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Discuss Chaos Strikes Back for Windows and Linux, an unofficial port of Chaos Strikes Back to PC by Paul Stevens, as well as CSBuild, an associated dungeon editor.

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Gambit37
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Post by Gambit37 »

Sounds like you have some intriguing ideas in that feverish imagination of yours, Zyx. After the diabolical Conflux 2, I don't think my poor brain could cope with anything more complicated!
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Post by cowsmanaut »

just slipping in... :)

any info on the possibility of the different Graphics.dat? and did I mention with it.. the altering of pallet? I know it changes on the main screens.. and then on the level with the worms as well as some others.. seems mostly changing location of colours but there are a few colours that change.

Just wondering if I was carefull about which colours I used for character portraits and items if I could get away with changing more.. giving us more to play with in terms of dungeon graphics and monsters.

Need to know these things before we sit down and start further planning our strategy. :) and obviously before I can start on the new images ;)
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Post by Paul Stevens »

Yes.....the graphics is very definitely on my mind.
I am trying to put version 9.7 together. I keep running into
perplexing little bugs. Tonight a bug popped up when 'repeat'
was specified on my Dungeon Master movie that will come with
the release. Naturally, I have to play the entire game to the
end to get the bug to show itself.

One of the things you will find in version 9.7 (if you examine the
code) is that all the complicated FTL code to cache graphics and
stay within the boundary of the 512k Atari memory is gone. I
replaced it entirely in order to make it understandable to me. That
is a first step in providing some method of switching backgrounds/
walls/wall decorations on the different levels. So give me time.
It will require a bit of thought.

I don't know about the palette.....changing the palette in general
will cause green apples. We can certainly provide a method of
specifying the one (or is it two? colors that currently change on the
various levels. Perhaps that is all you are asking for?????
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Post by cowsmanaut »

well, I'm a little out of practice but I think I can get back into it. I've played the juggling colours within a palette before. I can probably juggle quite a few of them if I'm carefull. More than 2 at the very least.

There really are just two things that need to be thought about with regards to the shifting pallete. 1. is portraits. 2. is user items.

now.. for the portraits.. if they were pulled as seperate bitmaps from a folder they could be drawn last and as such could have their own colours and as such would not be dependant on the pallete of the game. We talked a bit about this with the interface stuff for the pocket PC remember? This is a possibility but not a necessity.. it just offers more leeway for mixing up the colours.

For the items.. I just need to be sparing with their colours. there is no real escaping their limits without altering soooooo much more. So those I can work around. Other than that it's all changeable from level to level. Monsters, walls, ornaments, doors, etc.

Anyway ZYX and I were talking about a lot of unique graphical elements. That the style and colour of the environment will change a good deal. Likely hood is that I will have 6-8 of the 16 colours to juggle if I plan it well. I'm not expecting any crazy HAM modes where we have a different pallete for every scanline ;) however the ability to change with change of level would certainly suffice. however if you can find ways of getting me 32 colours or 256 colours to play with.. whatever you're interested in getting out of this.. I won't complain. ;) I'm certainly willing to accomodate you with more elabourate graphical elements.

Good luck
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Post by Paul Stevens »

Zyx: I have been pondering the 'Light' and 'Dark' shooters. I began to
wonder just what you want to accomplish. For example, why do you
want these spells to be issued by a Shooter? And if they must come from
a Shooter, then what visible Missile should fly out? How far should it
go before the Light or Dark spell comes out? If the missile dies out before
hitting something should it simply 'Fizzle'.

If the spell need NOT come from a Shooter, then perhaps it would be better
to devise a way to cast **ANY** spell as if an NPC with the Party cast the
spell in the direction that the party leader is facing.

*********************************************
Another (wild) thought......maybe we should use one of the empty databases
to contain Spells that can be picked up, manipulated, thrown, copied,
or launched by a Shooter. They could use the Potion graphics or we could
invent new graphics that would be available like the Portrait graphics.
This might not be easy........it is a brainstorm.
*********************************************
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Post by beowuuf »

personally, i imagined having one way back in the day like an 'unconciousness' pause where you are captured by a monster, teleported, and 'awaken' (darkness then light shooters or other mechanism)

Also, if there is no infinite negative to casting darkness, a constantly triggering darkness spell could force the player to play a level or section i nthe dark. May be interesting!

