[sck] release 1.3 is out and handles animations

[greatstone]

Delay between each release is longer each time, but that's life

So, a new release for the sck tool has been published today ( http://greatstone.free.fr/dm/index.html ).
There is a news on the web site explaining the stuff. So, to be short:

• extractor supports animations files (the one beginning with "AN"): you can now see all the images, palettes, sounds, etc.
  
  
  
• a standalone viewer engine has been created to play the animations on a standard/modern PC/Mac/Linux machine from the original files
  
  
  
• animations played by the viewer have been recorded and published on YouTube ( http://www.youtube.com/user/GreatStoneEx )
• IMG9, TXT3, ENT1 DM2 item formats are now supported to prepare the DM2 full support (mapfiles have not been updated accordingly yet, so extraction can be difficult)

The challenge was to handle every possible items supported by such animations and to test all animations of all DM/CSB/DM2 versions.

[Gambit37]

Wow! Very cool! That's a lot of hard work you've put in there, I can't wait to try it out

EDIT: The link on the download page is wrong; it's pointing to a JAR file -- should be a ZIP.

[greatstone]

Hello Gambit,

The link for the zip file has been fixed. Thanks for the short notice!
I will try now to update the mapfile inside the sck to "automatically" handle at least the DM2 PC graphics.dat.
Next, write extractor for the on-going hard work from Christophe about DM Nexus?

[Bit]

Love the tool, just helped me a lot!

One note about:
If you extract pictures 01...05 for DM it's fine, but in CSB another palette is used and so the result is wrong.

[greatstone]

Hello Bit,

Can you precise me the file that you try to extract and the impacted items?
ex: CSB Amiga 3.5 (en) graphics.dat, items 0001 to 0005
The sck is able to extract many many versions/files, and such detail is necessary to understand the problem, if any.

Regards.

[Bit]

CSB for Atari ST, Version 2.0 (think en) - items 0001 to 0005 (it's intro graphic, entrance, both prisondoors and author's page, then another palette is activated, so the rest is okay)
It's included in my testclone: here

Btw: I still haven't read about all the features of sck, maybe it includes some sort of this - but I can tell you what I want to do now: create something that supports the creation of a wallset. As you know, a wallset is splitted in a lot of files, ugly to create such one manually.
But I bet there's a chance to create one wall picture, then calculate it that way, that the result can be stored in such a pack. If I finish it, would you be interested to include the function into your sck?
Even better than to start another one-function-tool.
That's for DM/CSB only I'd say - too less experience with DMII and the others.

Also - for my special purposes, I took sck, extracted graphics.dat, then had to resize the output-files x*3 y*3, converted all to truecolor, then save renamed as png again. Was no problem as batch conversion with the Irfan Viewer. But maybe for others this isn't that easy. Add such features too?

[ian_scho]

It was one thing to have an extractor to view an animation.... But another thing to be able to immediately jump into Google and search->find->play it! Thanks! Good job.

[Adamo]

hey Greatstone! Amazing work! But I wonder if is possible you extract stuff (graphics) from other Amiga games, like Black Krypt, Evil`s Doom or EOB? There`s really a lot of stuff to rip and I din`t have idea how to do that.

[greatstone]

@Bit
For CSB palette issue, that's because the sck tries to extract also the palette directly from the original files and I don't know where it is in this version. Perhaps I can add some hard-coded palettes in the sck to deal with such situations and have correct colors. I will see what I can do.

wallset creation: I have still a lot to do to be able to extract all the remaining items/formats. I prefer to concentrate my efforts on the extraction feature, then perhaps add more later.

graphics conversion: again, extraction is my primary focus. I just have a converter inside the sck to generate png from bmp:

Code: Select all

  java -jar "<SCK_PATH>" convertMedia -dir "<directory_containing_bmps>" -src_ext "bmp" -dst_dir "<output_directory>" -dst_ext "png" -dst_type "png"

@ian_scho
It was a bit tedious to build all these videos but I know that dealing with command-line, dos, original files, etc. is also annoying from somebody, even if it is a pleasure for me

@Adamo
Extracting graphics from a game, like I do with the sck, is quite long as it is not a rip from the memory. We need to know how the graphics are stored in the original files and it can be different for each game.
Speaking about Black Crypt is a bit different because I have already started some research about this game
I have some mapfiles with a few images (and a wrong palette), txt and sounds. But there is still a lot to do, as you can see.





