[MOD] DEFCON: The WarGames mod

[glcanon]

Has anyone attempted to somewhat replicate the better parts of the WarGames movie screenies?

Specifically, I wonder if adding additional cities in the U.S. or in Russia would upset the default population balance and playability. I know zanzer7 has a mod which allows you to add cities, or change coastlines.

It might be neat to fix the southern U.S. border so that it looks correct (I'm from Texas, and the Texas-Rio Grande border is just a travesty frankly).

I have changed the shapes of the city icons from shaded diamonds to shaded hexagons and shrunk them down a little as I think the default size is simply too big. (I also tried using dots or circles which also looks better than diamonds IMHO).

Wonder if it would be possible in the script somewhere to not only add NORAD, but to change its icon from the typical city icon to that of the pentagram used in the movie?

I downloaded WinRAR as someone suggested, unpacked all the sound files, and have listened to every single one.

I made a particularly nice "Nuclear Launch Detected" ogg sound file myself, when I replaced the default file with my own I noticed that the computer game slows down the file a good deal, so it sounds like someone's speaking in slow motion. Weird, some of the default sound files play as recorded, such as the music files, but others are slowed down in the game, such as the background and effects sounds, which adds the "grunge" type sound effect we hear in the game.

Anyone know how to make my sound files play at normal speed in the game? I don't want them slowed down and "grungified."

I've also been looking for a font which closely matches the WarGames font seen on NORAD's big board. Haven't found a match yet. Anyone know of a similar font which would match the "ALASKAN AIR DEFENSE ZONE" font shown in the image below?

Lastly, here's a few screen captures from WarGames: notice the nice-looking Southern U.S. border, they got it right in the 1983 movie.

Cheers!

[glcanon]

Still haven't found a good match to the NORAD font used on the Big Board in the WarGames movies, but I've found a few which I think show possibilities, especially for those of you who don't like the thick CRYLLIC default font used in the game.

If you prefer the vector graphics look, I think the ELGETHY EST BOLD.TFF font looks quite nice, also the LARABIEFONT FREE.TFF TFF looks really good. I believe both can be downloaded free.

tp://imageshack.us][/URL]

[glcanon]

While I haven't found a match to the WarGames font, I think these are some interesting fonts, but I'm not sure how they would look when real small. Readability at small sizes is important. With DEFCON's default fonts, I don't like how the text runs all together, especially after you nuke a city and it announces the number of deaths -- that particular font is too thick, difficult to read, and runs all together like a big run-on sentance. Maybe one of these fonts would be a good alternative. Any comments?

[glcanon]

I figured out how to make my sound files play at normal speed. Under the "data" folder there's a file called "sounds.txt"
Just find the lines pertaining to the sound file you want modified, and erase any lines pertaining to FREQUENCY or ATTACK.

It's probably just the "frequency" line which slows the speed at which it's played, but I erased both lines and now my .ogg sound files play at normal speed.

Changing sounds in the game is as simple as taking a sound you don't like, recording a sound yourself (or finding one on the internet) and converting it to a .ogg sound file, then re-name it to the same name of the sound you didn't like. Basically, you're just replacing your sound for the default sound.

BTW, I never delete my default sounds, I just rename them like this: "gameover.ogg" becomes "gameoverORIG.ogg"

This way, at a glance I can always pick out an original file fm one of my mods. I've done the same thing with MS Flight Sim sound and graphics file for years and have never lost or misplaced a default sound or graphic file yet.

There's probably more ways of modding sounds, but the above technique works. I've actually created 5 different "Nuclear Launch Detected" klaxon/warnings. If I add a few lines at the bottom to the line " SAMPLEGROUP gameover" I can probably get the game play any of my 5 alarms randomly, so it's not the same alarm every time. But I haven't tried this yet.

Kuth or domox asked where I got the fonts. I don't really recall. I've been collecting fonts on the internet since about 1999 or 2000. Each time I think I'm going to have to pay for one, someone on the net directs me to a website that is offering it for free. I'll bet I have close to 8,000 fonts. Unfortunately, Windows doesn't like it if you have too many fonts. So I keep them distributed on three different computers. When I'm looking for a font, I will often have to get onto each comuter and run down the list. Guess I need to invest in some kind of font manager software as that really is a chore. Appreciate any suggests about managing fonts.

All for now. CHEERS!

[glcanon]

Well, I've gone thru about 10K fonts looking for the WarGames font. No luck. So I'm having to create it myself. No easy task creating a font, let me tell you.

I've also been trying various shapes for the cities, including a hexagon, as was used in movie WarGames.

Here's a peak at the results of my tinkering this evening (note: I'm not done tweaking my font, it's needs more work).

QUESTION 1 : Does anyone know how to change the text color of the city labels? It's kinda of blue-grey right now, and my custom font doesn't show up bright enough at that small scale. I'd like to make the city labels a brighter shade.

QUESTION 2: How to add cities?

QUESTION 3: Is it possible to create a custom icon for particular cities, such as an Anchor icon for Norfolk, and a Star for NORAD ? Obviously I don't want all my cities to have stars, or anchors. Ideas?

