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News Agents Genomes Software
Mirality Systems: Creatures Software |
Note: in order to confuse people, this section is arranged in order of creation (so that the most recent stuff is at the bottom of the page), unlike the News section.
The dates shown by each entry show when the software was last updated, and an entry in the News section around that date will usually tell you why it was updated.
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This ZIP file contains the interface DLL and Borland import library, C header file, and an example program (source and executable). The example program (CAOS.exe) is a bare-bones CAOS console that opens up in a DOS prompt. It functions pretty much identically to the in-game console, with one exception: it doesn't repeat the previous command when you press ENTER on a blank line. It doesn't have scrollback or command history functions; that's left as an exercise to the reader :) The documentation for the DLL can be found in c3engine.h; an example of correct usage can be found in CAOS.cpp. The DLL itself is statically linked so you should be able to use it from any language that can call __stdcall routines. If you use this DLL with any of your programs, please credit both myself and Chris Double in your documentation, About box, or similar. This DLL was constructed with the help of Christopher Double's Creatures Interface Specification, though I didn't use any of his code directly. Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, problems, or solutions! |
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This is a console application (which means that you need to run it in a Command Prompt) that takes a compiled PRAY file (for example, a .agent file) and extract all the scripts, graphics, etc from it. It will also construct a PRAY script file to let you recompile them using the normal PRAY Builder. This program is intended for you to recover your own source if you accidentally lose it - please don't steal other people's graphics, sounds, CAOS code, or anything else without obtaining their prior permission. Unlike the previous version of this program (codenamed YARP, for PRAY reversed), this version will extract and decompress compressed chunks from within PRAY files. While this will allow you to unpack non-agent files (such as .creature files), in most cases the unpacked data won't be very useful to you. Though I think it can be used to extract the genome from an exported creature, which I think all you genetic engineers out there might start drooling over! :) Note: data in PRAY files can be in one of two formats, which I have dubbed ASCII and BINARY. An ASCII chunk contains mostly text (for example, a script or an agent information block), whereas a BINARY chunk contains mostly binary data (for example, a graphic or a sound). At present, REVELATION uses a rather crude lookup table to determine whether any given chunk is ASCII or BINARY (it assumes that most chunks are ASCII, since they're the easiest to generate in CAOS, I think). You may occasionally come across a chunk that REVELATION handles the wrong way; in this case, please send an email to Mirality Systems listing any problems, any error messages that were printed (both on screen and in the .ps file generated), and if possible the file that you were trying to unpack. To obtain information about the parameters you need to supply, simply run the program without any parameters and read the help message carefully. Remember that running this (specifying a PRAY file to decompile) will OVERWRITE any existing files in the output directory (which by default is the current directory), so be careful. I'm not liable for your stupid mistakes, yadda yadda yadda. So why REVELATION, anyway? This program reverses the work of the PRAY Builder. In effect, it is doing things the other way around. So while a prayer is humans speaking to deities, a revelation is the reverse: deities speaking to humans. Plus, I have a cool acronym for it: Reads Each Virtual Electronic Life Agent, Translating Into Original Notation (This acronym was developed by me, with some help from the nice folk over at the ACRONYMS site, another fine NZ creation!) :) |
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This program is created in a similar spirit to REVELATION, though without the amusing acronym. It probably also has less use - the decompressed world file is nearly as incomprehensible as the compressed file is. Still, some hardy tinkering souls have requested such a tool, so here it is. Like REVELATION, simply run it with no parameters to get a nice simple help message. Specifically, this program is intended for the following files (depending on your game), though it may be usable with other files too:
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This program is just a quick hack, and is solely intended to let you view your genomes if they are too large for a proper genetics editor to load. Note that it's not much use if you want to edit such a large file, since it provides no facility to reassemble the various files back into a consolidated genome. Like my other programs, simply run it without parameters to get some basic help on how to execute it. |
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