Dungeon Master Forum

I think there is a bug in CSbuild: when you edit a text item defining a champion in the Hall of Champions, you can click the "Edit Portrait" button to see the skill points in "associated skills":

The drop down lists contain 18 values 0, 250, 500, 1000, 2000, 4000, etc...
However, I believe value 250 should be removed from this list. The shown values are thus incorrect. For example on the screenshot above, the values should be 1000, 1000, 500, 1000.

I have confirmed this by checking the values in the original MINI.DAT from CSB for Atari ST (the Halk Gonzo Barbarian champion) and compared with the skill levels displayed in-game. They do correspond to the table available here: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/691#toc8

Moreover, in the CSBwin source code, the "DetermineMastery" function does use "500" as the basic skill level unit, not 250.

Note that the same bug is present in DMute.

It's not a bug, it's a feature! A starting character with 250 experience points will reach neophyte sooner, and that is noticeable in the first minutes of play. Of course, one should be able to enter any value, but 250 was quite handy, at least for me.

The problem is that the champion text string does not contain a number of experience points (in which case you could specify any value) but it contains the initial skill level (values between 0 and 15 only). You can check in the dungeon.dat specs: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/217#toc31 .
The bug is only a display bug in CSBuild: If you select the Nth entry in the list, the skill level will be set to N. The first entry (index = 0) is skill level 0 ==> 0 XP. The second entry is indeed skill level = 1, but the real corresponding amount of XP is not 250, it is 500. I think it would be clearer if the list showed the skill level names and numbers instead of the corresponding XP points, as this would show what is really stored in the string and not an interpreted value of XP point that makes users think they should be allowed to enter any XP value.

Skill level names and numbers?

0 aaaaa
1 bbbbb
2 ccccc
.....

What should the entries be?

The skill level names and numbers can be found here: http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/691#toc8

See if you like
http://dianneandpaul.net/CSBwin/CSBuild321.7z

better

Many thanks for your quick feedback and fix. Great support as usual!