RC's BC --> KA Total Conversion thread.

[RCgothic]

About a month ago I floated the idea of a KA total conversion and was told it was within the realms of possibility, so I've decided to do a Proof Of Concept (POC) myself before enlisting help to complete the project. The POC will involve making KA mission one for BC, including audio and briefings.

The proof of concept requires:

#1. A mission script that in addition to doing the mission, does:
-Play the FMV mission briefing, then launch the mission.
-Play the audio content at appropriate moments.
-Abort to debriefing screen and audio debrief after success/failure.

#2. FMV mission one briefing converted from .mve to .bik for BC.

#3. Locate audio files for KA mission one and extract to a BC format. probably located in KA.dat which can be completely extracted. need to get dat extractor from KA.com as I no longer have my extracted install.

#4. Ships required:
- Oberth
- Jamming frigate
- B'rel class Bird of Prey
- Monitoring Station
- Mines
- Sensor Probes.
- Klingon Starbase

#5. Bridges required.
- Small Klingon Bridge.

#6. Systems required.
- Deep Space (named Beta-Ceti)
- Generic system with planets. (named Theta-Omicron)

Once (If) I've got this POC done I'll enlist anyone who wants to aid in doing a total conversion and a possible episodic release mission by mission.

This is a massive project, I have next to no experience in modding BC, and I don't expect to be able to accomplish it first time or without help, but I'll try and keep the actual 'doing' to myself rather than asking other people to waste their time on something that might not come to fruition.

First step is getting file formats that BC likes, so I've downloaded an *mve extractor, but I don't yet know if it will save in *bik format. If anyone knows a free or cheap (small expenses tollerated if it gets the job done) *mve to *bik converter that would be great.

I'll post updates in this thread as I go along.

[MLeo]

This should get you on your way for the bik format:
http://radgametools.com/bnkdown.htm

[RCgothic]

Tried that, it won't open *MVEs, think they're also known as Interplay Videos.
The other extractor I found doesn't seem to do anything useful with the extracted file.

[MLeo]

Well, you said you had an MVE extractor (didn't it go to avi?). Just extract the MVE's to something else, and have Bink encode the result to bik.

[RCgothic]

Turns out it didn't do what I was expecting. It can find *mve files and *bik files and others in a different type of file and extract them. For example I just ran it on KA.dat and it extracted more than a thousand textures (no sign of audio files).

what it doesn't seem to do is convert to other file formats. I'm trying something else now. [edit]Tried iTiny soft total video converter, it managed to open and play the file, but crashed a few seconds in and refused to convert.

[Alexraptor]

You may want to consider the legality issues involved, the cutscenes are naturally under copyright protection, and the rights don't even belong to activision itself but to Interplay.

[RCgothic]

It's a game that hasn't been available for years, Interplay are making zero profit from it, but I will seek permissions when I actually have something they might be upset about me releasing. There's no point getting into legal wrangling over something that might come to nothing.

[Mark]

I dont think you will get a reply - its one of those "we cant officially endorse it but we dont mind" things - at the end of the day if you make a proof of concept you arent going to be releasing it anywhere publically so you should be ok.

Regarding the klingon bridge - you could use the old ST3 B-O-P bridge.. I did a retexture for it in the CTU retexture pack that makes it half decent.

[RCgothic]

As the bridge needed is for a BOP it's perfect.

The unique things about KA is its audio and FMV sequences, I suspect writing the missions and collecting/making the ships necessary would make it a thoroughly mediocre conversion if I can't get those working, so that's what I'm focussing on at the moment. Currently can open the MVE files but not save them as anything that the bik exporter can read.

[MLeo]

To which things can it save?

I seem to remember that it can read from anything your system (ie. WMP) can read from.

[RCgothic]

well, nothing. I'm getting error messages. I'm trying other software.

[RCgothic]

The guys over at KA.com recommended ZD soft game recorder. I've downloaded it and will try it out tomorrow. It will produce an avi that can then be converted to bik.
I don't know about audio or resolutions, will have to wait and see.

[edit]:
I've managed to convert a short sequence to bik. It's a very poor version of the original, because my computer isn't fast enough to play and record at the same time, but I think it will do for a first approximation. It can always be improved at a later date.