nancygold 2024-07-13 21:39 (ссылка)
	Because seeing it requires the original assets, which I had recovered. (Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	(Анонимно) 2024-07-13 23:27 (ссылка)
	Is this codepath not triggered during normal gameplay or something? What's "the original assets"? I thought the game loads them anyway. Anyway, a reader of your post won't be able to infer the context that you have from what you've written. (Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

nancygold
2024-07-14 00:08 (ссылка)

>Is this codepath not triggered during normal gameplay or something?

No. That is the development code, which Cathryn had no time to strip from the release version, likely due to deadline.

>What's "the original assets"? I thought the game loads them anyway.

No. The game loads a set of unnamed preprocessed resources, referenced only by their order inside the stash file, which is determined during the grab process. The grab happens when one run "strong.exe grab", which takes *.lbm, *.voc and other files and compiles one monolithic resource file. Since the filenames and the sprite sheet parameters for the original files weren't stripped from the executable, I was able to reverse this process with a few days of effort. The Japanese versions have the development data stripped, since they had the time to optimize the game.

>Anyway, a reader of your post won't be able to infer the context that you have from what you've written.

I have explained that a few posts ago.

(Ответить) (Уровень выше)

	(Анонимно) 2024-07-13 23:23 (ссылка)
	There is no "Nigerian" btw. There is only Hausa, Igbo, and Yoruba. (Ответить) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	nancygold 2024-07-14 00:09 (ссылка)
	There is no "Russian" btw. There is only finno-ugric, tatar, and buryat. (Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	(Анонимно) 2024-07-14 12:12 (ссылка)
	So what is your native language then, comrade ZadkOV? (Ответить) (Уровень выше) (Ветвь дискуссии)

	nancygold 2024-07-14 14:03 (ссылка)
	English, since I grown up on English language content. (Ответить) (Уровень выше)

That function indeed has 2200 lines!But the original was too huge to fit in one segment.So Cathryn broke it into 3 functions, each 2000 lines.I had to go through all 3, collecting all the sprite cuts

That function indeed has 2200 lines!
But the original was too huge to fit in one segment.
So Cathryn broke it into 3 functions, each 2000 lines.
I had to go through all 3, collecting all the sprite cuts