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Ultima Underworld to Dark Mod Map conversion sample.


hank morgan

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Welcome!

 

This is really impressive. The two engines are so far apart in time and level of development you'd never think it would be possible to establish meaningful communication between the two. But it works, and produces functional, playable results. Building a game around the map would be an incredibly hard undertaking, but I'd play it.

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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Thanks. It's been a fun exercise and I'm tempted to make a single mega Stygian Abyss or Lord British's castle level just to see how it would come out. I had been playing around with DarkRadiant for a few weeks since it went standalone so this was nice opportunity to dive in with something a bit more complex. I don't exactly know where I want to go with this next but I do feel committed towards at the least seeing if I can come up with a tool to take the raw level data of an Underworld level and convert it to a usable format once I wrap my head around it all.

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Hopefully this doesn't come out as gibberish but here is some ascii output direct from lev.ark. What I'm showing here is a height map of the first level and an ascii tilemap of it's geometry.

Heights range from 0 to 15 and according to uw-formats.txt the tiles are as follows:

 

Underworld tile types are:

00 Solid (wall tile)

01 Open (square tile of empty space)

02 Diagonal, open SE

03 Diagonal, open SW

04 Diagonal, open NE

05 Diagonal, open NW

06 Sloping up to the north

07 Sloping up to the south

08 Sloping up to the east

09 Sloping up to the west

 

Trust me if you stare at it long enough it will make sense.

 

File opened successfully

There are 0x87 blocks in this file.
Header val is 135

Now Printing Height Map.
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Now Printing Tilemap.
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0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Edited by hank morgan
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Is there any texture information on the initial .map geometry export whatsoever? Even distinct missing shaders?

There's a fixup utility in DR that will automate texture/model/etc. replacements by parsing through a text file.

e.g.

# Material shaders:
MATERIAL: UW1/TEXTUREGRASS => textures/darkmod/nature/grass/thick_grass01

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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Not in what I just posted but the values I'm looking at to get that info also contain the index numbers for the textures so it would just be a simple matter of masking those particular bits to get the texture indices.

 

All of this work is passed on the Uw1/2 formats specification. http://bootstrike.com/Ultima/Online/uwformat.php. Basically there are two 4bit entries that set the floor and wall textures. That is my next step.

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Okay. I've updated my code. It now returns an ascii representation of the following:

1 Level heightmap. Heights in the range of 0 to 15

2 Tilemap of the level.

3.Index numbers for the floor textures (these refer to another block of data in the file that I have yet to look at)

4.Index numbers for the wall textures.

5.Door positions. This is slightly odd since it only shows about half of the doors I expect to see on a level. I'm guessing some doors are actually implemented as tile objects

6.Object map. Unverified. Still need to reference the objects to their types in their data block.

 

I'm uploading a copy of my code. Please forgive my sloppy programming. It's been 10 years since I last touched C so this has been a bit of a learning experience. Note this doesn't support Uw2 yet.

main.txt

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Latest update.

I've just spent some time prototyping the export from the tilemap to .map in a spreadsheet macro to get familiar with the formats and I can now use that to create a nearly functional level based on the tile data. I've yet to implement textures, floor heights or slopes but all in it's own good time.

 

You can download the level from http://www.mediafire...cm98tx8cav6rwrz.

 

Here are a couple of screenshots of the level

ib1v5kIcpAptV5.jpg

iOTtE4rQkQqcR.png

 

P.s. I tried looking for that Ascii to Dr tool that a few of you have mentioned but I could not find a download for it. I assume it's not been released yet?

Edited by hank morgan
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New features implemented.

Heights and slopes now work.

Tiles can be rendered in any x:y:z scale.

Placeholder texture loading for Level 1 of Underworld. (hardcoded)

Code will not generate brushes for hidden solids.

Code will attempt to merge neighbouring tiles of identical properties (height,texture etc) together.

Structured the tile data for easier handling.

 

0849f0287841515.jpg bf7653287841517.jpg

 

I'm attaching the latest version of my code. It's a bit messy but hopefully it makes some bit of sense.

 

Known issues.

UW data file is in little-endian. I switch the bytes around in code so I'm not sure how that will affect you on non-windows platforms.

Parameters are hard-coded. Change x,y,z ratios in void exportMaps(). Don't forget to point the file path to your copy of Underworld 1

Ascii print and other printout of tile data need to be commented out in order to run them. Ascii will be inverted unless you change the loop.

I need to add an higher offset to the ceiling so I can have a smaller z scale for gentler slopes.

Textures are a bit messed at the moment since I am not reading the texture blocks yet (next weeks project). Any tile with a brass texture is not right.

All those printfs need to be cleared out.

That code for calculating the dimensions of the normal to an angled plane is just incomprehensible to me and I wrote it.

Water is still to be done. Hence the ice.

 

Future plans

-doors & visportals

-load objects into a level (match with darkmod equivalent or place-holder) including wall decals such as the abyss door,the stairs and readables such as notes and graffiti.

-Friendly Npc's and monsters.

-Generate light/sounds automatically

-caulk texturing on hidden surfaces

-working switches & elevators

-hopefully level transitioning if supported by engine.

-better texturing handling

-Support of Underworld demo and Underworld 2. (The demo level is just a single file so in theory it's just a matter of loading that file into the leveldata data structure.

main.txt

Edited by hank morgan
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Nice. I'm still kind of interested/stumped in how water could get handled in conversion. It seems to me that UW1 just generates its geometry like any other floor; the player just interacts with it differently. Since idTech4 uses brush volumes for water, it seems like this would have to be something done by hand.

yay seuss crease touss dome in ouss nose tair

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As far as it matters to my implementation water is just a texture in Underworld. Seeing as I already know the texture numbers I'm planning to just add a special case for when the tile has a water texture. In my current implementation I already extend the base of every tile down to the same depth across the entire map so it's should just be a matter of extending the base around water tiles down a bit more and adding a water entity and base to the bottom. I just knocked up a simple room in DarkRadiant with a water entity in it's middle and it looks like this in a text editor.

// entity 3
{
"classname" "atdm:liquid_water"
"name" "atdm_liquid_water_1"
"model" "atdm_liquid_water_1"
"origin" "-789 541 30"
"underwater_gui" "guis\underwater\underwater_green_thinmurk.gui"
// primitive 0
{
brushDef3
{
( 0 0 1 -21 ) ( ( 0.0078125 0 0 ) ( 0 0.0078125 0 ) ) "textures/water_source/water_clear2" 0 0 0
( 0 1 0 -176 ) ( ( 0.015625 0 0 ) ( 0 0.015625 0 ) ) "textures/common/nodraw" 0 0 0
( 1 0 0 -126 ) ( ( 0.015625 0 0 ) ( 0 0.015625 0 ) ) "textures/common/nodraw" 0 0 0
( 0 0 -1 -21 ) ( ( 0.015625 0 0 ) ( 0 0.015625 0 ) ) "textures/common/nodraw" 0 0 0
( 0 -1 0 -176 ) ( ( 0.015625 0 0 ) ( 0 0.015625 0 ) ) "textures/common/nodraw" 0 0 0
( -1 0 0 -126 ) ( ( 0.015625 0 0 ) ( 0 0.015625 0 ) ) "textures/common/nodraw" 0 0 0
}
}
}

 

If I'm right in how I understand the map format I just create the entity entry for the water at it's origin and any brush (which I'm already generating) within that entity will become water with the correct texture settings. I need to clean the code up a lot more and move some of my hardcoded stuff into config files before I move on to water but I'm very confident that it's possible to do water.

Edited by hank morgan
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I've cleaned up my code a bit so I think it's high time I released the latest version of the program code as I have not done so since the initial demo map. A lot of stuff is still hardcorded but it should be in good enough shape for anyone interested to play around with.

 

You can download the code* from https://www.mediafir...5j3ffw4k5yy41d9

 

 

What new since I last posted?

 

-System Shock support. This is in very very early stages and I only just got started on it but I can read in tile data and produce basic flat levels. Shock has a lot of new tile types which I have to add support for.

-Underworld Demo support.

-Underworld 2 support.

-Original texture extraction

-Game strings extraction

 

Note that most of the implementation is based around Underworld 1 Level 1 so if you go beyond that level expect alot more default textures/placeholder objects. I will be making improvements in passing off texture mapping to config files in the near future.

 

 

* I do want to emphasise my gratitude for some of the resources from previous Underworld/System Shock projects that I have been able to draw on. I have given credit to those projects in the code credits.txt and readme.txt file.

Edited by hank morgan
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Its an interesting concept. I never really loved dungeon crawl, but I would be interested in seeing how would the TDM mechanics work in such a genre. I used to say the same to Tels, who was developing a project like that several months ago. If you take the physics of light and sound, the melee system, the AI sensitivity and behaviour, how would that behave in a rpg environment? I suspect it would be quite a good gaming experience. You could do away with annoying/useless stuff like random chance in combat, random chance in sneaking, random chance and armor multipliers in damage, put that all on the players shoulders in a fair, consistent world system as it is in TDM, and focuse solely on the exploration experience, creating interesting situations, etc.

Edited by RPGista
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I still think cRPG is about customizing your character, if not developing new abilities and their levels. If role playing is visible only in behaviour, such character looks bland to me. Sure I love to stun bad guys in DeusEx instead of killing in sake of "being human", but assuming goal of one role will be perfectly clear and separated from another role/approach... is wishful thinking. But maybe I'm missing the point, Thief is a true rpg experience, and TES-like games are Monopoly clones.

S2wtMNl.gif

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To be honest I'm not sure how well the Underworld maps lend themselves towards a stealth experience. Gameplay has been a minor part of my thinking on this since I just find it a lot more interesting at the moment just to see these games that I love recreated somewhat in a modern engine. Once I'm happy with things I intend to do a proper release of Underworld Level 1 with Thief like objectives that mesh with the original game. I've only just nibbled at System Shock so there is a fair bit of work to get that in a state where I'm happy with it (for instance there are almost twice as many tile types in that game that) but I think maybe there is real potential there for something fun with Doom3 itself since Doom3 is closer to System Shock than Underworld is to the DarkMod.

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It's ugly with default textures and the scaling has to be tweaked but here are some shots of the hospital level of System Shock. The tool can now handle variable ceiling heights, steeper slopes and a number of new tile types that SS needs.

 

Funny how instantly recognizable the second pic is, even without proper textures.

 

This is really cool stuff: I mean the first I heard of TDM going stand-alone, I didn't think "Yay! Modern Thief!" but "I wonder if the guys at Strange Bedfellows are already trying to convert this into System Shock." I don't want to get my hopes up, but its great to see someone pioneering this stuff even if this particular project doesn't go any further.

 

If at some point you decide to stop working on this, I really think you should do a little write-up or documentation on what you have managed so far. Sooner or later someone will be interested.

 

If you don't know Strange Bedfellows, it's a large System Shock fan community centered around modding SS1 and SS2 and preserving their legacy. There have been some remake attempts of SS1 made there, and if you haven't already, I think you should cross-post this there.

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