GENERAL: I am slow

[Gilgamensch]

I really had to get back to the top to read the title again

And no.......we are always on a topic...........

[child of Thor]

Originally posted by Mr Ogre
All comments are gone, sorry. It's a large code base, and hand pickiing stuff to remove, or not remove, would have been a very time consuming task.

Replacement sound libraries: I suggest either writing to DirectSound, umm, directly, or using SDL, a cross platform library for sound and graphics (which will make porting to other operating systems easier if anyone gets really ambitious).

Mr Ogre, do you have an expected release date for this or any information on about how far into the process you feel you are?
I know your very busy and all that but a little info will be much appriciated around here i'm sure - i can almost feel the tension as people are desperate to ask, but maybe holding their breath just it case it doesn't happen as expected?
Thank you very much for any info you are able to give on this

[Ekmek]

What ever sound system that gets used in ApolytonCTP2 I hope it allows me to play MP3s from harddrive. It'll be nice to pick the background music through my computer instead of relying on a disc.

I hope the removal/adding of a new sound system wll give modder new options for using sounds like MP3s for action sounds instead of Wavs (to save space) or even the chance to add new sounds when a wonder is built, victory in certain battles (like a key city in a mod) etc.

[Pyaray]

Originally posted by child of Thor


Mr Ogre, do you have an expected release date for this or any information on about how far into the process you feel you are?
I know your very busy and all that but a little info will be much appriciated around here i'm sure - i can almost feel the tension as people are desperate to ask, but maybe holding their breath just it case it doesn't happen as expected?
Thank you very much for any info you are able to give on this

You seem to have misunderstood what Mr. Ogre meant. Mr. Ogre's part of this task is now finished, and he's no longer involved. It's all up to Activision now. And since he no longer works at Activision, he probably can't help any further.

Do any of you have contacts at Activision you can ask about this?

Pyaray

[Solver]

Hold on... does that mean that those will be people from Activision to strip the source of Miles references? Or has Mr. Ogre already done that?

I must have missed something...

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Solver
Hold on... does that mean that those will be people from Activision to strip the source of Miles references? Or has Mr. Ogre already done that?

I must have missed something...

As far as I understood Mr Ogre someone else has to strip the Miles and More reference and from his post that is left to the person who downloads the source code. Everyone of us has to do it, as long as noone else was so kind to provide a stripped version of the source code. I suggest of just outcommenting the refferences, we need later to know were we have to place our own sound methods. Giving us the refferences does not mean giving us Miles and More itsself, it is a libary a bunch of source files or something precompiled that we won't get. Thefore the source code won't compile immediatly.

-Martin

[Pyaray]

Martin is correct. The package you get won't work "as is", you'll have to modify it a bit.

Pyaray

[Keygen]

Mr Ogre cleared up that his part is done and we now have to wait for Activision solely to release the code. I guess Activision will have to define the terms under which the source will be used, modified or distributed and possibly make some final adjustments to the code.

Miles will be off but what it is not clear to me is whether the sound files packed in the .zfs files go with Miles or not. Or if the music in the CD will be release as well or not though the latter won't be much of importance in my opinion.

[Keygen]

Pyaray, I don't think any of us is in contact with Activision or with someone working there right now. There had been sent a couple of emails 2-3 months ago with no response I think.

We need to act as a community, perhaps with your name or Mr Ogre's included in the list, to have a chance of a proper responce and active communication with Activision. One of the owners of this site could do the job. I would do it but I am not sure I'll get any response at all

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Keygen
Miles will be off but what it is not clear to me is whether the sound files packed in the .zfs files go with Miles or not. Or if the music in the CD will be release as well or not though the latter won't be much of importance in my opinion.

Why should they release the sound files and the music on the CD´. The music is on the CD you just need a program to extract the music and the sound files in the *.zfs file are wave files and Martin the Dane wrote a program to extract and play them.

-Martin

[Pyaray]

I can almost guarantee you that no "resources" from the game will be released with the source. You'll get a package of text files, mostly with the extension .h & .cpp. There will probably not be any art, sound, or music with it. You'll need to have the original game CD for those resources.

