Warhammer Dark Omen Forum

Warhammer Dark Omen Extreme Camera Zoom Out!

(http://img138.imageshack.us/img138/7084/extremezoomout.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/138/extremezoomout.jpg/)

Warhammer Dark Omen Mod Extreme Camera Zoom Out (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4CPIAzyTjk&feature=youtu.be#)

As you know we are very close to releasing new mods maps (been working with Ghabry on Height Maps) and recently had an idea to make the map edges really high. This makes the camera extreme zoom out and is safely out of bounds for troops. Although it's a shame I can't make the Extreme Zoom Out work for the whole of this large map (should be able to view everything in smaller maps though) since adjusting height maps affects Camera movement and is tied in with Line of Sight and Troop Movement ->

"Line of Sight uses the .PRJ 1st Height Map and Camera for Single Player and 2nd Height Map is for Troop Movement and Multiplayer Camera. (Proved by the small pyramids not being included in the original 2nd height map)".


But it should make playing 19v19 easier, hehe

http://forum.dark-omen.org/troops/fighting-with-25-regiments-t463.0.html (http://forum.dark-omen.org/troops/fighting-with-25-regiments-t463.0.html)

19v19 works =39 max units combined total
(http://img198.imageshack.us/img198/8818/19v19.jpg) (http://img198.imageshack.us/i/19v19.jpg/)

Exciting Times ahead!

:)

Dark Omen only allows the camera to get a distance of 80 from the ground
To change that distance limit to 800 ...

( assuming the English version of the executable )
write the hex values "48 44" with a hex-edit at the following file offsets:
00030128
0003029A
000304AE

Amazing work Aqrit! That certainly is an Extreme Camera, many thanks

(Can keep zooming out until map totally disappears)
(http://img818.imageshack.us/img818/9702/90tm.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/818/90tm.jpg/)

This will also be perfect for when we can create very large maps (hopefully soon)

:)

If you have any more precious free time for Dark Omen mods, perhaps you could kindly investigate our problem of the over head tactical maps in Single Player mode, as when you press SPACE BAR key it displays the current mission map from a MAPS.PBD

C:\Program Files (x86)\Dark Omen\Graphics\Maps

Unlike the Multiplayer camera SPACE BAR key that simply displays a Top Down live view of the Terrain Map. So when playing my new Fortress map (Pyramids mod map) in multiplayer the over head tactical map shows the Fortress/Castle in a Top Down view correctly but in Single Player it will still shows the Pyramids over head view map picture from within MAPS.PBD. The last time we chatted about this I think Ghabry and Rob thought it maybe possible to link off to our own map file using Ghabry's Mod Selector .dll link mod. Or to maybe extract and compile .PBD files to which I could add my own top down image of the Fortress to call up. If none of this is possible could the Single player mode overhead view be Hex edited to use Multiplayer or would Source code be required.

:)

It would be possible to hook "the call" in the executable and simply supply a custom bitmap. (If we really wanted to. )

A quick peek at MAPS.PBD
It seems to my eyes to be... bitmaps compressed with Rob Northen Computing compression v2

Have any of the modders here toyed with that?
I noticed the "RNC" magic signature in a couple files in SOTHR as well.

Rob can tell you more but yes RNC files does sound familiar, perhaps it was the case that he was working on an extractor but realized Ghabry's .dll linking would be easier solution. Thanks for looking though

:)

 http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=RNC_ProPack (http://wiki.multimedia.cx/index.php?title=RNC_ProPack)

It is possible to extract the bmps using hex-editor + propack + dosbox
oddly, two zero bytes have to added (or removed) at the end of the RNC header for the game to be compatible with ProPack
With ProPack a decompress then re-compress creates an identical file ( with the 2 bytes inserted/deleted from the header )

however, if I modify a bmp and add it back to the MAPS.PBD file ... the game crashes.

so I assume the RNC compression isn't really the current hold-up...
something in the PBD header info needs to be fixup? ( other than the [compressed data + header] size var in the table at 0x800 )
 

Yes we noticed RNC, too. Rob wrote a script to decompress Maps.pdb file. But no idea where I have saved that ;).

But we planned to replace this behaviour:
Instead of loading a fixed bitmap from Maps.pdb we want it like in Multiplayer instead:
Multiplayer just displays an overhead camera of the map.

I have no idea why this behaviour is different between Single- and Multiplayer, makes no sense at all :(

Sounds good promising investigations, much appreciated and I'm sure everyone will join me in celebrating Aqrit's well deserved promotion to Developer status for all his recent wonderful Dark Omen mods such as Win7/8 Full 3d fix, extracting all Shadow of the Horned Rat Sprites, Dark Omen Extreme Camera Zoom and hopefully many more.

Many thanks

:)

this thread is a little off topic now but...

here is a patch to get the multiplier behavior of the [tab/space] battlemap in single player
at file offset 0x00023720 in the english version of the executable
write E9 00 01 00 00 90

Overhead map in single player now works perfectly -many thanks, again!

(http://imageshack.us/a/img7/4706/wsyu.png) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/7/wsyu.png/)


and for the explanation that "one path lead to ""[MAPS]\\maps.pbd" the other went to "[PICTURES]\\MapBord.bmp"

:)