One day perhaps it will be better, or if I have some help on this topic?

G.

[babebridou]

Hello everyone, hi Greatstone and thanks for all the work you guys have put into keeping this game very alive

I'd like to get something straight - I've downloaded a couple CSBWin packages for both DM and CSB, and while data extraction is pretty straightforward with SCK & DM, I can't seem to be able to grab the main dungeon layout for CSB. Where can I find a proper dungeon.dat file for the main game of Chaos Strikes Back? I'm mainly looking for the dungeon definition right now (maps & items). The reason is, I'm currently having fun building a Unity3d game engine, and I'd very much like to use the same file format as CSBWin does for my level definition, I like the idea of bringing those legendary games up to speed with current technologies without altering the original gameplay & level design. More people need to taste the awesomeness

I'm so far in pre-pre-pre-alpha, walls, floors, roofs and stairs are generated straight from an SCK extraction of Dungeon Master's dungeon.dat file, and I can move around free-style from the hall of champions down to the dragon's lair (more or less, I haven't bothered actually going deeper than level 4-5, I expect the clockwise/turnback to be a showstopper anyway without actuators ). I wanted to test the engine with another source file - and naturally wanted to try out CSB but couldn't perform a clean conversion to xml with map definitions, etc. If there's anything I missed, please let me know

Edit: apparently my tiny french brain forgot about the prison & stuff. Still, I get a java exception when I try to sckextract mini.dat (dowloaded from the encyclopedia over there).

Code: Select all

D:\sck>java -jar "D:\sck\sck.jar" extract mini.dat
INFO: Resource = mini.dat
INFO: Resource MD5 = 531EA104A2FBC2011EA73D11F274C57D
INFO: Detected format = DUNGEON
INFO: decoding header...
INFO: decoding maps definitions...
INFO: decoding 1st object on tiles...
Exception in thread "main" java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: 42815
        at com.gse.lib.dm.data.DataDUNGEON.decode(DataDUNGEON.java:363)
        at com.gse.lib.dm.data.DataAdapter.decode(DataAdapter.java:533)
        at com.gse.lib.dm.MapItem.extractFromResource(MapItem.java:475)
        at com.gse.lib.dm.MapFile.extractItemsFromResource(MapFile.java:622)
        at com.gse.lib.dm.resource.MapableResource.readItemFromFile(MapableResou
rce.java:334)
        at com.gse.lib.dm.resource.MapableResource.decodeFromNative(MapableResou
rce.java:103)
        at com.gse.lib.dm.resource.MapableResource.extractFromNative(MapableReso
urce.java:170)
        at sck.Extract.run(Extract.java:244)
        at sck.Main.main(Main.java:200)

D:\sck>pause
Appuyez sur une touche pour continuer...

Anyway this is definitely not blocking to me at the moment so no need to be hasty. There's so much to be done elsewhere still Thanks again for your tool.

[ChristopheF]

The CSB dungeon is not stored as a dungeon file but rather as a saved game file (mini.dat). This saved game file contains the dungeon data though, and my script here http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1391 will extract the dungeon data from the mini.dat for you. Then you should be able to extract the dungeon with sck.

[babebridou]

Cheers Christophe, thanks, that was precisely what I needed.

[DrCoolZic]

I'm trying to do exactly the same thing as @bebibridou (Unity/Godot game experiment), and I'm having exactly the same problem as him, namely that for CBS, the mini.dat file isn't being decoded correctly.

Code: Select all

D:\Games\DM\Tools\sck@1.5.1@20110502.0\test>java -jar sck.jar extract mini.dat
INFO: Resource = mini.dat
INFO: Resource MD5 = 531EA104A2FBC2011EA73D11F274C57D
INFO: Detected format = SAVEGAME
INFO: trying to identify Savegame specific format...
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 47506 - computed = 31494
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: B3 OK
Savegame: decode: block3 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CrD OK
Savegame: decode: CreaturesData checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CD ERROR
Savegame: decode: ChampionsData checksum expected = 33679 - computed = 42759
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 37083 - computed = 30454
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: B3 OK
Savegame: decode: block3 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CrD OK
Savegame: decode: CreaturesData checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CD ERROR
Savegame: decode: ChampionsData checksum match!
ENCRYPT: TD ERROR
Savegame: decode: TimersData checksum match!
ENCRYPT: TQ ERROR
Savegame: decode: TimersQueue checksum match!
INFO: portrait format detected: CMP
INFO: decoding header...

