Jan Klose posted to our forums to let us know that 3 new units have been added to the
unit list on the
TEK section of Artex' website. The new units are the Dervish, a small jeep type vehicle; Atlas, a large tracked transport vehicle; and the Raven, a rather cool looking airborne fighter plane.
We contacted Jan to find out how the game is progressing:
"We have just finished work on the (very basic) level editor and are now creating the final levels for the game. The aim is to have a fully
playable version with all features ready for Wakefield. Whether the game will be on sale at the Show, or shortly afterwards, will depend on the time we need for balancing and debugging. We will not release a
nearly-finished game just to meet the Wakefield deadline.Most work is going into graphics and AI now. All necessary gfx and AI functions are available already, but we are adding more details to make the atmosphere more dense."
Apparently the company's biggest development problem at the moment is finding a movie format that will allow them to display movies with sound in a resonable resolution and at a resonable speed. Hopefully they'll overcome this hurdle and we look forward to seeing the game at the show!
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TEK Progress Update |
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(09:24 21/4/2001)
Jan Klose (10:49 21/4/2001)
Andrew Weston (15:27 21/4/2001)
Mark Quint (18:22 21/4/2001)
Nathan (21:29 21/4/2001)
Andrew Weston (22:30 21/4/2001)
Gunnlaugur Jonsson (00:31 22/4/2001)
Jan Klose (14:42 22/4/2001)
Andrew Weston (16:56 22/4/2001)
Mark Quint (09:00 23/4/2001)
Gareth (13:52 26/4/2001)
Nathan (14:51 26/4/2001)
David McEwen (15:32 26/4/2001)
Nathan (21:28 26/4/2001)
David McEwen (10:27 27/4/2001)
Lee Johnston (10:30 27/4/2001)
Nathan (12:40 27/4/2001)
Jan Klose (15:06 27/4/2001)
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Andrew Weston |
Message #86931, posted at 09:24, 21/4/2001 |
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We'll probably need a new version of Cineworks for this thought, won't we?
As far as I know this is the only digital movie format with sound for RISC OS currently.
The cineworks author has not been forthcoming in wanting to update the program as I understand though. |
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Jan Klose |
Message #86932, posted at 10:49, 21/4/2001, in reply to message #86931 |
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Hi,
There won't be any improvement on CineWorks; the author told me that. So either we'll squeeze something great out of CineWorks by chance, or we have to find another program.
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Andrew Weston |
Message #86933, posted at 15:27, 21/4/2001, in reply to message #86932 |
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There is limited FLI and MPEG2 support but as far as I know audio is not supported on RISC OS.
I assume you've spoken to Nathan about this?
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Mark Quint |
Message #86934, posted at 18:22, 21/4/2001, in reply to message #86933 |
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how about Replay format???
that supports audio as well, and (kinda) works :) |
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Nathan |
Message #86935, posted at 21:29, 21/4/2001, in reply to message #86934 |
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Forget Cineworks, when it comes to porting PC movies to RO we fall by the way side. The MPG2 player does not support sound and the FLI player is fairly dud. There is nothing else unless you save out each frame of a movie, port it to RO and then bodge it together for Replay. I don't find this a viable solution. We can't support a standard movie type, not one, how stupid. |
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Andrew Weston |
Message #86936, posted at 22:30, 21/4/2001, in reply to message #86935 |
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There is a MPEG2 to Replay program in the public domain on argonets FTP service. Has anybody tried this out?
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Gunnlaugur Jonsson |
Message #86937, posted at 00:31, 22/4/2001, in reply to message #86936 |
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Maybe it's time someone made a decent MPEG player or talks to Apple for a QuickTime player. I would if I knew the least bit about either!
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Jan Klose |
Message #86938, posted at 14:42, 22/4/2001, in reply to message #86937 |
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For the Ankh trailer, we did copy each single frame across and then joined them using some horrible self-written "tools". I would not like to do that again. And still, which RISC OS output format could be used? We were using a "Single Sprites to Replay" public domain tool, but what's a good size that Replay can handle on ordinary sytems? What codec should be used? And how do you add Audio without using CineWorks? |
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Andrew Weston |
Message #86939, posted at 16:56, 22/4/2001, in reply to message #86938 |
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That's what I mean about the MPEG2 tool - you can generate the movie on a PC then convert to Replay. There is still the sound problem of course.
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Mark Quint |
Message #86940, posted at 09:00, 23/4/2001, in reply to message #86939 |
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Im sure there was another PD program that would allow you to add Audio to Replay files, which I guess you would prepare before hand as a Wave file, then mix the sound & video together. |
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Gareth |
Message #86941, posted at 13:52, 26/4/2001, in reply to message #86940 |
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Maybe you can borrow some movie playback source code from 'xanim'? So long as you release it for free alongside then it should be legal...
http://xanim.va.pubnix.com/home.html |
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Nathan |
Message #86942, posted at 14:51, 26/4/2001, in reply to message #86941 |
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Have already emailed the author and he has said it would be okay to do but problem is, who will/can do it? |
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David McEwen |
Message #86943, posted at 15:32, 26/4/2001, in reply to message #86942 |
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Xanim is quite large... I looked at it not too long ago. However in the context of say Tek it would just be a matter of using AVI/Mov and choosing a codec. Effectively just having it playing one subset of whatever format. AVI itself is quite simple its the codec that's the complex bit...
BTW I have a very very primitive build of OpenDivX (from ProjectMayo) up and running. Depending on how other things go I should be able to release something in the nearish future - a couple of days or so. It runs fine with small movies (160x128), but larger ones really chug. I haven't added sound support yet.
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Nathan |
Message #86944, posted at 21:28, 26/4/2001, in reply to message #86943 |
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All we need is one widely used format supported. I know MPG2 docs are expensive but AVI, MPG2 or MOV would be okay. We are looking at running larger res movies but optimising is a second task to actually converting it. |
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David McEwen |
Message #86945, posted at 10:27, 27/4/2001, in reply to message #86944 |
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AVI & MOV are basically container formats... and can contain a wide variety of encoded movie types. Unfortunately some of which have to be licenced -> Indeo (although Intel have sold this technology IIRC).
Since my OpenDivX player uses AVI files I can look into adding some other AVI codecs into the mix, probably straight from xanim ;-)
This will obviously take longer for me to do - although ideally not that long - (and I have got other priorities atm). However when it gets done the source and binary will be released so that it can be used however you want. It probably won't be optimal, but having the source, which people can play with will hopefully mean that such things can be done by other people. |
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Lee Johnston |
Message #86946, posted at 10:30, 27/4/2001, in reply to message #86945 |
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Well David if you can do this (and I realise it might be a while coming) I know VOTI will definitely be grateful.
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Nathan |
Message #86947, posted at 12:40, 27/4/2001, in reply to message #86946 |
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Lee is absolutely right :-) |
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Jan Klose |
Message #86948, posted at 15:06, 27/4/2001, in reply to message #86947 |
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That does indeed sound like a possible solution :)
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