Tool for converting Ultima Underworld and Shock 1 Levels into Unity.

[67437a0282f21JackTheHacker]

Y-Y-You pe-performed well-l, i-i-in-insect.

Uploading cybernetic cookies.

[67437a0283114icemann]

Who knows, there may even be a military grade neural interface in it for you.

[67437a02833a8JackTheHacker]

link=topic=6045.msg66334#msg66334 date=1

Who knows, there may even be a military grade neural interface in it for you.

Nope, military grade cyber raisins

[67437a0283762hank morgan]

Who knows, there may even be a military grade neural interface in it for you.

I could do with one at times.

Haven't posted much lately about what I'm at but I'm still working at the project. Since I last posted I've added most of the animated computer screens that you can smash with a weapon, flat panel switches to replace the placeholder levers, "deathwatch" triggers which are basically the triggers that get set off when you destroy all of a certain type of object(such as computer nodes), audio messages (for example those once off messages Shodan will use to taunt you or the computer voice if you pull a cyborg conversion lever), some wall decals such as posters, department icons and graffiti and I think I've nearly fully understand how lighting is controlled so I have a very simple and approximate dynamic lighting solution in place complete with flickering lights. 
My implementation differs a bit from how Shock does it. Shock works on shading the textures(an upper and lower shade for each tile and has a algorithm for meshing neighbouring shades together) whereas my solution currently works by placing lights at the top and bottom of a tile which slightly overlap. It's not quite there in terms of looks but the behaviour in controlling lights seems mostly okay. It's also a bit inefficient at the moment but since lights only have a range of 0-15 values it should be possible to merge contiguous blocks of light.
Under the hood I'm outputting a lot of object debug info for research purposes and I'm hopeful of added a few more level features in the near future. Also I've added some dirty code for generating support files that the engine needs for things like switch guis and other assets.

[67437a0283983Edy]

Hi Hank,

First, thank you very much for your good work. I encourage you to keep it going.

A friend of mine and I are toying with the idea of developing a true remake of System Shock 1 using today's available technologies. We both are game developers, we both have played System Shock 1 in the 90's, and we both consider this game our personal best game of all times. I my case I've played the diskette version.

The first step would be to extract the System Shock 1 maps to an actually editable 3D format. I've chosen Blender. Your tool took my attention because with small modifications we could make it to generate the output as a simple list of faces (where "face" = 4 vertices [xyz] + normal [xyz] + 4 UVs [uv] + texture). Having this list of faces I could write a small script for generating the geometry in Blender. We could then make all further optimizations, adjustments and fixes within the 3D editor prior to bringing the maps to a game engine.

I've already forked your project in GitHub. Looks like the best map interpretation and "rendering" is located at the D3DarkMod.cpp, for writing the .map file. It seems that all special cases on the map are addressed here properly. I think that this is the file we should base on for writing another one that renders the output as a simple list of faces. What do you think?

[67437a0283a7dicemann]

Why not help Hank with his project? Dooming yourself to failure (eventually) otherwise.

[67437a0283d9fEdy]

Why not help Hank with his project?

I don't think I could be of help here. Hank is doing an excellent work by extracting the SS1 items in the low level and making them available in a "humanly understandable" format. All that information fits perfect as base for a remake. I've abandoned working at low level long ago.

Dooming yourself to failure (eventually) otherwise.

Let me bring the SS1 map into Blender and I'll show you what can I do with it 

We're not pursuing any specific goal. It's just about our personal satisfaction. Personally I've been toying with this idea for some years now. Maybe once I start it all that I get is a first person runner for the SS1 map before getting tired of it. Or maybe other people join in and we end making a complete remake. Or maybe my approach is completely wrong for a remake. Who knows. Anyways my first personal goal (having the full SS1 map in a 3D editable format) would be more than satisfactory for me, and that's what matters.

[67437a0283fedicemann]

Fair enough. Don't mind my cynicism. Just seen MANY SS1 projects start and then fall off the face of the Earth over the passage of time. And when I say many, I mean that there has been quite a few. Lost count of how many at this point.

Some got quite far along with TSSHP being the one that got the furthest (I think it got to around the 50% done mark). Where as the vast majority at best resulted in a medical level remake for -insert game engine here-. I think for something on the magnitude of doing a complete remake of a game of that size would either need:

* A REALLY damn good programmer, who is the type that never gives up. Also would need to have a moderately good knowledge of AI.
* A large-ish team (say 4-6 people maybe).

Having both of the above would greatly increase your chances. I'd recommend heading over to the TSSHP site (here: http://tsshp.sourceforge.net/) as the lead programmer on that detailed QUITE a fair bit, in extensive detail before he dropped off the internet.

If that one had kept progressing for another year, we'd have seen some really good stuff quite likely.

They still have their source code up for that also.

[67437a02840d9Edy]

EDIT:
Thank you for the information. I'll look around and see I can do something.

[67437a0284288hank morgan]

Apologies for not following this thread. I was busy on a real life work project for a couple of months. I've been updating somewhat over at the Dark Mod forums.

