Dungeon Master Forum

what about faders do they go in groups of four? Rat's go in twos and so must the hounds then too.. uhmm.. beholders? 4 or two? perhaps someone has got a list of these?

hmm nice.. Shoulda thought of that one.. Got the Oitu and the Couatl mixed up.. Are you sure the flying snakes don't go in two's? Rat's as well I was sure those came in two's.. in the fireball section where there are so many of them I had the idea that I eneded up against two at once.. though wouldn't be the first time I was wrong..

moo

Was up till 1am last night repairning the editor with new allowanced for monsters such as rats and worms that go around in two's.

Thank god it was quite an easy adaptation, I have to fix some of the graphics in the tilevault as they are currently small images.

And.. !!! Cowsmanaut. Can you send me an image of the shadow section of a tile, just the top bit where the graphics are different. I can just paste another image over the top of tiles that have a wall above them thus creating the desired shadow effect (and it looks much nicer)

- Create Limbo Items button went in as well last night
- View Limbo Items (on level/ whole dungeon) menu is in there now

so tonight is :-
- Fix the default value entering
and
- Adaptation of the itme list for limbo parameters
- Item Lists Property types next - for items that hold items

Phew.

JFYI Cows...Beholders can fit four on a square, Giant Rats two, Flying Snakes and Giant Spiders only one .

Are gigglers one or can there be more, They are pretty small?

gigglers four, vexirks four, wasps four, ghosts four

'rusters' two, i seem to recall, thoguh you never encounter them liek that naturally...though RTC may be different and have then single-squared...

I cant ever remember encountering more than 1 giggler per square, but it would make sense to have them as a 4.

Just on a completley different subject, George? are you lurking aroun here still? I sent you a PM last week some time, just wondered if you have seen it yet.

If you run CSBwin, load a savegame, and do an ASCII dump
you will get the correct answers directly from the runtime
engine. THe horizontal size is 0, 1, or 2 for 4, 2, or 1 monster
per group. It comes from the graphics,dat file, I believe so
you might want to be sure that the DM and CSB are the same.

You will have to do a bit of translation ...like Hell Hound == Rat.

Cool thanks for that Paul. One of the nicer features of the editor is that to change the object, all I have to do is alter the text file that is associated with it and then copy over a small or large picture. So even if there are errors in the first release, some patches over time will sort out the tile sets and the object text files no problem.

I must admit i havent tried CSBWin yet. I will have a look at it when I get home from work tonight.

Cheers

Updates for tonight
- Add: Added the ItemList Window (although not coded yet)
- Add: Compiled a version history TXT file for reference
- Add: Item List can now display limbo items (F12)
- Add: EnableShadows in the RtcEditor.INI to draw shadows on tiles if available
- Change: Tile0 and Tile1 Images now load from the tileVault rather than be fixed

New screenshot over at

http://www.freewebs.com/andyboy_uk/rtceditor/index.htm

I clicked on that link but it came up with a page saying "Error 404 - Page not found"

fixed it for me and then didn't change it eh Andy? well try it again folks I used the fixed one he sent me.. should work now

Ooh yes, that works now
Looking forward to being able to use it...I've always loved map editors. Not sure if I have a favourite but the one for "Heroes of Might and Magic III" was brilliant

Good News!

To put 2 worms on a square, one faces east and one west. !!

Unless anyone can tell me a way to get 2 worms facing the same way in an RTC text file.

That means... I dont have to change my rotation code (which is a rather complicated mess in the editor code at the moment) - Note for version 0.2 - Update the rotation code to be good!

Not much work recently due to various xmas parties, etc.

My break start in 2 hours (2 weeks off work -- wicked) so some work will happen over the xmas period (borrowing a laptop for the break)

SO, I will be offline for a bit but hopefully back with some good news.



Merry Xmas everyone See you on the other side.
Andy

Dark side of the editor? ;o)

Regards, PitD

Hmm, well I meant other side of the weekend. But I suppose thats pretty close

Only an hour and a half to go, then Im outta here. Yay!

lol, merry christmas and have fun

yes,, merry ho ho!

have a holly jolly christmas.. it's the best time of the year.... (crack)

oh... just cracked my monitor.. I should stop singing..


moo

Any chances on getting an x-mas Chaos picture, cows?

Regards, PitD

Merry Solstice all of you!

Thanks and same to you as well and all the others out there!

Regards, PitD

Editor development will continue tomorrow and up till the end of the weekend (aside from the new year party of course).

