The Reliant's rooms¶

The hub a single-player campaign comes back to between missions: the Reliant's rooms, walked through in movies, and the Yamato's after mission 18. The game calls them VR (VR_movie). interface.cpp holds them: the rooms (vr_rooms, 0x00439FB0) with their drawing (vr_draw, 0x0043C1C0), the news report on the television (news_report, 0x0043BA40), a new pilot's induction (reliant_induction, 0x00438D50), and the in-game options Escape opens over them (in_game_options, 0x004394D0).

In OpenReliant¶

game/interface/rooms.zig holds the rooms and the news report, rooms/views.zig their views, which tablegen rooms reads out of the executable (make room-tables), and rooms/crew.zig the crew (The crew). induction.zig holds the induction, in_game_options.zig the in-game options, restart.zig the restart screen, game/winmain.zig what WinMain does as a campaign starts (CampaignStart) and after each mission (afterMission), and game/gameflow.zig the campaign it carries from one mission to the next. The driver runs each in a loop of its own (openreliant/rooms.zig), and plays the movies between them as the game plays them (Movies).

The pilot roster's START GAME leads into the rooms, through the induction for mission 1; its LOAD GAME, into the rooms before the loaded game's mission, as START GAME would, through the induction where that is mission 1 (Front end). The briefing room's door leads to the briefing (Briefing), and then to the mission, after the hangar's movie. Use ITAC opens the ITAC (The ITAC), Enter Simulator Pod the pod (The simulator pod), Open Locker the locker (The locker), and Use CD player the CD player (The CD player). The in-game options' MAIN MENU leads back to the main menu, and QUIT quits. After the mission the campaign goes on through the rooms to the next briefing, or through the restart screen to the same mission (After a mission). While the window is away, the rooms' loops pause the music and the voices, as the message pump does; the game's pump also waits for the window to come back, where the rooms go on.

Not ported:

• The pilot's profile, which the rooms write with the call sign as they open (profile_save), and a mission's end writes with the pilot's records (#74).
• The story's end after the last mission (#416): OpenReliant goes back to the main menu.

Fixes:

• The fish's food falls by the ticks since it last moved; the game moves it on by the ticks between the pass's start and the drawing, so that it hardly falls on a fast machine (The fish tank).
• A mission outside the table of news reports has none; the game reads what lies either side of the table for its name.
• The pointer's right button ends the induction only once it has come up since the place showed. The game ends it while the button is down, so that the press that skipped the way to a place, still held, ends the induction there at once (The induction).
• After the pilot's execution in mission 25's second part, REPLAY MISSION FROM BRIEFING replays the first part's briefing. The game flies the second part again at once, and leaves the replay asked for, so that the next mission's briefing follows it without the rooms, from the game's variables as the second part began (The restart screen).

Improvements, each marked so in the code:

• The rooms' pointer, and the in-game options', is where the system's is over the window, as the front end's is (Front end). The game adds up DirectInput's movements.
• OpenReliant's version is written in the window's corner of the in-game options, as on the front end's screens. The rooms, the news report and the induction don't show it.
• The in-game options' ABOUT STARLANCER is ABOUT OPENRELIANT (The in-game options).
• The loudest peaks of Enriquez's scenes are rounded off, as the radio's lines' are (Radio). --original cuts them flat.
• The rooms' sounds, the hum, the steps, the doors and the crew's lines, ring subtly in a small room of the ship, and Enriquez's scenes on the television and the monitors as the radio's voices do, in the cockpit's cabin, as over a speaker (Sound); the game plays them dry. --no-reverb and --original leave the rooms out.

A campaign's start¶

As START GAME starts a campaign (interface_run returns 1), WinMain (0x004AA1BA on) starts the music fading out by 15 (music_fade_out) and opens the archive of the disc that holds the rooms: the second up to mission 18, the first after it (cd_hog_open). Before mission 1 it plays the new pilot's intro, new_intro.bik, from the disc on a cleared screen (play_bink_movie_resourced), then the induction (The induction), then from where the induction ended to the simulator pod:

The movies play over the screen (play_bink_movie_no_clear_resourced). Any other mission's rooms start at the carrier's first view. Through the briefing room's door, vr_rooms lets its movie, sounds and pictures go and runs the briefing, the front end's screen 7 (interface_run; Briefing), and returns 1 for WinMain to fly the mission; where the briefing ends otherwise (0x0051D4B4), the rooms go on, or return 0 for the main menu, as the in-game options' MAIN MENU has them do.

