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Necrominicon

[Darkmancer]

Necrominicon.

Orginally envisaged as an army modification tool, has developed into a full blown engine "modification" to dark omen.    It's still in it's early stages but I hope to contiunally update this page showing the games development.

Dark Omen is a fantastic game but has several embedded problems that cannot be solve with minor modifications (graphic errors, awful netcode, etc), along with allowing changes to items, spell, etc which are simply not possible now.

  Below is a demo of the current alpha build, currently implemented are, formations, animations, sprite movement, sprite scaling with camera distance, sprite facing changes affected by both current direction of travel and camera facing.

The explosions are demo particle effects not written by me.

NecrominiconAlpha02.avi	DQ | by Aeva

The next update will have multiple regiments, smooth formation alterations, banners, and mouse control (hopefully).

Happy new year.

[olly]

Wow!  That's amazing progress and is going to be a Fantastic Project.

Nice One




If time allows it would be great to see the Development documented on our Dark Omen Blog

http://blog.dark-omen.org/

[Mikademus]

Yeah, great initiative!

Feel free to ask away about technical details about the DO formats! Since we're keeping at decrypting the formats with the intentions to (1) modify Dark omen and (2) finally remake the game, we're working toward the same goal. So ask for the info you need

[Darkmancer]

necrominicon2.avi	DQ | by Aeva

Quick update,

Added support for multiple regiments, dynamic formations (you can add/take units and ranks at will), mouse control and banners.

There's still some minor bugs with where the units decide to go in the formations but nothing major.  Next update will feature a HUD, and sprite orders (i need to let the game know which sprite is nearest to the player and hence which sprite is drawn first/last).

[alavet]

are u ok with extraxting Dark-Omen original stextures (liek landscape , trees and so on)? or youre' going to re-design it (hell loads of works)

also are you working alone or with some1?

also, are you going to issue completely "new game" as it seems to be? it's very hard work man take my respecet!

[Darkmancer]

are u ok with extraxting Dark-Omen original stextures (liek landscape , trees and so on)?

units, hud, and textures are easy to extract thanks to rdose by rob.  The actual 3d model behind the textures will be more complicated.  I will be leaving integrating that till last as it give more time for other tools to become more mature.

I believe I could integrate the landscape with what available at the moment, however It'll be a pig to do so I believe.

I'm currently working alone, although I will be abusing various people as time progresses.

New game? No the textures and models are from dark omen, as is the concept and general gameplay mechanics.  You will need the original game, this is a modification, to go any futher would be against copywrite rules.

[Mikademus]

Looking forward to see how you attack the problem of coherent formation movement and mutual avoidance, it is a classic problem in medieval battle simulations, but it can be defeated in a number of algorithmically interesting ways Atm when you change directions in the video the individuals move about as in Mark of Chaos, that is they move to their goal position regardless of the formation, so everything will start to look really cool when that's in place!

[Darkmancer]

not sure what you mean by "Atm when you change directions in the video the individuals move about as in Mark of Chaos, that is they move to their goal position regardless of the formation".  If you mean they walk over each other then thats intended.

They did it the original dark omen which im trying to emulate as much as possible.  Dark Omen formation movement is very basic there's only 2 things it does beside basic block movements.

One a sweeping curve movement that looks quite good, although it tends to be annoying in game as instead of turning towards the enemy you units will sweep in a curve then spend forever pissing about while the pathfinding farts about, it's ofter 10x quicker using the shift key first then click on target to avoid this.

The other thing is that often a few units in formation will walk a bit slow than the others breaking up the formation a bit.  They will suddenly speed up and rejoin the formation if they fall too far behind.

The other thing I need to copy is formation deformation as one unit engages another, although I think DO has a fairly simple system.

Collision detection is going to be very basic, espcially until i get the terrain in.

[Darkmancer]

necrominicon3.avi	DQ | by Aeva

A quick update.

Newly added:
enemy units, banners display selection, HUD, yet another formation and unit facing fix (it appears to be working 100% for now), and a range of vision for units.


Next up.
Formation deformation, charging, a limited collision detection, and maybe a bit of fighting too.

[alavet]

could it solve some connection bugs as well (when dark omen disconnects cause "hard to calculate" some stuff? is it possible to change shooting and magic mechanics (this is also one of the main reason of disconnects - for example few mortairs+canons shooting at the same time crashes games a lot in my experience)

great work so far!

[olly]

Fantastic Progress Darkmancer!

[Mikademus]

Nice going!

Next up.
Formation deformation, charging, a limited collision detection, and maybe a bit of fighting too.

If you take requests, I'd like retained formation for turning while marching ("wheeling", as it called) for the next demo! Note that the WH TT rules allow for two kinds of wheeling, from the edges, which is when the units at the inner corner of the turn march slower and those at the outer edge move faster; and around the center, which is when the centermost character of the front rank is still and one edge moves forward and the other backs up (this latter one is considered an "advanced maneouvre" in the TTv3 rules and some units, like trolls, are too stupid to do it  ).

[lordbraprus]

iam sorry my ignorance but what are you doing exactly like  a new engine or something?
or just making better some original game things, as the movement .. ?

[Darkmancer]

Lordvraprus: Yes it is a new engine.

Mika: it won't be in the next update, but i'll try adding the wheeling for the update after.

Alavet - Yes the multiplayer code will be brand new.

[alavet]

will it be possible to work more on armybooks AND units unique mechanics? and shooting mechanics or perhars even new spells!??