Carryals

[mvi]

Hey guys,

I'm currently working on mission files, I've cracked much of the carryal system (I can change the position to which they drop units of at, when they drop troops off, and what allegiance/what units they drop of.)

Now what would be really helpful, is if someone could tell me any missions they know of which involve automated carryals at some point (whether friendly or enemy). I'd be able to move a lot more quickly on finishing my understanding of the carryals.

Ta,

mvi

[AMIgaBot]

infinite reinforcements you get in ordos mission 3 but forgot  what map i think map 2 where you are on top  middle.  there is 2 carryals one with quads one with raiders.

some reinforcements are in harkonnen mission 5.  mission 9 v 1 ,

is it possible to double reinforcements???

can you find value  to refinery arryal? i mean when you build refinery carryal drop  harvester. if we could  do it  then if you build  harkonnen palace instead of deathhand you should get two devastators.. is it possible?

[mvi]

Right, I've got a bit better idea of the carryal system now. I know for instance the bytes used for a reinforcement delivery of a carryal carrying a new harvester in the event that your harvester gets destroyed in A1V1.

As for other forms of reinforcement, I can't get tell how much of the file is taken up by reinforcements, because the easiest way to support the reinforcement bytes is by the x,y position, and some reinforcements don't have positions specified (e.g. refinery). I'm also looking into starport deliveries, like used in A5V1 when you send an engineer into the smugglers starport.

Unsure if what you say about the Hark palace is even possible, it depends how the event system works in these files. Does anyone know anything about the event system employed by the .mis files, does it have some sort of criteria which activates other parts of the .mis file? Or even does anyone know any of the basic structure? That is do we know anything beyond that changing a few bytes will change the time limit, starting currency or allegiances?

[AMIgaBot]

well we neeed find one of westwood  members maybe they can reveal  some facts. as for dune2000 if we could have mission parser or something that can tell us how to  do it ..  also there on forums there was few people who knew it

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windforce

[DaxxXyrax]

can you write here an offsets for reinforcements??

[AMIgaBot]

they are in other topic but  reinforements offsets are under searching

[D2k Sardaukar]

I can change the position to which they drop units of at, when they drop troops off, and what allegiance/what units they drop of.

Wow, that sounds pretty cool. Thanks. Keep us updated.  ;D

[AMIgaBot]

that is great adventage still

[mvi]

I'll write up what I've found about carryalls, and either post it here tonight or tomorrow.

[AMIgaBot]

ok... it could be for us very good

[Gruntlord6]

I'll write up what I've found about carryalls, and either post it here tonight or tomorrow.

any progress on what units are delivered?

[mvi]

For this explanation of carryals I will be looking at the file _A1V1.mis

First of, if you haven't already noticed, I've updated the allegiance spec in the mission files specification topic to incorporate the 8 players being used by Dune 2000. This is important because the view before was that there were bytes we skipped. All bytes from EE18 to EE57 are used by the allegiance data. I mention this, because the very next byte (EE58) is the start of the reinforcement data.

The way I found the carryall data was by playing the first level, print screening a carryal drop off, comparing that to the map and working out the co-ordinates of the drop off. Once these co-ordinates were then converted to hex, I searched for the x position. Because I was looking for the atreides reinforcement, I knew that it's x position was at 11 (0x0B) and that its y position would be at 3, 4 or 5 (depending on the way you look at the carryal). The first7 results of 0x0B returned data I thought I wasn't interested in, but the 8th returned result at 0xEF30, which showed 0B 00 00 00 03 00 00 00. This is cool because it looks like the x and y positions are stored in an INT32 which was what I was looking for. By modifying these co-ordinates and testing in game, I confirmed that these were indeed carryal drop off points.

Now, there was another reinforcement that I was interested in, that of the enemy harkonnen, I knew this was at an x co-od of 18 (0x12) and was a couple of tiles up as well. Lo and behold, 72 bytes further on in the file is 12 00 00 00 01 00 00 00, the harkonnen drop off :) From this we can assume that reinforcements occupy 72 bytes of data. If you jump up a few times a distance of 72 bytes each time, you will get to the first byte after the allegiance data. Which incidentally shows the coordinates of where the replacement harverster is dropped off to (if your harvester is destroyed, a new one is brought in), the co-ordinates being 0x0A by 0x0B or 10 x 11.

Okay, so now looking at the structure of a reinforcment, I've worked out the following (each line represents 4 bytes):

X Position

Y Position

Unknown - Generally 00 00

Allegiance and units (if these 4 bytes in the Harkonnen reinforcement are changed to the same 4 bytes from the atreides reinforcement, an Atreides carryal turns up and delivers the same units)

Time - Reducing this number will make carryals turn up faster and making the harkonnen time the same as the atreides, will make them both come at the same time.

Unknown - Used in harvester replacement delivery in A1V1

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Used in harvester replacement delivery in A1V1

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Used in harvester replacement delivery in A1V1

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Unknown - Not seen it not be 00 00

Hopefully we can work out what these unknowns are. Please note that I'm not sure about all of it being 4 bytes long, the only bits I am sure are exactly 4 bytes long are the x and y positions.

In addition I've been speaking to one of the Dune 2000 developers and he's shed some light on the mission files, apparently they are compiled C header files. Hopefully he'll be able to shed some more light on them.

