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Emerald Mine level conversion

Posted: Sat Jun 19, 2004 11:43 pm
by Galaxy
How does one convert levels for Amiga Emerald Mine to RnD. I have a whole heap of levels that can be converted, but the RnD converted EM levels are larger (seem to have some header info added.)

Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 12:38 am
by bojster
Am I wrong or can the raw EM level files be loaded directly into RnD in 3.1.0?

Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 9:56 pm
by Holger
bojster wrote:Am I wrong or can the raw EM level files be loaded directly into RnD in 3.1.0?
No, you're right! :-)

To use this feature (which currently works for EM and SP levels), just create a new level directory (with an appropriate "levelinfo.conf") and throw your native EM levels into this directory. To make R'n'D recognize them as native EM levels, don't use the R'n'D style naming scheme (like "012.level"), but use the original EM naming scheme (like "12" for level number 12).
That's all!

For native Supaplex levels, which come as 111 levels in one larger file, just throw this native Supaplex level set file into your level directory as "levels.dat" or "levels.dXX", where "XX" is a number between "00" and "99", and it should be automatically detected. If you want to use a different filename, use the directive "filename: <your SP level file>" in "levelinfo.conf".

This is all rather untested, so please tell me if anything does not work or shows unexpected behaviour.

Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:23 pm
by bojster
OK, so let's say I download http://www.elmerproductions.com/sp/levels/splvls01.zip, unzip it (I get LEVEL.L01, LEVELS.D01, SPLVLS01.TXT), put it in levels/Supaplex/splvls01 and then what? How to prepare levelinfo.conf? Or is it enough to copy Supaplex' levelinfo.conf?

I copied some levelfile and edited it to
"
file_identifier: ROCKSNDIAMONDS_LEVELINFO_FILE_VERSION_1.2

name: Supaplex Level Collection 01

levels: 111
first_level: 1
"

Is that enough? Seems to work...

Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:32 pm
by Holger
Yep, exactly right. :-)

Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 10:40 pm
by bojster
What about .mpx and .sp Supaplex levels (like those on http://www.matemaster.de/mpx/levels.html)? Any chance to get them working?

Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:50 pm
by Holger
> What about .mpx and .sp Supaplex levels [...] ? Any chance to get them working?

Both file types are currently not supported, but ".sp" levels (single Supaplex levels) should be fairly easy to support; about ".mpx" levels, I don't know. (Any information available about this file type?) But the upcoming new SP engine should be able to read them...

Posted: Sun Jun 20, 2004 11:56 pm
by bojster
Very nice :-) I was just wondering, because I found some levels of that type, very few though.

Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 10:10 am
by Galaxy
Holger wrote:To use this feature (which currently works for EM and SP levels), just create a new level directory (with an appropriate "levelinfo.conf") and throw your native EM levels into this directory. To make R'n'D recognize them as native EM levels, don't use the R'n'D style naming scheme (like "012.level"), but use the original EM naming scheme (like "12" for level number 12).
That's great seems to work ok for old style levels.

However, this feature does not seem to fully support EMv6 levels (which use a new naming scheme). You can rename the levels to the old naming scheme, but many elements seem to appear as '?' characters, and the yam contents seem to differ too. (Unfortunately I don't have EMv6 tools so I can't compare the elements properly)

Is EMv6 currently unsupported, or is it just the level importer?

Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 11:33 pm
by Holger
> However, this feature does not seem to fully support EMv6 levels (which use a new naming
> scheme).

How does this new naming scheme look like? I think this is new to me...

> You can rename the levels to the old naming scheme, but many elements seem to
> appear as '?' characters, and the yam contents seem to differ too. (Unfortunately I don't have
> EMv6 tools so I can't compare the elements properly)

The current EM level import code is not very good, but I thought it would correctly import all EM style elements that also exist in R'n'D... :-/

> Is EMv6 currently unsupported, or is it just the level importer?

I think the level importer is not really EMv6 compliant, and therefore EMv6 is not really (well) supported. But I hope (and think) that the new EM engine will solve all these problems; at least it seems that it supports EMv4, EMv5 and EMv6.

Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 8:57 am
by Galaxy
Holger wrote:How does this new naming scheme look like? I think this is new to me...
The levels are now in a folder called 'cave' as opposed to the old 'pla' directory. They are named XXS for single player levels (eg. level 1 is 00S; level 81 is 80S). Teamwork levels are XXT.

EMv6 added a number of new elements (compared to v5).

Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 11:07 pm
by Holger
> The levels are now in a folder called 'cave' as opposed to the old 'pla' directory. They are
> named XXS for single player levels (eg. level 1 is 00S; level 81 is 80S). Teamwork levels are
> XXT.

Yeah, now I remember that I have seen such files! As they are different to the existing various level filenames, it should be easy to directly support them without the need to rename them. :-)

Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 8:40 am
by Galaxy
Holger, would you like me to send you some of these EMv6 levels? Also, would you like me to send you some EM level sets from EMC games that you don't have in the current EMC level set?

Also, does anyone have a copy of the Emerald Mine v6 editor that they would be willing to email me?

Posted: Thu Jun 24, 2004 8:55 am
by Holger
> Holger, would you like me to send you some of these EMv6 levels?

Yeah, would be great!

As soon as I start integrating the new EM engine, they will be great for testing!

> Also, would you like me to send you some EM level sets from EMC games that you don't have
> in the current EMC level set?

Yes, of course! Although note that I have that old Emerald Mines CDROM available, which also contains a lot of level sets not in the current "emc" levels package, which I will provide at a later time (together with the new EM engine). So if you have level sets neither in the current package, nor on that CDROM, I'll be happy to receive them! :-)

(If you don't have that CDROM for checking which of you sets are contained on it and which are not, I think that CDROM is available at back2roots.org as an ISO image file.)

> Also, does anyone have a copy of the Emerald Mine v6 editor that they would be willing to
> email me?

That's also something that I still miss, and which would be of great use when testing the new engine, so if anybody has it, please send it to Galaxy and to me! :-)