[Warhammer Dark Omen Forum]

Warhammer Dark Omen Forum | The Remake Project | General Suggestions
Dark Omen Reborn

[devast3d]

I decided to go from scratch because it's faster. Waypoints are taken from BTB file.

[cuthalion]

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.

[devast3d]

I'm using Behavior Trees - https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-US/Engine/AI/BehaviorTrees/QuickStart/index.html

They are applied to the unit type and work the same on different levels. Waypoints are just parameters. Scripting manually is too much work.

[cuthalion]

Thanks!

[punkforthepunkgod]

Hi guys. I created an account to give some feedback and ask for an invite to the dark omen slack channel so i can continue to help with suggestions. Gotta say though i played the demo and am pretty chuffed as a old time fan of the series, (SOTHR) being in my opinion superior in depth of story, but DO being nicer in its more modern graphics and controls at the time. So i have some feedback and some questions. One thing i think would be really nice to implement, if you are going down the route of remaking the whole game from the bottom up, would be to allow for multi unit control at once, so rather that click, select each unit to tell them what to do, having the ability to box drag and select units you like to attack one or more enemy regiments would help modernize the game for the better and feel less clunky. Second, maybe more sprite animations for combat just to make it more fluid, if at all possible. Im not sure how much of the original game you are updating and importing into the UE4 engine, seems to me you have managed to keep the actual real time warhammer engine they created intact which for anyone who knows game design and table top is what makes these games so great and timeless. So feel free to knock back any of the above comments. And i think this is nothing short of an amazing effort and really hope to see it continue.

Im actually working on a table top fantasy RPG influned by the warhammeer fantasy battle system, and run a social media outfit to support it. Would you be interested in taking someone into help with promotion of DOR?

[olly]

Hi and welcome, agree with your suggestions as already been discussed and planned. Everything is possible but devast3d is on a well earned break for awhile.

To progress this project really requires additional veteran developers for devast3d to delegate to. It's still astounding how far it already is.

[punkforthepunkgod]

Yea it is very impressive. And no rush, in understand how trying and time consuming it is to be a creator so i get it. I wish i knew some other devs to jump in on the project

[deffnator]

I think that a good way to make Dark Omen work without a full fledged remake, is creating a wrapper so it can read the game's files.


Kinda like what Kex engine does

[olly]

Hi sounds good and will investigate Kex engine. Is the proposed wrapper the same as Dege's dgvoodoo2?

[deffnator]

Hi sounds good and will investigate Kex engine. Is the proposed wrapper the same as Dege's dgvoodoo2?

Kex Engine is what Nightdive uses for their remasters, recently the Quake 1 remaster.

[aqrit]

AFAICT, Kex is akin to SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer).