[mod][wip] KKND
[mod][wip] KKND
KKnD 1 and 2 are real-time strategy games released in 1997 and 1998 respectively, that are today owned by Atari. They were known for their tongue-in-cheek humor and the difficulty of their campaigns. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, the first game let the player choose between two factions: The Survivors (Humans) and the Evolved (Mutants). In KKnD 2 another faction, the Series 9 (Robots) are also playable.
Back in 2011 our team began to form, when we decided to dissect both KKnD games in all their available releases. From these reverse-engineering efforts we came to the idea of reimplementing the games, so they could be played on different platforms and with less compatibility issues on modern systems. After a few first prototypes we decided to move our project over to an existing engine and finally settled for OpenRA.
More information:
https://www.kknd-game.com/
Latest update: 2018-09-17
Last edited by IceReaper on Tue Sep 18, 2018 9:03 pm, edited 17 times in total.
make sure to post your findings in the ReWiki at http://rewiki.regengedanken.de/wiki/Main_Page
kknd freak
Now megaupload is closed is there any way to get the extractor thingy?
Would it allow tinkering with the maps - add more units, change resources, move the odd tree away etc?
Very interested in this nostalgic game.
Am referring to xtreme version
Would it allow tinkering with the maps - add more units, change resources, move the odd tree away etc?
Very interested in this nostalgic game.
Am referring to xtreme version
Well... its quite a time ago now, however i started a second try with 2 more years of development skills, and finaly managed to fully decrypt and read the asset container files.
The demo version includes all sprites and sounds, its just missing the maps. The map sprites are stored inside the maps themself - so you can use custom ones in your maps. Sharing of maps is allowed, so basicaly you also share the map sprites.
Wrote a little show off tool (tested in chrome browser) http://eiveo.net/kknd/
The next step would be to implement the container file format into openRA and then write the mod.
About writing the mod: is there any bare minimum mod somewhere? when starting with an empty mod.yml the engine crashes, so it sepends on some minimum definitions.
Also anyone interested in seeing this done?
If anyone wants to test the original game:
http://nahoo.net/downloads/go/kknd2/gam ... 2-Demo.exe
just wait a few seconds and the download begins - its the demo with all three factions.
(and this demo includes all assets required btw, so it should be no problem at all hosting it)
The demo version includes all sprites and sounds, its just missing the maps. The map sprites are stored inside the maps themself - so you can use custom ones in your maps. Sharing of maps is allowed, so basicaly you also share the map sprites.
Wrote a little show off tool (tested in chrome browser) http://eiveo.net/kknd/
The next step would be to implement the container file format into openRA and then write the mod.
About writing the mod: is there any bare minimum mod somewhere? when starting with an empty mod.yml the engine crashes, so it sepends on some minimum definitions.
Also anyone interested in seeing this done?
If anyone wants to test the original game:
http://nahoo.net/downloads/go/kknd2/gam ... 2-Demo.exe
just wait a few seconds and the download begins - its the demo with all three factions.
(and this demo includes all assets required btw, so it should be no problem at all hosting it)
Looks like the hardest part (reverse engineering) is done. For the Dune 2000 mod I did not add the Fileformat to the engine, but added converter subroutines to OpenRA.Utility to create PNGs and then convert those PNGs to SHPs. Might not be the cleanest solution, but I wanted to prevent a fork as I was a beginner working on the d2k mod mostly alone. Also the .R8 fileformat of Dune 2000 was horrible to work with and still has some problems not solved.
To get started with modding, simply copy the mods/ra folder and start adapting/stripping it. The bare minimum is defined in OpenRA.FileFormats/Mod.cs but you might also want mostly everything in OpenRA.FileFormats/Manifest.cs to really have something that loads the game. I started with replacing red alert graphics one by one and did the tilesets last. We have a GUI tool for that now. Have a look at https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki/Pixelart for some documentation.
I suggest you post something in KKND communities to see if people are interested in playing this and what improvements they suggest.
To get started with modding, simply copy the mods/ra folder and start adapting/stripping it. The bare minimum is defined in OpenRA.FileFormats/Mod.cs but you might also want mostly everything in OpenRA.FileFormats/Manifest.cs to really have something that loads the game. I started with replacing red alert graphics one by one and did the tilesets last. We have a GUI tool for that now. Have a look at https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/wiki/Pixelart for some documentation.
I suggest you post something in KKND communities to see if people are interested in playing this and what improvements they suggest.