DF-21 Forums

[Dima]

Hello!

I am quite new to Dark Forces modding. However, I am browsing the DF-21 as well as several other Dark Forces sites for quite some time now. After studying which tools are available and what is actually possible within the limitations of the DF engine, I also found several great custom levels/maps such as Tie Defender Base, Dark Tide or Mt. Kurek and many more

To make a long story short: I want to include some of the maps I found into Dark Forces, completely replacing the original levels. Would this be possible by merging the levels/gob/lfd etc., editing the jedi.lvl file accordingly and tweaking everything to work together? Or is it simply not possible?

I also wonder if anyone has ever tried to combine all 4 released episodes from the "Dark Tide" mod into the game (replacing the campaign as well as the cutscenes)?

Any ideas, hints or suggestions would be greatly welcome ;D

Thanks!

[Barry Brien]

Hi. Though this would be possible with certain levels, it would not be possible with the Dark Tide series. This is due to the use of custom bms that replace the weapons, as well as palette issues and the issues with Kyle's gear relating to japship.
However I'm sure that such a thing would be possible in DarkXL.

[Dima]

Thanks for answering hm... Oh no Why didn't they try to make at least Dark Tide's missions compatible to each other o0 Or is this possible maybe? Is there any way to rename certain files inside the mods to not replace any original resources but to "add" to the game?

EDIT: If all this does not work - is it at least possible to combine only Dark Tide I-IV somehow?

EDIT2: About DarkXL, I really really like this project don't get me wrong - but as with most really good projects, this will not be finished and usable before around 2010 So that's not an option unfortunately

[sheepandshepherd]

[Dima]

Well, thank you for this detailed explanation Actually I would like to sacrifice some individuality of DT for a "complete" package. However, this might still not work out because of the pallettes used in each level. Ah too bad, I really like Dark Forces and wanted to create something like a huge addon or even sequel. Ah well.....

Btw, it's nice to see some of the people who created Dark Tide and other classic levels around here, still helping people with all their ideas I guess DF modding will become even more interesting again, now that DarkXL is in development. Hm, I still don't believe it will come out anytime soon - but I would really like to be proven wrong here ^^

EDIT: Hm, after rethinking this - I would still like to combine it somehow. Is there anyone who can help me a bit more by giving me some more insight in what has to be combined and where possible problems might be? Can levels that replace the secbase also replace other levels by simply renaming the secbase level files to something else? The missions and texts etc. should not be complicated to combine. The cutscenes should also work, at least those from the beginning of the levels. I could then add the missing story elements in form of extended briefings. Furthermore, some more custom levels could be added in-between the 4 DT episodes.

[sheepandshepherd]

You're welcome. Do you know how to use WDFUSE? It's the most popular editor for Dark Forces. It doesn't just make levels, it's also used to make GOBs and LFDs. If you haven't practiced with it, you might want to, since it contains probably everything you'll need to combine any of these levels (besides knowledge ).

I'm not the most experienced person here, but I can give you a few quick tips relating to this task

-Palettes are level-specific, you can use different palettes for different levels. There's 2 different kinds of palettes ->
-PLTT palettes store the colors used in a level.
-CMPT palettes store the color transitions used by different lighting levels.

-The jedi.lvl file stores the names and order of all the levels in your GOB. You can't add new levels, you have to replace the 14 originals.
-You CAN change the order of the levels, but there's one exception here:
-The JABSHIP level is different than the others. In it, you start with no gear from the previous level. You can get it back by picking up the Gear object. Besides JABSHIP, all the other levels work the same, since you can change the palettes used in them.

-WDFUSE makes a GOB with your level in it for you. In the GOB, you put all the custom files and replacement files. Any original files (ie textures) that you don't modify are loaded automatically by DF, don't put them in your new GOB.

-The only thing about weapons that you can change is the images and sound, you can't change what ammo it uses, how much damage it does, etc. The BMs and VOCs for the weapons and projectiles are universal, so they have to be the same in all of your levels.

-Enemies are assigned 2 things in a level, a WAX and a LOGIC. The WAX determines the image displayed, the LOGIC determines how the enemy behaves. They ARE mixable. So, if you give an enemy a Stormtrooper WAX and a Dark Trooper III LOGIC, it will look like a Stormtrooper but fly around and shoot plasma missiles at you.
-This^^ means that you don't have to replace any of the original enemy WAXs with custom ones from the levels (yay ), just put them all in the same GOB with the levels.

-The TEXT.MSG file in the GOB contains all the text messages sent to you in the game, from ALL the levels. You'd have to manually combine the 4 files from Dark Tide episodes and completely renumber the INF. This will be a lot of copy-paste work. If you want to understand the TEXT.MSG file better, just open up a level in WDFUSE and look through it. It'll get simpler with practice, trust me

-DON'T FORGET to get permission from all authors before doing anything with their levels. This might be a pretty big problem for Dark Tide, since there were many authors, and 2 of them are rarely seen around this site.
-Also, even the Dark Tide uses some BMs and WAXs created by other authors. You can find credits for these in the DT readmes. You ALSO have to put these credits in your readme if you pack Dark Tide into one GOB.


That's all the advice I can offer right now . . . anyway, if you haven't familiarized yourself with WDFUSE and Dark Forces' file structure, you probably didn't understand any of that. Unfortunately, this kind of project will take some learning . . . WDFUSE skills won't develop overnight, sadly . . . the tutorial included with WDFUSE will help you a lot, and simply experimenting with the program will help you even more. Make a backup folder and just mess around with some of those levels you downloaded, and don't hesitate to ask for help along the way. You'll learn it all eventually

EDIT: Yes, I think simply renaming the SECBASE resources should work . . . there might be a few extra steps in WDFUSE though, with the level header files. I don't know how to use those yet, sorry

[Dima]

Thank you! That's very helpful indeed!! Well, I already created several mods for some other games, so don't worry, I only need to learn more about the level headers and other details in WDFUSE. I already extracted files from the Dark Tide and it seems that several cutscenes are also replacing one and the same existing DF cutscene, so that might be a problem at some point - what do you think? I also found that many enemy-files are replacing the same DF enemies (well just from looking at the files so far). Is there any way to rename them in the level itself and the files to simply overwrite other enemies each time?

