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News: Celebrating 30 years of Star Control 2 - The Ur-Quan Masters

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Author Topic: duk files  (Read 6937 times)
JHGuitarFreak
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duk files
« on: June 12, 2005, 01:56:10 pm »

i wanted to ask all of you if you have some example .duk, .frm, .hdr, and .tbl files.

i decided to make my own damed intro and ending using my fathers modeling techniques and my ability to "animate" them,
but i need to know what to decompile those files mentioned above with.

anybody with relevant information is welcome to give advice when needed.

i really doubt that i will be able to pull this off because of peoples obtuse view on copyright laws...

all i gotta say...   screw accolade
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Re: duk files
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2005, 05:47:27 pm »

The .duk format is really badly documented, old, badly supported, inefficient and low quality. If you are making new videos, I'd strongly advise you to use a better video format, e.g. MPEG-4. XviD handles this type of video quite nicely and would be easy to add to UQM both technically and legally.

The only reason to support DUK video at all is to use the original 3DO videos without losing quality and/or disk space by converting.
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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: duk files
« Reply #2 on: June 12, 2005, 08:28:57 pm »

the only reason im gonna use the .duk format is to make my own intro/ending, and i dont want to recompile all of uqm to use a different format other than the duk, frm, hdr, tbl
i would rather just find a way to convert an mpeg video or possibly make "record" a duk file myself.

plus if i pull this off i will most probably share my videos with everybody...

but the keyword is   "IF"    i pull it off
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Re: duk files
« Reply #3 on: June 12, 2005, 09:56:08 pm »

There is no .duk encoder available. I guess the Duck Corporation (now On2) will still have one, but I'd say you're out of luck.
The only reason we can play the .duk videos is because we made our own decoder (fOSSiL handled the video, I did the audio). We didn't have any specs or source code to go by.
There are a few codecs that say they play .duk files, but they can't handle the SC2 duks. When the 3DO version of SC2 was created, the duk codec was new, as was the Duck corporation itself if I'm not mistaken. I suspect the duk file format (and perhaps the codec itself) wasn't final yet.

Instead of writing your own .duk encoder, I suggest you go with another format. The .duk encoding isn't very good by todays standards, and we will eventually support other video formats, probably through some video library (see http://uqm.stack.nl/cgi-bin/bugs/show_bug.cgi?id=489). You could add support for it to UQM yourself, or just wait until someone else does it. PR3 said it was on top of his list of things he would like to see in UQM.
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Re: duk files
« Reply #4 on: June 13, 2005, 12:18:36 am »

Quote
i dont want to recompile all of uqm to use a different format other than the duk, frm, hdr, tbl
Look, adding something like MPEG-4 support to UQM is going to be a lot easier than writing a program to convert to DUK.

The minute someone releases nice intro and/or ending videos for UQM that can be legally redistributed with UQM, there is going to be a frenzy of activity related to getting these videos running in UQM. Even the 3DO DUK videos, which most of us aren't allowed to use and were quite difficult to support, are supported in UQM. Don't you think there would be quite a lot of people willing to add support for pretty much any well-known video format to UQM if that would give us all a good intro and/or ending? Heck, if the videos are good enough (and in a sane format), I'll do it myself, if that's what it takes.

Don't worry about getting those videos playing in UQM. The hard part is producing the videos.
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Re: duk files
« Reply #5 on: June 13, 2005, 11:23:34 am »

If you want to produce an animation but don't want to go through the trouble of modelling and texturing all the star control ships (or even if you want to just experiment for the moment, and maybe model your own ships later on), a good resource to use would be SC3D and the TimeWarp bunchamodels sites:
http://www.geocities.com/bunchamodels5000/

http://www.geocities.com/bunchamodels5001/

If your video gets to the state where it could be distributed with UQM, it would be prudent to contact the various modellers invovled to ask permission (although the timewarp ones are ostensibly cleared for use in open-source projects).
« Last Edit: June 13, 2005, 11:24:13 am by Halleck » Logged


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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: duk files
« Reply #6 on: June 13, 2005, 02:06:54 pm »

well all i can say is i will try to do this.

i cant promise anything.
but if it happens to work i will distribute it when i'm finished.

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Re: duk files
« Reply #7 on: May 30, 2016, 03:37:47 pm »

Hello,people. I have one question. By the reason DUK player fully released inside UQM, can it be released outside the game, so anyone can play DUK videos from 3DO game platform?
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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: duk files
« Reply #8 on: June 02, 2016, 09:35:18 pm »

The only way would be to try.

You would have to isolate the code involved and build a program around it.

I totally forgot that I was remaking the intro and ending. I have since then lost the files but it is interesting to see my determination.
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Re: duk files
« Reply #9 on: January 30, 2021, 01:42:20 am »

Recently donwload original 3DO videos...
My idea was to resize to HD and restore those videos using AI programs for sharing with you in mp4 or hevc format to use with UQM HD mod but i didnt find any program for play those files or any codec...
I know this thread is old but maybe in this time, someone found a way for playing that files and could share with us.
Regards!
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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: duk files
« Reply #10 on: January 30, 2021, 06:17:20 am »

I ran them through Topaz's Video Enhance AI and got less than stellar (har har) results. 
Tested every option and it outputs some better results here and there, but overall were no better than the original in terms of noise and fidelity.

I'm thinking a few more years worth of improvements to AI upscaling are needed and work in the UQM code to support at least ogg video.
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Re: duk files
« Reply #11 on: January 30, 2021, 01:35:46 pm »

Serosis, did u try to make the video to sequence of pngs, loading into topaz sharpness and after into gigapixel CG module? this was the step i was thinking to do...
Maybe you can try if you had access to the video Smiley
Regards!
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JHGuitarFreak
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Re: duk files
« Reply #12 on: January 30, 2021, 02:39:02 pm »

The problem I've had is there is no reliable way to dump the video files.

I had to use FRAPS to record the output of UQM then put the result in Video Enhance.
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