I have tried the solution proposed by Christophe: it generated several bin file and I have tried to extract the dungeon one

Code: Select all

D:\Games\DM\Tools\sck@1.5.1@20110502.0\test>java -jar sck.jar extract mini.dat-10-DungeonData.bin
INFO: Resource = mini.dat-10-DungeonData.bin
INFO: Resource MD5 = 9B5D7323884BE0FFA20F74D54B6A9039
INFO: Detected format = SAVEGAME
INFO: trying to identify Savegame specific format...
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 4810 - computed = 44874
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 24562 - computed = 49365
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 59482 - computed = 53890
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 24562 - computed = 49365
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 59482 - computed = 20862
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 24562 - computed = 14201
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 24562 - computed = 14201
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 59482 - computed = 20862
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 59482 - computed = 53890
ERROR: unable to decode this savegame.
ERROR: decoding has failed => no extraction
INFO: extraction finished.

but as you can see it also fails!

Is this a known problem? Did someone succeed in decoding the CSB dungeon leves?

[ChristopheF]

Hi Jean, it's been a long time!

I made a few tests myself:
Despite the error messages you see when extracting file mini.dat, the process still seems to work fine and the dungeon data is indeed extracted into an XML file.
When extracting the dungeon data only (your second test), it seems you must rename the file to dungeon.dat for sck to recognize it as a dungeon file, and then the extraction will work fine.

[DrCoolZic]

Bonjour Christophe,

Indeed, it's been at least 5 years since we last communicated...

To come back to the problem I am sorry because it works perfectly well. It's just that I hadn't taken the time to read the sck documentation properly. Indeed, in the case of CSB, the mini.dat file is a savegame file and therefore you have to click on the icon in the Dungeon section to see the maps of the 11 levels appear. In addition, these maps are a priori in xml/xslm which is a format that I don't understand

Quick question: why in the maps there are two x axes and two y axes?

I had fun playing DM with csbwin and I have saved the game. I tried to use sck on this savegame but it didn't work? Maybe I didn't do the right thing again? But hey, it doesn't really matter much.

Code: Select all

D:\Games\DM\Tools\sck@1.5.1@20110502.0\test>java -jar sck.jar extract csbgame.dat
INFO: Resource = csbgame.dat
INFO: Resource MD5 = 10B5DD2F25C997447D6871B6CF02548F
INFO: Format SAVEGAME_CSBWIN detected, not encrypted.
INFO: Detected format = SAVEGAME_CSBWIN
INFO: trying to identify Savegame specific format...
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: B3 OK
Savegame: decode: block3 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CrD OK
Savegame: decode: CreaturesData checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CD ERROR
Savegame: decode: ChampionsData checksum match!
ENCRYPT: TD ERROR
Savegame: decode: TimersData checksum expected = 45430 - computed = 7692
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 25971 - computed = 60468
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 25971 - computed = 60468
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 35995 - computed = 31662
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 25971 - computed = 60468
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: B3 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block3 checksum expected = 0 - computed = 8679
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: B3 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block3 checksum expected = 0 - computed = 8679
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum expected = 25971 - computed = 60468
ENCRYPT: B2 ERROR
Savegame: decode: block2 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: B3 OK
Savegame: decode: block3 checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CrD OK
Savegame: decode: CreaturesData checksum match!
ENCRYPT: CD ERROR
Savegame: decode: ChampionsData checksum expected = 45146 - computed = 64968
ERROR: unable to decode this savegame.
ERROR: decoding has failed => no extraction
INFO: extraction finished.

By the way it is incredible the work that you've been doing around dungeon master. The SCK program is amazing.

