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STICKY: 2020 King's Field II port progress report

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Holey Moley:



UPDATE/DEMO: https://swordofmoonlight.itch.io/k






I'm officially doing this :biggrin:

Update: Here (www.swordofmoonlight.net/holy/KING'S%20FIELD%20II.zip) is a verbatim copy of my working project. It's primarily for safe keeping on my webhost's server, but you can see it for yourself. I will announce future updates in this topic/thread. They will be regular unceremonious posts. Not regularly, just quiet posts.

6/8/2020 Demo patch: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=286.0;attach=1043

ZIP update: http://www.swordofmoonlight.net/bbs2/index.php?topic=286.msg2679#msg2679

EDITED: For the record, I found out that SOM_MAP's arrow icon, which I based this image on, is backward, pointing north, when it should point south. After the fix, the arrows in the image flow naturally like a race course along the walls. This backward arrow long gave me a misunderstanding of SOM_MAP's directions. I realized today that they default to south, not because of 2D, but because in the 3D view, south facing, seems to be looking toward the monitor, at us, because we think of down as facing us, and up as facing away... possibly because we (I) see the map laid out like a table top.

Holey Moley:
EDITED: I discovered how sub-layers are encoded into each level. I thought it would shed light on the "mystery" level that this post mentions. Especially because it seems to have models that are not used. However, its sub-layer is a blank. It also occurred to me that it could be a moat or some other feature not meant to be traversed, but I struggle to think of a place for it in the game. My memory of the game is pretty fuzzy though.

As a test case I've reconstituted (in SOM) a 9th/mystery level on the disc, both because it was smallest, and I was curious about what it could be. I still don't know what it could be, but as proof of concept, I have recreated a section of the game in SOM.

I will probably make everything without textures first, because the PlayStation basically only has one texture (its video memory) and how it is addressed is understandably anachronistic. So basically manual model work is required to apply the textures. At the same time I will likely consolidate many of the profiles (the squares in the palette area of the original picture/post) since they are duplicated for each level... although it's very possible that there are subtle differences in the duplications, as is often the case for SOM's stock art work, and so great care must be paid to not destroy any information in the consolidation process.

KF2 poses many challenges for SOM, that boil down to necessitating new features that must be added to SOM in order to faithfully recreate its experience. That's going to be the bulk of the work for this project.

While this is a devlog, I am not withholding the product itself; for its duration, I will periodically make demos available in various stages of undress, until one day it will get to the point where only fine polishing touches are required. It's up to individual interest in KF2/SOM as to when to engage with snapshots of the incomplete product.

P.S. As for the "mystery" level, I'm skeptical its purpose will ever be known. Perhaps if it is populated with "objects" etc. something of its purpose will be revealed... perhaps not. It doesn't seem to be part of the game, because it runs the full width of the level, which seems like too far of a trek even for many of Melanat's long corridors. I don't think the game's designers ever meant to subject its audience to it.

There is a doorway toward one end, and beyond it a side exit into a 2 tile wide (3.5m) hallway that ends in a very small chamber. I also developed 20x20 icons for this level, and selected 3x3 icons for SOM's auto-map function. I could share a screenshot, but it's really not very interesting. I would prefer to let downloaders explore it when a demo appears later.

Holey Moley:
Here's a fun screenshot on the sub layer of Guyra's level. I am hopeful that the MPX format might have facilities for two layers... because I've seen code inside of SOM that looks like it is processing multiple layers or simultaneously loaded maps (connecting corridors) and I know where the jumping off point is in the internal structure of the MPX file in memory, and I know that this memory is reset when a level is loaded, and so it reasons that if the feature extends to the file format, that there is a field in the file format for at least one additional layer.

At the very least, I won't be surprised if the MPX file has a field that mirrors this field that it has in the program's memory.