Both those cases don't really require a shooter though, just the effect to happen somehow...
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Post by Paul Stevens »

The constant triggering darkness seems to be a problem.
The party could cast light spells to overcome it. And how
will you make the dungeon light again? Are you going to
somehow count the number of darkness spells and then cast
that many Light spells? Or are you just going to let them
wear off?

Maybe it would be better to devise a way to override the normal
dungeon brightness level. Take control of illumination. I think it
might not be too hard to provide a function to set the absolute light
level (with an option to either replace or override the normal light
level) or an additive to the current light level (which would remove any
override that is in effect). And, of course, a function to get the current
light level. Then you can do whatever you please with the light.
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Post by beowuuf »

It depends if the light levl has a zero value or if it can go negative
If the light can only be reduced to zero, and the darkness spell is always firing, , then it would always reduce any light spell cast instantly back to zero until the shooter/trigger stopped

I think you secind option of the override would be better...
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Post by Zyx »

Paul, you're right: I don't need a "shooter" (light and darkness are not missiles anyway), I just need a "spell casting device".
I assumed a shooter could be considered the same as a casting character:
*if casting a missile spell, then a missile is created with coordinates, direction and energy.
*if casting a durationnal spell, then a timer is created with the energy and duration of the spell (coordinates and direction don't matter)
*Exception: if casting footprints, they appear in the tile immediately in front of the shooter (instead of following the party for all the duration)
*if casting a flask spell, then a potion would be generated on the same tile and position as the shooter as long as there is an empty flask on the same tile and position (just make the shooter appears like an alcove and everything is fine)

For the constant darkness triggering effect, I agree with the solution proposed by Beowuuf, supposing zero is the limit. In fact I was planning this kind of trap! :) At least, this would suit my current needs.

However, on the long term, the override option would be better. It depends on the easiness to be coded. I don't think it is worth too much of your time.

As for your wild thought about the spells, I'm glad you mentionned it, for I would never have dared myself. But I dreamt of it several times! :) It would be best to start another thread for the brainstorming, though.
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Post by Zyx »

Speaking of the databases...
I think there is one free "tile category", is it correct?
And 2 free "object databases"?
So what about another brainstorming about what can be done with them?
Examples:

*using the 8 values of the free tile for a new kind of wall: "transparent" wall (=with zones that let you see what is behind), ie: windows, columns, tables...
Graphics would be external, with the same format as for walls.

*using one of the object database for pickable items that act like monsters when dropped (ie: a chicken)

etc
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Post by Paul Stevens »

Zyx: You list four cases:

1) Missile spells cast by shooters. This sorta works already. Perhaps
it would be possible to add additional spell types (open door???) (what?).

2)Durational Spell. Like fire protection? Some of these affect a single
character, do they not? I guess we need to be more specific.

3) Footprints. I have yet to devise a way to put footprints on a tile.
I have looked at how they are implemented and I think it can be
done. But what sense does it make for them to come from shooters?
Do they need to appear and disappear? I had hoped that I could
somehow make them work much like ordinary 'Floor Decorations' except
that they would be drawn after any ordinary decoration....that is sorta
how they work now.

4) Flask spells. You can do this already without involving shooters.

===============================
Yes, there are three unused databases and an unused celltype. But
using it for 'transparent walls'.......oh my. That is asking a lot. There
are so many things to consider. As soon as I do something like this you
will be wanting to put actuators on such walls and you will expect
wall decorations to act in particular ways and you will want the walls to
respond to messages by changing to/from solid stone walls, and etc. etc.
All such possibilities would need to be worked out in advance. I agree that
it would be nice. This will certainly have to wait until we can be sure that
no other requests are in progress because it will very likely result in a
lot of trial and error and backing up and starting over. And fixing bugs. This
program is not well-structured. It frightens me.

