[WIP] WACK <<Wasteland ACK>>

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

UPDATE: Resumed work on this. Started up a WIP page for it on the ACK Quick Reference site I've been building in my dropbox.

WACK WIP PAGE

I added a few screenshots there. Scroll down to see them.

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.

Hey folks, sorry for taking so long to mirror this project after my old gaming site went down.

Wasteland Adventure Creation Kit [W.A.C.K.] WIP
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21267578/WACK.rar

Wasteland Adventure Creation Kit Resources
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/21267578/Wastel ... Folder.rar

Feel free to pick this up where i left off or use whatever you can from it.

I toyed with 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 by 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. For example the mind-maze side-quest. 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.

UPDATE: This problem of too many tiles is easily solved now that I have decided to continue the story of wasteland where the original left off, or continue with a new story rather which takes place after the events of the first one. With the cochise base destroyed that eliminates a huge chunk of tiles allowing me much more room to work in.

[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?

[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.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Currently, I have completed Highpool. It is exactly the same as the original except for some recolors and a few custom graphics added in. I plan to add 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.

EDIT: I originally planned to make this a duplicate of the original Wasteland but have since decided to make it more of a tribute similar to the way Chris's humorous part 2 was to Ultima IV. I will be taking some inspiration from various sources such as the roguelike Alphaman, the humorous post-apocalyptic superhero crpg Superhero League of Hoboken [got some good tile improvements from there as well], the original Fallouts 1 and 2, and an old MUD called Desolation which picks up the story where Wasteland left off.

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.

This is what Desolation did and I think that is the best option for me.

[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 [See Original Post for links].

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.

Scrapped the voice acting plan.

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.

[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

[Garth]

Haven't worked on this for a while since starting long distance construction job which keeps me occupied 15 hours a day, four hours from home. The current job will be over in about a month and the foreman promises to give us 3 o 4 weeks off before we start the next big job. Hopefully I'll get something done then. But by all mean feel free to pick this up and do whatever you wish with it.

Old news, that job long gone now. The offer still stands for anyone interested in using what I have so far in their own game or wishing to collaborate with me on this one. I am still at work on this.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

That long distance job ended a while back and I've been mostly story-boarding for this project, brainstorming ideas for new plot twists and dialogs and characters to use instead of a perfect clone of wasteland. But I am also thinking about just donating whatever I create for this project to Biffsnot for use in his project in whatever fashion he wishes, taking or leaving whatever he wishes, and editing things as he sees fit. I really just want to see a fully completed game made in ACK and set in the wasteland finally completed for the community to enjoy and have another genre to show off ACK in.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Resumed work on this. Started up a WIP page for it on the ACK Quick Reference site I've been building in my dropbox.

WACK WIP PAGE

I added a few screenshots there. Scroll down to see them. The first ones are original size so a bit hard to see on modern systems but I provided some enlarged ones after those.

BTW: Im scrapping the voice acting idea. Too much work for one man and theres only so much I can do with my own voice. I'm a little embarassed now listening to what I made since I had tried to exagerate my Tennessee accent and it ended up sounding kind of silly lol. I'm just not cut out for voice acting. And editing it in a sound prog wasn't a cure for that. But I will definitely be providing a soundtrack and sound effects.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

The Ranger Center as conceived over at Desolation MUD

[RetroRomper]

Would there be enough people here to lend their voices to the game? Anyway, glad to see you've resumed work on this as after finishing the ACK Ultima parody, I'd enjoy playing another full adventure within the engine.

Looking forward to reading more about.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Thanks RR, make sure ya check out the facebook page for ACK so you can stay up to date on all the latest. Its in the top announcement thread right now.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Wow I really need to check my gmail inbox more often. Found this mail from inxile. Check it out!

On Tue, Jun 25, 2013 at 3:37 PM, Thomas Beekers <thomas> wrote:

Hello,



We here at inXile just noticed your ACK remake of Wasteland https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/212 ... /wack.html



I was just wondering; how complete/functional is it? Did you stop working on it or is it still a WIP?



Cheers,

Thomas Beekers

inXile line producer

From: Garth Rakhir [mailto:garthsequipmentshop@gmail.com]
Sent: dinsdag 13 augustus 2013 16:29
To: Thomas Beekers
Subject: Re: Wasteland demake



Oh hello! So sorry i missed this mail. I haven't checked this inbox in a while. It is mostly just a demo at this point, my attempt to attract more potential amateur game designers to ACK. Originally I intended on making it a complete game with as many of the characters, locations, and story elements as I could squeeze into the limited 8-16 bit memory of this old Dos Pascal program. I saw great opportunities for using the original Wasteland as a vehicle for humorous references to the American/World cultural era it was so obvious a product of. Incidentally that is now my most favorite element of Wasteland. It's setting, the 80's perspective and flavor of it all.

It has the entire original Wasteland worldmap faithfully reproduced but only the first location, Highpool, could be considered playable. I would love to keep working on it but I've been getting back into teaching myself programming, this time trying Python, for less restrictive game design, more freedom for my imagination, more power over every element in the games i create. To answer the question more directly, yes it is still a WIP. But I encourage others to use what I've done so far and to add to it. I am honored that inXile actually took notice of it! I can't wait for Wasteland 2!!!

Thomas Beekers

10:30 AM (14 hours ago)

to me

Thanks for getting back to us. It’s a cool thing even if it mostly just a demo. Good stuff, thanks!



The 80s flavor will definitely be a part of WL2 too.



