Hidden and Dangerous .net Forums

1. Both H&D and H&D2 are *Windows Only* 32-bit executables, which means they don't always run under Vista and probably won't at all under future versions of Microsoft's Operating Systems.

2. H&D uses an old network interface, probably a primitive version of DirectPlay, if it had of been WinSock 1.1 (BSD Sockets) we wouldn't have as many problems hosting under Vista.

3. Both H&D and H&D2 have bugs which look like they are coded into the engine (technolgy) programming, i.e. the botchy 'Wait' signals, the ever random Uber Fire Rate bug of German Opponents in H&D.

4. The H&D2 archives are encripted, not compressed, or just misunderstood, ENCRIPTED, not only is this horrible for modding, but having to decript then decompress the data (assets) within the archives each time the data is used, causing the engine and therefore the game performance problems.


Never fear though, because Jason is forever working on that Hidden and Dangerous Restored and Revamped, which sounds awesome, that will probably be out before H&D3.
And hopefully all this will be fixed in the sequels of sequels, the game of games, Hidden and Dangerous III.

In the mean time I'm working on the technolgy of technolgies (engine of engines), http://www.twc-studios.ismywebsite.com, and recently stumbled apon VOXEL rendering instead of rendering to pixels; To compare, Delta Force with VOXEL rendering, http://www.file-extensions.org/imgs/app ... arrior.jpg, H&D Classic with pixel rendering, http://www.gamershell.com/static/screen ... 2_full.jpg both screenshots are from arround 1999 (the difference is in the terrain quality.)

P.S.@Jason: I deleted the previous topic and replaced it with this one.

What can be done from a C/C++ perspective to patch or improve the game? I know with some other games people have created their own community patches, Red Faction for instane. How far can we really crack H&D2 open and repair it?

Nothing can be done from C\C++ level, if there is no released source code from the developers to make the patch from and fix problems with the actual game code, but no doubt an editor for H&D 2 could be built, but it would take a long time because all the old Infinity3D model and animation formats (i.e. that .i3d format was it?, which are said to be compatible with LS3D) and the new .4ds and .5ds model formats and the .sav and other binary data files' formats would have to be reverse engineered aswell.

Then for it to really be an editor, it would have to work with the H&D2 .dta files, i.e. have the keys and an unpacker and repacker internally (yeah, use the external procedures from that rw_data.dll but not some mechanism to which relys on sending command-line arguments to some other unpacker program ofwhich the source is long lost and so is anyone who knew how the code worked) coded; Having a [re]packer there so any mods can actually be neatly installed and look somewhat compiled, removing the ugly unpacked files and directories all over the place H&D2 directory.

I didn't just give up after somewhat reversing the format of items.sav, as I said, I tried for every free hour I had over three weeks to try and make further progress on that insanity they call archives, yes that darn .dta format, MassaSynegga was the real hero of that campaign though, and always will be, I think it took him 6 months to quit.

But prior to re-activating the engine project of mine, I start OpenLS3D, but soon came to the conclusion that LS3D is redundant, it's a stupid idea to encript and then possibly compress game archive files because speed goes out the window, I rather try building a engine from scratch which employs standard file formats like the Wavefront 3D model format, JavaScript as an scripting language than put up with the propriortory stuff that I've been working with since the Battlefield 1942 release. I rather try bringing my ideas not only to the Windows\PC people too, but to the MacOS, Linux, MIPS/os\Playstation, Linux\Playstation2, and even plan to attack the task of porting back to MS-DOS 6.0, so I can expand to the FreeDOS, and BeOS (I think the other open MS-DOS-like DOS is that one.)

P.S. Hell, today, I decided I would go on an programming adventure (yeah I can see those who are saying 'GEEK!') it started with finding the optimal binary representation to encode Memory\Register operands, the representation of which is supposed to be written right next to the representation of the opcode, after considering the Intel 8086 ModRM and the MIPS-I (R30xx) op:rb:rt:immediate formats, to cater for the Zilog Z-80 CPU, I was much better off to make up my own structured representation and when an instruction needed to be generated which used that operand interpret the representation to decide on the opcode and general format that the instruction would use, and format the byte-code ofwhich the JavaScript is compiled into actual Zilog Z-80 machine code. To enable the possibility of doing away with the virtual machine (byte-code interpreter) the in Zilog Z-80 ports, just getting the Z-80 CPU to call (execute) a block (segment\chunk) of the code directly, as the Z-80 platforms are most likely to be slowest targets comming in at an average processing speed of 4MHz.

Yeah! Hidden and Dangerous at 4MHz, yeah sounds l33t!

I never really liked the LS3D engine any way so it sounds as if it is long gone, put to rest. Unless 2k Czech magically decide they like spending time on side projects working after business hours on a H&D2 editor, I don't think it' worth any time.

So we can work with what we have which is the Insanity 2 engine (with 3d Max R3), mod an existing game, use another game engine or build something from scratch. Hrmm!