================================
: The override option would be better.....not worth too
much time.
Well, in my opinion the override/additive option is not only better,
it is more elegant, easier to understand, and easier to implement.
As soon as version 9.7 is released (and I have it packaged and ready
to send to Christophe) I will try to get a new CSBuild/CSBwin with
this feature to you.
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Post by zoom »

I just wanted to add that in my opiníon, it would be nice to have the effect of an anti-illumulett.
How do power levels influence light, torch or darkness spells?
How do these spells, esp. light vs. darkness count against each other? power levels light vs power levels darkness(=-light?)
I recall a game where i had constantly casted light. then, to train i did some darkness spells, splept and the darkness was gone, but the lightspells where still there. one darkness overrides multiple darknessés and vice versa?
What is the difference in respect to light emmiting between light- and magic torch- spells? only duration and strenght? is there any more difference possible
this is not very im-por-tan-t
regards, zoooom
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Post by Paul Stevens »

I reckon much of this will have to be answered before I can release
any changes to control the lighting level. I will try to add a page to
the documentation for this. But first, I have to figure it out.
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Post by cowsmanaut »

Just sliding this in again.. Remember a while back talking about overlays? Could not this be used for these darkness spells? As it could also be used in a number of other ways?

effects for flares of fire (fireball, fire gouting out of a hole in the dungeon, explosions,) could be done with a redish overlay going quickly from transparent to opaque to transparent again.

and smoke feilds.. though this could be anything I guess.. a monster with 0 attack..

moo
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Post by Paul Stevens »

Could not this be used for these darkness spells
I hope you are not asking me. Designers need to decide whether such
things would work for them. It certainly seems that a black overly
would satisfy Zyx's needs. It should be simple to provide a function
to specify that an overlay should be applied and to name it as we
did the portraits: "Overlaynnn.bmp". Might it be smaller than the
viewport? Then we need to specify whether it is to be repeated
vertically/horizontally and/or where it should be placed on the viewport.
And to specify the overlay algorithm. All pretty straight-forward.

I don't think it would be too hard to apply an overlay at the last minute.
If the overlay is a 16-color graphic then I can build a table lookup to take
the place of the usual palette lookup (there would only be 256 possible
combinations of picture and overlay) and therefore would cost next-to-nothing
in terms of CPU time. If it is a 16-bit overlay then there are 1000000 combinations
and it might be better compute on-the-fly which could be a small problem
on 486-class machines. Maybe a good compromise is 256-colors. That makes
4096 possible combinations and a table-lookup would work OK even on
a PocketPC.

I forget what the various overlay algorithms do but it might be nice if
we made a way for a (for example) black overlay to be used as many 'shades'
of black by having an algorithm that says use n-percent graphic and
(100-n)-percent overlay. Probably one of the standard algorithms has this
very effect, I just don't remember the details.

Another neat effect might be to have an overlay with a 'transparent'
color. So that it might have a solid part and a transparent part. This would
not be any special case as the lookup table will accomodate ***ANY***
function we can dream up. (All problems fall to additional layers of indirection.)
In fact, it could accomodate 'transparent' colores in the graphic rather than
in the overlay. Don't know how that would be any help but clever people
do clever things on occasion.
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Post by cowsmanaut »

well, as I think discussed in that thread.. (too lazy to go back and check on something I'm going to reiterate anyway ;) ) something like a 1 colour overlay that went to levels of influence/translucency is a good way of creating effects like smoother lighting levels and flashes or flares of coloured light. Like a flash of red when hit if, a flare of light when hit with a spell, a flare of orange from the explosion of a fireball.

The only occasions where we would need an image are in things like my underwater example. or the case of thick smoke or mist. stuf like that. and for that I'm not sure a lookuptable would be usefull.. limiting to the original 16 colours would make colour matching nearly impossible. there are 2 blues and a cyan.. 2 greens.. 2 reds.. 3 goldish colours. without dithering badly you would get an ugly result. unless there was in use a series of other unshown colours to the tune of say 256 and they were all varried shades of the orriginal 16.