Thomas

Garth Rakhir <garthsequipmentshop>

1:53 AM (0 minutes ago)

to Thomas

Your feedback means so much to me. I believe this may just be the spark I needed to light the motivational fire under my ass to get back to work on this old project! :D In case you havent seen it yet, here is the about page I made for the game (on an unpublished website I threw together in my dropbox which i share with other ACK users at the Jolt Country BBS forums. Wasteland Revision. And here is the original Work In Progress thread at Jolt Country. [WIP] WACK <<Wasteland>>.

Oh and in case you haven't heard of it yet there is a Wasteland based MUD that has been active since November 19th, 1998! Great place to advertise Wasteland 2 as well as to find people with years of experimentation/experience building on the original Wasteland story in a multiuser context. I've explored Desolation MUD for further inspiration and ideas for my own Wasteland based adventures. http://www.desolation.org/

[rld]

BTW: Im scrapping the voice acting idea. Too much work for one man and theres only so much I can do with my own voice.

Garth, I know this has been suggested before but I think there might be a number of people who frequent this board who would be willing to provide voice samples.

Are you doing short lines or whole dialogs? I was thinking what you could do is set up a sticky thread and just set up a list of one-liners or short clips you are looking for as a starting point, and specify what format (like WAV) you want them in. That would make it fairly easy for interested people to just try recording a few and email them to you, and you could go from there.

So you could list it out like:

Male character 1 - details on age or accent if you want
"Lock and load!"
"We're all clear!"
"I don't like the looks of this place..."

Female character 1
"Did you see that?"
"I think we need to stop and ask directions..."
"Scanning the vicinity for trouble..."

and so on. I think you should specify that anyone who submits you voice samples is placing them in public domain, and then we could eventually have a catalog of voice sound clips (hosted on 80sgaming.org or somewhere) that anyone could use in any game. I think this would be really useful for a lot of people designing ACK games.

[Landscaper Garth]

Great idea rld! Somehow I missed that last post of yours in this thread.

[Ice Cream Jonsey]

BTW: Im scrapping the voice acting idea. Too much work for one man and theres only so much I can do with my own voice.

Garth, I know this has been suggested before but I think there might be a number of people who frequent this board who would be willing to provide voice samples.

Are you doing short lines or whole dialogs? I was thinking what you could do is set up a sticky thread and just set up a list of one-liners or short clips you are looking for as a starting point, and specify what format (like WAV) you want them in. That would make it fairly easy for interested people to just try recording a few and email them to you, and you could go from there.

So you could list it out like:

Male character 1 - details on age or accent if you want
"Lock and load!"
"We're all clear!"
"I don't like the looks of this place..."

Female character 1
"Did you see that?"
"I think we need to stop and ask directions..."
"Scanning the vicinity for trouble..."

and so on. I think you should specify that anyone who submits you voice samples is placing them in public domain, and then we could eventually have a catalog of voice sound clips (hosted on 80sgaming.org or somewhere) that anyone could use in any game. I think this would be really useful for a lot of people designing ACK games.

I will provide voice samples. SIRS.

[Tdarcos]

If you can get a chance to see the 1971 film Andromeda Strain, while the scientists are working, there is background announcements on the PA system giving the "feel" as if the movie is taking place in a regularly operated scientific facility.

So you might want to consider radio chatter unrelated to the main player character if the radio is a campaign-wide radio channel, where network-wide information is being passed to all stations.

The ubiquitous availability of trunked radio and cellular-type radio where you essentially have a private channel has made this sort of thing occur a lot less, but for a strike team landing on a planet where radio does not exist, a public radio service to all stations is probably more likely.

So it might be appropriate to have "background" comm chatter of a military nature. Or the equivalent of text messages to all stations.

[Admiral Ackguh]

If you can get a chance to see the 1971 film Andromeda Strain, while the scientists are working, there is background announcements on the PA system giving the "feel" as if the movie is taking place in a regularly operated scientific facility.

I loved that movie. There was a TV station in Western Canada that used to play Andromeda Strain every second or third Sunday afternoon!

The ubiquitous availability of trunked radio and cellular-type radio where you essentially have a private channel has made this sort of thing occur a lot less, but for a strike team landing on a planet where radio does not exist, a public radio service to all stations is probably more likely.

Perhaps, but less likely in a futuristic setting, with the trends towards trunking, digital media, and heavy encryption. One thing that impressed me about original Star Trek (1966) was the mention of a "scramble" setting on the communicators, implying some sort of encryption.

So it might be appropriate to have "background" comm chatter of a military nature. Or the equivalent of text messages to all stations.

Some other good SF examples are the BattleStar Galactica and Buck Rogers series of the late 70s. In BR, there was constant PA system chatter in the background, in spaceports and military bases. If you listened closely, you could hear DC comics and Star Trek references, such as "Paging Adam Strange."

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

[youtube][/youtube]

Note: Check out Sloshworks channel for his entire series of Wasteland 2 Beta play throughs, he covers all the latest updates as he goes. As well as other good stuff like Slosh's Bar & Grill hotsauce tasting series, informative and quite entertaining.

[Garth's Equipment Shop]

Very thorough review of Wasteland 2 by very young sounding youtuber. In spite of being a non-native English speaker and being so young I found the dialog to be the best overall background and feature overview of Wasteland 2 I have come across so far. It isn't a Beta Let's Play like most on Youtube as it shows very little of the game in action and he seems to have chosen where to begin recording purely at random. The kid's definitely got mad reporting skills though.
[youtube][/youtube]