After a mission¶

As a mission of the campaign ends (0x004AA4B2 on), WinMain plays the landing or a chapter's end where the pilot came back (Movies), then goes on by how the mission ended (winmain.afterMission):

The record (mission_end_record, 0x00475A90) keeps the script's rating as the last (last_success), awards the ribbon of a chapter's last mission, missions 7, 11, 19, 21 and 25 (ribbon_of_mission, 0x0050099F), promotes the pilot by the kills, keeps them for the next mission's start, raises the campaign's tier after missions 11, 19 and 21, and moves the campaign on to the next mission: 11 and 12 to 14, 16 to 18, 21 to 23, and the others to the next number, the campaign having no missions 12, 13, 17 and 22. A mission that awards a medal, missions 6, 11, 16, 21, 23 and 27, awards it and plays its ceremony for a success with its bonus, unless a nanny ship picked the pilot up (Movies). Then the game saves itself as the autosave (Saved games). The debriefing follows in the ITAC (itac, 0x0043EFC0, The ITAC), whose REPLAY MISSION flies the mission again from its briefing; otherwise the rooms open where the ITAC leaves the pilot (0x00506C80, and the Yamato's 0x0050AEC8), and the briefing room leads to the next mission. After mission 28, the last, the story ends (ending_movies_play, 0x004AC620) and the campaign goes back to mission 1 and the main menu. A script that rates the mission a total failure ends the pilot's career instead: the transfer, or the shuttle, then the main menu.

The game's variables go on from each mission to the next as its script left them. WinMain saves the game as each attempt begins (restart_save, 0x00475D20), and a replay, or the pause menu's RESTART, loads it again (restart_load, 0x00475D30), so that a replay starts from the game as the mission began, but for the ship and missiles chosen last (Saved games, Script VM).

The restart screen¶

restart_screen (0x0043EB80), in interface\restart.spr, offers three choices, each a button 30 by 21 with its label beside it in orange (0xFE851A), in the small font:

Its drawing (restart_screen_draw, 0x0043ED90) takes the palette of shape 17 at the screen's brightness, clears the screen, and draws shape 18 at (1, 1), shape 19 over the button under the pointer at (164, 373), (164, 400) or (164, 427), the labels, and the pointer. The screen fades in from dark by a thirtieth of full each game tick (palette_ramp_brightness, 0x004DC64C). A press on a button chooses at once, and Escape chooses MAIN MENU; the pointer is put away and the screen fades out, the button chosen still lit, ending as it is dark or as Escape is pressed again.

Mission 25's second part replays as its first part, but after the pilot's execution, which leaves REPLAY MISSION FROM LAUNCH the second (0x004AA750). The pause menu's RESTART, too, starts mission 25 again from its first part (0x004AA47A).

The views¶

Each place the player stands in is a view, 0x30 bytes:

The Reliant's views lie from 0x00506AD0 and the Yamato's from 0x0050A958, 125 in all, reached from the views the code enters the rooms by: each carrier's first, and those the places leave the player in. The views of the locker and the simulator's hotspots count exits they don't have, null pointers the game never follows.

The loop¶

As vr_rooms starts, it reads the ship's sounds, vrsnd.fat, and the player's, wlksmp.fat, from the disc, and plays the ship's hum over and over, sound 4 on the Reliant and 5 on the Yamato, at 0x50. It reads the pointer's shapes, interface\vrgfx.spr, sets the pointer at (320, 200), opens the first view's way in and shows its first frame, and starts a timer at 15 Hz (vr_timer, 0x00437DD0). Each pass of its loop (0x0043A2C1):

1. Escape opens the in-game options (The in-game options). BACK goes on; a saved game loaded starts the rooms again from the carrier's first view; MAIN MENU ends them.
2. Once the way in has ended (0x00520298), the view's action: the briefing, with the music fading out by 15 and every voice ended; a place's screen runs, and the rooms go on from the view it leaves the player in. A view without one settles (0x0043AF4C): its loop opens, or the fish tank's first movie, and its hotspots come alive (0x0051D9E4: 1 settled, 2 on the way in).
3. In the fish tank's view, the food (The fish tank).
4. The pointer moves, within 4 of the screen's left, 65 short of its right and 41 short of its foot. While the view is settled, the exit whose hotspot holds it is the one under it (0x00520184).
5. A press of the left or right button, or Space, over an exit takes it; the right button elsewhere skips the way in. A button held from a skip is not taken again until it comes up.
6. On each tick of the timer, the pointer's animation steps on.

