[Mod][Dead]Krush Kill 'N Destroy 2

Information and discussion for custom maps and mods.
Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

[Mod][Dead]Krush Kill 'N Destroy 2

Post by Parker »

[align=center]Image
Krush Kill 'N Destroy - Krossfire
----------[Project discontiuned]----------
Moved to stand alone project at http://kknd-game.com/[/align]

Description: A "Manual" port of KKND2 to Open RA. Specifically doing loss-less recordings of the game, convert video frames to images and pixel by pixel cleaning up the sprites and converting them to OpenRA.

Mod Goal: Ideally but unrealistically a 1:1 feature remake of KKND2 on OpenRA, realistically a PS1 version equivalent minus the Single Player Campaigns (PS1 version doesn't have module unit building). While I do aim to bring KKND2 to OpenRA, its not necessarily going to happen, like anyone I'm busy and have more pressing matters to attend to. Which brings us to...

What the Mod is about: Getting the ball rolling on bringing back KKND2 into the modern age, while you can still enjoy KKND2 in its original form its lacking some majority functionality such as higher resolution, higher unit caps and really poor AI pathing. Letting people play one of my favorite RTS's from back in the day ONLINE would be amazing, not to mention making custom missions.


Progress:

Survivors
I've got the basics of survivors going, they have their buildings that somewhat operate the same as KKND2. There will need to be some alterations on the way structures work however, mostly disabling the building until its complete constructed.

Terrains
  • Desert - I've got majority of the desert terrains files ready to go, Minus Single Player special pieces (Sydney Opera house, Empire State building etc)
  • Urban - Got tile set images off of the official site but haven't touched them/converted. Like Desert there isn't special pieces from Single Player.
  • Highland - Same as Urban.
  • Oil Patch - Animated Images ready to go.
Technical Stuff

Sprites: As stated in the description I'm converting "By Hand" the sprites from the original game, although I haven't done much of that at all I did do the Oil Patch as a test to see if it was practical.
Image
  • Shadows are built into the sprites them selves as a checkered black and transparent pixels underneath.
  • Moving sprites seems to have 8+ directions on them (Between 45° angles) possibly 16 directions.
  • Building Bases (The Ground underneath) are universal, no special cases for Urban/Desert etc
Reverse Engineering:While manually porting is progress, if someone just outright gave me all the sprites it'd save hundreds of hours work.
http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f ... &view=next
http://forum.xentax.com/viewtopic.php?f ... KND#p81314

Research / Useful Links: I'm mostly documenting this publicly so if anyone wants to help or continue this project in the future.

Alpha/Beta/Demo History: http://www.betaarchive.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=24962
Blog with reverse engineering: http://hallfiry.blogspot.com.au/
Predecessor(?) Mod: http://www.sleipnirstuff.com/forum/view ... hp?t=15158

Collected work: I want to keep as much completed/semi completed work available in the case of disappearing off the face of the earth and people may want to use/continue the work.

These are not mod downloads!
Download - 7/05/2014 Complete Desert image set with the oil patch, plus a few UI pieces.
Download - The Wasteland (Desert) tileset with pallet.
Last edited by Parker on Sun Jul 06, 2014 5:31 pm, edited 7 times in total.

User avatar
Speedy
Posts: 76
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2014 12:34 pm
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

Post by Speedy »

I'm a bit sad you're doing Krush Kill 'N' Destroy 2, rather than the first, as I've never played the second (it wasn't available anywhere) and I totally crushed, killed AND destroyed the first. ;D

I'm still looking forward to you finishing this one. :D



P.S. The topic title says 'Destory' XD
Image

xan2622
Posts: 80
Joined: Fri Mar 15, 2013 9:27 pm

Post by xan2622 »

Hi Parker.