[glcanon]

Here's another screenie:

[ChrisMosel]

This is an extremely cool idea - keep it up!
Btw I don't think you need to create a new font, that's really too much work. Some of the ones you posted look true to the original enough.
Don't forget to mod the sound - the sound when the missiles hit was extremely weird in WarGames...

Cheers
Chris

[rome87]

looks great gd job its a shame tht defcon doesnt have more map detail on it like major rivers mountains etc like in wargames

[Ninja Overlord]

Hmm. I noticed something about one of those fonts. On the first image you posted, the fourth font down looks strangely familiar. It looks just like (okay, at least pretty similar to) the font seen in Terminator 2.

I hereby dub the font SKYNET.

That would be a really cool font to use in Defcon, seeing how Terminator is about a supercomputer starting a nuclear war.

[ShadowFox37]

I'm too lazy to quote.

Yeah, in normal Defcon, all the sounds being slowed down once nuclear armageddon began was a very neat effect. For a lot of conversion mods, this comes around to bite us in the butt. Say hello to the Christmas Mod. Once gifts started landing in cities, the Christmas music would start to slow down to speeds that were quite...annoying to say the least. There's nothing worse then Christmas music being played at 2% the original speed stuck in your head...Not sure if this was supposed to happen or if it wasn't changed on purpose, but that was my take on it.

I also don't know about making NORAD a city as if you actually nuked it, you wouldn't be killing innocent civilians. Just wouldn't work out if you populated NORAD with 22 million people. Other then adding some rules to the scoring systems (military strategic targets add to score but don't kill innocents), I don't see NORAD working in this mod.

Other then that, your screenshots look fantastic and much more reminiscent of WarGames then Defcon already looks. Keep up the good work!

[shinygerbil]

looks great gd job its a shame tht defcon doesnt have more map detail on it like major rivers mountains etc like in wargames

If someone had time to burn, they could change the international.dat to include rivers.

[rome87]

tht would be interesting purely for a realism point of view

[glcanon]

Thanks for everyone's kind comments. I didn't really intend to make NORAD a point-worthy target (although I guess that could be done). I just wanted it to appear on the map the same as it appeared in the WarGames movie.

Hmm...rivers. I think they would only look like more borders and thus confuse us.

However, wouldn't it be neat to be able to zoom in and have more and more detail appear the closer you zoom? Of course Introversion would have to give us such ability as it's beyond any mod. It doesn't really add anything to the game, but imagine zooming in real close to Loring AFB, where the first Ruskie nukes are about to fall... Just dreaming, I know.



I'm open to help & ideas. At the rate I'm going it could take me a couple wks just to get my font right. If someone knows how to modify border lines, sure would be nice to get a tweak of the southern U.S. border so it looks more realistic, like this:



Here's the WarGames font I've been working on, along with a few other icons I've been playing with.

[Chris]

You can put any lines you want onto the map. Coastlines.dat contains the edges of all the world continents and is rendered as thick lines, and International.dat contains all the political boundaries that mark the edges of countries, and are rendered as thin lines. They aren't used for anything other than visual appearence. So you could modify those files to include detailed vector drawings of whatever airbases you wanted.

Regarding sounds slowing down, you can also control this. The file sounds.txt completely controls the way audio is played. It contains the rules that slow down the music when your population dies. Here is an excert from sounds.txt:

Code: Select all

OBJECT Music
   EVENT StartMusic         
      SOUNDNAME          music
      SOURCETYPE         1
      POSITIONTYPE       4
      INSTANCETYPE       0
      LOOPTYPE           2
      MINDISTANCE        100.00
      VOLUME             PARAMETER TypeLinked          100.00     8.00     0.00     9.52     0.80  Team_Survivors  UpdateConstantly
      FREQUENCY          PARAMETER TypeLinked            0.00     0.30    99.60     1.00     0.85  Team_Survivors  UpdateConstantly
      ATTACK             PARAMETER TypeFixedValue        5.03  UpdateConstantly
      SUSTAIN            PARAMETER TypeFixedValue       -3.87  UpdateConstantly
      RELEASE            PARAMETER TypeFixedValue       19.74  UpdateConstantly
   END
END


What this basically means is that Volume and Frequency are linked to "Team_Survivors". The frequency is lowered and the volume is raised (because lower frequency sounds need a volume boost to still be audible).

I cant remember exactly what each number means off the top of my head, but roughly speaking it means:
Team_Survivors at 0.00 (everyone dead) : playback frequency is 0.3
Team_Survivors at 99.6 (everyone alive) : playbacl frequency is 1.0
The 0.85 on the end is a smoothing factor that means it doesnt change frequency too quickly.

You can fiddle with all this to create whatever effect you want.

If there's enough call for it i'll release the sound editor that we use, that actually produces this sounds.txt file and lets you alter all the audio events visually.

[ChrisMosel]

About Norad: Maybe make it a city with really few inhabitants... kinda lame I know, just what came to mind first.

Rivers would be OK depending on how they're done, but I don't think they're very important for a WarGames look... or are they?

About Loring AFB: Just make all AFBs look like it, problem kind of solved...

Your font looks really great, as do some of the icons - excluding the radar - great work!

Did you think about the sounds from WarGames?

Cheers
Chris