Taking an exit (0x0043B40C) plays its view's sound at full volume, unless the right button took it without the left and the transitions off (Transitions, Movies). The view's way in opens; one without a way in has its action at once. The right button, or the left with the transitions off, skips the way in (0x0043B7D6): into a view with a loop, or an action, the view is arrived in at once; for any but the CD player, the pointer shows the skip's shape for a frame, then the way in's last frame shows (BinkGoto), and the drawing after it arrives in the view.

As the player goes into a place, the view's movie closes (0x0043A48C):

Each place leaves the player in a view of its own on each carrier, turned away from it, with that view's way in next.

The pointer¶

The pointer's shapes are those of interface\vrgfx.spr, each drawn as the set's next: an arrow to the left at 0, the pointer at 11, an arrow to the right at 21, and those between them. Left of 40 it turns into the left arrow, and from 541 on into the right; on each tick of the timer it turns two shapes toward the one its place calls for (0x0051D618, 0x0051D7E4), and its animation steps through 9 frames (0x00520244).

vr_draw draws it only while the view is settled, but for the skip's shape, 50, 22 to the pointer's right, the frame the skip shows it. Over the way into a view with an action, the pointer straight, it lights, shapes 23 on by its animation's frame; the arrows turn over the exits at the edges, shapes 32 on to the left and 41 on to the right. The label of the exit under it shows centred on (320, 440) in interface\optfnt.fnt, in white.

The fish tank¶

Walk to Fish Tank's view has no loop: it plays its movies one after another, move_a_.bik, move_d_.bik and the rest of the fourteen at 0x004E8138, then from the first again. While no food falls, the pointer on the food, (67, 131), 68 by 120, shows Press for Fish Food (string 0xE1), and the left button drops it (0x0043B1E5). The food falls for 498 ticks (0x0051D600): fish.spr from the disc, the shape three on from the ticks it has fallen at (250, 125), and the tank's front, shape 2, at (23, 110) over it (0x0043C73C).

Fix: the game moves the food on by the ticks from the pass's start to the drawing, just after the pass takes them up (frame_duration), so that it falls only as the drawing takes time. OpenReliant moves it on by the ticks since it last moved.

The news report¶

news_report (0x0043BA40) plays the next mission's report, Enriquez's scene from the disc spoken over the television's movie, rel_tv_in_loop.bik on the Reliant, b_tv_news_.bik on the Yamato. The scenes are .box speech files (Speech files), by the mission's number from 1: 0005a, 0015, 0025 and on by ten to 0275. Mission 1's is in three parts: 0005a, then 0005b over tv_cald.bik, then 0005c over the television again.

The report runs a loop of its own inside the rooms, which draws with the rooms' drawing (0x0051D454): the television's movie loops, the pointer shows where it is over the whole screen, and the label reads Click to Leave News Report (0x299). Escape, or either button down, ends it, as does the end of its speech, the next part following where mission 1 has one. The speech plays once at full volume (speech_play, 0x00461D80, speech_start on the first free stream).

Fix: the game takes the scene's name from the table on its stack by the mission's number, and outside missions 1 to 28 reads what lies either side of it. OpenReliant has no report there, and the rooms go on.

The crew¶

As the rooms open, vr_crew_pick (0x00437DF0) picks the crew the player passes on the way to the briefing room's door, by how the mission before went (0x00437E33 on): one kind after a mission that awards a medal by its table, whether or not the pilot won it, or a promotion at its end; another after a failure, or a pickup by a nanny ship; and a third after any other rating, the partial failure's among them. It draws one of the carrier's crew of that kind at random, each a sprite set from the disc's archive and a line, an MP3 file. It picks again as a game loads into the rooms, and as they open again after the briefing.

Each line is named for a mission and its kind, p, n or g: rm06p.mp3 is rovh's. On the Yamato a second crew member shows after the first, without a line: yovs, yovt and yovu in turn (0x005202F4), from frame 117. The tables of the crew lie from 0x004E7B58, 0x30 bytes each: the set's name, the frame of the way's movie the crew member shows from and for how many frames, and the line's name.

Taking the way to the briefing room's door, rel_bunkroom2briefing_door.bik on the Reliant and bunk2wr.bik on the Yamato, where the second shows too, starts the crew showing and plays the line (0x0043B4EF on), as does any way taken while they still show. The line plays on voice 2, which it holds so that no other sound takes it over, once, in the middle. The drawing shows each crew member over the way's movie from their first frame, a shape for each frame drawn at (1, 1), its pixels of index 0 drawn black (Sprites), until their frames run out.