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Post by Zyx »

Paul Stevens wrote:1) Perhaps it would be possible to add additional spell types (open door???)
Yes, I think the zo spell is the only missile spell lacking.
Paul Stevens wrote:2)Some of these affect a single character, do they not? I guess we need to be more specific.
No, I think these spells affect the whole party. Potions affect a single character. Anyone can confirm/infirm this?
Paul Stevens wrote:4) Flask spells. You can do this already without involving shooters.
Doh! You're right, though the mechanism would be limited by the number of prepared potions already in the tile.
Paul Stevens wrote:As soon as I do something like this you will be wanting to put actuators on such walls and you will expect wall decorations to act in particular ways and you will want the walls to respond to messages by changing to/from solid stone walls, and etc. etc.
Me? :oops:
I'll try to figure in advance what would be required for this kind of wall to be working. I agree the idea is too green yet.


About the dark/light...
There should be at least 2 different "light devices":
*one (or more) that can increase or decrease the light level (like a torch, the 2 light spells, the darkness spell)
*one that can set the "natural light", that is, the minimal level of light (by default: 0, except in the Hall of Champions, where it's 255)
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Post by Zyx »

Zyx wrote:*one that can set the "natural light", that is, the minimal level of light (by default: 0, except in the Hall of Champions, where it's 255)
And maybe it would be possible to design a DSA after that, which would do the following:
set the minimal light level according to the distance between the party and a specific point, as long as the distance is not greater than x.
This would allow to simulate the light given by a window or a torch on a wall. (ok, there would be a problem if several DSA are in the same zone of influence, and yes, I quoted myself!)
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Post by Paul Stevens »

mechanism would be limited by the number of prepared potions already in the tile
Not really. You could use the mechanism from my 'MoneyChanger' example
to create the potions one-at-a-time as needed.
There should be at least 2 different "light devices":
I think these two 'devices' could be easily implemented with the functions
I proposed in the preceeding note about additive/overrides of lighting.
The party's distance from a point could be monitored by a DSA if I
devise a way of implementing a global message that is sent whenever
the party moves or turns or is transported or falls through a pit. Any other?

Cowsmanaut: My suggestion that we might limit the colors to
16 or 256 in number did not mean to imply hat they would be
limited to the same colors as are used in the current game.
At that point in the graphics processing, everything is in 16-bit
format. So the overlay could choose and 16 (or 256) colors
from the 65000 available. Does that make sense? A 256 color
bitmap comes with a palette. The crucial thing for the table lookup
algorithm is that the number of colors be small.

Thinking about this last night while going to sleep.....what we should
do is provide a specially-formated file to contain the bitmap and a
lookup table (and positiong/size information). In that way absolutely
****ANY*** overlay function can be implemented without changing
CSBwin. And we can put multiple overlays in a single file so as to
limit the number of files that need to be lying about. There would be
provision for several 'Standard' functions that would be computed by
CSBwin so that ordinary effects like brightening would not require multiple
tables to be incorprated into the file. But special effects could be created
by including the table explicitly.
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Post by Paul Stevens »

It may be obvious but I would like to point out that this
method of providing a lookup-table will allow a 1-pixel overlay
to specify a new palette. If you dont like the 16 colors that
are used by default, you can choose any 16 colors that you do like.
Maybe turn the grey dungeon into a blue dungeon on level 6.
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Post by cowsmanaut »

well aside from the light or dark bit.. things I was thinking about were like the underwater dungeon..

http://dmweb.free.fr/Stuff/images/underwater.gif

(without that little jump in it that is ;) )

or a flickering torch.. where it alters from dim red to bright orange.

These are effects that can be a sequence of images ( I think I was using 16 colour images) or it could be a flat colour that cycled.. either in colour or tanslucency.

These things would need to be dictated by dungeon zones. So that you could gradually lower the effect as you left an area.. for instance that water caustics could simply mean you are near a pool instead of in one.. and you want it to fade as you walk away from it so little keys on the ground effect it's translucency.

