News:

Printed Amstrad Addict magazine announced, check it out here!

Main Menu

Iron Lord by UBISoft

Started by zeropolis79, 22:05, 22 April 15

Previous topic - Next topic

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

MacDeath

#25
Sorry to be somewhat dense, but this :


is clealy not the opening font in 4 colours, but a font in 2 colours (aka mode2 in 1bpp = 1 bit per pixel) that seems to be used during those village parts...

It is Mode2 turned into Mode1 the same way the letters are turned in Basic (same pixelisation despite every modes, just different pixel ratio)

why would they put this font into RAM if it is not used ?
You can find them in RAM during the village scenes/sequences.


Ok the game doesn't use 128K ? then this can explain why there is so many multiloading... well also because it is a heavy on graphics 4 floppy sides game as well...  :o
This game is not a 6128 but a disk only game, it can run on most settings provided you get a disk drive.
Show that 64K is not so much of a limitation provided you insert a new disk/side every minutes...  ;D

QuoteIs the game as good as it looks?
seems to be an adventure game made of many minigames.
Yes it looks terrific, but to be honnest, while some parts are great on CPC, some other screens look actually a bit better in CGA.

Bizzarely they didn't quite used the exact same graphics...
BTW most are ports from the ST version.
CPC version is a bit more on the monochrome aspect while CGA fixed palettes and EGA compatibility would somewhat get more realistic sometimes.




dlfrsilver

#26
Oui tu as trouvé cette fonte là :

la petite de l'intro, et celle-ci, qui fait les lettres plus grosses :


TFM

Meinte er nicht, er hätte den Zeichensatz in Hauptprogram gefunden?


Für mich macht es ehrlich gesagt auch wenig Sinn Text als Grafik abzuspiechern.

TFM of FutureSoft
Also visit the CPC and Plus users favorite OS: FutureOS - The Revolution on CPC6128 and 6128Plus

MacDeath

#28
Yes, in game there are upper case letters using more tiles (16x16 pixels), and lower case letters in 8x8 x1bpp... winape can display them in "Mode2" so it pull the 1x2 pixel ratio as it is suppposed to be Mode2 code.

[attachimg=1]

Basically the intro font and ingame font are the same, but :

>> the intro ones has 4 colours and add layers of colour (the shadow from yellow-orange-red) so letters are "bigger" : 8x10 per lower case letters, in native Mode1 (2bpp, 2 bytes width) because you know : extra colours...

>>in-game only use 2 inks (1bpp) are are a bit  smaller as a result : only the "yellow" on my pictures... hence the 8x8.


in french :
à quel moment tu n'arrives pas à faire la différence entre les deux images appelées "letter tiles11.png" et "ingame font IL.png" ?
Ce sont des screenshots de la fonction find graphics de winApe.
la première à été prise dans la RAM durant l'intro, l'autre pendant une séquence quand le joueur explore un village.

Si tu passe la première en "mode2" crois moi ça donne absolument pas ce que tu vois sur l'image 2.
Tu peux voir l'étalonnage de largeur, hauteur et le Mode graphic d'encodage.
WinApe aura tendance a magnifier la vue en "mode2" car tu sais, les écrans aux pixels carrés modernes ne savent pas faire des pixels genre Mode2...
Tu peux aussi voir que l'emplacement en RAM n'est pas le même non plus.


Après ok, ils ont surement mis cette fonte Mode2 dans la RAM pour faire jolie et ont alors mis de gros panneaux bitmaps en Mode1 native mais compressés avec les textes déjà fais car on sait qu'UBIsoft était une bande de branquignolles et de bras cassé du code.  ;D

Sinon oui les lettres pour indiquer les ponts cardinaux sur la Minimap sont bien en Bitmap à l'image... ça fait partis du cadre de la minimap vraissemblablement, et elles utilisent un poil plus d'encres que le lettrage de base de la zone de texte.

enfin il y a des séquences de dialogues avec des lettre majuscules  en 4 couleurs et les lettres minuscules en 1bpp, du moins à l'écran ,faudrait voir en RAM.


http://www.emu-france.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Iron-Lord-Map.png


anyway, this sort of game could be the perfect exemple of what a proper PLUS version could add to a mode1 game with nice sprites.
The Map could use them for the casttles/village/towers/mouse pointer... to add many more colours and details.