The scale factors are pretty weird. A tile is 2068x2068. That means if it maps to 2 meters (as SOM does) that 10341024 is 1 meter. On the other hand, the elevation units, are 128 apart. This means that tiles go up and down by 128 at a time. To make this work in SOM without changing anything, the vertical dimension (Y) needs to scale by 0.1/128 instead of 1/10341024. It's possible this distorts the final experience. Especially because the horizontal and vertical dimensions differ. It's also possible that the game in the PlayStation compensates for this. It will become apparent when furnishings are added since the difference is almost 80%. (EDITED: 128 is actually 0.125 meters, which works out to 0.5 most of the time, which is SOM compatible, because elevation changes tend to be 4 at a time. I'm looking into modifying SOM_MAP for the other cases.)

If the vertical dimension were subjected to the same scale factor, the elevation values will be even weirder than 0.128, 0.256, etc. It might make more sense to tweak all of the tiles by hand, in order to find a balance.

Strikeout: I now think 1034 is a strategy to overlap tiled polygons so that cracks appear less after they are rotated into place, since the vertices lose precision. It will be a lot of work to remove all of this, so I might stick with 1034, and fix the problems that emerge from it instead. It does make a difference. I will decide when I start looking at UV maps. EDITED: I noticed this because the water tiles don't seem to use 1034, so I'm assuming 1000 like SOM uses. If they overlapped it would double the transparency effect.

Strike 2: turns out it's 1024, like PlayStation uses. Or 1 meter in SOM is 0.25 in PlayStation fixed-pont.

Holey Moley:
Upon further work, it turns out that the "1034" overhanging tiles were only a difference of 10, because the tile unit is 1024, or 2048 from -1024 to +1024. I should've seen this coming really. Just for lack of imagination.

This works out well for elevation, because 128 is really 0.125, which sums to 0.5 every 4 units. I honestly don't know why I didn't see this. Mixing 128 with 1000 was really a red flag. I can be a real ditz sometimes. It's the dumb blonde in me. (Is dumb blonde still politically correct?)

I opted to bake in the conversion from 1034 to 1, because the game's art applies this to climbing pieces (e.g. staircases) but doesn't apply the same transformation to the vertical dimension, therefor the seams are thrown off. The conversion negatively effects diagonal walls, because it pinches them in. But they are fewer, and will be easier to fix later on.

Luckily there doesn't seem to be problems in the caves. Or not the ones I've looked at. In fact, they are seemingly airtight. Which bodes well for the conversion itself. I was worried that their many faceted walls would be more difficult to repair, but they seem to avoid the full extents of the tiles.

P.S. I'm inclined to look at the layering problem next. Wouldn't it be wonderful if MapComp.exe would produce a layered MPX file if it is given 2 MAP files?! That's the dream scenario anyway. I have a feeling it might accept multiple MAP files, but will probably just spit out multiple MPX files if so.

Holey Moley:
Here is a triumphant two story false color tweaked rendering of KF2's opening level. You can see the lighthouse on the left, and the waterfall in the back.

In the last week or two I've worked almost nonstop on adding multi-layer functionality to SOM so that it can entertain its maps. Funnily, SOM has multi-layer code and provisions within its file formats. Unfortunately, From Software either did not complete these facilities or disabled them. It's not as simple as flipping a switch back on (or it wouldn't have taken me multiple full time workweeks to pull it off.)

The layer stuff is halfway finished. This is the first image of a full map. It has only a test pattern for "texture" at this stage, so I inverted the image, to create the appearance of a white fog instead of the customary black. And I thought a white background would be more striking. However, I couldn't resist adding some color, and arguably I may have gone overboard with it, but I think this treatment brings out some details lost in the haze, although, it washes others out, in the more boxy rooms, that are overpowered by the stripes. The stripes are enhanced by the saturation enhancements that give it its color. Slight sampling errors become colorful highlights through successive saturation enhancements.

I could somewhat guide the coloration, and chose a combination most befitting this zone. If it's harsh, it was my desire to eliminate dull grays from the final image, especially in the very back in the effervescent waterfall area.

Two strange sections appear in the foreground, and there is a third in the back left corner that got lost in the brightness/contrast enhancement. I think these must have some purpose. I wonder if they are parts of the corridors that appear between zones. Even Guyra's zone has some like them. Their inward facing walls are not visible.

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