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Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Sun Nov 22, 2015 12:04 pm
by cambertian
I'm looking to extract some graphics from any of the Catacomb 3D games. It's for... reasons :wink:

Anyway, I've been looking to see if there's any editors that allow this, like a SLADE equivalent or whatever, but Google searches have done me no favors. I had read that the graphics had been compressed using Huffman Compression, and that they're in the EGAGraph format - but I don't know if that'll help me at all.
I'm a programmer, so I could probably create a utility if it gets to that point. However, I don't want to reinvent the wheel.

So, anybody have any leads?

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 3:45 am
by Kinsie

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 4:14 am
by Nash
I'm surprised no one's made a ZCatacomb mod yet! Loved those games back in the day. Hated the clunky controls though.

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 4:29 am
by Kinsie
Nash wrote:I'm surprised no one's made a ZCatacomb mod yet! Loved those games back in the day. Hated the clunky controls though.
The levels are way tinier and less visually diverse than Wolfenstein, and you'd need to do some work to get the EGA graphics and PC speaker audio up to Doom's par.

I did do a remake of Catacombs Abyss map 1 at one point, but it kind of sucked and it's since been eaten by time.

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Mon Nov 23, 2015 7:20 am
by Nash
Kinsie wrote:
Nash wrote:I'm surprised no one's made a ZCatacomb mod yet! Loved those games back in the day. Hated the clunky controls though.
The levels are way tinier and less visually diverse than Wolfenstein, and you'd need to do some work to get the EGA graphics and PC speaker audio up to Doom's par.

I did do a remake of Catacombs Abyss map 1 at one point, but it kind of sucked and it's since been eaten by time.
If someone were to do a Catacombs mod right, I'd imagine it to be like ravage's Hocus Doom. Maps, graphics, overall polish etc

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 9:54 am
by zrrion the insect
EGA is a surprisingly capable palette, and you could probably squeeze a lot of detail out of it without straying from those 16 colours.
It'd be a good idea to have more than 16 colours in the palette though, but only to be used by the colormap to make the light levels blend more smoothly.

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 5:36 pm
by SamVision
The levels are way tinier and less visually diverse than Wolfenstein, and you'd need to do some work to get the EGA graphics and PC speaker audio up to Doom's par.
What about the three other Catacombs games? How do those hold up? I've only played Abyss but only a shareware version and I was nine when I did.

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 9:54 pm
by Kinsie
SamVision wrote:
The levels are way tinier and less visually diverse than Wolfenstein, and you'd need to do some work to get the EGA graphics and PC speaker audio up to Doom's par.
What about the three other Catacombs games? How do those hold up? I've only played Abyss but only a shareware version and I was nine when I did.
Every Wolf3D map is 64x64.
The Catacombs games do support maps of similar size (Big Wizard Maze in Apocalypse is 64x60) but most typical maps float around 40x28.

Re: Catacomb Series Question

Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 12:29 pm
by cambertian
Thanks for the help guys, but WDC doesn't want to read my game data, unfortunately. :(

Don't worry, though: there will be something coming your way, Catacomb fans! I've decided to go with custom graphics instead (still with an EGA palette, of course :lol: )
It's gonna take a while, but keep an eye on the Projects section.