S2K's WA-to-WormsDC Conversion Project [LATEST UPDATE: 2021-02-17]

[Squirminator2k]

Do you love the wacky, cartoony terrains, maps and speechbanks of WA but wish you could experience them in a 1st-gen Worms game? Well, wish no more! Presenting S2K'S WA-to-WormsDC Conversion Project, which aims to take every single one of those lovely assets and downscale them for use in Worms: The Director's Cut on the Amiga.

As well as working to convert all of the 2nd-gen assets, I was also able to convert the two terrain styles that never made the jump from the PC version of the original Worms/Worms Utd. - CANDY and MONEY. These are also available to download.

CURRENT STATUS

• Speechbanks: 100% complete
• Terrains and Mountains: 100% complete
• WA Maps: 100% complete
• WA Screensaver Maps: 100% complete
• Worms World Party Maps - Single + Multiplayer Missions: 100% complete
• Worms World Party Maps - Training + Time Trials: 100% complete
• Worms United Maps: 0% complete - not yet begun

REQUIREMENTS

• An AGA Amiga - A1200, A4000, or an expanded CD32.
  
• Note that an accelerator board is likely required - these have not been tested on an unexpanded Amiga.
• WormsDC must be installed on the Amiga's hard drive - these files cannot be added to the floppy disk version.
• (Yes, these files work fine in an emulator - I recommend using the latest version of WinUAE in an AGA A1200 configuration with extra Fast RAM. The files will also work in FS-UAE and Amiga Forever.)

DOWNLOAD LINK

All completed assets are available in both .zip and .LhA format, and can be downloaded [here]


INSTRUCTIONS

• For the terrains and maps, simply unpack the archive into your WORMSDC drawer on your Amiga's hard drive.
• For the speechbanks, unpack the archive into your WORMSDC/TWSAMPLES drawer on your Amiga's hard drive.

CREDITS

• Original assets by Team17
• Worms United assets originally extracted by nizikawa
• Downscaling and conversion by Squirminator2k
• CONVERT (MS-DOS tool used to convert .WAV sounds to .IFF format) created by Jesus Villena
• Special thanks to Andy Davidson

ANY QUESTIONS?

Feel free to post any questions you may have in the thread below, I will do my best to answer them!

[Squirminator2k]

Fun aside: For completeness' sake, I wanted to do a speechbank using the effects from WWP Remastered, but CONVERT chokes on those files and spits out insanely huge IFFs. I have no idea what Team17 did, but those are some janky WAV files.

I think they just repurposed the same sound effects they used in Worms Reloaded so I might be able to snag 'em from there, but blimey.

[h3oCharles]

after you complete this, do you plan on converting the other way? WormsDC-to-WA?

I think they just repurposed the same sound effects they used in Worms Reloaded so I might be able to snag 'em from there, but blimey.

either WWPR or WRev, either way, they are indeed duplicates from some newer games

[Squirminator2k]

after you complete this, do you plan on converting the other way? WA-to-WormsDC?

I've actually already done some of that, kind-of! I took the WormsDC version of the English speechbank and converted the files to .WAV, and that's been up to download on Dream17 for a while. I believe someone may have uploaded that here too (which some edits, it would seem - not too keen on that).

I also recreated the WormsDC gravestone, so I used that! Can't remember if I ever shared that one.

Converting the color maps the other way 'round is a neat idea. Some of the maps are just downscaled versions of maps from Worms United though, so it might be better to convert from there, TBH.

I think they just repurposed the same sound effects they used in Worms Reloaded so I might be able to snag 'em from there, but blimey.

either WWPR or WRev, either way, they are indeed duplicates from some newer games

I'll have to do some digging. I checked Reloaded, but all of those sounds are compacted in a file format I'm too lazy to try and crack open. Honestly, I'm not particularly feeling a need to do the WWPR sounds, it was mostly a completeness' thing.

[Squirminator2k]

The WA screensaver maps are now 100% converted, and have been uploaded for download!

[Squirminator2k]

In extracting the maps from WA and WWP, I've made a fun discovery: There's over 100 of the buggers! I've split them into separate categories.

There are some maps, particularly in WWP, that are for single-purpose gimmick missions and I'm honestly having a hard time deciding whether to include those or not. On one hand, the completionist in me thinks it's worth doing. On the other hand, you couldn't actually play a game on these maps.

I suspect I'll skip them.

[Squirminator2k]

Yesterday I completed and uploaded the archives for the WA maps. Late last night, however, I caught a pretty glaring error with TWOSHOES.WRM16. I've just fixed and reuploaded - if you downloaded it last night, I recommend redownloading it today.

Also, fun fact: If you're not an Amiga user but still want to see how the maps look after downscaling, download the WA Maps .zip archive, extract it somewhere, add .iff to the end of the filename, and the images will open in PhotoShop. I actually corrected the error in PhotoShop without even needing to switch on my Amiga.

[Squirminator2k]

I decided to have a quick peek at the maps for Worms United. Some discoveries:

MOUNTAINS
They all have mountain sets! I had entirely forgotten that. Unfortunately, Worms Utd's mountain dimensions are entirely different from WormsDC's, which I already kind of knew from converting the mountains for the MONEY terrain, but yikes! I have to choose between drastically changing how the mountains work for WormsDC, or just abandoning them entirely... but the fact that the few maps from Utd that Team17 converted themselves for DC included a mountain set means I'd want to go after that uniformity. So the Worms Utd stuff is definitely going to take longer than everything else. Yikes!

DIMENSIONS
A standard Amiga Worms/WormsDC map is 960x350px. This is 50px shorter than the maps in Worms Utd. For the most part, I don't think this presents a problem - there's usually enough space at the top or bottom that cropping isn't an issue. There are a couple of maps, however, where this isn't going to be possible, so I have to make some hard choices. That Windows 95 map, for example! I would probably have to lose some of the icons at the top of the map, and if I do that is it still the same map? Again, this is something that's going to require a lot more work than the WA maps, which after resizing are actually only 2px shorter than the WormsDC mapsize.

[Squirminator2k]

WWP Training + Time Trial maps have been uploaded! I put these through a more rigorous conversion process, in part because... well, Team17 cut a lot of corners making maps for WWP, and making sure they were 100% accurate and authentic downscales was a Process™.

[h3oCharles]

im dumb, i meant WormsDC-to-WA, edited

[Squirminator2k]

im dumb, i meant WormsDC-to-WA, edited

I figured that's what you meant.

[Squirminator2k]

The WWP single + multiplayer mission maps are now done! I skipped maps that were unplayable, or were simply duplicates of maps from WA. They can now be downloaded from the site.

Between the WA maps, WA screensaver maps, and the WWP maps, there are 115 2nd-gen maps that are now playable in Worms: The Director's Cut. Phew!

The next step is to crack on with the speechbank conversions, which is an easy but annoying process of converting the files from WAV to IFFs, then renaming them. I should really make a script for it. That'd speed things up a little.

[Squirminator2k]

Ten more speechbanks are added! My WAV-to-IFF pipeline is super-efficient now, so cranking them out is relatively easy. Just ZIPs uploaded for the new banks for now - LhA archives take longer to make, so I'll upload those probably tomorrow or Wednesday. (Update: LhA files now available)

(Also, not to make a big thing out of it, but I've added a link to both my PayPal and my Amazon Wishlist to the bottom of the project page should anybody feel like supporting this nonsense.)

[Squirminator2k]

Whoops, I finished all of the speechbanks.

[Squirminator2k]

oScarDiAnno on the WA Discord asked for an archive containing the entire project, so I just made that available on the project page.