It's good to see that there are fans of KKND games on this forum. :)

Parker: have you seen this other related thread:
http://www.sleipnirstuff.com/forum/view ... 83&t=15158 ? (not a mod planned for OpenRA anymore)

If you want a live chat with us, you can use this current forum (of course) but you can also contact us on the IRC channel : http://openra.res0l.net/community/

Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

Post by Parker »

xanax wrote: Parker: have you seen this other related thread:
http://www.sleipnirstuff.com/forum/view ... 83&t=15158 ? (not a mod planned for OpenRA anymore)
Aye I have seen that thread, I did some research around but that project hasn't really seen the light of day apart from that thread. I go by the username Packer on the IRC, I'd use that name on the forums but it refused to activate my account so I go by Parker instead.
Speedy wrote: I'm a bit sad you're doing Krush Kill 'N' Destroy 2, rather than the first, as I've never played the second

P.S. The topic title says 'Destory' XD
Yeah it was the opposite for me, I have tried the first a few times but the 2nd one for me is where its at. Also good catch on the thread title, I wrote the thread at 4am :S

xan2622
Posts: 80
Joined: Fri Mar 15, 2013 9:27 pm

Post by xan2622 »


Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

Post by Parker »

Trying to work with Tileset Builder and...
Image Tiles why do you do this to me.

I've changed the tiles to 32 pixels which is what KKND2 uses and it just never matches the image I use, I took a screenshot and zoomed in on the pixels of the image I'm using in the program and its scaling the image up causing the grid offset. Does anyone know how to fix this or is there a step I'm missing, I'm using power of 2 image for the terrain and everything inside the image is aligned perfectly outside of TIleset Builder.
Solved: I had my computers font DPI changed to a higher setting causing the image to stretch as well.
Wow good find, I'll definitely check it out but my coding knowledge isn't really up to scratch.
Last edited by Parker on Sun May 25, 2014 2:29 am, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Speedy
Posts: 76
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2014 12:34 pm
Location: Netherlands
Contact:

Post by Speedy »

Because your screenshot is saved as jpg, I can't be 100% accurate..

But.. it seems to me the tileset is actually 35x35.. Though due to the jpg bleed, I'm thinking 36x36.

...Which I admit is kinda odd, because I found an old development blog, and they have 16x16 tiles..

All in all I'm probably no help at all and am only furthuring the confusion. I kinda wanna help but I have just about no idea how to.
Image

Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

Post by Parker »

Speedy wrote: Because your screenshot is saved as jpg, I can't be 100% accurate..

But.. it seems to me the tileset is actually 35x35.. Though due to the jpg bleed, I'm thinking 36x36.

...Which I admit is kinda odd, because I found an old development blog, and they have 16x16 tiles..

All in all I'm probably no help at all and am only furthuring the confusion. I kinda wanna help but I have just about no idea how to.
See that's the problem, the tiles are getting stretched from 32x32 to 35x35 and that's whats causing the incorrect offsets.
Heres a link to the tile set itself, I may need to rework it to a smaller compact version.
http://i.imgur.com/OIO0xTh.jpg
After briefing getting the mod to run it appears that Tile Builder is correct cutting at the tile edges at the right resolution but the visual example provided doesn't match up.
Also I'm not using JPEG's for the record, it was just a example screenshot.

Matt
Posts: 1144
Joined: Tue May 01, 2012 12:21 pm
Location: Germany

Post by Matt »

You should probably ask IceReaper who already wrote a sprite parser and presented a little tech demo at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZRtzrkuDm0. He might give you some source code or at least the ripped assets or even get in contact and help him with his project instead of starting your own from scratch.

Also notice that the official website for the game is still there: http://melbournehouse.kknd2.com/index2.html According to Wikipedia it was published in the EU by Infrogrames which is incorporated into Atari again. It is still sold at http://www.gog.com/game/krush_kill_n_de ... _krossfire

Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

Post by Parker »

Cmd. Matt wrote: Also notice that the official website for the game is still there: http://melbournehouse.kknd2.com/index2.html According to Wikipedia it was published in the EU by Infrogrames which is incorporated into Atari again. It is still sold at http://www.gog.com/game/krush_kill_n_de ... _krossfire
I'll definitely take a look and might drop them a message.
---
In other news I've finally managed to work out some aspects of modding, at the moment I'm kind of making this a mod for CNC:TB but in its own mod folder.
Here's an image of the main menu I just whipped up.
View Here!
As you can see its just CNC re-textured blue with new Logo images but its cool to have none the less.

