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Star Wars™: X-Wing and TIE Fighter seriesXWVM - Any interest?(1272 posts)(1272 posts)
(1272 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted January 03, 2017
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amajewski1983: One question I have is which Star Destroyer will be used: The Imperator-I or the Imperator-II? The former is used in A New Hope and Rogue One while the latter is in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi.

I suppose the same could be asked of the TIE Fighters. The ones in A New Hope have white-gray hull plating, while the later episodes have them using blue-gray.
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Azrapse: I must admit that I have never been such an expert of telling apart the ISD-I from the ISD-II. Probably there are clear differences that I have not realized.
Well, the only things that really differ between the ISD-I and ISD-II are the arrays on top of the bridge towers and the primary (ie. visible) turrets. It's not too terribly important at this stage, but keep in mind that XWA includes both the ISD-I and the ISD-II as separate craft (XWAUP has models for both).

TIEs are far less of a concern. Just as long as all the TIE craft stick to a consistent hull-plating color, they'll be fine. :)
Posted January 03, 2017
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Azrapse: I must admit that I have never been such an expert of telling apart the ISD-I from the ISD-II. Probably there are clear differences that I have not realized.
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Bellosh101: Well, the only things that really differ between the ISD-I and ISD-II are the arrays on top of the bridge towers and the primary (ie. visible) turrets. It's not too terribly important at this stage, but keep in mind that XWA includes both the ISD-I and the ISD-II as separate craft (XWAUP has models for both).

TIEs are far less of a concern. Just as long as all the TIE craft stick to a consistent hull-plating color, they'll be fine. :)
I have the overall shape and dimensions of the ISD-I filming model worked out through a combination of photogrammetry (I took hundreds of photographs of the filming model) and original kit bash part measurements, if that's useful.
Posted January 03, 2017
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Azrapse: I must admit that I have never been such an expert of telling apart the ISD-I from the ISD-II. Probably there are clear differences that I have not realized.
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Bellosh101: Well, the only things that really differ between the ISD-I and ISD-II are the arrays on top of the bridge towers and the primary (ie. visible) turrets. It's not too terribly important at this stage, but keep in mind that XWA includes both the ISD-I and the ISD-II as separate craft (XWAUP has models for both).

TIEs are far less of a concern. Just as long as all the TIE craft stick to a consistent hull-plating color, they'll be fine. :)
You know, it slipped my mind that the TIE Advanced and MC80 Star Cruisers used aren't consistent in the X-wing series.

So which models would be used? The TIE Advanced x1, or the TIE Avenger? Likewise, for the Mon Calamari Cruisers because those REALLY evolved from X-wing to X-wing Alliance, with the latter being the closest we ever got to what's seen in the films.
Posted January 03, 2017
Looks great, keep up the good work!
Post edited January 03, 2017 by fokkusu
Posted January 03, 2017
It's just wonderful!
Posted January 04, 2017
Currently working on the part about reading the resource files from the game install folder.
I have found a problem.
The 1994 version included with the digital downloads of X-Wing Special Edition keeps the relevant resource files (missions, voices, sound effects) in a BIN/CUE file pair.
The problem is that reading such file isn't trivial, I don't currently have a library able to read those, and it would take some time to develop it myself.

So after talking about it, it seems that for our first release of the demo, we wont be able to support the 1994 X-Wing Collectors' CD-ROM digital download from GOG and Steam. Those digital downloads contain the 1993 and 1998 editions, that are perfectly fine, and you can use instead with XWVM (use better the 1998 for the voice overs).

However, the original release of X-Wing Collectors' CD-ROM will be totally fine to use if you have the physical disk and either copy its content to a folder in your hard disk, or keep the disk in the drive.

Alternatively, you could still use the 1994 version of the digital downloads by mounting the BIN/CUE files with an external tool like DaemonTools or others, but this seems to be too complex compared with just downloading the 1998 version instead.

We will eventually overcome this, just by finding a compatible C# library to read BIN/CUEs. If anyone finds any, please let me know. :)
Posted January 04, 2017
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Azrapse: Currently working on the part about reading the resource files from the game install folder.
I have found a problem.
The 1994 version included with the digital downloads of X-Wing Special Edition keeps the relevant resource files (missions, voices, sound effects) in a BIN/CUE file pair.
The problem is that reading such file isn't trivial, I don't currently have a library able to read those, and it would take some time to develop it myself.

So after talking about it, it seems that for our first release of the demo, we wont be able to support the 1994 X-Wing Collectors' CD-ROM digital download from GOG and Steam. Those digital downloads contain the 1993 and 1998 editions, that are perfectly fine, and you can use instead with XWVM (use better the 1998 for the voice overs).

