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[MrDeadly]

Hey Fifth Horseman! I tried playing the first level a while, where everything seemed to work fine, except the "shop"-screen. There the colors get all messy and the language is still German. But even if this worked fine, we'd still lack English text for the intros to episode 2 and 3 (if there are any), plus the ending (if there is one). Can somebody who's played through episode 1 please confirm if there are any more "cut-scenes" or not?

[Ohne Mitleid]

I fully understand I could be corrected on any of this. Just my take on it.

FILE LISTING INFO
Right off, COMPLEX.$$$, no idea what it is for now.

LIESMICH.BAT and LIESMICH.TXT = README.BAT and README.TXT.
INSTALL.BAT and CDSETUP.BAT...pfffft. Install.bat is looking to copy a file (atlger) that doesn't exist. CDSetup.bat assumes you want to play the game from C:\atlantis. All both of them are trying to do is create a directory called 'atlantis' within your root directory and copy CONFIG.CNF to it. Config.cnf is the catalog listing for your Save files and I'm guessing, High Score record keeping (don't know for sure, I don't even have a score, per se).

The ATLANTIS.EXE file is responsible for the Menu Navigation screens (New/Save/Load, etc.), in game messages and world/level change messages. I have edited a copy of the EXE for all of this to be in English. It works perfectly with no known crashes, but then again I have not played the entire game.

There are two LBM files START and FINISH. START is for the Intro, whether it be the German or English translation. While they may be interchangeable to view the initial intro, they are not interchangeable with the EXE files for gameplay. START also contains the Noch Software screen, the Lost City of Atlantis Title screen and the graphic for the skill selection screen (Beginner/Master). There is a different type of LBM file titled COMMON.LBM. It seems to be responsible for the Status bar displayed at the bottom of the screen while playing and is an embedded graphic. This would explain why the English Shareware version says Beginner or Master while, and I quote, the German version has "one insignificant word is displayed during each level (see pictures)".

The other LBM files 1, 2 and 3 apparently are for the level tiles. The MNU files 1, 2 and 3 are for the "shop" and the changing of the weapons and deities.
LPN files seem to be level files. The file syntax for these files is WLS.LPN where W= World , L= Level within that World, S=Skill Level and LPN is the file extension. I think LPN must stand for something related to a personal extension used for development purposes because it is unknown and unassigned in the world of extensions.

World - Three Worlds: Greece, Egypt and of course, Atlantis.
Level within the World - According to the file listing, there are 6 levels per World for a total of 18 levels! Yikes! I can't swim or shoot that well...
Skill Level - 0 for Beginner, 1 for Master as per player selection at the beginning of the game. The defenders (I can't call them enemies since I was not invited to their Land) seem much more frenetic and aggressive. There also doesn't seem to be as much loot to be had, especially the precious pearls needed for ammo purchases. Someone else can verify I am not being paranoid when it seems as a Master I can't hold my breath underwater quite as long.

Speaking of purchasing things, the "shops" change per World. Skip ahead to the next paragraph if you wish to avoid the **SPOLIER ALERT** that is about to follow. World one (Greece) contains Zeus, Poseidon and Mars. World two (Egypt) contains Isidac, Osiris and Horus. Isidac looks similar to depictions I have seen of Isis adorning the headdress of Hathor. World three introduces us to Armadrill, Hydromag and Execute. I can't tell what they look like exactly because I still haven't tweaked the graphics palettes, but they don't look hospitable, or even semi-human for that matter.

I'll keep looking into this when I have the time which I unfortunately have already invested too much of today. I used to do this quite a bit back in the DOS days. Now I remember why...I think it's fun!

[MrDeadly]

Wow! Great detective-work Ohne Mitleid! Amazing stuff. With all this info available there has to be someone here who'd be able to create an English fan-version??

[Ohne Mitleid]

Thank you Mr. Deadly!

I have been, in the backrooms of my mind while I am not on duty, getting about to fixing this. I blabbed too much about this already, but I have thought/found/messed with more than that since.

GAK!

[marko river]

All the spiritual support, mates! Keep up the good work, this is very exciting

[Ohne Mitleid]

Game over; I finished playing 'Lost City'. The game is difficult! I needed to see it through to the end to make sure the EXE file I modified didn't cause any problems, which it did not. There is a special ending, it is in German but entirely not what I had expected.

I don't know where to post the English version of the executable. I also don't know how to proceed about posting any additional information I have discovered which should be able to help anyone who wants a head start on looking into this. I won't get into too much detail, but the fix seems simple in theory to me, I just am not fully aware of the method (possibly yet, but I might never "get it".)

If you want to have an English "fan" version for Abandonia, there are really only 4 things that need to happen.

Help is needed with the following items:
- A copy of the English Shareware version of the game would be very helpful. It might be possible to use the LBM file to clarify the difference between the English "shop" and the German "shop" currently in the game. If this were possible, all of the "shops" for the German version could be converted to English.
- The palette for the Status bar in common.lib needs to be altered within the file to match the German version of the game. The common.lib in the Shareware version is in English, the colors are just skewed. I have yet to figure this out, but know it is the solution.
- The graphic for the disk displayed during the opening of the game and the skill level selection graphic need to be swapped out.
- A finish.lbm needs to be translated and substituted for the German version. Once again, if the "shop" files were able to be swapped, all else should easily fall into place.

I also have some of the file structure mapped for the Save files. This allowed me to "cheat" in order to verify (mostly for MrDeadly) that there are no movies in between Worlds or Levels.

I am hoping to post more detailed information on a Website and not fill up the forum.

If you want to somewhat see how easy it would be, download the German version from Abandonia, download the modified version provided by The Fifth Horseman in this thread then swap the following file. Then all you need to do is copy the start.lbm from the shareware version over the start.lbm in the German version. The intro will be in English and a couple of other quirky things, but the game will function normally and everything will appear with "normal" colors, some of it still being in German.

More later. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

[The Fifth Horseman]

One English shareware version, coming right up.

[Ohne Mitleid]

I would be negligent if I didn't thank the 5th Horseman for the leg up on this. Thanks!

Here is what I have come up with so far.



Time for some more exploring. I already know what I don't already know

[The Fifth Horseman]

In regards to DOSBox screen capture, setting it to PNG will save the screencaps as 8-bit indexed PNG.

If we work with the assumption that all 256 colors are stored somewhere in the LBM as a single palette (which may be or not be the case), then we're looking for a contiguous 768 byte sequence where each color in the palette exists exactly at least once as a three byte RGB value. Having the RGB values of several colors from the palette, I could code a program that seeks out its' possible locations in the file.

Further, far as the sprites go - and this is just theory - we're most likely looking for an x, y pair of 16-bit integers, which do not exceed the screen's pixel size in either dimension (note: this is conjecture), followed by an x*y array of bytes representing the respective color indexes, and most likely followed by more than one such data set. This is, of course, if the data has not been compressed.

[MrDeadly]

This is so awesome! I've been hoping for something like this to happen for a long time. I want to say thank you very much for putting so much effort into this Ohne Mitleid! Much appreciated I just wish that I could have helped out in some way but all this inner-workings stuff is totally Greek to me... Hopefully more members like The Fifth Horseman can lend you a hand.

Anyways, great work guys! Happy holidays.