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Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 9:27 am
by paladin MAIK
Emm. . . I do not know where to start. . .

Okay. Try to express his thought.

For a long time to create patches for Myth II Soulblighter.

So. Someone from Project Magma or someone who knows how to work with programming languages. . . in short, can tell or explain how to work (ie, "dig") inside the game engine "of our game."

I mean to change any parameters (without Fear & Loathing), add any Innovations in the game engine.

At least explain the basics. Suggest program with which can work on the game engine.

Do now still nothing. And so was just interesting. :|

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Thu Jan 01, 2015 4:47 pm
by Pyro
I'm no programmer, but to get you started on your question you can search the web about the C programming language. Myth2 uses C and some C++.

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 3:30 am
by paladin MAIK
Pyro, found a program called Resource Tuner.

This program opens .exe - file. By the way, you can use it to translate texts in .exe (very useful).

Decided to try for the interest translate Fear & Loathing.

Let's see what happens. . .

Does anyone else offer any program that can be used to "study" the source code of the game?

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:45 am
by paladin MAIK
This piece of shit (Resource Tuner) flew at the end, when I almost translated Fear into Russian.

Burn it with fire. . .

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 10:51 am
by paladin MAIK
It's funny.

While I was translating Loathing learned a couple of new things that did not even know.

Here's a link to Loathing.

He translated on as much as possible.

Just sharing information. . .

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 8:18 pm
by vinylrake
What are you trying to link to, the original Windows executable of loathing?

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:10 pm
by Melekor
paladin MAIK wrote:Someone from Project Magma or someone who knows how to work with programming languages. . . in short, can tell or explain how to work (ie, "dig") inside the game engine "of our game."

I mean to change any parameters (without Fear & Loathing), add any Innovations in the game engine.

At least explain the basics. Suggest program with which can work on the game engine.
Generally speaking, you can't modify a game's engine by using a program to edit the .exe file. To modify an engine you would need to alter its source code, and then use a compiler to build it into a new .exe file. Myth's source code isn't open source, so it's not available to play around with - but other games are available, for example Quake.

If you are interested in that kind of stuff, Pyro had a good suggestion, learn about C and C++ programming. Those are the main languages used to code game engines, so you will likely need to know them if you work with engines.

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Fri Jan 02, 2015 9:11 pm
by Melekor
vinylrake wrote:What are you trying to link to, the original Windows executable of loathing?
He linked his russian translated loathing.exe, which he made by editing the embedded resource files (for menus, dialogs and such).

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 3:03 am
by paladin MAIK
Closed source code, right?

So when you create patches for Myth, you have perfected the old .exe file (Myth II old.exe) and thus the modified .exe --- Myth II 1.8.exe

It turns easier to say that it is easier to write a .exe file?

Hmm, this is not easy, even in C ++.

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 10:10 am
by vinylrake
Melekor wrote:
vinylrake wrote:What are you trying to link to, the original Windows executable of loathing?
He linked his russian translated loathing.exe, which he made by editing the embedded resource files (for menus, dialogs and such).

Thanks. That's what I thought it might be, but because I am often distracted and just click through popups, I try to never download executable windows files (too easy to click 'run' instead of 'save').

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 4:38 pm
by Pyro
Yes, Myth is closed source code which means it is not public. When patches are created, the old EXE is not touched. The code is altered and then a new EXE is made using the altered code.
paladin MAIK wrote:It turns easier to say that it is easier to write a .exe file?
I don't know what you mean here. When building programs like game engines, you make new EXE files if you have altered anything in the game engine. You don't hack the old EXE because that could break things and would only let you do a few things.

Re: Game Engine Programming [MII]

Posted: Sat Jan 03, 2015 7:10 pm
by vinylrake
Pyro wrote:...I don't know what you mean here. When building programs like game engines, you make new EXE files if you have altered anything in the game engine. You don't hack the old EXE because that could break things and would only let you do a few things.
can't speak for original commenter, and i don't know if it's as common as it used to be, but 'back in the day' when games were a lot simpler you could often find things you could tweak in the exe file if you had something that could edit it - any parameter used in-game that had a set value could be overwritten.

it's not 100% accurate comparison but i think when the original commenter is asking about editing the source-code what he's talking about is roughly analogous to how before mapmaking tools were created, people 'edited' TFL Myth maps or units using a hex editor. Those modifications were made to the 'executable' maps/plugins themselves - no new plugins were created from scratch or rebuilt. Sounds like the commenter has a tool that does something similar to hex editing with exe files - e.g. lets the user edit the file without having to decompile and recompile the source code to build a new executable.