Modding / hacking progress summary

[sgomes]

Hi everyone!

I'm creating this thread so we have centralized information on all the stuff that allow us to extract and edit the several kinds of data in the game. That way we'll have a general idea of what has been done, and what we can still do.

If anything is missing or incorrect, please let me know and I'll correct it ASAP.

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Game resources

Data cubes text: DONE, by The Last Zica (tool here)
Episode script: DONE, by The Last Zica (tool here)
Music: DONE, by ?? (program unavailable; original LDS files here, MIDI files here)
Sounds: DONE, by ?? (Samples here; tool unavailable)
Background tiles: DONE, by szevvy (tool here)
Actor sprites (ships, enemies, shots, etc.): DONE, by Mindless (tool here, reverse tool here)
Level layout (what is where): MISSING
Ship data (armor, weapon, flight pattern, etc.): MISSING
Weapon and equipment data (power, effect, etc.): PARTIAL (see Useful information for hackers below)

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Other tools
ShipEdit (for editing custom ships)
TyrHack (for editing weapons and equipment, may not work correctly with Tyrian 2000)
Genvoice (for editing voice samples)

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Useful information for hackers

Post by szevvy, detailing level format: here
Post by The Last Zica, detailing lots of internals: here
Text file by Gamera, on how to edit weapons and equipment: here

[Gamera]

IIRC the sound files are just the source sample files stuck together maybe with some headers. You can get your own samples and put them together with a hex editor. I tried it but I couldn't get my samples into the correct format so it sounded shitty. There are also restrictions on length and stuff.

[sgomes]

admin said:

IIRC the sound files are just the source sample files stuck together maybe with some headers. You can get your own samples and put them together with a hex editor. I tried it but I couldn't get my samples into the correct format so it sounded shitty. There are also restrictions on length and stuff.

Well, if we get some definite information on how to put them together (formats, hex addresses, etc.) I'll definitely list it as done. That or a tool which does the same thing.

[Weep]

Haven't the sound files already been exported? I've got a folder with them all (or at least most) sitting on my HD that I downloaded from somewhere...

[sgomes]

weep said:

Haven't the sound files already been exported? I've got a folder with them all (or at least most) sitting on my HD that I downloaded from somewhere...

Hmm, if you could find out where you got them from, or put them online yourself it would really help!

[gencoreoperative]

The Tyrian sound effects link is members.lycos.co.uk/stupidityzone/tyrian/

[Tempest]

I even set most of those sounds as my desktop sounds...

[Weep]

Yeah, gencoreoperative found it.

[sgomes]

Excellent! I've updated the information

[The Last Zica]

A few more observations in passing someone's liable to find useful sometime or other: default configuration enemy information is in the same places as the weapon and equipment data, in fact it's the last table (or pair of tables in 2k, if memory serves) in each set (weapon data is similarly the first table or pair of tables in these sets, with player ships, shields, etc between.) Armor, flight, and firing pattern can be optionally overriden by appropriate commands in the level script, the specific weapons fired cannot. Also, for the purposes of where the base data is, powerups are enemies; thier data is in the same table, there's a flag that differentiates. This includes front/rear weapon level powerups, all the arcade mode weapon selection/improvement powerups, special weapon selection powerups, the armor pickups dropped by the armor ship, the armor ship itself, point powerups such as the 5k crystal Tempest has as his avatar, etc. Most of the weapon/special related powerups use high values of score to represent which weapon they're meant to select, i.e. in the 30k range, so it should be possible to create ones that don't yet exist (i.e. a Zica Supercharger sidekick arcade powerup.)

If memory serves the level scripting has very limited provisions to create enemies which do not rely on the abovementioned data, but what properties they can be assigned are highly limited and thus enemies created thusly are rather plain vanilla - I don't recall if they can even be made to shoot anything. Most enemies are created referencing a table entry as per above.

The generalities of level layout are glossed over in my other post sgomes linked.

[bb1]

It is people like The Last Zica that make people like me feel stupid..

[The Last Zica]

Glad to be of service. >;-)

Update on the level tile maps... the layers are sizes 14x300, 14x600, and 15x600 respectively. That much I'm certain about, checked some of my old notes. The format itself... looks to be a little more complex than I recall. It's uncompressed, but there seems to be a trio of mapping tables at the start of the file, one for each layer - 128 2 byte indexes into the shape file per table. Then the tile data that follows (3 sets, also one for each layer, 1 byte per tile) apparently indexes into the mapping table.

I also confirmed for certain that Tyrian2K does indeed have a pair of tables each for weapons and enemies where Tyrian 2.x has only one each.

[Tempest]

I actually have sprites of (I think) ALL front and Rear Weapons at their maximum level.

[szevvy]

Could you please update the link to the tile ripper? I hooked up a domain name and it's safer to have that link up.

www.szevvy.net/downloads/wombat_tyrian.zip

Thanks!

[sgomes]

szevvy said:

Could you please update the link to the tile ripper? I hooked up a domain name and it's safer to have that link up.

www.szevvy.net/downloads/wombat_tyrian.zip

Thanks!

Looks like Gamera did it for me, thanks!