Hi there ! 

Just a small post to give news from my attempts to a new Commanche Gold modding tool.
First, the need for this tool comes from an observation :

• The legacy mission editor offer limited mission creation options
  
  • limited choice of maps
    
  • limited choice of AI objects (mission unit types)
    
  • limited options for objects behaviour
    
  • simple diplomacy options (camp red vs blue)
    
  • totally unavailable triggers for complex scenarios
    
  • sky, wind and music edition ?
    
  • maps are represented in 2D
    
  • no «cancel» or «redo» option
    
  • ....
    
• Saved mission project files and mission exported files are written in different formats
• The interface is very small and uneasy to use
• Map import/creation tool unavailable
• Object import tool unavailable (doable manually)

Current workarounds require:

• To extract files from PFF or MRF with FwO Raven's Pff Utility in order to edit missions (post edition with map swap, triggers insertion, AI objects swap), and to hope that everything works fine the first time.
• To use the «objedit» editor from DavidC99 on those exported missions in post edition
• To do some hexadecimal editing by hands to achieve some other special mods?
• To mod the Hexadecimal content of the editor in order to access new maps in pre-edition. Maps names are hardcoded.

I intend to unify those operations to make mission editing easier. This will require a lot of reverse engineering operations and I hope I’ll be able to have a beta of something usable one day.
I don’t intend to work on game modding... I mean : resolution, performances, multiplayer - I don’t have the knowledge (yet?) for that.
So here, I will mostly focus on the creation of contents for the game, via file edition.

Requirements

• The program should be a portable .exe file or a small folder.
• ...

Current state :
- PFF and MRF editing.
I just noticed the «file entry segment» has five null char before the file entry segment model described by https://codertao.com/blog/?cat=18 . Also, there is no footer.
Second issue I’m facing is the file entry segments in CGold.pff and Resource.pff being slightly smaller than expected with respect to the fileCount and segmentSize.

Once this is fixed and understood, I’ll be able to improve the GUI operation on pff (file insertion, file order swap, file removal) and then concentrate on map reverse engineering attempts.

Edit: Fixed. Since I had patched the MRF edition, I added 5 null bytes to the filelistentry. It’s not the case for Pff files. In both cases, there is no footer in these PFF2 files.

Status update - fixed. Currently having a look on maps. I hope that they are not compressed format otherwise I'll have some trouble !

Status update - fixed. Almost cracked Grey maps, I hope color maps will look the same (but palette must me more complicated). .PCX files use RLE (Run Length Encoding), but with a modified version, not compatible with today picture editors. Coding this should not be too complicated, there is only one byte that is totally unknown to me (maybe a timestamp), and a 256 byte field that I suspect to be the bin count. I hope it won’t take too long, but I’ll have few time in the following days. <See Modded map file viewed from file editor in second attached picture. In this modded map file, the base level and top level are interverted>

Status update 13/02/23 - Okay, the encoding used is not exactly run length encoding. I scratched my hair the whole day long, now I’m making a break !

Hi FatCatProject ,

Very good idea. I will follow this topic and I will wait to test your Comanche Gold modding tool.

SUCCSESS!

Regards

ufo :-)

Okay,

Tonight I’m glad to say (cf the new image in my edited message just above) that I’m just one step away from an efficient map creator tool.
I mean that at least, the conversion from grayscale and color images look like it’s within reach, so anybody could create his own irrealistic but functional map from paint. I hope I can do that this week.

Next step will be realizing the graphic interface so that editing depth and color at the same time is possible (I suspect that color is maybe coded from a custom palette that is ruled by the green / snow / desert setting)

Then the next big step will be placing and moving items on those maps, and exporting a mission.

Final steps will be either reading automatically the resources.pff to extend automatically the editor’s ability, either listing down on a resources.csv the data for every object of the game so that the editor gives every options are available.

Hello, FatCatProject,
This is an amazing plan. Now I have no doubt that You will
going on it step by step. I am on standby for any news here :-)

All best
ufo

Finally, I’ve been fooled !

The compression algorithm used is not Run Length Encoding, at least not the version documented on the internet. Figures don’t match, I can mod it but in a random way.
I make a little break and I will try to find out what compression algorithm is used.

Update:
Okay, it’s very, very hard to understand for me. While the compression is not that efficient (1 bytes encodes 1.37 pixels on average on my test map), it is not written in RLE since the change of one byte at some area of the code changes a whole pattern. In addition, I’ve seen that upper and lower nibble of the same byte play different roles in the map rendering.
I will give up on this point for the moment. As previously said, there already exists many maps from the other Novalogic games. I wanted to read the maps so that my editor would easily load them with a graphic interface and allow objects positionning inside it. But there is a workaround, I will simply mod the legacy editor and save .PNGs from screenshots. That’s a lot, at least 4 screenshots, image edition and export times the number of maps, but it’s a good way to patch the issue.

I contacted some former members of the team... who knows

Hi FatCatProject,

As you know I am a big fan of the advanced mission creating - /map and action/

We already have many maps - near 140 original maps
and Their Sky, Sun, Moon, Stars, Day/Night, Clouds, Тopography shape, intro info and camouflage can be additionally modified
If we can load maps and their attributions in the mission editor beforehand this is enough good solution for this part of the mission making.

The heart of the mission is in the good story and the action on it.
Until now in order to make a such complex mission we have learned to do manually these operations:

set Group IDs.
set Team/Side.
manipulate AI objects behavior with triggers ( if/than, points - time, position, event)
add 3D objects
add. speech, text, sounds

If some of these operations can be added in the mission editor this will be enough good solution for the other part of the mission making

Best Regards

ufo :-)