Master of Orion 1 unofficial patch

[kyrub]

So the gist of this whole thing is:
Your modifications to MoO will not change gameplay mechanics, keeping things roughly the same, but having AI play better.

No, I wrote it in a confusing way, sorry.
I have two projects. A) makes better AI and is a part of the unofficial patch. B) uses AI from A), but definitely makes several important changes to game mechanics. B) is a full mod, in fact, changing: trade / diplomacy / research 15% bonus / AI equality and a few other mechanics.

[Guiness]

One part of the AI I would love to see fixed is for it to make better decision with regards to when a ship design should be scrapped.

I hate having hard beams fighting against gatlin lasers, or watching as a ship approaches at warp 1 when they've got fusion drives.

[Doomk]

everything can be fixed or developed using assembler as with other programming language - only price to pay for that differs. My respect to "low (abstraction) level" (assembler) developers

... This is exactly what I had in mind for this project, fixing things that can't be fixed at assembly level.

... Since I need to learn OpenGL anyway, this will be the project where I can accomplish that. So this project is official now, I will start on it this week

[kyrub]

The discussion is interesting and I will be happy to follow it, but Zeraan created a special thread for his open project. I suggest we use it instead of this thread.

reMoo project discussion

[Zeraan]

The LBX file saving is giving me an headache So I'm just putting it out for you guys, maybe you can fix the bugs in it?

As far as I know, there are only two bugs, but they're pretty serious:

First, when it loads in images, it seems like all the images are identical, resulting in first frame having the full data, then the subsequent frames being compressed to 0 bytes because it's the same as previous frame.

Second, the compression algorithm for each frame seem to be off, but I'm not sure because the first bug is breaking the whole dang process If you manage to fix the first bug, first verify that there is actually a bug with the compression algorithm.

Everything required for creating a new LBX file is implemented. This includes creating a LBX header, adding file offsets for each file, file header for each file, color/frame offsets, color palettes, and frames. If the above two bugs are fixed, then I think everything should work.

Here's the link, I think I'm done with this project.

http://www.mediafire.com/file/iroc0j5sf7...anager.zip

Feel free to modify it in any way, improving the UI or whatever. I noticed that some frames don't rely on "previous frame" (such as WINLOSE), so you might want to add a checkbox that tells the program to use previous frame for current image. Also, I suspect that some images relies on other images' color palettes (such as VORTEX) from the same file, not much can be done about that. But I don't have the desire to polish it off, sorry.

[VM]

Ill take a look whenever I have the time for it.

[Raiddinn]

I hate to be the person to bring up ideas like this, but wouldn't it make things a lot easier if we got rid of the whole idea of rendering partial frames on top of other frames and just drew the whole frame every time?

I mean we aren't using 1993 hardware anymore, it is almost 20 years later now, computers can easily handle that level of rendering.

It made sense back then in order to make sure the game could run on 286 DX2 66s, but computers are a million times better than that now.

Would it even be that difficult to bring everything up to the new standard?

Seems like the idea of maintaining the partial frame drawing is a drag on everything.

If I was re-writing Orion1, I would definitely render the full picture every time.

Raiddinn

[Zeraan]

If I was re-writing Orion1, I would definitely render the full picture every time.

That's what I'm planning on doing. However, I will be using the original LBX files. So when the game loads the LBX files, it will convert them to our current "standards"

Any future discussions about reMoO, please redirect to this thread.

[Doomk]

How I like such posts like "if I ... I would", but usually they never do, because it is a nice and easy thing to say without using your brain and any commitment.
They don't care about details, technical implementation aspects are so earthbound and a perspective is so bright, so attractive that no fluffy cloud is covering their vision... And of course they don't understand what it would take to do what they are suggesting - new engine, not a problem; unknown LBX storage format - piece of cake.
But where were you when Zeraan was asking about the LBX structure.... And then comes magical "if"

Sorry, kyrub, for messing your patch thread

I hate to be the person to bring up ideas like this, but wouldn't it make things a lot easier if we got rid of the whole idea of rendering partial frames on top of other frames and just drew the whole frame every time?

If I was re-writing Orion1, I would definitely render the full picture every time

[Zeraan]

How I like such posts like "if I ... I would", but usually they never do, because it is a nice and easy thing to say without using your brain and any commitment.
They don't care about details, technical implementation aspects are so earthbound and a perspective is so bright, so attractive that no fluffy cloud is covering their vision... And of course they don't understand what it would take to do what they are suggesting - new engine, not a problem; unknown LBX storage format - piece of cake.
But where were you when Zeraan was asking about the LBX structure.... And then comes magical "if"

Sorry, kyrub, for messing your patch thread

Whoa, easy there People that don't have experience in a particular field usually assume that it's not difficult. It's not just with game development, many occupations have that problem. The best way to fix this is to educate people about the steps involved in a task. I'm not offended by his statements, so don't worry about it.