problems with making prBoom version of Harmony

[t.v.]

Hello,

I am trying to make a prBoom version of Harmony. Unfortunately prBoom-plus 2.5.1.0 is not as compatible as I thought. Harmony was made for Zdoom but most of it was done with vanilla doom in mind. Among other problems these are the most pressing:

1: Error with sound effect
The game crashes when I encounter a specific enemy (the Centaur, which uses the Cyberdemon behaviours) and give this error message when it is about to fire:
[S_startSound At volume: Bad sfx#:0]
The sound that is to be played before the game crashes is "DSRLAUNCH". This sound is also used for the rocketlauncher where it works fine; So it is not the sound effect itself that causes the problem. I don't know what causes it...

2: Menu
The menu called “General” (under Options) doesn’t work properly.
All other menus work fine though. Other menus use the pointer to select, but in this one the selected line is supposed to have a different color. But this doesn't work.
I cannot see what I select in the menu and some options like “fullscreen video mode” are unreachable no matter what I do.

3: Deh file
Some of the effects I made in the deh file with Whacked2 don’t work. Though they should be compatible with vanilla doom2. For example the shotgun is messed up. After a while the shotgun cannot be fired and the maximum ammo is displayed as the amount of ammo the player currently has.

4: MP3s
Not a bug; I just know know how:
How do get MP3s to work with prBoom-Plus?
Can I include them in the wad file or do they need to be separate?

Can anyone help me out with these bugs? I would greatly appreciate it.

[natt]

Regarding MP3s, they can just be embedded in the wad. Give them the same lumpname as the MUS files they are replacing (eg D_RUNNIN).

As far as the other bugs go, can I see these by downloading the standard release of Harmony? Or is there a separate "version for prboom" you're working on internally.

[t.v.]

well yes, you can use the standard version of Harmony to check out the bugs...
http://wadhost.fathax.com/files/harmony.zip

...but it isn't going to be pretty. The sprites are too big, the sound effects sound terrible and palette is off. I fixed these things in the new version, but I don't want to release it yet. So I am afraid, you will have to do with the ugly version.

Oh and the standard cheat codes won't work. Apparently I changed them long ago and forgot about it (zdoom still uses the original Doom ones).
The cheats are now:
iddqd / God mode = tvgod
idkfa / Ammo & Keys = tvall
idclip/ No Clipping 1 = tvclip
idclev/ Level Warp = tvwarp
iddt / Map cheat = tvmp
Sorry for the inconvenience

If you are looking for Centaurs, you will find them in map 6. (in Map 6 you will also notice the lasers from the wall are messed up as well. They pass though everything, including the player, making them useless. This is another thing that isn't working properly in prBoom)

[natt]

The text problem is easy. You need to make color translation lumps that match your palette and your fonts. See prboom-plus.wad for examples.

[t.v.]

you make it sound easy but I have no idea how to do this :-). What are the "color translation lumps"? Are they the "CRBrick... CRYellow" lumps? If so, how do I modify them correctly? In other words: what do all the numbers/ letters mean.
Harmony uses a different palette than Doom (it is actually closer to the Strife palette than anything else). Does this complicate things?

[natt]

t.v. said:

you make it sound easy but I have no idea how to do this :-). What are the "color translation lumps"? Are they the "CRBrick... CRYellow" lumps? If so, how do I modify them correctly? In other words: what do all the numbers/ letters mean.
Harmony uses a different palette than Doom (it is actually closer to the Strife palette than anything else). Does this complicate things?

I can make you some. As long as your fonts use a consistent part of your palette, it should be pretty easy.

The problem is, your wad doesn't replace a number of graphics in prboom-plus.wad, mostly UI type stuff. So those particular graphics are made for the old palettes and translation tables but are being shown with the new ones.

[natt]

http://www.mediafire.com/?95qb24mk5ktb1dc

i remapped only the few "teal blue" colors used in the small font.

CRBRICK: a reddish orange
CRTAN: tan, perhaps should be made lighter
CRGRAY: gray
CRGREEN: lime-green
CRBROWN: browinsh, looks too much like tan
CRGOLD: gold, pretty good
CRRED: no remapping - prboom-plus ignores the CRRED lump
CRBLUE: light steel blue
CRBLUE2: darker steel blue
CRORANGE: bright orange, a bit of a skintone-ish
CRYELLOW: gold-orange, kind of weird

it's rather quick and dirty, but should be sufficient for testing purposes.

[t.v.]