Fixes:

• The mission before is the one the campaign came from. The game takes the number before the rooms' mission, so that after missions 11, 16 and 21, each of which awards a medal, it reads the records of missions 13, 17 and 22, which the campaign skips.
• How the mission before was rated is what the campaign's records keep of it. The game reads the script's rating among the game's variables, which a saved game doesn't keep, so that after a game loads the crew are those of a failure. Before the first mission, both read the rating a campaign starts with, a partial failure.
• The line plays at the speech volume, scaled by the master volume. The game sets voice 2 to full volume itself, whatever the settings.

Improvement: the crew member is drawn from std.Random, where the game uses rand().

The drawing¶

vr_draw (0x0043C1C0), the rooms' render hook:

1. The movie's next frame, once due, copied to the screen. At its last: on the way in, the view is arrived in; settled, the loop goes back to its second frame, its first frame's pictures put back first (0x0051D9D8), or the fish tank's next movie opens; otherwise the last frame stays.
2. The crew, where they show (The crew).
3. The label: the news report's, the exit's under the pointer, or the food's.
4. The fish's food, while it falls.
5. The pointer.

The induction¶

reliant_induction (0x00438D50) shows a new pilot round the Reliant before mission 1's rooms. It plays the way from the bunk to the television, rel_ladd_bunk.bik, rel_t2l.bik and rel_c_tv.bik, over the screen, then at each place a movie over and over as Enriquez speaks her scene, from the disc, once, at full volume:

As a scene ends, or on Space, the way on plays over the screen, and the next place follows; after the last, the induction is over. Escape, or the pointer's right button, ends it where it is. It returns the count of ways it took, which WinMain goes on from (A campaign's start). Its drawing (induction_draw, 0x00439330) shows the movie alone, going back to its second frame at its last.

The in-game options¶

Escape opens them over the rooms (in_game_options, 0x004394D0): interface\ingameop.tga behind, the shapes of interface\frntend7.spr, and the front end's pointer. Its items, in the order interface_hit tries them:

As in the front end's screens, an item acts while the left button is down over it. Escape goes back to the rooms. Going back, the menu waits for the button to come up.

SAVE and LOAD open the saved games (Front end), with their shapes and interface\igoptfad.tga behind. Their BACK comes back to the menu after interface\igofade2.bik; a game saved closes the menu, as BACK does; a game loaded opens its mission's disc and starts the rooms again from its carrier's first view (0x0043980C, 0x0043A309 on), and over the briefing's loadout ends the briefing for them (0x004378E7 on); their MAIN MENU leads to the main menu. OpenReliant opens them while a campaign is flown, as there is none to save outside one.

Fix: coming back from the saved games, the menu takes no press until the button held there comes up, as the front end's screens take none.

Its drawing (in_game_options_draw, 0x004398B0), the render hook:

1. The buttons, shape 0x1C at (299, 422), (299, 443), (329, 422) and (329, 443), and their labels in blue in interface_font_small: BACK (string 0xF7) to the left of (292, 423), MAIN MENU (0xBB) to the left of (292, 444), ABOUT STARLANCER (0x10C) from (357, 423) and QUIT (0xBC) from (357, 444).
2. The item under the pointer lit: a panel's shape, 0x12 to 0x16, at (107, 115), (308, 114), (35, 250), (230, 255) and (406, 252); a button's label again in white, and shape 0x1D on its button.
3. The panels' labels in blue in interface_font_large, centred: SAVE (0x3B5) on (208, 233), LOAD (0x149) on (408, 233), AUDIO (0x109) on (130, 385), CONTROL DEVICES (0x10A) on (322, 385) and VIDEO (0x10B) on (506, 385).
4. The about box, where it is up, then QUIT's dialog, then the pointer.

ABOUT STARLANCER (about_box, 0x0042A520) reads interface\frntend2.spr (0x0051D540) and shows its box (0x0051DB4C) until Escape, or a click on OK, (316, 334), 25 by 16, once the button comes up: the box, shape 0x23 at (114, 177); OK, shape 0x1A at (316, 334), 0x1B under the pointer; in blue, the title, ABOUT STARLANCER, centred on (320, 180), PID - and the product ID the installer kept in the registry centred on (320, 194), both in interface_font_small, the notice (string 0x315) centred on (320, 208) in lines at most 400 wide, 14 apart, at most 10, and OK (0x316) to the left of (308, 329) in interface_font_large.

Improvement: OpenReliant's item and box are ABOUT OPENRELIANT. The box's middle is filled black, where the game leaves it clear over the menu, and in the product ID's place a few words on OpenReliant, its version, its copyright and its license, the Mozilla Public License 2.0, stand above the game's notice. Where the lines would reach OK's label 14 apart, they draw closer.