Terry Butler

MOD Monday #28

Terry — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:39:14 +0000

Here is “Ch2” by Vital.

New Heroes of Might and Magic III Map (H3M) File Compressor / Decompressor Tool Released!

Terry — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 19:29:31 +0000

This new utility allows for Heroes of Might and Magic II Map (H3M) files to be compressed and decompressed for power users.

Please see this page for more details and a download link.

MOD Monday #27

Terry — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:12:35 +0000

Here is “Into the Woods” by Reaper.

Download MP3
Download MOD

Lost S06E06 (Sundown) – Figure in the Smoke Monster

Terry — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 14:43:07 +0000

While watching Sundown, I couldn’t help but notice something in the smoke, so I took a closer look and it definitely appears as though there is a human figure within the smoke as it passes over Kate and Claire.

While it isn’t as obvious in the still below, the shape you can see toward the top-right is the shape of a human, specifically the lower half of the body.

Note: You can click the Image for a full-sized animated GIF version, or alternatively, you can click here for the full quality Animated PNG version (Doesn’t work in Internet Explorer! Use Firefox, Chrome or another up to date Browser).

Now, we’ve been led to believe that the Smoke Monster and the “Man in Black” (MiB a.k.a. Flocke (Fake Locke)) are one in the same. We’ve had Flocke essentially telling the viewers “I’m sorry that you had to see me like that”, referring to him supposedly becoming the Monster.

We’ve also seen in a previous episode the Monster scouting around the island, coming across Sawyer and then presumably changing form to turn into Flocke, pick up the machete on the floor and pay Sawyer a visit *.

It’s very likely that the Monster and the Man in Black are one in the same, but wouldn’t it be interesting if the Monster was actually just transporting the MiB around the Island instead of actually being him?

In the animation, we see that somebody is clearly being carried with the smoke. This is either just a hapless victim or the MiB (a.k.a Flocke) being transported.

* Nobody ever did say much about the multiple “strands” of the Monster floating around the Island all Evil Dead style. Presumably if the MiB _is_ the Monster, it means that he can be in a massive amount of places at once given the number of small black smoke clouds there can be.

I’m not entirely convinced the MiB is actually the Smoke Monster though. Given that we’ve never seen him change, it’s just the word of an untrustworthy character whose motives have been entirely selfish up until now.

It’s probably just another red herring by the show writers “as per usual for a change”.

Heroes of Might and Magic II AGG Reader and Extractor #1

Terry — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 10:24:49 +0000

Luke warm on the heels of my Doom Engine WAD Reader and Extractor program, I’ve dug out some of my really old Visual Basic 6 (VB6) code (and ported it over to C#) to allow for ICN reading, which is a Run Length Encoded (RLE) image format for storing multiple images native the the Might and Magic series, and I can note the following: it’s unstable, it falls apart under pressure and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, it bails on you.

On the positive side, at least my debugger actually tells me what’s going on!

On another note, I can play the 82M sound files although for whatever reason, the sound card refuses to close after it’s finished and I don’t get this problem with anything else I’ve tried.

Dealing with the sound card is pretty new to me still, so it’s probably just a dumb-arse mistake on my part.

MOD Monday #26

Terry — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:56:09 +0000

Here is “4ieme Music” by Unison.

Note: The MOD didn’t have any particular credits, either in the file name, title area or in the sample names, however, I sourced the information about who the author was from their profile at the Amiga Music Preservation.

From that page, we can see that I’ve posted up at least one other MOD file by this author.

Download MP3
Download MOD

MOD Monday #25

Terry — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:44:07 +0000

Here is is “TRSI” by Heartbeat of Rebels.

Download MP3
Download MOD

Doom Engine WAD Reader and Extractor – Release v0.8.5

Terry — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 17:20:43 +0000

Head to the download page for the first taste of the Doom Engine WAD Reader and Extractor (Something of a mouthful, I know. It does honour the function of the application however ).

It’s still a bit rough and ready, but still very functional and supports many of the features that I initially set out to do, so for this, I’m very happy, however, it still needs a lot of polishing.

For that reason, I value any comments or critique you can throw my way and they will be much appreciated.

You can contact at me at the usual place.

MOD Monday #24

Terry — Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:50:50 +0000

Here is is “Plastic Pop” by PaleDeth, originally by Tomas Danko.

Download MP3
Download XM

Edit:

Check out a brilliant cover of Tomas Danko’s original–and pretty much a masterpiece in it’s own right–at this address under the file “I Miss You (Plastic Pop)”:

http://mordi.ziphoid.com/

Get the original SID by Tomas Danko here:

http://www.hardsid.com/s.php?Plastic%20Pop%202688

Progress on Doom WAD Reader / Extractor #4

Terry — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 06:19:31 +0000

I have been fixing up a bunch of stuff in the Doom WAD Reader utility, such as making sure the program knows where to stick the huge amount of random files that aren’t bound by x_START and x_END flags, sound files, and so on.

I’ve also added the ability to play the digital sound files as well as save them out as a wave file.

I’ve also added a rather exciting (and somewhat nostalgia inducing) feature which allows the PC Speaker sounds to be played and saved out as wave files, and I must say, from what I recall, it does sound quite accurate!

The information for this feature was found at the Doom Wikia[1] which led me on to information on Andrew Apted and Simon "Fraggle" Howard’s work on reverse engineering the file format[2]. Good work guys!

Here are a few samples as saved out by the Doom PC Speaker Effect to Wave feature:

Edit: Checking the original Doom under DosBox, it doesn’t sound quite as accurate as I had thought. I had initially thought about continuity issues of the wave between the notes as I don’t really do anything about that, meaning it’ll sound quite rough.

I’m not entirely convinced this is the only issue, but it’s only minor stuff to fix really, but I’ll just try and do a better job at emulating the old PIT (Programmable Interval Timer) PC speaker setup[3] and see how it goes.

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