The ITAC¶

The ITAC (itac, 0x0043EFC0, C:\lancer\game\itac.cpp) is the terminal that Use ITAC opens in the Reliant's rooms and the Yamato's (The Reliant's rooms), and which WinMain opens after each mission of the campaign for its debriefing. It runs in a loop of its own on a screen 640 by 480. Nine buttons along its foot open its sections, each with a movie in, a movie out and a picture of its own that its text is written on; the last button closes it. Its strings are ITACLANG.DLL's, read as it opens (itac_language_init, 0x00440770).

In OpenReliant¶

game/itac.zig runs the ITAC, and game/itac/debriefing.zig is DEBRIEFINGS. The lit shapes and the debriefings' texts are in game/itac/tables.zig, which make itac-tables derives from the executable. The driver runs the loop (Driver.itac in openreliant/rooms.zig), from the rooms and after each mission of the campaign.

Ported so far: the ITAC's loop, with its movies, its sections' pictures and titles, the fades of their text, the panes their text wipes in by, the lit shapes, the pointer and the sounds; and DEBRIEFINGS with REPLAY MISSION. Not yet: the other sections, which show their pictures with nothing written on them: NEWS REPORTS (#461), VIDEO REPORTS (#462), the fighters (#463), the capital ships (#464), the squadrons (#465) and the personnel (#466) of either side, and the KILLBOARD (#467); and the buttons' tooltips (#468).

Fixes:

• A section's title and text fade a step each frame of its movie in and out, over which the fade is meant to run: sixteen frames in, five out. The game steps them each frame it draws, so that they run faster the faster the machine, and a movie skipped leaves the text as dim as the fade had reached. OpenReliant ends it at full.
• After a mission, the game opens DEBRIEFINGS after its movie in, so that the figures fading in over the movie are those of whichever debriefing was chosen last. OpenReliant opens it before, as the rooms open NEWS REPORTS.
• As another debriefing is chosen, the game holds the screen still for half a second, drawing nothing (itac_pause, 0x00440170). OpenReliant shows it at once.

Improvements:

• The times of the sounds now and then, and which plays, are drawn from std.Random, where the game uses rand.
• Its text, in itacbig.fnt and itacsml.fnt, is drawn with outline fonts at the window's resolution: Newtown, or a font from a mod (Outline fonts).

Opening and closing¶

In both, sound 3 plays at 0x50 as the screen comes on, inter\itac\itacinit.bik, which leaves the picture itactrans_00014. Then its hum, sound 0, plays over and over at 0x40, and now and then sound 2 or 7 at 0x50: the first between 500 and 700 game ticks later, each other between 500 and 1300 after the last (0x0043F654).

Escape, or the last button's movie in, closes it (0x0043FA70, 0x0043FADB): the hum fades, sound 6 plays at full volume, inter\itac\itaclose.bik plays after mission 18, and the screen holds until the sound has faded out. Every sound then ends. Escape leaves the section shown without its handler for leaving it.

The screen¶

Each section writes its text on its picture, inter\itac\itactrans_NNNNN.tga, into panes that wipe in from the left, 14 pixels a tick of the ITAC's timer, 30 ticks a second (itac_timer, 0x0043FC60; itac_panes_draw, 0x0043FF50). The panes show only while no fade runs. The title stands at (167, 22) in itacbig.fnt, in (236, 105, 77); the rest is in itacsml.fnt.

itacgfx.spr holds the pointer, shapes 2 to 22, one for every 4 game ticks with block 1's palette, and the shapes the ITAC lights where the pointer is over them, with block 30's palette (itac_lit_draw, 0x00440F90): the buttons, and each section's arrows.

The sections¶

The buttons are 58 by 51 at y 422 (itac_buttons, 0x004E9340). The movies are in inter\itac\ in the game's folder, played at 15 frames a second over the screen in the ITAC's own loop (itac_movie_play, 0x00440010), which only Escape ends; the pictures are in resource.hog.

A press on another section's button plays sound 1 (0x0043F6DE). The shown section's movie out plays, its title and text fading out over it, and its handler for leaving it runs. The new section's handler for opening it runs, and its movie in plays with its title and text fading in, the pointer hidden. Then its picture shows and its panes wipe in. Each section has five handlers (itac_section_handlers, 0x004E9288): opened, left, loaded, each frame and drawn.

DEBRIEFINGS¶

Enriquez's debriefing of each mission the pilot has flown, as text alone (debrief_text_draw, 0x00424CF0). The list at the right names the missions flown, "Mission" and each one's place in the campaign's order counted from 1 (campaign_missions, 0x004E4954), so that its Mission 12 is mission 14. As it opens, the latest is chosen.

• The header, in (58, 209, 255): FROM SQUADRON LEADER MARIA ENRIQUEZ, TO the pilot's call sign.
• The body, in (255, 146, 58), which the arrows below it scroll: the paragraphs the mission's rating calls for (debrief_texts, 0x004E4A68, a table for each rating and a row for each mission), then a paragraph on each of the medal, where the mission was rated a success with its bonus, the promotion, the ribbon and the fighters it brought. Where a nanny ship picked the pilot up in the mission, whether the objectives were met and the pickup's paragraph stand in their place. "(more)" marks a body that runs past its box.
• Mission Kills, the mission's, and Overall Kills, the campaign's; Rank and Level, the game's strings; their values fade with the section.
• REPLAY MISSION, after a mission, for the latest debriefing: the campaign as the mission began, as restart_load loads it, and its briefing again (0x004AA2E0 on).

What it shows of each mission is the pilot's record of it, which mission_end_record keeps (gameflow.MissionRecord): its rating, the kills made in it, one a ship (kills_add), the campaign's pickups where a nanny ship picked the pilot up in it, and the rank the pilot was promoted to at its end.