[Warhammer Dark Omen Forum]

Warhammer Dark Omen Forum

Thank you,
everything (almost) worked and indeed it now looks much better with 3d emulator and stuff. Good old Dark Omen

Why I say "almost" is - I noticed your custom dwarf heads have graphical glitches when they speak
[attachment=1]

I noticed it for dwarf king and also engineer (dwarf in glasses, in horned helm) - dwarf campaign, mission 1. Engineer glitches are less noticable - smaller and better color. But both are somewhat related to mouth-beard region...
Can you please let me know if you have the same as I have on the provided screenshot?

Hey guys how have you been. Hope everything is fine.

I installed Dark Omen yet another time on my new laptop. I managed to run the game with my own patch but I have a graphics issue I do not know/remember how to resolve.
[attachment=1]

Can anyone help and remind me of compatibility patches or something? I have core-i3 ice lake and Intel UHD Graphics if that matters.
Thank you.

Thanks!

Interesting, could you elaborate on the AI behaviour a bit? How enemy units decide "what they should do"? Has this logic to be reprogrammed for each melee/ranged unit on each map or is it something that can be applied to all maps?

In CTL files, "AI" logic was not de facto AI, it was a set of scripts that defined behaviour of each unit on one map.
Melee unit scripts (cavalry, infantry, chariots) were pretty straightforward:
1) Waiting for a certain even to get teleported to a certain place on the map.
   The event can be: timer, player unit within a certain range, certain unit alive/dead etc. Sometimes unit is not teleported but stands at a certain place on the map, waiting for event trigger.
2) Basically hunt nearest player unit, or if none can be seen, patrol between waypoints.

Archers had more complicated "AI". I cannot really call it an AI. It was basically instruction to go to a certain predefined waypoint, and shoot everyone from there. 2-3 waypoints were set up, archers moved between them, if they suffered damage etc...Every ctl map had to have its own set of scripts for each archer regiment.

Mages also had a pre-programmed behavour that defined their spells and moves on one map. Everything except event handlers should have been reprogrammed for any map.

This was very clumsy and not modding-friendly. On the other hand, all existing mods - at least mine - are bound to CTL files and will be completely broken otherwise.

Thank you very much again, for the UE demo of Dark Omen looks really promising.

Question: As far as computer regiments behaviour - timing, place, other functions - did you decode CTL files where it is used or did you create it from scratch?
Thank you.

Hi guys,
I have just tried a demo of Dark Omen Reborn and I can only say this: It is awesome! It really feels like good old Dark Omen, no questions. While I completed the battle, I noticed a few minor bugs or things that I think might be bugs - something that does not work exactly like DO. I can report them if your interested. Also, I am ready to test other game episodes as they appear - hope you have strength and patience left to make second step now that this incredible initial step is done

Hi Olly
Can you please let me know what mod is the most balanced and suitable to play a couple of mp games? My bro wanted to play some. Could you share a link? And is it better to use local network Ip address or connect via Game Ranger?

Thank you.

Thank you,
let me try PCem first. I downloaded it but did not find instruction how to run Dark Omen (or another game) using it. Is there one? Probably it's too late and I should look into it tomorrow :p

Hello guys,
I tried dgVoodoo 2.45, used Olly's instructions but I receive an error message when I run Eng_Rel.exe:
"Dark Omen has failed due to an incompatible DirectX version or out-of-date display drivers."
Any idea how to fix it?

Also, I have videocard NVIDIA GeForce MX150. And Dark Omen allows me to switch to 3d when I start game (only colorful mouse seems to crash the game).
While overall graphics seems to improve slightly, all unit sprites have black bars and I do not know how to get rid of them. Also, is there a way to fix it?
Thank you.

[attachment=1]

As far as i remember (it's been a while) there is a clumsy hardcode of cavalry speed:
It checks unit armor. If unit has what editor refers to as 'mounted armor', then speed is hardcoded and equals to infantry speed 7 regardless of what you set in Mv.
But you can make cavalry type, non-zero mount byte (horse or boar), just set them regular armor: 0 through 4. Then you set mv = 9 (for wolfriders) and they run fast. Ijust hope that no 'mounted armor' does not prevent such unit from being a cavalry in all fight checks. It works properly in ctl though and no reason to suspect worse at lower code levels.

Addon: mounted armor may influence certain combat situations, like polearm infantry  cancels its bonus or something like that. But there is no other choice atm to make faster or slower cavalry.

Ghabry could you advise on the following dark omen start exception:

Windows8
Original dark omen starts properly and runs original campaign. So game installation is OK.

Olly's Modded version with mod selector and updated ddraw.dll and darkpatch.dll returns  this exception number:
0xc0000142.

I once had the same error at my bro's laptop operating under Win8. I failed to fix that problem using instructions.
Probably, Ghabry's solution would have helped. I cannot verify it atm though. Probably, the solution is worth mentioning at troubleshooting steps in Olly's instructions.

One more thought related to race speech checks.

2 Years ago I had no better solution than to hardcode a set of unit ids that would talk dwarvish or skavenish, and do it for every of 25+ ctl mission files. Even if I had a simple race check at hand, I would still have to edit all 25+ ctl files.

Is it possible to upsert global functions starting with certain func id? Functions that would override (at your own risk) default local functions.

Unit type. last 3 bytes are responsible for race.

if Type mod 8 = 0 - it's a human race etc. Type mod 8 = 1 is elves I think, etc.
I do not have race order at hand, but I think you know it yourself, just you forgot.

Update.
Order is as follows:
   <unittype>
      <item value="0">(None)</item>
      <item value="8">Human infantry</item>
      <item value="9">Wood elf infantry</item>
      <item value="10">Dwarf infantry</item>
      <item value="11">Night goblin infantry</item>
      <item value="12">Orc infantry</item>
      <item value="13">Undead infantry</item>
      <item value="14">Townsfolk</item>
      <item value="15">Ogres</item>
      <item value="16">Human cavallry</item>
      <item value="20">Orc cavallry</item>
      <item value="21">Undead cavallry</item>
      <item value="24">Human archers</item>
      <item value="25">Wood elf archers</item>
      <item value="27">Night goblin archers</item>
      <item value="28">Orc archers</item>
      <item value="29">Skeleton archers</item>
      <item value="32">Human artillery</item>
      <item value="36">Orc artillery</item>
      <item value="37">Undead artillery</item>
      <item value="40">Human wizard</item>
      <item value="43">Night goblin shaman</item>
      <item value="44">Orc shaman</item>
      <item value="45">Evil wizard</item>
      <item value="61">Undead chariot</item>
      <item value="67">Fanatic</item>
      <item value="55">Monster</item>
      <item value="53">Dread King</item>
   </unittype>

When editing CTL scripts in campaigns, I missed a few things badly.

1. A randomizer. It was needed in many occasions. Among them - enemy units popping in one of 2-3 places to reduce predictable scenarios. Also, random magic books for own troops. 2 spells set at random out of a list of 6, for example. Many other scenarios.

2. I missed ability to read a unit's race. I had to hardcode all skaven and dwarvish phrases based on unit's ID. It is very clumsy but at that time there was no better solution.

There maybe other things I will recall later...It has been quite a while since then so I almost forgot what CTL is in the first place