Dungeon Master Forum

hi everyone !
as you probably noticed some days ago, i was testing some outside dungeon which should work with RTC future versions (i hope so !).. actually it won't compile because of the bitmaps sizes...
it becomes a big project, i eat sandwiches and pizzas every evening, drinking lots of orangina (i don't like pepsi or coke) ! if you think i'm getting crazy, then you're just so right !

finished : exterior wall set, door frames, iron gates, fake exits..
almost done : stairs up (side bitmaps not done yet), interior wall set
to do : stairs down, "balcony" wall set (based on the desert wall set but with a different floor), and... i need help to replace many items because they are only 16 colors and double sized and they don't fit with the rest.

mostly needed : weapons, food, misc objects, some walls decorations
for monsters, i plan to make a few new ones but i don't think there will be a lot...

10 screenshots : feedback appreciated (but i won't change -anything- ) !


01 : near entrance - 02 : behind you, the desert.. (trompe l'oeil, this is a cloned flooritem)


03 : iron gate - 04 : i shouldn't have hacked it... the scorpions are cloned munchers.


05 & 06 : those damned stairs again !


07 & 08 : some dark entrance...


09 : entering... - 10 : "Mon FUL" !

the story should be inspired by my old gamebooks, something between FF14 (Temple of Terror) and Golden Dragon 02 (Temple of Flame)...

Wow! Gorgeous! It gives a great ambiance already, I'm impatient to see your dungeon.

An idea for the stairs (upwards) in the desert: what about a spiral staircase inside a tower?

Only negative thought: The sand mosaic is a little too geometric and repetitive.

Looking really good! Temple of Terror was one of my favourite FF books, and I remember having a very definitive imagination about the ambience it would have -- these shots capture that very well.

I agree with Zyx about the stairs -- looks too contrived. A tower of some sort, or a gatehouse that shows the foot of the stairs spiralling upwards would be better. I'm trying this with my 16 colour graphics for CSBWin -- not as easy as it seems!

The side of the stairs needs some work where it overlays the walls, though I guess you know about that.

With the entrance, I assume that it's a wall decoration? How do you get the player to cross into a new dungeon with new walls? If it's a wall dec, then the player has no tile to step into for an invisible teleporter to do the work...? Oh, I just realised, the decoration must be *just* the dark bit, and it's on a wall behind the door frame, with the teleporter in the door frame?

The only problem with these kinds of 'zone portals' is that if you turn around, you won't see any objects you might have left behind you in the other zone. I guess there's no way around that.

EDIT: Oh, and those rough edges on the smashed gate are a great example of why we want anti-aliasing.... George?

oh my god ! spiral stairs !! of course ! why didn't i think about them before ! so many hours with walls overlays : i had to pencil the walls and stairs.. 3 or 4 times from scratch ! and i'm still not ok with that..
about the sand mosaic, this is only one bitmap.. i can change that easily.

the entrance is a special doorframe : there's an invisible teleporter (party, monsters AND objects) that leads to another level with a different wall set.

Just... wow! Looks really brilliant. And I like the stairs!

lol, i ditto lunever's remarks - every element looks gorgeous and atmospheric, and i like the stairs too! : )

Yeeeaaah! looks kinda cool man! Desert rocks"""^°°^"""
I like the stairs, too.

Ýou wrote:
quote start
and... i need help to replace many items because they are only 16 colors and double sized and they don't fit with the rest.
quote end

hmmm. what size are the new items for Return to Chaos. Please give a sample or explain,maybe in RTC forum. Thanks.

Regards,
Sigi

@zoom : i always have RTCeditor and Photoshop both running.
to get the right size, in the RTCeditor -> add/replace bitmaps, then choose the item to modify : the size is displayed in pixels.
i sometimes press "print screen" and crop the preview image in Photoshop to get a layer i can work with.

EDIT : transparent color is #FF00FF. to prevent from ugly pink edges in the game, select the pink zone with the magic wand (with high tolerance value) and use pen tool (no antialias) to fill the entire zone.

Nice...Hope I can do something as good as that.

Excellent job linflas

bad news ! i lost my txt file... because of a RTCeditor crash when saving...
bitmaps are still here of course, but i must recreate all the cloned objects !!

Add 1 to my graphics/dungeon.dat export feature for RTC. Damn I know how that feels.

well... i crashed 3 or 4 times today : it happens randomly when saving after adding new bitmap or sound. i work with a safe backup i must update every time i add something new.
losing so much time i could use to something more creative...

this is one of the things that makes me not want to complete my set.. it's so much work to add new images and test them out. if that was all made a little easier I would be more inclined to work on them again. However as it is I don't want to hunt line after line of text to find and adjust then wait for RTC to load again and walk to the point I've got it and look at it. shut down go back over line after line and adjust .. etc etc.

kudos to you to have the patience and determination to work so long and hard on it.

moo

well, that's why i ask for some help i've discovered that the biggest work is on wall decoration/flooritems/monsters placement and not on penciling them !

Some kind of visual editor for this would be very welcome -- if I was anywhere near a good programmer, I would attempt it myself.

I see some kind of app (or addon to the editor) that shows you the dungeon view however you specify, and you can simply drag and drop your new bitmaps onto the view and move them around until they look correct -- then it simply updates the TXT file with the relevant coordinates.

Sounds easy, but implementation could be quite hard.

Hmm, nice idea, maybe AndyBoy is watching and may impliment it into his ed.

maybe with a simple schema that explains how the coordinates are set... anyone ?

(not me, i don't understand anything in the coordinates system, depending on the type of item i guess)

Well I did talk to Andy about it and he said he might try that once he was done the editor itself.

so, it would be a while in the comming. I think George would be the best to do it since I knows the format and has all the code for displaying everything already.. just a matter of him finding the time and the inspiration too.

There are a number of other talented folk on here to..who might be able to do it. However again it's a matter of inspiration. Perhaps Unamedbone?

I could perhaps whip something but nothing that showed the dungeon view.. just a search and edit tool. getting the size info from files.. but I dunno that it would be worth my time. I got a lot of other things to do before that.

moo

could someone move the topic into the custom dungeons forum ? i think this is a better place for it.

That looks bloody amazing, excellent work. Is this RTC?

Im watching alright... I have Tomorrow and MOnday off to spend on coding projects. I dare say I might touch on the editor again tomorrow sometime over the weekend although I do have a priority one at the moment.

it's rtc 0.28 : the dungeon doesn't compile but is playable. compilation should be fixed in 0.29 (coming soon i hope !)

SWWEEEEET.. Inspiring work linflas.

oh... and back up your bloody text file

I know this was absolutely years ago (9 to be precise!!!!!), but is there any hope of seeing those broken images again? I remember that it all looked very cool Linflas....

I don't think so, my website was running on a demoscene server at that time but all data has been lost in 2005. I might find some old stuff in very old drives... I'll check that if you want