ordoor/README.md

# Ordoor

Ordoor is an **unofficial** [game engine recreation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine_recreation)
of the Random Games, Inc., [Strategy Engine](https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/game-engine-random-games-1996-2000-strategy-engine),
which was in use from 1996 - 2000.

Four games are known to have been published for this engine:

* [Wages of War: The Business of Battle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_of_War) (1996)
* [Soldiers At War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_at_War) (1998)
* [Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhammer_40,000:_Chaos_Gate) (1998) [GOG](https://www.gog.com/game/warhammer_40000_chaos_gate)
* [Avalon Hill's Squad Leader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_Hill%27s_Squad_Leader) (2000)

The aim of Ordoor is to be a complete reimplementation that allows all four
of these games to be played on modern hardware. It should also permit new games
of the same style to be built.

For each of the games above, **You must have a copy of the original game data to play**.
Links are provided above if we're aware of an active publisher; otherwise, check
your back catalogue, or perhaps a local charity shop.

Trademarks and intellectual property are the property of their respective
owners, and the games mentioned above (including the game data) are protected by
copyright. As a mere game engine recreation, we're confident that this project
operates legally, and that its goal is a noble one. Do get in touch if you
believe otherwise!

Ordoor is a portmanteau of Order Door, which is, of course, the opposite of a
Chaos Gate. The project began with a Chaos Gate recreation, then more games were
discovered, so scope expanded. A rename and/or rewrite may be on the cards as a
result.

## Current status

### Chaos Gate

Some of the original file formats are either partially or fully decoded. Maps,
menus, and most visual data can be rendered pixel-perfect. Sound can be played
(with a preprocessing step). Some UI tookit work is done. No game mechanics are
implemented yet.

I keep a GIF showcasing interesting progress here:

![](https://ur.gs/img/ordoor-main-menu.gif)

I've just been informed that another game from 1998, [Soldiers At War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_at_War),
seems to use the same engine. Maybe at some point Ordoor will be able to play
both. Will that need a rename? Hmm. Watch this space.

### Soldiers At War

(At least some) objects display. Map support is being worked on in the
`soldiers-at-war` branch, which can more-or-less display them, albeit with many
errors.

### Squad Leader

Squad Leader is the most recent of the games created with this engine. Nothing
has been done with it yet, but a preliminary look at the game data suggests many
changes are afoot. The object files are a different format, at the very least.

### Wages of War

This is the oldest of the four games. The object file format seems to be mostly
the same. the installer only copies some data to the game directory; we may want
to work directly from the CDROM instead, if we can.

Maps are uncompressed, around 243K, and no header is present. They look similar
in principle to the tile data of Soldiers At War or Chaos Gate maps, otherwise.

The menu system seen in Chaos Gate is not present; instead, there is a `BUTTONS`
directory and a lot of `pcx` files under `PIC` that, I suspect, do the job for
this game.

## Long-term goals

Once full playthrough of the official single-player campaign for all four games
has been achieved, thoughts turn to other things we could do. Here are some
ideas, mostly at random.

Multi-player support.

Graphics enhancements - 3D models instead of sprites, high-resolution tile sets,
32-bit colour, etc. Hopefully we'd be able to drop these in one at a time.

Vastly improved AI.

Mash-ups? How do mercenaries fare against cultists fare against Nazis? Only one
way to find out!

New campaigns with existing assets. Tell new stories, or elaborate on / modify
existing ones.

Completely new fantasy game using the same engine.

## Building from source

I'm writing code in Go at the moment, so you'll need to have a Go runtime
installed on your system:

```
$ go version
go version go1.14 linux/amd64
```

In addition, you'll also need the following packages installed, at least in
Debian:

```
# apt install libx11-dev libxcursor-dev mesa-common-dev libxrandr-dev \
  libxinerama-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libxi-dev libasound2-dev mpv ffmpeg
```

You can then run `make all` in the source tree to get the binaries that are
present at the moment.

Place your WH40K: Chaos Gate installation in `./orig` to benefit from automatic
path defaults. Otherwise, point to it with `-game-path`

The `view-map` binary attempts to render a map, and is the current focus of
effort. Once I can render a whole map, including pre-placed characters (cultist
scum), things can start to get more interesting.

Current status: almost pixel-perfect map rendering. Static objects (four per map
coordinate: floor, centre, left, and right) are rendered fine, and each Z level
looks good. There are a few minor artifacts here and there.

Characters and animations aren't touched at all yet. Rendering performance is
poor. No gameplay, no campaign logic. Interaction with the play area is minimal
and limited to pan, zoom, and click for basic console output.

Still, I'm proud of myself.

To run:

```
$ make view-map
$ ./view-map -map Chapter01
```

Looks like this:

![](doc/formats/img/chapter01_rendered_2018-09-08.png)

Use the arrow keys to scroll around the map, the mouse wheel to zoom, and the
`1` - `7` keys to change Z level.

Dependency management uses `go mod`, so ensure you have at least Go 1.11.

There is the **start** of the menu / campaign flow in a `ordoor` binary:

```
$ cp config.toml.example config.toml
$ make ordoor
$ ./ordoor
```

This plays the introductory videos so far, and nothing else.

Menus are in the process of being rendered; you can use the `view-menu` binary
to inspect them:

```
make view-menu
./view-menu -menu ./orig/Menu/Main.mnu
```

This menu *displays* OK, including 

## Sound

Sound is in the very early stages. Chaos Gate uses ADPCM WAV files, which are a
pain to play in Go, so for now, a preprocessing step that converts them to .ogg
is used instead. To create ./orig/Wav/*.wav.ogg, run:

```
# apt install ffmpeg
$ ./scripts/convert-wav ./orig/Wav
```

As with video playback, the ambition is to *eventually* remove this dependency
and operate on the unmodified files instead.