Also many squences could use hardsprites as well here and there (labyrinthe).
The game could also use a bit more different palettes to get more variations during game.

alex76gr

I remember playing this game without having a clue of what to do and understanding nothing from the on screen text!
Still the graphics were superb even on my green monitor. :)
I still believe that i got my myopia from the green GT-65 monitor, but i can't prove it! :)

MacDeath

Indeed this game is quite optimized for green screens.
:D

zeropolis79

You would find it funny that I can complete Zelda Ocarina of Time with Japanese text and I haven't a clue what's being said.

alex76gr

Maybe because the game isn't story sensitive?
I mean it doesn't require the player to answer or choose things related to the on-screen text.
I haven't played the game, i am just wondering.
QuoteYou would find it funny that I can complete Zelda Ocarina of Time with Japanese text and I haven't a clue what's being said.
I still believe that i got my myopia from the green GT-65 monitor, but i can't prove it! :)

ZbyniuR

Mine version of colors for Iron Lord. :)
In STARS, TREK is better than WARS.

siccoyote

#34
Just such a big game, very fancy, would be a really nice addition to the GX4000 Library if it could be converted.
And not be in french :D .
Shame you're still stuck with 4 colours even if the palette is altered.

kawickboy

A 4-sided game to CPR... You can hope.

siccoyote

Quote from: kawickboy on 14:55, 13 November 19
A 4-sided game to CPR... You can hope.
Yeah it would be a real operation for someone and they'd probably have to split it in two?With some way to carry on a game on a second cartridge by entering some values or something?

dthrone

Quote from: siccoyote on 15:30, 13 November 19
Yeah it would be a real operation for someone and they'd probably have to split it in two?With some way to carry on a game on a second cartridge by entering some values or something?


Two carts - crazy  :P   Data transfer via some sort of password - seems reasonable  :)   Splitting the game up across two carts - considerable work  :(


zeropolis79

I'd just love a version in English..

jackic

#39
Quote from: zeropolis79 on 12:03, 14 November 19
I'd just love a version in English..
Not that hard with the proper motivation, you just need the time, a simple hex editor can do the trick as the graphics don't need, mostly, to be altered in any way.




zeropolis79

I could do it - I have the text from the Spectrum version - would just need to know where to start..

kawickboy

As english words are using less letters than french words a translation shouldn't be to hard.
As we are more and more people using hcx/gotek devices, would it be difficult to have a 2-sided-game using 800ko dsk ?

zeropolis79

Quote from: kawickboy on 09:45, 18 November 19
As english words are using less letters than french words a translation shouldn't be to hard.
As we are more and more people using hcx/gotek devices, would it be difficult to have a 2-sided-game using 800ko dsk ?
I've got an English version of the text, I just need to work out how to get started - I'm wondering if the editor on WinAPE could help me with it or maybe a disc sector editor.

zeropolis79

Just taken a look on the WinAPE debugger but no luck in finding the text

jackic

Quote from: zeropolis79 on 00:10, 19 November 19
Just taken a look on the WinAPE debugger but no luck in finding the text
Hi again, I will give you some pointers on how to proceed, but keep in mind that translating a game like this without some knowledge will be a LONG task, anyway, here it goes:
First of all, the main tool I use for these kind of works is Windhex, a pretty old hex editor but i find it easy to use and very robust. I will show you an example of localising some random text and some tidbits about hex editing.