If you want to take my work as a basis for your own project then I'd advice you to start from ascii.cpp, tilemap.cpp and gameobjects.cpp (in particular the extraction functions in there have a fair bit of raw debug info for analysing object properties). System Shock is a tile-based system consisting of about a dozen or so various tile types and you'd be better off implementing them directly from that data structure rather that trying to convert my .map files into another format.
From an understanding the data point of view I would be nowhere without the TSSHP to refer to.

[67437a02843f5voodoo47]

fixed the image links.

[67437a02844edicemann]

Everything other than the elevator looks good.

So what work has been done of late?

[67437a0284663hank morgan]

I agree. The elevator was part of an experiment I did with taking the door animations from SHOCK and applying them to a hidden door so that they play their animations. There seems to be an issue with some colours appearing washed out in my implementation. Some doors look well and others like the elevator door are pretty crap looking.

Most of the stuff I've worked on is cosmetic and it's what I enjoy doing the most. I have no game systems implemented and I'm reluctant to start on them at this stage until I know where I'm at with persistence between levels.

I made this video a couple of weeks ago of it in motion. The wooden doors are gone in my latest versions but there is a fair bit of place-holder items in place.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlz_Ifo9mcQ

[67437a028481cicemann]

Watching the video as we speak. Quite bizarre seeing Thief doors with the SS1 surroundings . I know that's just due to the engine this is all in. But from a Looking Glass fan perspective (of both Thief and System Shock) it's quite surreal.

I wonder if the SS1 door system is even possible in the Dark mod engine. By that I mean that in the Dark mod all doors open via swinging open, where as in SS1 they sortof open outward but in all directions but only within the original Z axis space, and in many ways is more just the texture cycling of say state 1 closed which is texture 1, then when a open trigger is sent to the door cycles through it's opening textures. Or that's how it looks through my eyes when I've seen it done in actual SS1.

If I'm correct, then this would be more of having a solid space, which when the correct signal is sent switches to non solid. Then after a few seconds it then cycles the textures in reverse (to simulate the door closing) and switches back to solid.

The level already looks very impressive, with the vast majority of textures looking great. Great to see many of the trigger events already in place (ie the playing of the correct audio logs at set places, the playing of the other log when you destroy the computer nodes etc).

[67437a02848f7Judicator]

Imgs looks very good Hank, thanks for your work.

[67437a0284a54ZylonBane]

I'm still so disappointed in SS2's tiny, cramped shuttle bays vs SS1's gigantic, cavernous ones. WTF, Irrational?

[67437a0284e25hank morgan]

I wonder if the SS1 door system is even possible in the Dark mod engine. By that I mean that in the Dark mod all doors open via swinging open, where as in SS1 they sortof open outward but in all directions but only within the original Z axis space, and in many ways is more just the texture cycling of say state 1 closed which is texture 1, then when a open trigger is sent to the door cycles through it's opening textures. Or that's how it looks through my eyes when I've seen it done in actual SS1.

I understand what you mean. You have the simple medical doors which could be easy to recreate but you also have the spiral iris doors etc which have more complicated sequences. Most of the doors in SS1 just have 5,6 or 7 frames to do all that in.
I'm not an animator so I'm not sure how to go about doing those complicated doors as 3d objects. My current implementation of doors I just use a hidden sliding door for clipping purposes that rapidly goes underneath the floor while the original animation plays out in front of the player. It's a bit hacky but it works.

[67437a02850aeJoin2]

I'm still so disappointed in SS2's tiny, cramped shuttle bays vs SS1's gigantic, cavernous ones. WTF, Irrational?

SS1 is set on a space station, SS2 spaceships...

[67437a028530aZylonBane]

SS1 is set on a space station, SS2 spaceships...

Even the training level shuttle bay, on a space station, is tiny.

[67437a02853e4Join2]

Point taken.

[67437a02854b8voodoo47]

video memory 4MB, system memory 32MB. the levels had to fit into that.

[67437a02856bcKolya]

Advanced tech gets smaller all the time, so it's not implausible that you could do with smaller bays if shuttles become smaller and more precise to steer.
From an aesthetic viewpoint I have to agree though. Extreme size contrasts are a staple of science fiction visuals from Lang's Metropolis to the Star Wars films, they just work really well. Jedi Knight in 1997 used them to excellent effect, but in SS2 size contrasts are not to be seen. I can't imagine that Irrational didn't try, but they may have concluded that the dark engine wasn't made for huge spaces on contemporary systems. //voodoo beat me to the point

[67437a02857d5ZylonBane]

The first Thief has many areas that are both larger and more complex than SS2's shuttle bays (Down in the Bonehoard, anyone?). There's no technical excuse for SS2 having such tiny rooms.

[67437a02858e6voodoo47]

if I remember correctly, SS2's version of dark engine is a bit hungrier than the T1 version. when playing on an amd k6 333HMz cpu with voodoo2, even looking down a longer corridor could bring the FPS down noticeably. no such problem with T1.