However, the original release of X-Wing Collectors' CD-ROM will be totally fine to use if you have the physical disk and either copy its content to a folder in your hard disk, or keep the disk in the drive.

Alternatively, you could still use the 1994 version of the digital downloads by mounting the BIN/CUE files with an external tool like DaemonTools or others, but this seems to be too complex compared with just downloading the 1998 version instead.

We will eventually overcome this, just by finding a compatible C# library to read BIN/CUEs. If anyone finds any, please let me know. :)
I believe this is what you're looking for.
Posted January 04, 2017
Reading over the posts since finding out about this.

Really interested in the mission goals and mission state problems you were running through back in September. Looked through the rest of the posts and couldn't see an update.

Have you had any progress on this? I'd be really interested in figuring out a solution for this.
Posted January 04, 2017
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countbuggula: I believe this is what you're looking for.
I see that reads the CUE files, that are plain text format, and returns the audio files. I am not sure if I can use that to extrat data files, though. But thanks for the suggestion.
Posted January 04, 2017
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Stormy_Waters: Reading over the posts since finding out about this.

Really interested in the mission goals and mission state problems you were running through back in September. Looked through the rest of the posts and couldn't see an update.

Have you had any progress on this? I'd be really interested in figuring out a solution for this.
We are already at a much better state than original X-Wing ever was concerning the detection of uncompletable goals.
Basically, we detect failed goals at a first depth of dependency.

So, for example, if shuttle Hasti needs to complete mission and it is destroyed, then we detect that as mission failed.
If shuttle Epsilon needs to be boarded and it escapes or it destroyed, we detect that as mission failed.

However, we don't yet detect as mission failed when another object the goal depends of, but not the goal itself, is in a state that leads to an uncompletable mission.

For example, if shuttle Hasti arrives only after identifying a container, but the container is destroyed before it being identified. Even when the container itself doesn't have any goal attached to it, Hasti depends on it for even arriving at the mission. We cannot detect that yet, but I think it shouldn't happen so often.
In TIE Fighter and later games, the mission designers just made sure that all involved objects had a goal attached.
Detecting deep graphs of dependency is something that I will leave for later, as polishing.
Posted January 05, 2017
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countbuggula: I believe this is what you're looking for.
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Azrapse: I see that reads the CUE files, that are plain text format, and returns the audio files. I am not sure if I can use that to extrat data files, though. But thanks for the suggestion.
It should work for both audio and data images, according to the docs.
Posted January 05, 2017
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Azrapse: I see that reads the CUE files, that are plain text format, and returns the audio files. I am not sure if I can use that to extrat data files, though. But thanks for the suggestion.
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countbuggula: It should work for both audio and data images, according to the docs.
But it doesn't read the contents of the data track, just the entry for it in the cue sheet. I'm not aware of a ready-made parser which exposes a file system from cue/bin.
Posted January 05, 2017
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countbuggula: It should work for both audio and data images, according to the docs.
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JKing: But it doesn't read the contents of the data track, just the entry for it in the cue sheet. I'm not aware of a ready-made parser which exposes a file system from cue/bin.
Ah, I see. That's a bummer. How about finding a way to integrate WinCDEmu?
Posted January 05, 2017
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JKing: But it doesn't read the contents of the data track, just the entry for it in the cue sheet. I'm not aware of a ready-made parser which exposes a file system from cue/bin.
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countbuggula: Ah, I see. That's a bummer. How about finding a way to integrate WinCDEmu?
It's a little bit beyond the scope of this project to integrate or implement a CD mount driver utility, I think.
I found DiscUtils also, it is written in C#, it's open source, and doesn't use any native libraries, and it seems to support tons of different disk image formats and filesystems! Except for guess which one? :D
Post edited January 05, 2017 by Azrapse
Posted January 06, 2017
Just thinking out loud...

Is the ability to read from the bin file really needed by XWVM itself?

One approach I had in mind might be to include this type of activity in the installer, rather than the application itself.

In the scenario with the X-Wing 1994 GoG Edition, the installer might either automatically detect the installation (awesome) or prompt the user to point to the directory (fair enough). Once the path has been established, the installer could be the thing which mounts/reads the bin file, verifies (checksumming?) and extracts the required files into the directory specified for XWVM. (If wanting an extra layer of checking, the checksum could also be added into XWVM itself)

Then, this issue is abstracted away from the application itself and into the installer, which probably needs a platform-specific approach anyway?

Alternatively, one option (that is not ideal, but could be a workaround) is to convert the bin file to ISO - turns out there is a GPL2 utility which can do this - http://he.fi/bchunk/. Once it's in ISO format, it's a lot easier to deal with.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
Star Wars™: X-Wing and TIE Fighter seriesXWVM - Any interest?(1272 posts)(1272 posts)
(1272 posts)