Farbourne
Rear Admiral
Hey folks,
This has come up in passing in other threads I've posted, but at this point I've put real effort in and failed to get results, so I thought I'd start a dedicated thread in hopes someone could help.
I'm trying to somehow access the actual ship stats used in WC1 (the original PC version, not SWC). I'm working on a little fan project, and I wanted to verify that the stats listed as "WC1" that are in the WC Ships database, that I'm putting into my project, do indeed reflect what's in the game (and make sure that, in cases where the ships database does not list stats for WC1 but only from Claw Marks, that the WC1 stats are identical to the Claw Marks values). Since I'm not sure of the pedigree of the Ships database and have already found one error (the number of Darts and Javelins carried by the Scimitar), and since the Ships database disagrees pretty firmly with Claw Marks in places (e.g. the roll rate on the Gratha...), I thought the best thing to do would be to dig into the actual game files.
I would use WCPedia, but I'm not sure of that pedigree, either, and the WCPedia stats seem to sometimes agree with Claw Marks, and sometimes with the Ships database listings for "WC1".
The problem is, the only "Ship Editor" or other fan-developed tool I can find for accessing the in-game stats is the ship editor linked to in the CIC files section: wcview.exe. And it doesn't seem to work.
I tried it on my current system (Windows 7), and it won't even run...it is apparently 16-bit, and Windows 7 supports only 32 and 64 bit applications. I tried running it inside DosBox and it complains that it can't run in a Dos environment, only a Windows environment.
So I dug up a really old laptop that still has WinXP on it, and loaded wcview and WC1 on that. Still no dice. wcview.exe can't seem to find the WC1.exe executable, even when I put them in the same directory (I've tried moving WC1.exe to the viewer's directory, and vice versa, and no dice either way). Before anyone asks, I've also tried with and without the .exe extension.
The WC1 ship viewer, according to its readme, was written back in the early 90's, and the only usable WC1 executable I have is the Kilrathi Saga version...so maybe that's the problem... I have the original version of WC1 on floppy, but I haven't the slightest clue where I'd find a 3.5" floppy drive these days, even if my WC1 disks are still good...
So, I have three questions:
1). Does anyone know of any other fan-developed tools for digging into the WC1 files to extract the actual in-game ship stats? One that runs under Windows 7 and can operate on the Kilrathi Saga version of the game would be ideal...
2). If not, does anyone know how to get the linked wcview.exe editor working on the Kilrathi Saga version of the game? I've looked around for the author and can't seem to find him on Google or linked anywhere.
3). Failing that, I'm not terrible at scripting to interact with binary data... (but hard-core software hacking is beyond me). If someone out there knows where the ship stats are encoded (i.e. how many bytes into what file, and how the data is structured...e.g. int-int-double-double etc.), I can dig it out with my own editor. But I don't know where I would find such data. Has anyone dug into the WC1 files that closely? I figured Mario "HCl" Brito might have, but his website doesn't seem to work anymore...
This has come up in passing in other threads I've posted, but at this point I've put real effort in and failed to get results, so I thought I'd start a dedicated thread in hopes someone could help.
I'm trying to somehow access the actual ship stats used in WC1 (the original PC version, not SWC). I'm working on a little fan project, and I wanted to verify that the stats listed as "WC1" that are in the WC Ships database, that I'm putting into my project, do indeed reflect what's in the game (and make sure that, in cases where the ships database does not list stats for WC1 but only from Claw Marks, that the WC1 stats are identical to the Claw Marks values). Since I'm not sure of the pedigree of the Ships database and have already found one error (the number of Darts and Javelins carried by the Scimitar), and since the Ships database disagrees pretty firmly with Claw Marks in places (e.g. the roll rate on the Gratha...), I thought the best thing to do would be to dig into the actual game files.
I would use WCPedia, but I'm not sure of that pedigree, either, and the WCPedia stats seem to sometimes agree with Claw Marks, and sometimes with the Ships database listings for "WC1".
The problem is, the only "Ship Editor" or other fan-developed tool I can find for accessing the in-game stats is the ship editor linked to in the CIC files section: wcview.exe. And it doesn't seem to work.
I tried it on my current system (Windows 7), and it won't even run...it is apparently 16-bit, and Windows 7 supports only 32 and 64 bit applications. I tried running it inside DosBox and it complains that it can't run in a Dos environment, only a Windows environment.
So I dug up a really old laptop that still has WinXP on it, and loaded wcview and WC1 on that. Still no dice. wcview.exe can't seem to find the WC1.exe executable, even when I put them in the same directory (I've tried moving WC1.exe to the viewer's directory, and vice versa, and no dice either way). Before anyone asks, I've also tried with and without the .exe extension.
The WC1 ship viewer, according to its readme, was written back in the early 90's, and the only usable WC1 executable I have is the Kilrathi Saga version...so maybe that's the problem... I have the original version of WC1 on floppy, but I haven't the slightest clue where I'd find a 3.5" floppy drive these days, even if my WC1 disks are still good...
So, I have three questions:
1). Does anyone know of any other fan-developed tools for digging into the WC1 files to extract the actual in-game ship stats? One that runs under Windows 7 and can operate on the Kilrathi Saga version of the game would be ideal...
2). If not, does anyone know how to get the linked wcview.exe editor working on the Kilrathi Saga version of the game? I've looked around for the author and can't seem to find him on Google or linked anywhere.
3). Failing that, I'm not terrible at scripting to interact with binary data... (but hard-core software hacking is beyond me). If someone out there knows where the ship stats are encoded (i.e. how many bytes into what file, and how the data is structured...e.g. int-int-double-double etc.), I can dig it out with my own editor. But I don't know where I would find such data. Has anyone dug into the WC1 files that closely? I figured Mario "HCl" Brito might have, but his website doesn't seem to work anymore...