[ChristopheF]

XML: What are you trying to achieve exactly, what are you expecting ?
The dungeon file format is documented here if you want to parse it yourself in another way http://dmweb.free.fr/community/document ... eon-files/

2 axes: each map has a width and height, but also X and Y offsets that are used to align the maps vertically so that when you fall in a pit, the game can compute the coordinates where you will arrive at on the map located below. That is why there are two sets of coordinates.

Although CSBwin is based on the Atari ST version, it has some additional extensions so that the saved games it produces are not binary compatible with the saved games of the original game.
There might have been several such format variants which is probably why sck cannot open them altough it seems to detect a "SAVEGAME_CSBWIN" format.
You can use CSBuild to open them: http://dmweb.free.fr/community/tools/cs ... l-csbuild/
CSBuild can also load original dungeons and saved games, but it will only save in the custom CSBwin format.

Thanks for the kind words. sck was not written by me although I closely collaborated with its author.

[DrCoolZic]

Right now, I don't have a clearly defined goal! I'm currently experimenting with Unity's game engine, so I wondered if I could make a DM-style game. But I realize that's probably very ambitious, since I didn't realize DM was this complex. As for using the dungeon.dat file, the idea would be to retrieve the information from that file to directly generate a game level. Since the work of converting that information into an html file has already been done by sck, it seems simpler to use that file directly, as it’s easier to work with…

Regarding the HTML files, it seems there's they have a problem? When I took a quick look at the HTML file's content, I noticed that in many places there are some calls triggered by onmouseover events. So I expected something to happen when I hovered the mouse over the maze elements. But nothing happens in either Edge or Chrome? I think a message should normally appear to indicate the type of element under the mouse?

To understand the problem a little better, I went to DevTools in Chrome and saw lots of error messages when moving the mouse over the map.
For example, the following error message:

Uncaught ReferenceError: tpT_9_9 is not defined
at HTMLTableCellElement.onmouseover (map_1.html:382:952)

Here is the explanation provided by AI

This error occurs because the JavaScript engine is trying to execute a function or access a variable named tpT_9_9 when you hover over a table cell, but that identifier does not exist in the current scope.
In your case, the HTML contains an inline event handler like <td onmouseover="tpT_9_9(...)">. When the mouse moves over the cell, the browser looks for tpT_9_9 in the global window object and fails to find it. This usually happens for one of three reasons:
• Typo: The function name in the HTML doesn't match the name in your JavaScript file.
• Loading Order: The script defining the function hasn't loaded yet or failed to load.
• Scope: The function is defined inside another function or a module, making it inaccessible to the inline HTML attribute.
How to verify
• Search the source: Open the Sources tab in DevTools and press Ctrl+Shift+F (or Cmd+Opt+F) to search for tpT_9_9. If it's not found, the function is missing.
• Check the Network tab: Ensure all .js files are loading with a 200 OK status. If the file containing the function failed to load (e.g., 404 Not Found), the function will be undefined.
• Check Global Scope: Type window.tpT_9_9 into the Console. If it returns undefined, the function is not globally accessible.
Suggested fix
If the function is missing, you must define it. If it is defined inside a block (like a DOMContentLoaded listener), you must move it to the global scope or attach it to the window object.

Code: Select all

js
// Ensure the function is defined in the global scope
window.tpT_9_9 = function(event) {
console.log("Mouse over handled!");
// Your logic here
};

If you are using modern JavaScript modules (<script type="module">), functions are not global by default. You must explicitly attach them to the window object for inline HTML handlers to see them:

Code: Select all

js
// Inside your module script
export function tpT_9_9(params) { 
/* ... */ 
}

window.tpT_9_9 = tpT_9_9; // Expose to inline handlers

Summary
The browser cannot find the function tpT_9_9 called by your table cell's onmouseover attribute. Ensure the function is correctly spelled, the script file is loading successfully, and the function is defined in the global scope.

And indeed, if I type `window.tpT_9_9`, the function is undefined
Is this a known issue?
Sorry to bother you with all these questions

[ChristopheF]

When I go to http://greatstone.free.fr/dm/db_data/cs ... map_5.html in both Chrome or Edge, when I move the mouse over a square on the map and pause for a second, a tooltip popup is displayed showing the contents of the square.
I do not see the errors you see in the Devtool console.
Maybe you are opening the html file from a local source, and not a web server. Browsers apply security restrictions in this case, maybe that is what is causing your issues.