See you all soon,

A

Some Progress:

- Fix: Bug where choice from Combo box lists not being selected.
- Fix: Wallset changes for version RTC 0.28 in basedungeon.txt file
- Fix: Bug where rotation being left off of objects being placed
- Add: Dungeon Properties Screen added for informaiton related to dungeon (start point, etc)
- Add: Sanity Checker for object placement (no overlaps, invalid combinations of objects, etc - not finished yet)

- Started: C# program to extract all the objects, properties and optional properties from RTC text files. Will be running this on the DM and CSB.txt files to have a good start point for tidying the objects up

I have discovered that there are optional parameters for certain objects. I.e. doors can have strengths

STRENGTH=(BASH:15,FIRE:1)

So I am going to have to change the object Vault structure to allow for these optional parameters, thats going in tomorrow. Also things like HOLDS for monsters holding Items.

If only a few objects are there but they take advantage of all the different rules for the RTC text file then it will be a case of tidying up and adding objects.

The "sanity checker" as you put it does not sound simple - what are you checking against so far? (What is the definition of invalid you use?)

Regards, PitD

The plan is to check for the following:

- Disallow Identical object in the same place
- Disallow 2 tile objects (worms) to be facing say north and east (overlap)
- Disallow more than the allowed number of monsters on a square (2 mummy and 1 worm OR 4 mummies OR 1 mummy in the middle and nothing else, etc)

More stuff will go in there as time goes on and also I will be cutting it down to a single loop as at the moment there are a couple of passes going on. 1 for the requirement check (i.e. door frame on floor tile, door has to be on a square with a frame, etc)

Lots of fun Anything else anyone says I will put in if it is needed, but it will be something that is added to in later versions.

Progress again.

03/01/2004:
- Add: DELIMITED_INTEGER valuetype for propertyVault (for DOOR_STRENGTH)
- Add: User preference for scroll speed in INI file
- Add: User Preference for positioning of placing tile (UNDER_MOUSE or BELOW_MOUSE)
- Add: User preference for opening properties of placed items when placed
- Add: SelectSquare() function for targets, dungeon start, and others
- Add: Delete Item added to Item List
- Add: Help Panel added for keyboard shortcuts and debug information
- Add: Help Text Added to main editor modes, placing object, selecting tile and item properties
- Add: Fountain and Sconce objects to the objectVault allowing for larger graphics so that the fountain is on the edge of the wall
- Change: Scroll Input check seperated from main input check function.
- Change: Item List Window Re-Written as sub-loop rather than global
- Change: Rewritten object placement as a sub-loop rather than system wide
- Fix: Rotation bug where some SMALL items were being rotated NESW rather than 45
- Fix: Problem with selected Square drawing offset
- Fix: MapDraw() function now draws selected square if in correct editor mode
- Fix: Bug where editor crashed when Mouse over edge of map.
- Fix: Annoying flicker bug when coming out of modal window mode.

Here is a new picture for you all:

{Right click and choose copy shortcut and then paste into a new window to view}
http://www.freewebs.com/andyboy_uk/rtceditor/ed06.jpg
More tomorrow.

Andy, it's looking good so far, but I have a few comments:

1) Having used George's editor a bit, and seen how it handles the user-defined graphics, I think you should seriously consider using simpler graphics for the interface. Cow's graphics are simply too good, and don't look like the default game images. I think that this could cause a lot of confusion for new users who may be expecting to see images that look more like the original game. The fountains for example, look more like statues or something -- I think simple blue semi circles would be more appropriate. Or even do what George has done, and use images straight from the game for the default set, but only use user-defined images if they are specified in the dungeon TXT file.

2) You will still allow the user to do silly things if they want to, even if your editor throws up warnings about it?

Hey gambit.

Luckily I have had this in mind since the first concept. Basically, anyone can create a tile set for my editor and then switch to that. The tiles can be any size you like so long as the small tiles (i.e for a mummy or screamer or key) are a quater of teh size of the big tile.

You just drop them all into a directory under the tileVault folder and then change the name of the tiles being used, the editor does all teh rotating, etc automatically. So there should be no problem there.

And I think you are right, I will have a setting to disable the three checks in the INI file so that power users can do what the hell they like even if it is daft as a hatter. Consider it done

[edit]
Actually, if anyone wants to extract the graphics from the RTC included editor into individual pictures - maybe a tile format (say 32x32 pixels for the large tiles and 16x16 for the small) then I will be happy to include those tiles as a part of the first release as well

If anyone can do this, please email a zip over to me and I will rename them to the correct names for the tileVault.
[/edit]

Cheers for the feedback Gambit.