After spend ages trying to create a mod from scratch I realized (through looking at other community mods) that you can just reference everything and load everything from the other 'official' mods saving the effort of reimplementing every bit of code/resources. I actually made a Faction Mod template, as it were, for CNC. So I may make up a separate topic for that with instructions that people can alter.

Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

Post by Parker »

Just another small update, so I've been messing around with the sprites of the MCV for a while and trying to get a grasp on Palette's and what not with little success. I've also tried to get tile-sets working as well and again, little success. So I've decided to move onto the functionality than trying to get the artwork to work.

So far after working on it for a short while I've got some of the basic building construction somewhat similar to the KKND2 way (Buildings are placed to be built than built in the menu) which is a nice surprise that OpenRA has that already implemented. I think one of the harder aspects will be the tech tree/researching. I'm aiming to do just the tech 1 Survivors at the moment, then I'll gradually add newer units and high tech levels.

For those interested in helping out, the link below is the Desert (Renamed to Wasteland [wastelnd] to stop conflicts with CNC Desert) with a .pal file ready for implementation and setup. If you get any success sharing would be appreciated.
http://www.mediafire.com/download/ylckr ... teLand.zip

Matt
Posts: 1144
Joined: Tue May 01, 2012 12:21 pm
Location: Germany

Post by Matt »

You will also face a major problem in regards of resource collection which works pretty much different with the oil drilling mechanic. This may be solved by having a special oil patch terrain where you can deploy the drilling platforms and then they transform into a building having the SupplyCenter trait I saw in Scott's generals demake at https://github.com/ScottNZ/OpenRA/compa ... als#diff-8

Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

Post by Parker »

Image

I finally understand how to operate colour palettes now, at least to the extent of using an existing one.

While this image doesn't quite show it off, the buildings details are fairly low quality and this was just a rushed test job so there's no team colouring. Converting it for team colouring should be an interesting process... but I'm not sure how much I will do in this way. Ideally I'm looking at creating a new set of palette's for the Urban / Highland / Desert tilesets/units but not sure on how to go about setting up new palette's.

In other news I'm going to be getting reasonably busy soon, I want to at least attempt to get some sort of basic functioning/playable mod going but it really depends on how fast I get things working. As said in the original post "not necessarily going to happen" so just be mind full that I may have to drop this. I will be uploading my progress if I do.

IceReaper
Posts: 10
Joined: Fri May 20, 2011 9:36 pm

Post by IceReaper »

we are working on a standalone version of kknd 1 and 2 for windows, linux, mac, ios, android and cross-device multiplayer - just contact us if you are interested.

https://www.facebook.com/kknd.2014
http://kknd-game.com/

Also the blog you posted and the beta stuff is from one of our teammembers - and the youtube video shows an state half a year ago.

We are in contact with the original kknd staff, and written tools to read every single format both old games have (to convert them into some newer format for our modding api)

The reason you dont find much content around actualy is that we are very carefully developing towards releasing an alpha later this year.

So if you want to, lets get in contact ;)

Parker
Posts: 8
Joined: Sun May 04, 2014 6:27 am

Post by Parker »

Hey guys I haven't posted in a while, after talking with Ice reaper and taking a look at the progress they've done on their stand alone project I've decided to discontinue working on this project for OpenRA. But with good reason, there's quite a bit of variation on the technical side of KKND compared to OpenRA. If I were to continue this project I'd have to spend a long time making OpenRA compatible with the KKND2 sprites and animation systems just to name a few.

The KKND project ice reaper is working on (And I'm now contributing to) is much the same as OpenRA, building a new more advance engine for KKND specific content. I won't say much beyond that as its really not my place to say yet. But combining our efforts I can help archive more than they could before. Utilizing my actual profession and create new content that was removed from the original games.

Image

Post Reply