Please let me know what you find on these reinforcements, I'm sure between us we'll be able to work out some more information on them. :)

[AMIgaBot]

well i tested these settings and they are  functional. i am so happy, but how to manipulate reinforcements ? i mean to double them. to get 2 harvesters after you build first one refinery instead of 1 harv.

[mvi]

Very little idea yet, we need to look at all the reinforcements used in Dune 2000, and see how they differ. That way hopefully we can build up an idea.

[AMIgaBot]

also did anything you find about  ordos reinforcements in harkonnen mission 6 both maps ?

[mvi]

If you're referring to infinite reinforcements, I've not yet looked at that file, I did notice that the Atreides reinforcements in A1V1 were infinite though. This was especially obvious when I reduced the time on it, had quite the little army massing :) I agree finding out how to make reinforcements only happen once, a set number of times or infinite is important.

[AMIgaBot]

so..  could it it work for skirmish?? since you can control harvester  drop .. it should be possible to  get that to work instead of 1 harv get two  from1 carryal.

[mvi]

Potentially it might be possible. One thing we need to determine though, is whether it's using preset options (a list of things it can deliver, e.g. 3 atreides troops, a trike and combat tank etc.) or whether you can specify everything it delivers. Unfortunately it is my opinion that it uses preset things, so we'll only have the choice of preset deliveries. So while it might be possible for a carryal to deliver say a combat tank instead of harvester when you build a refinery, unless the game has a carryal delivering several harvesters at a point (and we can get the bytes from that) it may not be possible for one carryal to deliver two harvesters.

Also of note is that it appears reinforcements and harvester deliveries are regarded as different by the game. When you have a reinforcement, none of what is carried is visible (it merely comes out the carryal when it lands). When you have a harvester delivery the harvester is visible beneath the carryal. It may be that we aren't able to alter harvester deliveries at all. I know what you're going to say here - that you can disable deliveres in the mission files and this stops harvesters being delivered. But harvester deliveries may be hard coded, and that hard code may simply be disabled by part of the mission file.

[AMIgaBot]

so.... it should be no problem to get  combat tanks via carryal in skirmish. if some westwood guys could set light to us. then we could rule game. 

i tried use tibed to  replae harvester  begaviour ,, grapchics with combat tank.. notthing special. an harvester  was looking like  combat tank, has its cannon but still attack spice, cant attack buldings with it

[mvi]

I didn't say it wouldn't be a problem, I said it might be possible, it might not.

Right, turns out there is byte level control over what gets delivered. Testing now :)

[mvi]

So it turns out that the byte structure of the four byte Allegiance/Units structure can be broken down like so:

First Byte - Something, possibly type of unit

Second Byte - Something, no idea yet

Thrd Byte - Quantity

Fourth Byte - House

e.g.

01 00 03 00 - 3 Atreides infantry

01 00 04 00 - 4 Atreides infantry

01 00 06 00 - 6 Atreides infantry

01 00 10 00 - 16 Atreides infantry

01 00 02 01 - 5 Harkonnen infantry

Will keep you posted :)

Also note, that weird things happen when you increase the quantity, when I hit 32, the carryal delivers 30 infantry, then a trike and a sonic tank. When I ask it to deliver 37, it delivers 30 infantry, trike, sonic tank, then 5 more infantry. When I ask it to deliver 64, it doesnt come :(

[AMIgaBot]

by the way what offset i must   locate and inject these data to obtain the effect

so.. look at a test map and test.mis file.  there must be value for sardaukar for atreides.  also engineer and some other infantry. also i think there is mcv  in ordos base, engineer too.  

i tried value in first post but i modified somehow  badly and cant use  maps with bgbs ttextures. i can play only these maps produced by  bloxice bloxtree bloxmas  bloxwast  etc.    when i try start   any map i get error XBGBS.r8 not found  LOL   adn i start with timer   14 minutes  another discovery..  i copied  bloxbgbs file and    i renamed to xbgbs.r8 and it works.  i had to do same  tileatr.bin  copy and rename to  eatr3.bin  ..

well. dune is  so very very strange. i keep modifying values untill crash, i have backup file

[mvi]

On to something which could be pretty exciting. Will post soon.

[AMIgaBot]

i found something

if you  take  _o9v1.mis file and rename to _prac.mis  you start with like previous.  enemies dont build the base.

buldings in map files are ignored. but what if we  take spot from map file and put in mis file  t

maybe if we crack mechanics of campagin file and try convert into skirmish may something  reveal  

another discovery

in text uib i found  H5V1EnemyApproaching Enemy carryall drop detected!

if you try to modify this via notepad, game crashes. 

[mvi]

The section of the mission file I was referring to as for reinforcements appears to be for all events. For instance, in the units/allegiance 4 bytes use 01 0A 06 03 (I think the last 2 bytes can be 00 00 or anything, but haven't tested). When the carryal would have come, mission success is triggered instead. Replace the 0A with 0B for mission failure!

Just verified this on A5V1, replaced one of the 0B bytes with an 0A. I wiped out my own forces (with a little help from the enemy to finish off the last troop) and was given "Mission Accomplished" as a result. Looks like this bit of the file is the triggerable event storage. And I'd assume it goes from 0xEE58 most of the way 0x10597. Potentially, we can work out more events, and if we work out the trigger system too, we'll have the basics of mission editing. Would be nice to try and work out a list of some of the events and triggers in the game to look into :)