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

[Mystery]

How did I miss this thread?

Anyone still got a backup of the GCS Docs that chris uploaded? The link seems to be dead unfortunately.
Never mind, turns out I'm stupid today


About the GCS for C Programmers:
I've been trying to find this for quite a while now.
A number of years ago I've been in direct contact with Kevin Stokes from Pie in the Sky Software, trying to get him to release the old thing. Unfortunately he was quite adamant and didn't want to get into any trouble if his old code caused any issues for anyone and he also didn't want to be responsible for any support, questions etc. that might arise from releasing the GCSP. Maybe his opinion has changed over the years, might be worth a shot?

These are the four games that potentially used the GCSP version, as they all have the slim HUD mentioned above:
Darkness of Space
Escape P.O.W.
Life’s Battle
Subterraneans www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZ8dJCZzA2Y
If the DIDN'T use the GCSP version, there might be another previously unknown version of the regular GCS out there, but I doubt it.


Back when I still had a facebook account I tried finding some of the developers (some of the games have names in the credits or text files) but didn't have any luck. My search wasn't completely exhaustive, so there might still be someone out there who has some backups.

[lgb3d]

It would be totally rad if Kevin or anyone with access to this was to release it.. but even without, that documentation provided above is beyond excellent. I have employed quite a few aspects of it in my project deadly technology. It's a bit of a trick to get a lot of it to work as you have to employ it as some files you can work with in the editor. But some files the editor rewrites every time you test level.. so you have to have confidence in your scripted code and slip in the modified documents just before you press make final. So I have a folder of all my modified animation documents and code and every time I'm ready to make a new demo version after I've tested all the levels I slip in my modified documents and then press make final.

So those documents and information above are phenomenal for the GCS we all have, but it takes a bit of thinking and a few tricks to employ some of them.

[lgb3d]

Mystery..

I'm going to attach two videos here one showing a trick I pulled off with the c programmers documents. And another showing some trickery that anyone could have pulled off with the stock GCS thinking outside of the box..

This video demonstrates C programmers techniques that the editor and test level is not capable of. So I had to have existing animations with file names in the level. And then make modified versions of them that I store outside of the directory. Then after testing the level when I'm ready to make final just before May final I replace the existing animation documents with my modified ones and press make final I don't get to test my modified script until make final is complete playing the final rendition of game. So it's a bit of a headache but once you have the gist of it a lot of the stress will leave. To do this with the floor required two animations, 2 different registers that carry different values and both those animations have to function with those registers and values and calculate the difference. What's not visible in this video as I just wanted to make a quick video where the player can move fast to demonstrate the floor. On this level the swimming feature is enabled, so typically when there's liquid floor the player would be bobbing and not have access to any weapons other than number one the Ninja Kick. As well at the start of the level the player comes through a pipe and I have the platforms that cause player movement so he is pushed into this deep pool of water. He cannot swim against that current to exit the level and he is stuck swimming until he drains the water at which point a platform appears at an elevation of one unit so he's no longer swimming and it disables the platforms that cause the movement so he can walk right back out the pipe. So although this level is not finished the floor techniques demonstrated alone give the hint that with the correct architecture someone could make a pretty darn interesting level where the player walks across different types of surfaces. Example players in water player walks in building now there's cement floor, player walks out of building there could be a grass field. You just have to build your level architecture enough that the player does not see what you are doing
youtu.be/PSgP28iMPDQ?si=LN_R8fu0nHTPiVIK

So here's one demonstrating lighting effects that you could pull off with the stock GCS thinking outside of the box making a fluid animation that Cycles through lighting effects having a unique color saved as the fade to color etc. As well these walls objects are set to react to explosions so my flash flicker animation is running at the same time as the strobing light just momentarily interrupting each other. Another cool part is that you'll notice the explosion does not fade with distance. With the stock GCS animations they do not have the attributes programmed into the explosions. So literally objects can bump into the explosions instead of pass through and they fade with distance so if an explosion happened far away from the player in a dark place the explosion would be dark. So I modified those attributes on my explosion as well as my maltive thingytail. Example with the Flames I have this Burning Fire like a wall of fire but the player would bump into it. And if the fire is burning at a distance in a dark place you couldn't see the fire because it fade with distance so I had to modify those attributes and those unique animations. And that GCSE programmers documentation is everything you need to achieve these. But the walls flashing when there is an explosion, or the red strobing light none of that required gcsc programmers that's just thinking outside the box with the initial editor..
youtube.com/shorts/OYu2anvWQfU?si=8VaOcVKeS9An2QDL

I highly recommend checking my tutorials. As well as the YouTube playlist for the game as it demonstrates a lot of things I have not made tutorials for yet.

[Mystery]

Very impressive, thanks for the videos. I went "No way!" a couple of times.

Man, I really have to get back to making some stuff in GCS, your stuff is really motivating

[lgb3d]

Jul 23, 2024 22:57:35 GMT -5 Mystery said:

Very impressive, thanks for the videos. I went "No way!" a couple of times.

Man, I really have to get back to making some stuff in GCS, your stuff is really motivating

Like he told me in the past the best part of the GCS is that it allows you to be creative where there might be a limitation we find our ways around it. The flashing red light is just the stock GCS I didn't use anything other than the editor but I thought to myself if I set the fade distance really far none of the walls will fade to red make an illuminated place so it makes sense it doesn't get dark. But then flexing all the different calibrations of the light intensity and fade distance when the default fade color is set as red makes that pulsing strobe effect. It looks super cool when walking down a hallway because the hallway Fades to red and then you start seeing a little more distance. And it looks really cool on a platform table top.

Of course the moving floor is something we could do with GCS.. but the gcsc programmers documentation explains the delay time is actually a command line so if it's less than 256 yeah it's a delay time. But beyond that invariables of 256 are all different commands and there's one for changing the floor texture to another texture in the levels object text. So I have the moving floor program to make various changes recalibrate change direction Etc but then a separate animation running that based upon Universal registers either stays in the loop of the liquid floor or switches to Brick or if you're in different areas switches to the cement floor.

I highly recommend reading the GCS C programmers material it's like a Bible to me at this point.. I'm nearly finished with my project I have one level really to do but I'm slipping back through adding storyline, or NCP that Advance with the storyline.. adding new inventory types as with the stock GCS the part of the book about inventory you can do some super radical things as long as you have structure to the universal registers that you're employing it can actually be really easy.

I'm always hoping to finish my project sooner than later but I know it's a ways away. No pressure no stress with a calendar. I'm heavily used GCS menu making cutscenes and for any different enemy or situation at the player dies there's special death sequences Etc so every time you play the game you get something different. But on the other hand when initially going through it I did an okay job with some of my GCS menu graphics which there are hundreds of now, but now and then when I'm playing the game I see a pixel or two that seem out of place it's like oh I need to use a different color there or change that shape just to hair so.. long story short I'm always from finishing..

But definitely at some point when I have the base game complete before I put the Polish on I want to make it available for beta testing and I would definitely appreciate the group and people familiar with the GCS to get the first experience. In the end goal I'm going to try to monetize this project in the fad of retro FPS.. so I'm making a lot of the game as controversial or shocking as possible to make it more attractive to that youthful audience.

But seriously once you start employing some of the gcsc programmers techniques you're going to be blown away and addicted to the GCS. It's like many of the things we wanted to do with the GCS when we were kids suddenly we recognize the engine was more than capable it's possible

[Mystery]

Sounds really exciting. I'm working on an unrelated game project right now, probably going to be done by the end of this month, august at the latest.
After that I'll try and get back into GCS dev. I have a project half started from a couple of years ago, going to dig that up and post some updates here.