[WIP] WACK <<Wasteland ACK>>

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

For the ACK remake of Wasteland work in progress we have all the most essential graphics for most of the maps imported and the original Wasteland map has been faithfully reproduced in the following ACK project available for download.

WACK Project DL

As I wrote over at SeditionProject.info forums, I am looking into the possibility of streamlining some of the graphics of the original WL to make room for those I had to leave out.

For example there is an obscene amount of doors in the original WL which I think I could reduce be atleast half if not more. That alone might do the trick though I won't know for sure until I really start looking into the matter in detail. At any rate there is enough in there right now to pull off a good original adventure set in the original Wasteland setting.

Most of what was left out involved the rather unusual one time rooms and encounters near the end of the original game. As for characters or people, well, that is one of the original game's weaknesses, it used only a handful of icons to represent all the colorful characters and enemies in the game. That is one area I would definately like to improve in future games set in the Wasteland.
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[Ice Cream Jonsey]

What is the upper limit on ACK tile graphics?

I hope the project goes well. Will you be incorporating the text from the manual inside the game, somehow?
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the dark and gritty...Ice Cream Jonsey!

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Upper limit is 480 assuming a way is figured out to make full use of both the primary and the secondary sets in ACK. The tricky part is that some things in ACK can only use tiles from the Primary set while others can only use the tiles from the secondary set. 240 Primary and 240 secondary. Originally ACK Secondary Tiles could only be used for animating things like vehicles, people and terrain. Fortunately Chris has since then added a new workaround to set the graphics of non-custom objects later. There is still some degree of a challenge however to take full advantage of this as this workaround is not compatible with the other workaround Chris added which was transparency. So any passable spaces should be put in the Primary Set and only impassible tiles should take advantage of set later Secondary Tiles.

Yes, I have the complete manual text in text format and will most definitely be using that. Anyone who played Wasteland without referring to the text when the game directed you to missed out on a great story. Wasteland was in this way similar to a work of Interactive Fiction. Flipping pages to find out what happens reminded me of those old choose your own adventures.

Anyone who'd like to get involved with this project is more than welcome to come aboard. What I have so far is already provided. More to come in the not so distant future.
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[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Up to date WACK WIP thread with links to current downloads of the project.
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[Garth's Equipment Shop]

It has been reported that some folks cannot access the Forum base of operations for the WACK project so I'll mirror all updates here.

Currently, I have completed Highpool. It is exactly the same as the original except I've added voices to the dialogs. I plan to add voices to all the major NPC dialogs as well as a soundtrack. I am not sure which music I will settle on in the end but for now I am using the ambient background music and some of the sound fx from the original Fallout.

I have determined that this will have to be made in two parts due to the high volume of original graphics. Fortunately only a fraction of the total number of tiles are used from one region to the next so it will be possible to divide this ACK clone of WL up into parts. I am hoping I can do it in two parts.

Another option is to make this a sequal and have a few of the levels inaccessible. Such as those areas that were destroyed at the end of the original game.
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[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Latest progress update of Wasteland ACK 'Work In Progress.' The updated archive is online and ready to download at Wasteland ACK.

I did some streamlining of the redundant graphic tiles, added new tiles [and still have room left over for more!], created more items, more messages, dialogs, and macros. It isn't perfected yet but you can now go fishing in the lake at Highpool to get some food once you buy a fishin-pole from the Highpool store. You have to find bait though. Won't give that away just yet. The shopkeeper will give you a hint though if you ask him.

There are a few empty squares where I wanted to remember to put some stuff, so dont be alarmed about that. Camp Highpool is the testing ground right now. When it is perfected I will move on to some other area and that will become the new testing ground for further improvements.

I created voices for all the Highpool dialogs. They are in there but I am not sure I set that up correctly yet. I am not 100% satisfied with the voices I've created so far and have been experimenting with AV Voice Changer to see what kinds of voices I can create starting with my own as a base.

I have collected a lot of great tunes, ambience and sound fx for the game but I am still sorting all that out. I have been experimenting with conversion of wav/mp3 files to midi for the maximum size reduction but that isnt going so well. I may just have to put them in there at their original sizes until I learn a better way.
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[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Not a whole lot of progress on my end of things but it is great to find out that what I have done so far has helped others and inspired new designs to be created.

http://www.seditionproject.info/forums/viewtopic.php?f=95&t=2324&p=2686#p2686
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[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Found an old classic DOS game that used the Wasteland Engine. So in addition to Wasteland and Fountain of Dreams we have Escape From Hell to farm some interesting tiles and other game elements from... [If you want your ACK design modeled on this style that is]

Let's Play: Richard and Alan's Escape From Hell!

DOWNLOAD THE GAME

You may notice a slight improvement graphically over the previous titles using this engine. Yet it was still done within the confines of the 256 color, 16x16 tile format. *thumbs up* :D
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