Yes, the menu works now. Thanks. But how did you do that?
I mean how do you know what to modify. All I see when I open the "CR..." lumps is numbers and letters. How does this work?

The color descriptions you gave are for the old palette right? So you changed the colors that match the color numbers of the new palette? and changed them to what? I really don't get it :-)

A tutorial on prBoom would be nice...

[natt]

t.v. said:

Yes, the menu works now. Thanks. But how did you do that?
I mean how do you know what to modify. All I see when I open the "CR..." lumps is numbers and letters. How does this work?

The color descriptions you gave are for the old palette right? So you changed the colors that match the color numbers of the new palette? and changed them to what? I really don't get it :-)

A tutorial on prBoom would be nice...

The color descriptions I made are for the translation tables I made. I tried to roughly match the intent of the original translation tables while using your palette.

I am not aware of any easy to use editors for the translation table lumps though, and I doubt I could explain my method well (I use an obscure image editor combined with some spit and chicken wire). Whatever you do, don't try to use whatever editor the Boom guys originally used; it's nasty buggy.

[hawkwind]

t.v. said:

I am trying to make a prBoom version of Harmony. Unfortunately prBoom-plus 2.5.1.0 is not as compatible as I thought.

3: Deh file
Some of the effects I made in the deh file with Whacked2 don’t work. Though they should be compatible with vanilla doom2. For example the shotgun is messed up. After a while the shotgun cannot be fired and the maximum ammo is displayed as the amount of ammo the player currently has.

So are you making this for Boom or Vanilla ? AFAIK Whacked2 uses the Bex format for Boom, and is not compatible with vanilla doom2. Correct me if I'm wrong.

[tempun]

t.v. said:

Yes, the menu works now. Thanks. But how did you do that?
I mean how do you know what to modify. All I see when I open the "CR..." lumps is numbers and letters. How does this work?

Simple. Colors are numbered from 0 to 255 (0 to FF in hexadecimal). The color translation lump is 256 bytes large. If, say, the first byte (byte at offset 0) is 2C, then it means that color number 0 will be replaced with color number 2C (44 in decimal). If the second byte (byte at offset 1) is 1, then color #1 will not be remapped to anything else. And so on.

[natt]

tempun said:

Simple. Colors are numbered from 0 to 255 (0 to FF in hexadecimal). The color translation lump is 256 bytes large. If, say, the first byte (byte at offset 0) is 2C, then it means that color number 0 will be replaced with color number 2C (44 in decimal). If the second byte (byte at offset 1) is 1, then color #1 will not be remapped to anything else. And so on.

Still, that's an awful way to actually try and edit the lumps - you want to be able to see the colors as you work

[andrewj]

This is a little off topic, but I wanted to say that I think Harmony is a very cool TC, and have began work on making an OBLIGE game definition for it (OBLIGE is a random map generator).

[Average]

andrewj said:

This is a little off topic, but I wanted to say that I think Harmony is a very cool TC, and have began work on making an OBLIGE game definition for it (OBLIGE is a random map generator).

That, sir, is a great idea. :)


Also, is it possible that Harmony could be edited to run on vanilla? I'd love to see that!

[esselfortium]

hawkwind said:

So are you making this for Boom or Vanilla ? AFAIK Whacked2 uses the Bex format for Boom, and is not compatible with vanilla doom2. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Whacked2 supports both BEX and the original Doom2-compatible DEH format.

[t.v.]

About the colors:
thanks! I think I can fix this now with the information given :-)

About the whacked2:
The original Harm1.wad contains a internal dehacked file which is based on a deh file I made with Whacked2. Although I didn't test all of it in vanilla doom2 I always assumed it should be compatible with it. I didn't use any special coding.

About the OBLIGE game definition
That indeed sounds cool. It would be nice to see more Harmony maps :-). I am actually a bit surprised no-one ever made additional maps for it yet.

About the other problems:
Does anyone know what the error message: [S_startSound At volume: Bad sfx#:0] could mean?

[andrewj]

t.v. said:

Does anyone know what the error message: [S_startSound At volume: Bad sfx#:0] could mean?

Looking at the code....

could happen with a monster having "Alert sound" set to 0 (perhaps because it was not a monster before)

can happen with a frame with A_SkullAttack code pointer but the monster has "Attack sound" set to 0

or if using the new (in BOOM or MBF) A_PlaySound code pointer.

[t.v.]

can happen with a frame with A_SkullAttack code pointer but the monster has "Attack sound" set to 0

That gave me some idea's. thanks.
I don't have access to my own computer right now, but I will look into it next week.