I also certainly hope that someone from Dark Tide will grant permission to combine the files into one. But actually I do not plan to release this on the net or something anyway, I mainly do this because of personal preference. And I guess everyone else would just load up each episode separately I still wonder why the creators of DT never thought about combining everything - maybe it is simply not possible to include everything they got into one package?

Oh and one last thing, I did not finish any Dark Tide Episode yet (actually I would save that for when I get all this together somehow) - are the episodes one level each or does every episode contain more than one level or are the levels so long that they have been split?

[Barry Brien]

Parts 1 and 2 are single levels.
part 3 is split over 3 levels and 1 mini-level.
Part 4 is split over 3 levels.
Part 5 is split over no levels


I too would love to be able to play through the series in one gob, and who knows, maybe we'll put something together for the release of DarkXL

[Dima]

Sounds good Hm, I would try to do it myself (I doubt you have enough time? ) but from what I found out so far, some important files cannot be combined. This includes textures/objects from Tatooine which would replace textures/objects from the imperial level in Ep. 3 and vice versa. So combining them would result in Tatooine stuff showing up in an imperial station. I hope I am wrong here because I just read the file names but didn't open/view anything yet to compare. Otherwise I don't really know how to do it or what to rename or if it is actually possible to "add" resources instead of simply replacing them (without DarkXL).

[Dima]

Hm, ok scratch the above... If I want to at least combine some levels from the net (as Dark Tide is quite complicated though ), what can I do to combine two levels which both use the "secbase" as base? I tried to edit the headers in WDFUSE, renaming the files to names of other original dark forces levels ("ramshed" for example) but the game will not start the levels. It lists them in the mission select screen (if jedi.lvl has been edited before) but when I want to start the custom mission DF just quits back to DOS. In one level I also got a pointer error. Does anyone know which files have to be changed/renamed/edited to "convert" a map from "secbase" to something else? Actually nearly every downloadable map seems to be based on "secbase"

[sheepandshepherd]

Well, there's a reason levels are based on secbase. When you pick a normal DF level from the list, you will start with the inventory you ended the previous level with, except in Secbase (since it's the 1st level) and Jabship (explained above in my large post).

I have absolutely no experience in changing what level is replaced. I doubt it's ever been done, since WDFUSE simply wasn't designed to do it. I actually NEED to figure it out soon to change my level to Secbase, so if you haven't figured it out by then, I'll be sure to post a how-to.

Why the levels are crashing - my best guess is that there's more level-name references to 'secbase' that need to be changed. Where they are, I have no idea, assuming that I'm right about the crashes.
Haha, reminds me of the old days of DF modding (before I ever got here), where all editing was manual, with no WDFUSE. It might pay off to just make a new project in WDFUSE for the level you're messing with and MANUALLY find and rename every single reference to the word 'secbase', it might yield better results than the automation of WDFUSE's header editor.

[Dima]

Interesting, thanks for the info Well, I managed to find out why this error occurred, seems that the files are indeed case sensitive - now I get another error however, the briefing starts (that was the problem before because the file is case sensitive as already mentioned), the level starts to load (loading screen shows up) and then it quits with the following message:

ERROR:Message_GetAddress: ADDRESS NOT FOUND ????????

Press any key to Exit...

(yes the question marks are actually in there)

Any ideas about that? ;D

[Dima]

Ok, unfortunately I do not know what exactly has caused the above error message, but I certainly mixed a LOT things up back then xD Now I know a lot more and everything worked out quite well!

So here are some results of my research and how you can safely rename/replace any level, I will also explain how to "merge" cutscenes:

1. Open a map file from a level which replaces "SECBASE" (for example "secbase.o")
2. Find all sequences of "SECBASE"
3. Replace all sequences of "SECBASE" in this file by "TALAY" for example
4. Repeat this for all files which contain the word "SECBASE" (.o, .lev, .inf)
5. Rename all files to "talay.o", "talay.lev" and so on (important: also rename the secbase.pal to talay.pal, each map contains of 6 files which have to be renamed to make it work correctly)

And that's all ^ working every time. You can replace all 14 levels of Dark Forces but keep in mind that Secbase and Jabship have different starting conditions, as sheepandshepherd already explained.

For cutscenes it seems you only have to alter the cutscene.lst. Take two cutscene.lst files from the levels you want to merge and simply combine the entries. As every scene can have its resources stored in a different .lfd you do not have the problem of overwriting any content (briefing graphics for example cannot simply be merged as they mostly replace the default DF briefing graphics). However, only 39 cutscenes can be included in the cutscene.lst - if you have many levels that depend on a lot of cutscenes, you will have to drop some of them to reduce the overall amount of scenes.

Generally when merging missions you will have to sacrifice some things depending on what missions you want to combine. If you have several missions that use custom weapons, choose one for -all- the missions and so on. I found out that many missions work surprisingly fine together. However, levels like the Dark Tide will for the most part not work very well together as you will loose a lot of unique stuff for each mission as well as cutscenes and so on. There would also be a LOT of work to do to combine the cutscenes and briefings. Maybe the original creators will create a "combined" version some day? *hint hint*

Also remember to ask for permission from the authors of each level before releasing any levelsets (!) Have fun "missionmerging" everyone