New Cosmo Game Idea

[T-Squared]

Well, I told you I'd have a promo picture for you all on this day [Christmas Eve day], so here it is! 8D

We have Cosmo riding at warp speed in his FS Model X-105!

There are 2 (actually 3) things that some people should recognize right off the bat, but if you can't find them, I'll tell you: (The third one of them is very difficult to make out)

• Look at the cover on the outside of the ship. Look familiar? [He probably got his spaceship at the same dealership that Mylo Steamwitz got his Millenium Kiwi from. ]
  
  Now look at the LCD on Cosmo's communication/music headphones. Does it have a familiar look to it? If not, try it in a different font.
  
  The third one I told you was very hard to make out, so I'll tell you what it is. Look at the Tactical display [Hey, even a intergalactic-exploring alien-kid need a little defense in case they run into some not-so-nice-guys! ], does it bring back some memories of the 80's?

Tomorrow, I'll bring out a bigger present! (I still have to work out the kinks in it though.. )

[Demon_Wraith]

Looking great

[T-Squared]

Hey guys.
I've decided to change the story a little bit for the first episode onward just slightly.(not affecting gameplay, however.) I originally was going to have ETRAC be this organization capturing aliens to research, but this is a kids game, so I decided to change it to just one scientist kidnapping children to blend into Earth's societies, and ETRAC is this peaceful research organization that has no idea of his workings.

I also need your opinion on how this title screen looks for the second episode (There needs to be a proper background added.)

I was also thinking that ETRAC could not only be a place to research aliens and their culture, but also their foods, plants, architecture... etc. One level I had in mind was a botany lab. and the exit would be that you had to jump into the mouth of a "Thruba" (shown in the title screen picture), and get swallowed, [the next level begins here] where Cosmo would be passed through it's large roots (which have grown past the soil area it occupies and actually into the floor, and get ejected through a cut in one of the roots that has grown through the cieling of the next level into an abandoned section of the Research Center.

I just though it might be a good way to give a little continuity to the levels, since there's some in the first two levels of the first episode.

(BTW, I came up with the name just a few days ago [TH=THroat, RUB= shRUB, A=Alligator], and it's also affectionately called the "Alligator Plant". Oh, and it's technically not a shrub, it's more of an alien-reptilian space-"fly"trap XD)

Cosmo better use his shoes to brake faster, or else he might be dinner |3 (Not really)

[szevvy]

Looking good.

[Malvineous]

Hey one thing I've been meaning to ask - if you're using the original Cosmo engine, how are you going to get all the speech effects in there? IIRC the sounds were PC speaker only, and not fast/sophisticated enough to reproduce speech.

[T-Squared]

Originally Posted by Malvineous

Hey one thing I've been meaning to ask - if you're using the original Cosmo engine, how are you going to get all the speech effects in there? IIRC the sounds were PC speaker only, and not fast/sophisticated enough to reproduce speech.

Well, levellass from the Keen Modding Forums has a program that she wants to test out. (There's a post I made here that goes into more detail about it)

I wish I could use the Duke Nukem II Engine (in fact, that would make things a lot easier), but I doubt anyone would (want to/be able to) reprogram it.

[AaronMT]

Just curious what programming language the engine you will be using is written in?

As a software engineer I find these old games really interesting to see the way in which they were written.

[T-Squared]

Originally Posted by AaronMT

Just curious what programming language the engine you will be using is written in?

As a software engineer I find these old games really interesting to see the way in which they were written.

The original Cosmo engine was programmed in Borland Turbo-C. (A quick peek in a Hex Editor does wonders XD) I wish actor (the objects in the game) properties could be changed like they can be in Commander Keen, if you have the right know how, but I have no idea how to do that

[Malvineous]

I think most of these old games were originally written in C. Given that the source code was never released though, any patching is done in assembly with a hex editor...

I'll be interested to see what Levellass' converter sounds like - I've only ever written snd -> wav utilities, never the other way 'round.

So out of curiosity, what can you do with the Cosmo engine that you can't do with Duke II? (given that I have a preliminary level editor, the graphics format is well known, and many of the game elements are scripted with text files...)

[T-Squared]

Originally Posted by Malvineous

I think most of these old games were originally written in C. Given that the source code was never released though, any patching is done in assembly with a hex editor...

I'll be interested to see what Levellass' converter sounds like - I've only ever written snd -> wav utilities, never the other way 'round.

So out of curiosity, what can you do with the Cosmo engine that you can't do with Duke II? (given that I have a preliminary level editor, the graphics format is well known, and many of the game elements are scripted with text files...)

Well, it's a matter of consistency.

There are a few tricks you could do with the tiles.

1. At the end of the first episode, Cosmo finally gets to his ship, but to block him from actually getting in the ship, there is an invisible & impenetrable barrier that I created by covering one of the metal pipe tiles. I could even probably create a floor that can be ascended, but not descended, by putting a floor tile over a horizontal metal pipe tile.

2. The vacuum pipes that apparently carry Cosmo from a start point to an exit point are not required. There are special actor tiles that point up, down, left and right, and only these actor tiles make the magic happen with the vacuum entrance and exits. In essence, you could create a transporter that you could actually see where you're going, or even make a hidden vaccum system that goes through a wall with no sign of pipes. (You can cover the vacuum pipe entrance with certain tiles, effectively hiding it.)

There's probably more, but I can't remember any others at this time...

You could probably make the cyan elevator pad (found in Ep. 1, Level 7) move up and down (vertically only) just by putting it between two actor arrows pointing opposite directions, but I haven't tried that yet.

EDIT:Wait, Malvineous, you mean even the intro is scripted with a text file? o_o Oy, now I've seen everything.... (If it is, then that's good, but it could probably have been told to me a little sooner. :3) Besides, I don't even have the second and third games in the series! XD

[Malvineous]

Hmm ok, well it sounds like you're sufficiently advanced with the Cosmo engine that it's not worth switching now.

Yes, the Duke II story is scripted. From TEXT.MNI (extracted from NUKEM2.CMP)

&Story

//NOSOUNDS
//FADEOUT
//LOADRAW STORY.MNI
//FADEIN
//BABBLEON 50
//XYTEXT 1 21 "Ladies and gentlemen, one of our
//XYTEXT 1 22 nation's heroes has disappeared!"
//DELAY 600
//LOADRAW STORY.MNI
//BABBLEON 32
//XYTEXT 1 21 "While Duke was being interviewed
//XYTEXT 1 22 on television about his new book..."
//DELAY 200
//XYTEXT 0 0 <EF>27600
//DELAY 500
//LOADRAW STORY.MNI
//BABBLEON 36
//XYTEXT 1 21 ...Mr. Nukem was abducted by an
//XYTEXT 1 22 unknown force."
//DELAY 200
//XYTEXT 0 0 <EF>27602
//DELAY 500
//LOADRAW STORY.MNI
//BABBLEON 50
//XYTEXT 1 21 "In other news, there's a four
//XYTEXT 1 22 mile-wide UFO floating over Los
//XYTEXT 1 23 Angeles."
//DELAY 200
//XYTEXT 0 0 <EF>27601
//DELAY 700
//LOADRAW STORY.mni
//BABBLEON 68

I think the "actual" intro (where he - Joe I believe - says "I'm Back") is some sort of animation, no script used.

And it doesn't really matter if you don't have the full game, you can start with episode one and buy the full game if it works out well :-)

[T-Squared]

When levellass completes her wav-to-snd program, I hope that the results will sound like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:We...(Electron).ogg

[Malvineous]

Well at least you're not setting your hopes too high :-) I can't even understand what that sound is... It'll be interesting to see how it comes out, I'm not sure whether the game's PC Speaker code is fast enough to reproduce sound like that (if it is I'd be surprised they didn't have more speech-like effects in the originals.)

I've often wondered how difficult it would be to patch games like Cosmo and Keen1-3 to give them Adlib sound effects...

[T-Squared]

The clip is from a game called "Exile" for the Acorn Electron, which couldn't output raw-sampled sound unless a simple trick involving the range of human hearing was used.

BTW, that voice said "Welcome to the Land of the Exile"

I've heard 1-bit sampled speech enough to know what it sounds like. (In fact, there's a program that I found for my Apple II that can output 1-bit sampled sound through the PC Speaker from the cassette port, and that's almost how I know that putting simple speech in the game for Cosmo might work. XD) XD

[T-Squared]

I'd like to know something about the maps/bg/sfx:

Are there a bits that control where the level's BG starts and what type of BG it is, as well as any special effects? For example, Episode 1's levels 1-4 and 9 all have a background that is fixed vertically [doesn't move up or down], but can change position left or right. However, Levels 5-8 and 10-11 have a BG that is free to move in two dimensions. Levels 4,7 and 8 appear to have a special tag embedded in the executable where everything that is dark purple flashes a certain color.
[Quickly from black to dark-grey to grey to white and then back again for level 4 for lightning flashes; slow, continuous pulsing between red, green, and blue for level 7; and the same pulsing with the colors used in Level 4 for Level 8]

Also, Level 4 seems to have a tag which puts rain in the frontmost layer.

[Malvineous]

Duke Nukem II has the background image specified in the map file, and IIRC it's not too different from Cosmo. There are a couple of unknown flags in there, perhaps they're used for the movement of the background layer, and lightning/rain effects?