Pyaray

[Keygen]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

Why should they release the sound files and the music on the CD´. The music is on the CD you just need a program to extract the music and the sound files in the *.zfs file are wave files and Martin the Dane wrote a program to extract and play them.

-Martin

Oh, don't worry, I know all this stuff. I have some tools to extract music tracks from CDs and I have used Martin's ReadZFSFile tool in the past for extracting wave files from .zfs

But since sounds were mentioned I though to further clear things up as I'm sure we'll see these question over and over again in the future

[Keygen]

Originally posted by Pyaray

I can almost guarantee you that no "resources" from the game will be released with the source. You'll get a package of text files, mostly with the extension .h & .cpp. There will probably not be any art, sound, or music with it. You'll need to have the original game CD for those resources.

Pyaray

No art at all? No unit graphics, city graphics et al?
Won't be any reference in graphics within the code or are all located within the .txt files? How about the graphics used in the interface? I can't remember if these are indexed in .txt file as well.

If I got it right after we strip all references to Miles we will be able to compile the code but not able to actually run it unless we copy all art in a similar structure as in the installation folder.

OK, no problem

Thanks

[Martin Gühmann]

Originally posted by Keygen
No art at all? No unit graphics, city graphics et al?

We have this stuff, maybe there is some additional stuff that didn't make it into the game, but actual we didn't asked for that.

Originally posted by Keygen
Won't be any reference in graphics within the code or are all located within the .txt files? How about the graphics used in the interface? I can't remember if these are indexed in .txt file as well.

Well you never read *.ldl files, you find them in your ..\ctp2_data\[your language folder]\uidata\layouts\ folder. Maybe some graphics files are refferenced only in the source code itsself, but no graphics is compiled into the source that is actual used. That has the big advantage that you can develope the game without the need for finished graphics.

Originally posted by Keygen
If I got it right after we strip all references to Miles we will be able to compile the code but not able to actually run it unless we copy all art in a similar structure as in the installation folder.

No, we won't be able to play sounds, as Mr Ogre mentoned, and we don't need to copy the sounds or do anything with it. The *.zfs files are as far as I know developed by activision, so the game has an *.zfs extractor. We just need new method that will make the wav files play that is all.

-Martin

[Keygen]

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

We have this stuff, maybe there is some additional stuff that didn't make it into the game, but actual we didn't asked for that.

Em... I know that... beleive me
Just leave the CD apart and imagine someone that doesn't own CtP but is interested to read the source code, make some changes and run it after he compiles it to see the results. BOOM, the game doesn't run Why? Because the game finds no graphics to load.

But even for us who own CtP series we'll certainly copy & test the source code in some other locaction, different than the one that CtP is installed. It will be useful to know from the beginning that the graphics will not be inside the package that will come with the code and we will have to manually copy them.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

Well you never read *.ldl files, you find them in your ..\ctp2_data\[your language folder]\uidata\layouts\ folder. Maybe some graphics files are refferenced only in the source code itsself, but no graphics is compiled into the source that is actual used. That has the big advantage that you can develope the game without the need for finished graphics.

I beleive *.ldl are user interface specific graphics if I remember correctly, but interface graphics or any other graphic in CtP doesn't magically load by itself. They need to be called from inside the code by some routine and that was my comment about.

Originally posted by Martin Gühmann

No, we won't be able to play sounds, as Mr Ogre mentoned, and we don't need to copy the sounds or do anything with it. The *.zfs files are as far as I know developed by activision, so the game has an *.zfs extractor. We just need new method that will make the wav files play that is all.

-Martin

It is quite clear in my comments that I know that we won't be able to play sounds as Mr Orge said, is it not? I don't know how the Miles Sound System is utilized in a game so forgive my ignorance on that matter but perhaps the wave files within the .zfs files are played through the MSS so without it won't be possible to play them even if you have them when you compile the code after it is stripped from any reference to MSS. Unless of cource we modify the code to use DirectSound or SDL as suggested by Mr Orge or any other API that might do the job.