After downloading windhex and running it, you will have a completely black main window, then press:
File -> Open file for editing ; and select the SECOND dsk for Iron Lord, you'll be greeted by a screen full of bytes on the left side of the screen and their "ascii interpretation on the right"

Then press File-> Open Table File -> File #1 and open "iron.tbl" (I will provide this file)

Then press File-> Open Table File -> File #2 and open "ironB.tbl" (I will provide this file)
With this, you can already start looking for text, we are going straight to a section of the dsk for ilustrative purposes, press CTRL+G (Go to) and enter: 2f090 and press enter, this will move the editor to that position in the file and you will see this:

As you can see, I have already localised some text (but it won't be like that on your file, it'll still be French), in this editor, you can switch between editing the left and right side by pressing TAB, this is mandatory as you will have to manually enter line jumps and the position of the text, this first image also has highlighted the FF byte that, as you can see, marks the end the sentence. Where this byte not present, the program would keep drawing on screen all the characters in the file until it finds the FF byte.



So, you already know about the end byte, next is the line jump, that forces the program to start drawing in the next line provided:


As you can see, after the <nextline> mark, there are two bytes prior to the text, these two bytes determine the X and Y position of the line that follows so, in this particular example, if you wanted to draw the "on your old" line further to the left of the screen you should change the highlighted 70 on the LEFT to a lower value, keep in mind that it is hex and not decimal so 70-2 (for drawing 2 spaces to the left) would be 6E and not 68. The Y or vertical position can also be changed but I did not do enough testing as to have a clear idea on how it works. Also, let's say that you edited the PREVIOUS line "in the castle" and left just "in the", after the "the" you should switch to the left side of the editor by pressing tab and manually enter the line jump and the position of the line that, in this case, would be 00 70 C1, then, switch back and keep editing, OR, if you feel that the space is enough for you without moving line jumps, these control codes could be ignored and just overwrite the french text.


This last picture, shows how do the MASSIVE uppercase at the start of some text work, they are stored in memory as TILES, and in this particular case, those big letters are formed by 4 of these tiles, two on the upper line and two on the bottom one, you can see that 90 91 forms the UPPER (Y-) part of the letter and 92 93 the BOTTOM (Y_) part, they are shown as Y- and Y_ for simplicity's sake. So, say you would want an X instead of the Y, just open the IRON.TBL file provided with some text editor and just find the code for the letter you want, (X- BEING 88 89 and X_ being 8A 8B)
The last thing I will mention is why two table files (IRON.TBL and IRONB.TBL), I am not very familiar with this game but it seems that it has several ways to show text so one tbl file may not be perfect for every situation so, if you find text that has a dot instead of an space between words, just switch tables (ctrl + 1 is tbl 1 and ctrl + 2 is table 2) this is mandatory because the position of some uppercase letters is also changed between game styles. Also, one of this game styles' text only uses ONE byte to mark the position of the text and, as I am very unfamiliar with the game, have not been able to test it.

So, now you should load the first dsk, load the tbl files and start looking for the text and localising it, then load other dsk, rinse and repeat.

I hope I have been clear enough for you to understand, if you have any questions that I am able to answer, I will gladly do.

Good luck!

zeropolis79

Doesn't look too hard. I'll take a look at the program and make a start as soon as I can.
As I said, I have the English text thanks to the Spectrum version. The Amstrad Manique walkthrough video will help make sure I've got the right text for the right sections.

Many thanks for the help.. i think I can do it, it's just working out where to get started.



zeropolis79

In theory, could this program help find and fix the bug in the disc version of Famous Five (which I've mentioned in another posting)

MacDeath

funny to see this old topic was raised from death and still kicking.

;D

zeropolis79

I'm determined to carry this out - just needed some help to get started.

zeropolis79

Well, my part in this project is over.

I've followed the instructions, I found the first batch of text which was easy to access in the game itself (for checking), got an English translation... and it didn't work.  First attempt I got part of the first line in but it went into a BASIC mode - numerous attempts after that, I load the area for which text I had translated all I get is a black screen.

(and I'd worked on it for six hours)
So, I'm throwing in the towel on this one and going to leave it for someone else to do.  :(

Powered by SMFPacks Menu Editor Mod