187 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
187 lines
6.6 KiB
Markdown
# Ordoor
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Ordoor is an **unofficial** [game engine recreation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine_recreation)
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of the Random Games, Inc., [Strategy Engine](https://www.mobygames.com/game-group/game-engine-random-games-1996-2000-strategy-engine),
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which was in use from 1996 - 2000.
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Four games are known to have been published for this engine:
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* [Wages of War: The Business of Battle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wages_of_War) (1996)
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* [Soldiers At War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_at_War) (1998)
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* [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)
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* [Avalon Hill's Squad Leader](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avalon_Hill%27s_Squad_Leader) (2000)
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The aim of Ordoor is to be a complete reimplementation that allows all four
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of these games to be played on modern hardware. It should also permit new games
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of the same style to be built.
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For each of the games above, **You must have a copy of the original game data to play**.
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Links are provided above if we're aware of an active publisher; otherwise, check
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your back catalogue, or perhaps a local charity shop.
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Trademarks and intellectual property are the property of their respective
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owners, and the games mentioned above (including the game data) are protected by
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copyright. As a mere game engine recreation, we're confident that this project
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operates legally, and that its goal is a noble one. Do get in touch if you
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believe otherwise!
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Ordoor is a portmanteau of Order Door, which is, of course, the opposite of a
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Chaos Gate. The project began with a Chaos Gate recreation, then more games were
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discovered, so scope expanded. A rename and/or rewrite may be on the cards as a
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result.
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## Current status
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### Chaos Gate
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Some of the original file formats are either partially or fully decoded. Maps,
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menus, and most visual data can be rendered pixel-perfect. Sound can be played
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(with a preprocessing step). Some UI tookit work is done. No game mechanics are
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implemented yet.
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I keep a GIF showcasing interesting progress here:
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I've just been informed that another game from 1998, [Soldiers At War](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soldiers_at_War),
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seems to use the same engine. Maybe at some point Ordoor will be able to play
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both. Will that need a rename? Hmm. Watch this space.
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### Soldiers At War
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(At least some) objects display. Map support is being worked on in the
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`soldiers-at-war` branch, which can more-or-less display them, albeit with many
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errors.
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### Squad Leader
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Squad Leader is the most recent of the games created with this engine. Nothing
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has been done with it yet, but a preliminary look at the game data suggests many
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changes are afoot. The object files are a different format, at the very least.
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### Wages of War
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This is the oldest of the four games. The object file format seems to be mostly
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the same. the installer only copies some data to the game directory; we may want
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to work directly from the CDROM instead, if we can.
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Maps are uncompressed, around 243K, and no header is present. They look similar
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in principle to the tile data of Soldiers At War or Chaos Gate maps, otherwise.
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The menu system seen in Chaos Gate is not present; instead, there is a `BUTTONS`
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directory and a lot of `pcx` files under `PIC` that, I suspect, do the job for
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this game.
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Even with a full installation, Wages of War leaves a lot of data on the CD. It
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may be best to run solely from the `WOW` directory on the CD, assuming it's a
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strict superset of what gets installed, data-wise.
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## Long-term goals
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Once full playthrough of the official single-player campaign for all four games
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has been achieved, thoughts turn to other things we could do. Here are some
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ideas, mostly at random.
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Multi-player support.
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Graphics enhancements - 3D models instead of sprites, high-resolution tile sets,
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32-bit colour, etc. Hopefully we'd be able to drop these in one at a time.
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Vastly improved AI.
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Mash-ups? How do mercenaries fare against cultists fare against Nazis? Only one
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way to find out!
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New campaigns with existing assets. Tell new stories, or elaborate on / modify
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existing ones.
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Completely new fantasy game using the same engine.
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## Building from source
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I'm writing code in Go at the moment, so you'll need to have a Go runtime
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installed on your system. Dependency management uses `go mod`, so ensure you
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have at least Go 1.11.
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```
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$ go version
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go version go1.14 linux/amd64
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```
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In addition, you'll also need the following packages installed, at least in
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Debian:
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```
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# apt install libx11-dev libxcursor-dev mesa-common-dev libxrandr-dev \
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libxinerama-dev libgl1-mesa-dev libxi-dev libasound2-dev mpv ffmpeg
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```
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You can then run `make all` in the source tree to get the binaries that are
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present at the moment.
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## Configuring
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Since we support multiple games, a fair bit of configuration is required. Copy
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`config.toml.example` to `config.toml` and edit it to your requirements. The
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`data_dir` for the engine(s) you want to use is probably the most important bit,
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along with the `default_engine`.
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The various games all use snapshots of the original engine at different points
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in time, and specify a lot in code that we need to specify in data. That should
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all go into the config file, so new games will be able to adapt the engine to
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their needs.
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## Running
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To run:
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```
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$ make view-map
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$ ./bin/view-map -map Chapter01
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```
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Looks like this:
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Use the arrow keys to scroll around the map, the mouse wheel to zoom, and the
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`1` - `7` keys to change Z level.
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Menus / UI widgets have fairly good support now; you can use the `view-menu`
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binary to inspect them:
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```
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make view-menu
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./bin/view-menu -menu Main
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```
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This renders the menus found in Chaos Gate and Soldiers At War. The Squad Leader
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format seems basically the same, but has some extra files and aren't 8-bit
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colour. They don't display at the moment. Wages of War uses a different format
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altogether.
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For Chaos Gate, there is the **start** of the game in an `ordoor` binary:
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```
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$ make ordoor
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$ ./bin/ordoor
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```
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The idea is to hook all the different parts together, and to an abstract game
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state (which is called `ship` for ordoor), to make the whole thing playable. It
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isn't playable *yet*, but it's heading in that direction.
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## Sound
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Sound is in the very early stages. Chaos Gate uses ADPCM WAV files, which are a
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pain to play in Go, so for now, a preprocessing step that converts them to .ogg
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is used instead. To create ./orig/Wav/*.wav.ogg, run:
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```
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# apt install ffmpeg
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$ ./scripts/convert-wav ./orig/Wav
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```
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As with video playback, the ambition is to *eventually* remove this dependency
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and operate on the unmodified files instead.
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