[DrCoolZic]

It seems I'm doomed!
I think I'm using the sck program correctly, but the generated files aren't right. As I've already explained, the mouse events aren't working, and on top of that, there are lots of extra white lines appearing in the maze that don't seem to exist in the versions available on the web site???

Note:I tried to upload an image to the forum, but it seems that it isn't possible to do so directly

for example in the map_1.html the correct file from the web site is

Code: Select all

function tpT_9_0(tp, class_id){
      tp.T_TITLE=tpTitle+" (X=9,Y=0)";return tpTC(tp, class_id, '', "Wall")+"<br>"+addContent("(wall actuator) Double magic missile shooter [data: Fireball]<br>");
    }

the same file generated by sck is transformed into

Code: Select all

function tpT_9_0(tp, class_id){
      tp.T_TITLE=tpTitle+" (X=9,Y=0)";return tpTC(tp, class_id, '', "Wall")+"
            <br>"+addContent("(wall actuator) Double magic missile shooter [data: Fireball]<br>");
    }

which is of course not recognized

also some slashes becomes backslashes on my generated version

Code: Select all

    var img_potion   = '<img src="../../resources/dungeon/images/potion.png">';

becomes

Code: Select all

    var img_potion   = '<img src="..\resources\dungeon/images/potion.png">';

Here it does not matter but in other places it generates errors?

I am just showing some of the differences in generated files versus files on the web site, but there are a lot of other differences

I am running sck latest version on Windows 11. What I am doin wrong? Why sck generates bad files on my system?

Edit:
As I cannot generate correct files on my machine, I have tried to download them from the Web site, but unfortunately it does not seems possible to get all the files like for example the resources or xml directories. Is there a place to get a zip files of correct output for dm and csb (atari version) ?

Edit Edit:
I have finally downloaded all the html files and fixed the ../../resources to fit the sck out put of ../resources so now I can look at the correct maps with the mouse hover working locally on my machine.
Is sck open source?
I also realize that I may not publish in the place may be viewtopic.php?t=29028 would be better for sck problems?

[ChristopheF]

There are no meaningful differences between the two variants tpT_9_0 you posted. The newline in the middle of the line is just ignored by javascript when running the code.
I have extracted the mini.dat file with sck 1.5.1 on my Windows 11 computer and Java 1.8.0_491-b10, it worked fine except for the / in paths that need to be replaced with \ like you mentioned. It seems to be a bug.
sck is not open source, and not maintained anymore.

[DrCoolZic]

There are no meaningful differences between the two variants tpT_9_0 you posted. The newline in the middle of the line is just ignored by javascript when running the code.

It does make difference on my machine with help of AI I fixed all the broken newline and after that was working correctly
Visual Studio code also report this as an error: Unterminated string literal in javascript
followed by: semicolon expected
this explain why the function are not called

For java I have this
C:\Users\Jean>java -version
openjdk version "21.0.6" 2025-01-21 LTS
OpenJDK Runtime Environment Microsoft-10800203 (build 21.0.6+7-LTS)
OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM Microsoft-10800203 (build 21.0.6+7-LTS, mixed mode, sharing)

Could this be the problem?

[DrCoolZic]

bingo I have installed jre-8u491-windows-x64.exe changed the JAVA_HOME now
C:\Users\Jean>java -version
java version "1.8.0_491"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.8.0_491-b10)
Java HotSpot(TM) 64-Bit Server VM (build 25.491-b10, mixed mode)

An now ... tada ... files are correctly generated no newline in middle of strings so now the hints are working fine
actually on Windows / or \ are normally equivalent so all looks good.
The only minor problem is on level 1 I have some extra lines starting from 0,0 0,2 0,4 0,6 and going to the champions that does not show up on the map from the web site

Edit:
compared the html files in VS code and in the function myDrawFunction there a lot of extra dl(a,b,c,d); lines on my generated funtion and this explain the extra lines I see

Edit Edit:
Also tested cbs mini.dat and now hint works fine here also

Thanks for your help