Ohmygawd..... are those dogs cute !!!




I did also keep my "big" computer, my trusty old G5, running OS 10.4.11, as there are enough applications that run perfectly on it (it's actually in my studio) and several that won't run on Lion at all.

However.....  once I had that new MacBook and Lion for a while I quickly got used to the new speed, the new functionality etc. and found myself spending more and more time on the new machine....

Hi SandyBean, great to hear from you, too. Beautiful pups and mom!

aquaMat wrote on 29.04.2012 at 01:58:23:


Rezycle is a stand-alone tool which "unpacks" the resource fork from a file. You can drag a mansion onto the Rezycle icon, or open rezycle and drag-and-drop the mansion on the opened Rezycle window. This will create a directory called: Resources from "<the mansion name>" that contains all the extracted resources.

The BBB issues, at least the easiest to spot issues, revolve around the description that was part of the resource information. This must have made all kinds of sense in the early days, because it documented the resource, whether it was sign/BBB or whether it was an image (pict file). Unfortunately, when Recycle extracts the resources, it embeds the description into the filename if it was set. For example, in the 'PICT' subdirectory, *all* the pict files contain a description like:

00351 "GreenBricks + Disco".pict

This would have to be renamed to:

00351.pict

This would have to be done for all resources like this. I've typically only seen it in the 'TEXT' and 'PICT' subdirectories - mostly in the older mansions. So for custom graphics you would have to:

(Assuming Rezycle has already unpacked the mansion)

1. Check and correct embedded descriptions within 'PICT' subdirectory

2. Use some tool that can convert all .pict files to .png files

3. Remove all .pict files.

5. Scale all .png files up 2 times their current size. When in doubt, compare size with resources under Game Data/Sprites.

6. Ensure transparency is maintained.

Keep in mind, the image quality will suffer when you scale it up. In the game, the resulting images will probably look somewhat pixelated. Basically, this is like taking a digital picture with a 3-4 Megapixel Camera and blowing it up to 8x10 or larger image. Scaling images up might be step one, but probably a better path to go would be to use the old custom images as a guide, and apply the same color changes to copies of the new game images. 

Before you change any image you should compare it to the new game graphics. Some graphics - such as those for Jack and possibly some monsters have changed enough so that simply scaling it up won't work. It will load OK, because the size (doubled) will be correct, but the animation will be off because the figures present in the image have changed. Changes to Jack are best redone using the current "Jack" image as a starting point.

Tools I found useful:
- Photoshop (or Gimp and Xee)
   
  Unfortunately if you use Gimp, it doesn't know how to deal with .pict files, so you'll have to convert them to PNG with another tool. I played with a few. You might try Xee - it was fairly straight forward (and free). Photoshop *can* convert the .pict files. There are no shortage of graphics tools, though not all of them have been ported to Lion.

aquaMat wrote on 29.04.2012 at 01:31:13:


I'm sorry we didn't contact you and the other designers. It sounds bad, but it was something we had intended, and even talked about it but didn't follow through with for whatever reason. The new game was getting ready to come out, and we wanted players to be able to be able to play as many of the custom mansions as possible.

The majority of the mansions required no changes other than to be "unpacked" using rezycle. We figured that we (the Admins) could do these since no "real" changes to the mansions were needed (and no builder was necessary). It was felt that a few people who knew how could take care of this quickly, and it did go quickly for the most part. Perhaps, too quickly...

Some mansions (the older ones), had descriptions embedded in the resources which (as I mentioned in another post), caused  problems in the game. These problems were easy to fix, and also didn't require a Builder, and didn't result in any noticeable change within the game so we also fixed these.

We were extremely reluctant to make any changes within any mansion that required the editor, even though most of the admins had (still have as far as I know) access to an older Mac and the old Builder. We felt this was best left to individual designers, or done with permission.

Due to minor game changes, some mansions were broken. For example:

- Mansions where levers were stylistically lowered one brick below the ground, so that only the top portion of the lever was sticking out. These levers cannot be pulled in the new Game. I believe this was a side effect of Vern 'fixing' it so that levers could not be pulled mid-air. Some mansions were *full* of levers like this.

- Some mansions used portions of the ladder in unusually decorative ways. They ended up not resembling ladders whatsoever. The new game doesn't allow these ladder pieces to work, which broke a few puzzles.

- The behavior of some of the disappearing platforms changed so that if you jumped from a disappearing platform from one screen onto a floating platform in another screen, that platform might not be there to land on.

We noted these issues, and took no action unless we had permission. Once we had done as much as we could, we intended to ask for permission. We should have at least sent a PM (I know that I felt a bit like I was intruding by sending unsolicited email). These issues would have been fairly easy to fix, but required access to an editor. I wrote some scripts that could at least identify some of the issues quickly.

The largest problem was the custom graphics, because the graphics were overhauled for this new version. Jacob completely redid *all* the graphics. Up until today, I thought the changes were limited to being twice the size, and featured new art, but I thought that all the figures in the art were in the same positions as before. I realized I was wrong when I compared the Jack graphic in the Discotheque of doom and the graphic for Jack.

My guess is that those mansions that feature a large amount of custom graphics will probably need to be redone completely (at least the graphics). Simply scaling the graphics larger doesn't look that great. I tried a few experiments with DoD today and the results were mixed. *None* of the admins wished to make fundamental changes to anyone else's mansion. Like I said, I think the intention had always been to contact those designers whose dungeons didn't convert cleanly. After the initial flurry of activity, we all got busy with other things, I guess, and I think it was forgotten. Brell *did* post about conversions, and some of the issues with mansions. There was certainly no disrespect intended.

Semi-Native wrote on 29.04.2012 at 10:00:28:


I didn't mean to imply that no one would, just that no matter who works on it, it would end up being a labor of love more than anything else, since there's no way the costs for doing it would ever be recouped. Unfortunately, this means it's going to necessarily take a back seat to efforts that better help to pay the bills. This doesn't mean that the Builder will never be done - it's just not as high on the priority list is all. Then again, who knows? I suppose there's always the chance that Vern could suddenly figure out a way it could be done quickly and easily and surprise everyone.