Porting TFL MP Plug-ins? - I'm guessing it's tough

A forum for discussing map making ideas and problems for the Myth series.
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ElRay
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Post by ElRay »

I'm finally getting back into Myth II play and I'm missing some of the old TFL Multi-player Plug-Ins (mainly U2 and Torpidinium). I thought they were pretty popular back then. I know parts of U2 made it into UTB, but I'm not found anything like Torp.

Ray
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William Wallet
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Post by William Wallet »

Weeeelll...

From an amateurish point of view it's pretty tough to port a map from one to the other. If you can keep TFL Fear + Loathing from crashing, make good use of the original colourmaps, terrain maps, displacement maps (shadow maps aren't a biggie because you can redo those), use Spite and Malice to port any models you might want, and you've already got vTFL if you don't want to play using M2 style units...

The real bitch would be placing scenery. I heard a Magma member divined a way of converting things like that automatically (after another Magma member had already been painstakingly copying it by hand... heh).

Soooo yes. If you can track down TFL Fear and Loathing (and if you're on a Mac) you should be okay.
Okay I got the models but now I'm too dumb to do anything with 'em
ElRay
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Post by ElRay »

Weeeelll... I have the TFL parts, but I thought Fear or Loathing (don't remember which) doesn't play nice with OS X. Scenery placement, that's tough. Unfortunately, I'm not going to have time for a while to look at writing or helping test a tool to do something like that.

Ray
Graydon
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Post by Graydon »

Here's a fairly accurate way to do it, if you CAN in fact get TFL Loathing to jive with your machine (I've never been able to get EITHER to work, and that was back on my 233 imac during os9 days..).
Enlarge the 'Overhead Map' in loathing so it is... large. now click the scenery button, and select scenery object X. lets call it tree1. Go under View Preferences, and you should see a box that says 'show all objects' or something... theres only one box there, impossible to miss. UNCHECK it. This effectively shows the blue (or whatever colour you may have set) dot locations on your overhead that indicate all of _that_ particular scenery item.

Take a screenshot, and then crop the overhead up in photoshop. force the image to take on the size of your colourmap, and import it into your m2 loathing. All the blue dots where tree1 were, now appear on your landscape. Place said tree1, then repeat the process for object Z, Y etc etc etc.

Long and tedius, but mb less tedius than setting up two monitors and doing it like FE did...

I honestly don't think people are going to mind if some bushes arent on the EXACT OMFG POINT as they were in TFL ;) In fact, most people will probably have not seen the maps you intend to port for several years, others never before. So just go for it and port some of those classics! :D

I've always had aspirations to do a 3da port....
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William Wallet
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Post by William Wallet »

Bah Graydon! You want a map worth porting? Ghol Rugby! There's a map, that seriously almost made me reinstall MacsBug and the TFL tools, just to try and port it.

Seriously, a worthy idea.
Okay I got the models but now I'm too dumb to do anything with 'em
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Doobie
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Post by Doobie »

I'm sure if you harass Iron, he can get you the ported GR map that he started (or at least i think he started). From there, all that's left is the scripting (gl with that ;)
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ElRay
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Post by ElRay »

Do "we" have access to the TFL Loathing and M2 Loathing code? For some of these things, it shouldn't be too tough to write a program to extract the data from one, do any coordinate change logic and then write the data out. Not knowing anything about the guts, I can't say for sure, but it doesn't seem like it would be too tough. Maybe not worth it, but not too tough.

Ray
Graydon
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Post by Graydon »

Well since it WAS made by someone, then certainly we know it's possible, it's just convincing these guys to give you the source code. I'd get to be REALLY friendly for about 3 months first bro :)
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William Wallet
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Post by William Wallet »

"I'm sure if you harass Iron, he can get you the ported GR map that he started (or at least i think he started). From there, all that's left is the scripting (gl with that ;)"

Heheh. I'd do it myself if I had the time.
Okay I got the models but now I'm too dumb to do anything with 'em
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Doobie
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Post by Doobie »

no need to do it yourself, he's already built the conversion program, and I THINK, converted the GR mesh. If he hasn't it should be a peice of cake. This does not address the scripting though which would be a huger undertaking.

Finally, this all assumes that the relevent plugins/program weren't lost in his HDD crash.
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William Wallet
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Post by William Wallet »

.... that'd be so cruel. Hard drives suck.
Okay I got the models but now I'm too dumb to do anything with 'em
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