Also sequencial commands need to be made to based off a timer. and the changes defined.. either it's only image and translucency we can control or we can control the colour too. However we need to be able to define these changes in time for each given square.

This is to have the full effect.. however, simplfied non animated effects can be fine as well. As I said.. it depends on how far you would like to go. We'll implment them if you make them.. or we can just as easily do other things that are less involved. :)

I'm well aware this is a lot to work at.. and you're plate is certainly overflowing. So it really comes down to a matter of time and interest. If this really piques yours.. then I'd be more than happy of finding a way to add it into our project. :)

moo
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Post by Paul Stevens »

Well, it does interest me. I think that if we are careful we can make it
easy to implement, low overhead, and flexible enough that you clever
folks will do some amazing things.

I am currently documenting how the light levels, light and dark spells,
and torches work. When I finish that little project I will try to solve
Zyx's problem with the overlays, leaving room for additional flexibility
that you would like to see. Everything you mention seems solvable
using the tools I have already proposed:

1) Overlays with pre-defined functions.
2) Overlays with explicit table-lookups.
3) Functions to specify overlay and parameters.
4) Global messages when party moves/turns.
5) Ability to determine party position.
6 ) Ability to determine current Light Level.

*********************************
I went a little overboard in my enthusiasm, I fear. There are
actually about 100 colors that can be displayed in the viewport.
Because there are 6 palettes, each with 16 colors plus some
special colors. This does not affect the pre-defined overlay
functions whose tables will be built at runtime because there are
only 16 colors that can be shown at any one time. But it does
affect the explicit tables that might be specified in the overlay
file. So I think what I will do is limit the standard overlays to 256
colors and the explicit table-lookup overlays to 16 (maybe 32) colors.
Again, these colors can be selected from a palette of 65000 colors.

P.S. I'm glad you mentioned the overlays in this context as it seems
to me a much better way of handling the light/dark problem with something
that will be useful for other things. Thanks.
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Post by cowsmanaut »

what about the possibility of GIF, colour masked, or image masked images? not really something that is needed 100% but I can think of one instance. Attaching these overlays to monsters.. (way more complicated though I guess) the idea of a gas cloud that surrounds a mosnter.. or say the cloak of darkness chaos wears.. he's wreathed in darkness now but what if it were animated.. wooooo

ok.. getting ahead of myself now ;)
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Post by Paul Stevens »

Have you ever read the story of the Fisherman and his Wife?
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Post by cowsmanaut »

I've read the old man and the sea. I also remember a story about a magical fish granting wishes.. however I'm afraid those are the only two that come to mind.

I'm guessing this is related to fish stories some how.. everytime it's told it gets bigger and more elabourate? Like my requests ;)

moo
Last edited by cowsmanaut on Fri Jul 02, 2004 9:49 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by beowuuf »

No, I think she beat him to death with the fish when he asked for a mask over it, or somehting

If this cloud shooter/generator is implemented, then you could simply have your cloud/cloak effect generated seperately wherever the monster is standing...as long as it's a very short lived effect then it should work, or might be interesting to have a trail of dark/stench following the creature as it moved
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Post by Gambit37 »

LOL. I remember that story. I think paul's point was more to do with 'be happy with what you've requested so far' ie: lets just get some of these things completed and enjoy them before asking for more. ;)
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Post by Paul Stevens »

What is the difference in respect to light emmiting between light- and magic torch- spells? only duration and strenght? is there any more difference possible
OK. Go to dmweb.free.fr and find the Technical Documentation/Miscellaneous/Light Levels.

Any questions? I'm here. Maybe best to start a new thread if there are questions.

Now I am free to fiddle with overlays. There will be no news for quite some time,
I imagine. Lots of dimensions to this problem.
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Post by Zyx »

Thank you for the documentation. There is a typo at the Oh ir Ra line, it should say "9/16144" instead of "59/16144"
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Post by zoom »

good job.
btw,...there is another typo, it should say ful spell instead of ir spell.
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