Keenan - we need to contact Jason Ely

[Akira-TAJT]

a multiplayer for crusader

just who does have still legal copy of crusader? might be hard to find players :/

Well, this game is absolutely great! I still love it!. And yes, I have a legal copy of both Crusaders released (with spanish cases)

This game, in its era, was a real best seller.

 

[Keenan]

This game, in its era, was a real best seller.

Too bad it's pretty unknown these days.  :'(

 

[Toecutter]

WOW ... A crusader multiplayer !!!! * drools ! *    :-*

 

[wild_qwerty]

Wow this sounds pretty awesome, maybe I could help in some way with any graphics conversions that are required.

I've had a bit of experience with modding 2d games and converting graphics, though normally its for Fallout 2 modding. I converted all of the critters from Fallout Tactics into fallout 2 file format so batch converting and automating conversion processes in my speciality. I tried to convert the sprites from Crusader into Fallout and also into a useable formate for gamemaker. The sprites are just to nice looking not to be used elsewhere and when in gamemake at high res look really nice, I just couldnt get them to move smoothly.

Anyway if you want the sprites converted into PNGs or what ever other format I could probably help you there, I would just need a decent image extracter for Crusader. I've used "Crusader Explorer" in the past to get the images out but it does give you the frame alignment information for each sprite, so as the sprite cycels through it's different frames the image hops around, I couldnt find a common point of origin for the frames so I figure there is some information on the offsets stored in the shapes.flx file that crusader explorer doesnt extract.

Oh well thats enough talking on my part, let me know how I can help out with any graphics conversions.

*EDIT*
I just remebered that Crusader Explorer is had to find on the web now days, the authors website is down but I thinks it's still hosted on a couple of Rusian websites. If you cant read rusian (who can??) you can download it here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/23879897/CNRCEXP.zip

It's a really fun tool to play around with as you can look at all of the crusader art, hopefully somehere will reaply and say they already have someting better that can exract all the contents of the Shapes.flx file out.

 

[Keenan]

Welcome to the site!

Yeah, we have the Crusader Explorer tool here on the website... It's just not up yet after the crash.

 

[wild_qwerty]

Does anyone know what video codec origin used to compress the movie files in crusader? Or is it not possible to get the move clips out and into "normal" formats?

Otherwise it should be possible to run crusader in a virtual machine or DOSBox and use a screen recording tool to capture the video directly to an AVI, provided you have a computer fast enough for the movies not to skip...

 

[Keenan]

That has been the trillion-dollar question for twelve years. No one knows how to decode the movies, not even Jason Ely.

Yeah, we had a campaign declared several weeks ago to record the movies. No one here has volunteered to record them yet.

 

[wild_qwerty]

Is there anyway to skip forward to parts of the game using cheats or replay the movies once you have seen them once? I could possibly play them in DOS box on my work computer, but I'd rather not play games all day at work just to watch the movies, that and DOSbox still stutters a little bit even on my work PC (and its kind of fast...)

Has anyone contacted the people who are making the pentegram engine and asked them? I think they have reverse engineered most of the game, so they migth know.

 

[Keenan]

I'm pretty sure you can't skip to the movies. 

As far as I know, the Pentagram guys don't know we exist. Do you think you can contact them?

 

[Robotophe]

If you can record No Remorse movies, I have a hint to watch the movie that you want, from the game ! I already explained it here ! Better than play all the game at work !

 

[wild_qwerty]

I've been having a dig around inside the AVI files to see what I can pick up from the files header, I've learnt this so far:

- The codec appears to be "vidsJYV1" following normal avi file types the four letters after the vids represent the codec name. So far I've found zero information on the this codec...

- It's an AVI RIFF file, so I used a program called tabriffdump.exe to dump the header information. The program seems to process the information correctly which is a good start

I've been searching around for RIFF AVI files for 1995 but havent found much yet, I'm starting to think that it's a customised codec that origin made, but at least some of it follows the normal avi layout eg: the sound will play but not the video, I figure that this means the avi audio streams are the same structure as other avi files, but the video streams are slightly different, this means it may be possible to 'edit' or hack a normal codec to play the files. Anyone know a good programer? Oh well I'l see if the guy who made the tabriffdump knows how to convert these files.

*EDIT*

Well I can now confirm that the codec used in Crusader is a RIFF packaged AVI
Video codec is a FourCC Code of 'JYV1'
Audio codec is a PCM

So the good news is that we know what the codec is now, thebad news is I cant get one hit on google for a fourCC code of JYV1




There's some more information about FourCC codecs here:
http://www.afreecodec.com/
http://www.fourcc.org/codecs.php

 

[Keenan]

From what I recall in an old e-mail I sent someone (Jason?), Crusader used a very unique codec... this is probably why you didn't have any results on Google.

 

[wild_qwerty]

I've managed to find out about another codec that Origin has made, and sure enough this one is on the CD, there is also a XANDRV32.DLL on the Regret nd both regret and remorse have this file "ASYLUM.DLL"

I'm going to look into the possibilty that one of these files is the codec or I've heard that quite often one codec is campaible of playing another.

Has anyone used the XANMOVIE.EXE on the regret CD to try and play the other movies rather than just the preview ones? I have got Win9x so it wont run up for me

XXAN - Origin - Codec useing Huffman and RLE encoding paired with basic interframing. This format is used in Wing Commander 3 and 4 movies. 
The codec filename is xanlib.dll and a player, xanmovie, is available on the the Kilrathi Saga and Crusader game CDs.

 

[Cyberion]

yes? it plays movies from no regret. However it doesn't play any movie from no remorse. We asked Jason Ely (he was the leading programmer after all) he said that no remorse used something different for the codec. Very rare and Origin created codec.

Asylum.dll is written by Jason Ely, this is library to play music and sounds as far as I remember.

 

[wild_qwerty]

Hello all.  I am around. I have been very busy with my next MMO project. (And yes I've had thoughts for a Crusader themed MMO for a number of years).

I have a multiplayer version that was created under Watcom DOS compiler and used Dos4Gw. It would be rather simple to convert to WinXp in DirectX. I'm sure the project would take a number of months to complete. I have started the conversion a few times and then something in real life always pulled me away.

We had simple 4 player (doom style) combat. You could run around with different colored silencers (8 different colors I believe) and shoot each other. The character motion was much different. In Crusader the series the creatures all walked pixel perfect. In this one the creatures skated some. This was to give a more interesting control when in the heat of battle. It needed some work of course.

The game has a built in world editor. I'm sure I could make it work in XP using No Remorse or No Regret assets. So you would have to own a copy of the game to play it... For legal reasons.

Is there any update on how this is going? I mean I've love to be able to play this in XP along with a few of my friends

 

[Silencer0001]

I know this is cheeky seeing as I've been a member of this forum for about 15 hours now but all of a sudden i feel like a kid again and Crusader is my life!!!!!
I'm studying to be a professional musician at university and I'm currently on summer holiday. Up until now I've been doing well getting in at least a bit of practice on the guitar each day but Crusader has taken over things for now and i'm determined to kick start things on this forum again as it seems there hasn't been any major discussion in a while and i was wondering if anyone has had any information on this threads situation at all???
Has Jason Ely been in contact with anyone recently? I remember mailing him years ago and waiting a good year or 2 for a reply which i can understand as he must be very busy but If anyone has solid contact with him could they try and find out what is going on???

Thanks 

 

[Keenan]

I haven't talked to Jason in a long time now. I just felt I was annoying him too much, so it's been awhile. I'll try to get in contact soon and get an update.

 

[wild_qwerty]

Yes, it would be good to get an update on that build of crusader...