Warhammer Dark Omen Forum

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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y77ZE5avulU#normal)


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

Happy new year.

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

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 :)

necrominicon2.avi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IIILNn3qaFg#normal)

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).

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!

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.

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!

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.

necrominicon3.avi (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6GFKWBray4#normal)

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.

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!

Fantastic Progress Darkmancer!

:)

Nice going! :)


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  ;D).

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 .. ?

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.

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

Yes, Yes and Yes.

Although:
I'm going to be a bit tight about new army books, I want to keep the sides fairly distinct I'm not keen on just reskining and slightly altering existing sides as it just waters stuff down.

new spells yes, although obviously art will need to be draw for them.  I'm thinking more along the lines of minor spells too, things like creating an illusionary squad, ice bridge, setting fire to arrows, a reinforcing zombie/skele squads.

will it be possible to fix some video issues? like now game plays very slowly and max resolution so i have to use medium q-ty textures.

The should be no graphic issues (hopefully), and I've already included support for multiple resolutions at both standard and widescreen.

Although the graphic improvement will be limited to the orginal (all be it highest settinsg), DO texture& sprites.  New better quality sprites (or even 3d models) can be incorpreated but are beyond my capabilities/patience too produce.

I've implemented a the fight resolution code (no psyc), i''ve been slowed down though with collision as the xna libaries didn't have what I need.

an the horribles bug or problems when units move/fight near a mountain, a roc a object that drives me crazy when in the 20 vs 20 units only 3 or 4 fight because the others are freezed so you have to make them flee to dis-freeze .. that things will be "fixed"

My system should be better although not perfect (don't expect miricles im not a professional programmer).

I'm going to emulate the DO system of engage all the enemy units on the side charged, then evelop one side.  Now I think DO always envelops the right side hence problems when terrain interfears.  I'm planning on necro scanning both sides and envolping the side that allows for the most units to fight.

Hopefully this'll reduce the "jams" that occur atm.

No sweat, you seem to be doing an excellent job! :)

Perhaps the WH:TT rules could be applied? They approximately state that each combat round a regiment in melee can extended its formation with one model on each side from rear ranks, until finally the enemy is completely enveloped or there are no more rear models to move forward.

I did think about it (well i still am really), but i think the DO system works better in real time, than the TT system does.

It's something to test thou I suppose.

Any news? :)

Not really i'm afaid, not much work been done.

What i've mainly been doing is rejigging what I already have to reduce the amount of data need to be sent between players.

That's called "refactoring" and is an extremely important part of good software development, so I wouldn't say that you haven't done much work ;)

*Arrogantly ignoring his own lack of news*
ANY NEWS???

I've whacked in a simple colision detection system in, and a simple combat system (no psy, items, etc).

Whats holding it up is grouping the units into squads and squads interacting with each other, the system I orginally planned was no good (not fit for purpose in arsehole developer speak).  I've been doing a bit of theory crafting and i've thought up a new system, which has a naff working title of circles and squares, down to the fact it treats manuvering squads as a bunch or circles, and fighting fighting troops as unsirprisingly triskadecagons  squares.

Video of unit movement?</greedy>

 :( hey, i was so entusiastic with this reading and suddenly it finish! sorry the post was continued in another post or all the project was cancelled?  ???