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SWAT 3 - LAST RESORT GAME MODIFICATION


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Fixing the Screens(Work flow)

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3 years 11 months ago - 3 years 11 months ago #1421 by Slippery Jim
New thought: I never explored the differences with the original single CD version of the game from the 2 CD tactical version. Did it have a modified Menu.dat? Will an LR mod designed for the 2 CD version screw up slightly on the 1 CD version?

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3 years 11 months ago - 3 years 11 months ago #1422 by Copy-Cat
If I remember correctly the patches that installed multiplayer capabilities overwrote the menu.dat.

Finding someone running the 1 cd version that is willing to reinstall is going to be a challenge.

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3 years 11 months ago #1423 by Slippery Jim
I have the 1 CD version on my laptop. Will compare tomorrow probably.

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3 years 11 months ago - 3 years 11 months ago #1426 by Slippery Jim
No differences. Looked at the tactics CD and it is totally self contained and uses it's own executable.

Always good to be extra careful.

Update: I recruited my kid to make a python script to make the processing of the menu.dat easier. There are a ton of lines to process for the new X,Y coordinates and my old method was too slow.

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3 years 11 months ago - 3 years 11 months ago #1429 by Copy-Cat
I couldn't let it go and after reading the post on the loading images and potential fix for em. I decided to give it another shot.

I ran some test and created a 800 x600 LC_Callup_background screen and ran it in 1366 x 768. The results made me rethink the current solution for this post and I am going to research it further. The 800 x 600 callup background was centered without the need to manually recenter. This tells me that somewhere it is being centered.

I played with the con settings and wrote my observations.
Code:
prompt LanLobby LanLobby LC_Callup_background 0 0 1366 768 0 0
The screen will run with all the values replaced with 0's; Why?
The con files are run dynamically, and the values they load are not loaded into memory, meaning they are loaded as needed. When the game needs to load a screen it loads a con file, passes in values, but the values are all ignored.

Test this for yourself.
make a mod with a con file. I chose the lanlobby.con, run the game , and create a Multiplayer>Lan and click GO!.
go back to your mod and open the con file. Add a 1 to the file name, save and go back into game. Go to main and recreate your game and notice the image is no longer showing up.

This gave me the location in the assembly code where I can throw an exception and crash the game. If I remove all values save and try again the game crashes. Create a software breakpoint at this location, step thru and watch the values being passed in, to see where and why they are ignored and what is loading in its place. Hopefully it is loaded from exe, find location and chage value to see if it shoots it up to the corner of the screen. (I know I know) this is not the desired result but I'm trying to break it to find the value, if its 0 or 1 or screenRect/2 or what ever it is.

I will continue and post my findings.

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3 years 11 months ago - 3 years 11 months ago #1430 by Slippery Jim
Yes, I was aware the game auto-centered the multiplayer screens. With those screens I don't manually center them. I actually have to do the opposite - I have to manually reset the top left to 0,0 by subtracting from the coordinates. The game ignores the top line coordinates but it does not ignore the rest of the entries that come after the top line.

I was aware the game ignored the top line numbers after the .bmp title but I always added the info because I was worried the game needed it at some point. I remember long ago deciding to follow their example just because it is "good form" and because it helped me keep track of which file was which. Until you posted I completely forgot all about that. It has been 10 years since I touched some aspects.

After reading your post I want to smack you upside the head (benny hill style) because I have been trying to get you to look at the .exe this whole thread!

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