[2007-04-15]
One of my favourite pasttimes is reverse-engineering, another one is computer games. Combined they make up Game Hacking, which is something I really enjoy. This page is dedicated to my (and others) work in that area.
A simple application to extract all BIK and SMK animations from MM6: The Mandate of Heaven, MM7: For Blood and Honor and MM8: Day of the Destroyer. So you can watch them to relive old memories without having to play the game, or maybe to get some hard-to-get-to screenshots. Console executable mm7vidextractor (source)
Bonus tip: To play MM6 and MM7 without a CD, copy the 'Anims2.vid' (MM6) or 'Magic7.vid' (MM7) animation file from the second CD to your Anims directory, and create a 'mm6.ini' (yes, also for MM7) in your game directory containing the lines:
[settings]
use_cd = 0
These games also work best with the unofficial 1.2+ patches applied: mm6_eng_patch.exe and mm7_eng_xp.exe.
Woah.. back here after not having updated since mid-2000. Anyhow, I wrote this to hunt down some music, which I remembered as being very good. However, either my memory fails me or it's not included with the Ascendancy PC version, because I couldn't find anything that triggered a memory.
Nevertheless, here it is: cobextractor (source)
One day I was browsing my directories when my eyes fell upon the old game PACPC. I started playing and thought "Well this is a decent clone, too bad there's just one level". So, I decided to spend the day writing a level-editor. You can download the game here (~120Kb), after which you should grab this archive (~15Kb) which contains my editor and a couple of extra levels for you to play. I wonder if the original author still has his page out there...
I'm sure hardcore players think of this as blasphemy :-)
Update: It's 1999-08-02 and I found the original author on the net! He is here.
Me and a friend were on the barricades working the front when TA had just been released. We were the first to release specifications for the map-format used by TA. We released the first TA-resource tool (TATOOL) and I went on to write the first released map-editor (TAME). I also wrote the bizarre Total Annihilation Scenery Randomizer (TASR) and a shortish document describing how to run singleplayer maps in multiplay (TA-SP2MP). None of this was very good (form a technical standpoint), but then we did it just for the fun of it. We both enjoy the reverse-engineering aspect of gaming, especially reversing unknown fileformats.
Hacking TA has since then been taken up by others, and the TA community seems to be alive and well (as of writing, Q1-1999), now playing with TA:Kingdoms.
The latest hack was pertaining to Baldur's Gate. Everything about that was collected and put on display at the Baldur's Gate page. The Baldur's Gate Mapping Effort was something which just happened and was meant to be something to hold me over until such time the data files were reverse-engineerd and a tool could be written to extract the info. Available now only for my personal nostalgic reasons.