SpaceCrusade
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This article is partially complete. This means that all known information is here, but there is still more information that needs to be discovered and/or reverse engineered. If you know some of the missing information, you can help the ModdingWiki by adding this info yourself. |
| Levels? |  Editable |
|---|---|
| Tiles? | Editable |
| Sprites? | Editable |
| Fullscreen? | Editable |
| Sound? |  Not editable |
| Music? | Not editable |
| Text? | Editable |
| Story/cutscenes? | Not editable |
| UI/menus? | Editable |
| Demos? | Unknown |
Space Crusade for DOS was developed and Published by Gremlin Graphics Software Limited in 1992.
Space Crusade is a science fiction strategy game converted from the Games Workshop/Milton Bradley boardgame, in which you control a commander and four marines who are sent on different missions aboard hostile alien starships. Your commander starts off as a sergeant, but he can work his way through the ranks. The game allows three players, each commanding one marine chapter each. The alien team is played by the computer.
The game is a literal conversion of the board game in the same vein as Gremlin's earlier Hero Quest. It can be best described as a turn-based board game in which the player must fulfill the primary and secondary objectives to complete the mission, which usually involves elimination of entire alien force on board or destruction of mothership etc. This game features unique 3D close-ups during the battle scenes, a feature which was later adopted by games like the X-Com series.
Tools
The following tools are able to work with this game.
| Name | Platform | Archives | Levels | Graphics | Music | Sounds | Text | Saves | .exe patch | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Codec by Shelwien from Encode.su | Windows | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Language and Sprite/Graphic files are LZ compressed |
| UNP by Ben Castricum | DOS | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Edit | EXE are compressed with EXEPACKER |
| GremlinUT | Multi | No | No | No | No | No | Yes | No | No | A string editor for unnpacked .bin language files by DK (OldGamesItalia) |
| ProPack RNC de/compressor | DOS 16bit | Yes | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | PPIBM.exe is needed to extract/import VGA/EGA files inside the GRAPH.RNC archive |
| Westwood Font Editor | Windows | No | No | Edit | No | No | No | No | No | Font resides in space.exe and they have to be manually exported/imported |
File formats
The following file formats are used by this game.
| Filename | Format | Details |
|---|---|---|
| MAPS.BIN | Space Crusade Map Format | Binary files that contains all the game Maps |
| *.BIN | Space Crusade Strings Format | Binary files with in-game text in four languages (ENGLISH, GERMAN, FRENCH, ITALIAN). |
| *.EGA | Raw EGA data | Full-screen images (320×200) and sprites RAW 4bpp |
| *.VGA | Raw VGA Image | Full-screen images (320×200) and sprites RAW 8bpp |
| *.SAV | Space Crusade Savegame Format | 3 Savegames file created by space.EXE, one for each of the three playable "Chapters" |
| SPACE.CFG | Space Crusade Config Format | Configuration file created by space.exe |
| *.EXE | Space Crusade EXE File | SPACE.EXE contains Program-related text |
| *.RLD | Space Crusade Music Format | Archive for Roland Sound effects and Music |
| *.ALB | Space Crusade Music Format | Archive for Adlib Sound effects and Music |
Research credits
- The decompression program was done by Shelwien from encode.su forum
- TheRuler from the OldGamesItalia translation and modding project mapped the format of the BIN and the savegame files.
Links
- OldGamesItalia.net forum discussion about the game where everything started (in Italian), with research and development on the project by TheRuler.