Does anyone have GCS for C Programmers?

[ahw]

I haven't been able to find GCS for C Programmers anywhere. Does anyone here happen to have it?

[lgb3d]

Are you referring to the engine that was used for the title, if I remember right... "Escape pow".. the game that used the Dos engine and demonstrated the modified HUD with larger gameplay screen..?

[ahw]

Nov 16, 2022 1:51:41 GMT -5 lgb3d said:

Are you referring to the engine that was used for the title, if I remember right... "Escape pow".. the game that used the Dos engine and demonstrated the modified HUD with larger gameplay screen..?

I'm not sure off-hand if that was the engine used for that game, but I can link you to the original webpage, if it helps:

web.archive.org/web/19980524220018/http://www.psky.com/GCSP.htm

[lgb3d]

I haven't seen that advertisement in quite some time. Although I do remember it. To my knowledge there was one potentially two games that utilized that setup, but they did not truly utilize all the features.

I've heard rumors that a few people did actually purchase it, but I'm not sure it caught on. If we could find the individual who made that "escape pow" game they might be able to tell us the truth on the matter..

You can find video playthroughs of the game I'm referencing on YouTube it looks very much like the typical GCS game but you'll notice some unique differences including the view screen being bigger.

I don't know if anyone here ever purchased it, perhaps another user of the Forum might know more...

I believe it's mentioned in this forum a few times, as well I think a prior employee of Pie I think his name was Nigel did a few interviews in the past amongst other groups.. I think he touched on the topic of this product bringing some clarity to what it really was and what became of it.

One of the topics in the advertisement about explosions.. I think I am on track to figure that out.

Check out my how to gib enemies, kick him when he's down, and flamethrower tutorials.. I think I'm pretty close to unlocking a little piece of what was advertised with the gcsp

[chris]

I'd love to get my hands on a copy of GCS for Programmers.

While I don't own a copy, I do have a copy of some of the documentation TXT files that originally came with GCSP, and it goes into fairly good detail of the inner workings of the file types, etc. and I've definitely found it useful. I can dig that up if you're interested.

Really love the stuff you've discovered especially with weapons, I didn't know a lot of that was even possible. Keep up the good work!

Anyone have a link to Escape POW? I wonder if there are some things that can be learned just from looking at the binary. Like what if you tried to copy the binaries to another GCS project, would you get the full screen mode? Just thinking off the top of my head.

[lgb3d]

Chris..

I appreciate reading you here as well, that is a really good idea to dissect another game that utilized "gcsp"..

I learn a lot reading the ".bat" for sergeant blood.. which gave me ideas that later resulted in my batch file menu for Windows.. so dissecting old games is a good technique to receive some hints.

Escape pow.. off the top of my head I want to say it was forgotten worlds on YouTube who did the playthrough it might have been somebody else it was not Hall of first person games because he always post download links..

YouTube is currently pretty frustrating with the ability to communicate with other users and share information through comments..

If you do have that documentation I would be very interested in Reading, as well I'm sure our new member would love some reading material.

I'm still trying to figure out how the fire extinguisher worked so I could employ that with various weapons having alternative interactions with animated objects or enemies, and something tells me that documentation you're referring to might assist in that.

[chris]

So I sourced a copy of Escape POW and tried to splice its PNOCOMP.EXE into another GCS game but was not successful (critical error 246 or something). I believe it has something to do with the level resources being in .ENG format instead of the usual .SAC format. The file formats seem different, and I think some GCSP tools are needed to convert between them. Maybe I'll mess around with it more later, would love the ability to look up and down, utilize the larger screen space, etc.

Here is the GCS file format documentation. I also scanned the GCS manual to PDF in case you didn't have a copy already.
chrisbartek.com/remote/GCS%20Docs.zip

Some really interesting stuff in here, especially in ENGINE.TXT. I even wrote a VGA/VGR reader/writer a few years ago using this documentation.

Hope that helps.

[lgb3d]

Bro you are tech savvy..

These PDF of the manuals are priceless.. I remember receiving GCS menu and having that manual.. somehow I've overlooked event "0"... the other day I was scratching my head at how to get an opening sequence before the menu loads.. so simple

As for gcsp documentation

I read similar documentation I believe was included with the windows release explaining how to modify text documents or utilize comand line instead of using the editor, and the layout of how the engine and how engine file structure work but I think these ones you uploaded are a bit different.

