User talk:Moburma

Magic Carpet Formats

How have you been able to view/extract from the TMAPS.DAT files in these old Bullfrog games? I haven't had much, if any, luck trying to spelunk around them. Would greatly appreciate advice on what tools to use. ---TheKins (talk) 12:42, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

Hi, as you probably know, the problem with them is that the existing TAB/DAT file tools (like this excellent one by Mefistotelis) don't support RNC compression, they need the file decompressed first. The way these particular files work is each individual image is RNC compressed rather than the entire file. This therefore needs a tool to take that into account when extracting them. I don't have that, so I did it the hard way. If you download this RNC tool, it has a very useful "search and extract" argument when run with e. I used that on the dat files, and it extracts all the constituent images. The problem then is you have loads of raw image data files. There are many way to go about this, but I used yet another tool by Mefistotelis here that lets you manipulate raw image files and handles Bullfrog palette formats. Then begins the painstaking work of poking through the images, resizing them through trial and error, and then exporting anything interesting. Someone with more braincells could probably combine the above TAB/DAT and RNC tools, as that way it's all done for you. Moburma (talk) 15:52, 13 March 2023 (UTC)

An update on this - I talked to the guys behind the REMC2 project (modern port of Magic Carpet 2), and in fact they have made such a tool! It can be found in the tools folder of this tree of their project under "decompressTMAPS". It's very clunky (hardcoded to export to a particular directory on the dev's hard drive, and needs the original palette files' values multiplied by four to look right), but it works! I've extracted every Bullfrog game that uses this format today, including all sub animations etc. I wrote a script to parse the palette files, if you're interested. Moburma (talk) 21:14, 12 April 2023 (UTC)

I'm late to hearing about this, but awesome! I'd love to get more info/compiled binaries, but if you've already dumped everything, can you please send me your exports if that's possible? It'd save me a bit of time doing it all myself. Thanks! --TheKins (talk) 15:05, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Sure, link is here: here. This is everything I have (actually just realised I didn't put the MC1 early demo in there, it's a different format), demos and full games. MC1 and HW are in there twice as I was playing around with the extractor code (which was hardcoded only for MC2 so did some odd things with MC1). Between the two folders should be everything. One thing that IS missing are the sub frames for the very last objects in the MC1 folder. Specifically I never got it to spit out the animation frames for the bone object used by the skeleton army spell (TMAPS2-0-519-00). There are more frames of it rotating, but I never got those, nevermind. I will make a Magic Carpet 2 page soon. There aren't many cut graphics (the demo has an unused spell pot graphic instead of the experience scroll graphic, however), but put it this way - MC2 has about 40 levels. I have discovered MC2 shipped with 200 levels. Around 150 unused levels are included with the game! I've started writing these up, but some are still in MC1 format and don't run in MC2. Oh, also I made a level editor for Magic Carpet, if you're interested - here. Moburma (talk) 21:06, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks very much! 150 levels, goddamn. Looking forward to hearing more, you've done a great job on your pages thus far! --TheKins (talk) 02:40, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

Dungeon Keeper concept origin

Hi,

I have two other, conflicting, accounts of how the concept came about: according to the official guide book, Molyneux came up with the idea while sitting in a traffic jam, and according to a Bullfrog Bulletin interview with Simon and Dene Carter, it came about after Bullfrog people messed around with RPGs. Could all three accounts be correct? AdamP (talk) 20:48, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

I imagine so! One thing to keep in mind is that it was clearly a team effort. While it seems like the earliest basic idea did come from Molyneux, lots of other team members likely had inputs, and fleshing out how exactly it worked must have been several people working together. Plus some of it is just making exciting soundbytes for journalists, something Molyneux was particularly good at... Moburma (talk) 21:11, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Oh also, this video actually summarises your points above - [[1]] - He mentions a) the "play as bad guy" idea, and then b) the subversion of D&D tropes as the core ideas of the game, so I guess that covers at least two of the origins as important parts of the whole from his own mouth. Moburma (talk) 21:23, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

Theme Hospital JP Omake

Hey, I wouldn't mind reversing the binary to check how this is activated. Is this dump public? QUFB (talk) 18:30, 23 November 2024 (UTC)

It is now! https://archive.org/details/hospital_202411 A bonus piece of trivia: Look closely during the intro of the game (any version) where it shows the receptionist at her desk typing, there is an object hanging down. This is the submarine from the unreleased Creation. Moburma (talk) 20:34, 23 November 2024 (UTC)