I'm currently going through your engine.txt.. and I think I found the numbers I needed to understand the "illegal" delay numbers used in weapon FLD text.. they are identified as command numbers in the section about fluid or animated objects.

Currently trying to understand how command 17, 81 and 82 work.. I see these commands are visible with the tear and gas grenade.. although there very much the opposite of what I see visible with the negative five attribute trigger rendition of the fire extinguisher.

I'm sure if I don't become complacent the functional application of these unique command #s will assist in my exploration of the fire extinguishers function in terminal terror... thus unlocking the potential to have weapons have unique interaction with animated objects.

So fingers crossed that I can understand the difference in between the unique gas and tear grenade explosions resulting in a universal register values that causes the screen to become blurry and the fire extinguisher having a negative five trigger attribute that causes a unique interaction with specific animated objects set to receive the signal..

Since this string began, a thought that came to mind for me was the parallel between gcsp and the original Windows release. One of the major features of the original Windows release was going full screen or modifying View - screen size and the ability to look up and down.

With a ray casting engine additional math has to be incorporated in engine for looking up and down.. just an assumption that was not factored into the original dos engine. So the windows 1.3 release might be closer related to gcsp. So doing the same experiment you did with Escape pow but utilizing the carcass of a Windows 1.3 game might produce different results giving you a view to the inner workings.. just a thought I'm not tech savvy like you

Reading the read me text Incorporated in the documentation says that the lighting registers are going to be different than the application in the windows engine.. but other than that it says the instructions going to be very similar if not the same..

[lgb3d]

Chris.. the gcsp documents helped out, I believe a lot of this is directly applicable to the original dos release good luck on your mission.. you solved mine

I don't know what I did but after about 30 tries to make it work... out of nowhere it worked perfect. So I should be able to set an animation that will recognize various register values and have alternate outcomes based upon receiving damage from various types of weapons.

I already have the fourth guards able to die from a bullet and have a separate outcome from an explosion ect.. that was a trick in it self to figure out... but now I should be able to modify my animations to reflect similar varied outcomes

For this I'm utilizing an illegal delay number of 20736 "command #81" that sets (ur#v=*).. 20736 goes in weapon delay reg & v go in frame. Example Reg and val are (reg*256)+v.. so ur5v=1 is 1281.. after the explosion I do the same thing except I put 1280, clearing the register back to zero..

The cool part about this is I made various other discoveries along the way...

Although we cannot through the editor alter the type explosion dealt by an animation all we can set is an invisible blast and radius. If we go into the text documents of those animations we can modify the blast to carry attributes of different weapons ..

Example I have a explosion with an attribute that causes guards to gib.. but if I shoot an explosive Barrel and it puts off an invisible blast the barrel is only going to cause the guard to have the normal fall on the ground death.

Now using "command 8" 8*256 2048 as a delay in a fld file the folowing number would be the attribute "-#" for gib death.. my explosive barrels would be more convincing

As well I learned that command number 1248

Not followed by a negative number results in the blast radius. So after my initial blast, I put another invisible blast but with a radius of 1,000. So those who were nearby but outside of the Gib death suffer a normal death from the Shockwave of the explosion. I'm yet to discover how to alter the blast radius for various attributes of players weapons but for the normal death I can extend the blast radius that's a big plus.

Another learning experience was "command 20" 5120 when employed with an explosion this allows multiple forms of explosions utilizing various attributes of weapons.

So now my base explosion has three separate blast that occur.

Explained.. the initial blast is the typical 500 radius which gibs the enemies in that bubble. The following blast has an attribute that I'm using for a guard on fire, so if any of the guards are foolish enough to be rushing toward the explosion and just after their buddies gib.. they catch fire, player only sees this for a brief moment as when the Third invisible blast occurs it blows the fire right off them and their bodies fall to the ground dead.

I need to make a couple videos demonstrating these things so people believe me, but apparently what this does do is demonstrates we've fully unlocked the gcsp aspects revolving around explosions. More labor intensive than using a GUI, but pretty impressive to witness in gameplay.

I'm interested to see what else others might glean from these gcsp documents Chris shared today. Phenomenal stuff bro