Custom graphics for CSB Win available

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 1:25 pm

I was working on some custom graphics for a CSBWin adventure, but I need to be realistic about the time I have available. I'm working on so many different projects that I am going to completely stop on some of them, and this is one that I have chosen. I don't have the time to do a good job of it.

I've made some new walls, wall items and converted a lot of creatures from other games (EOB etc) to the DM palette.

I also created a completely new set of runes and a magic system.

Would any of this stuff be useful to anyone? It would be a shame to let it go to waste.

Post by **Zyx** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 4:43 pm

What a shame, I was eagerly waiting to see your work!
Of course I'm very interested! But I'd rather see another dungeon designer take the challenge, I'm busy with too many projects.

Post by **PaulH** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 9:10 pm

Gambit: I would be very interested. I have created a fairly new graphics.dat for my new dungeon, and as you know wall graphics are hard to do. I would love to have a look at your work and would be grateful if you could email me the file. I am sure you are a better artist than me and that I could put your time to good use.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 9:27 pm

It's incomplete -- I never got around to doing doorframes, floor or ceiling or stairs. But some stuff is usable, and there are lot of things grabbed from DM2 for example.

The only tricky thing is that I have already massively hex edited 0558.dat for all these items and anyone taking my file would either have to use the graphics.dat as is, or do all that hex work again themselves. None of what I did is documented...

I would be happy provide whatever assets you want. Here's a taster image:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matt_hill/ ... creens.gif

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 9:28 pm

BTW, if you have Photoshop, I can provide you with all the PSDs.

Post by **PaulH** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 9:31 pm

Wow! That looks fantastic! Yes I have photoshop, but not very good with it.

I will expand the graphics.dat and look at each bitmap individually, size etc and can then patch my own stuff into yours or vice versa.

My email is: Supersonic525@aol.com

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:32 pm

I can probably give the images un-graphics-datted (?!) if that's better? You can see the palettes used on creatures for example, which should give you ideas of how to use multiple coloured images in the same dungeon. You know about colour priorities right?

I did a lot of work on setting all the customisable wall items hex values for scalings too -- that's something to bear in mind.

Just saw that post by Rain about ADGE -- that would help things a lot, so maybe this is good timing for you!

Anyway, I'll put together a zip of stuff which should give you some ideas of how I went about things.

Post by **PaulH** » Thu Feb 17, 2005 10:45 pm

Great stuff, you're a gentleman.

It looks like there is going to be some real good stuff out soon for DM with all this new material available. Just have to tear myself away from Bane of the Cosmic Forge

Hehe, I was pretty chuffed to have the EOB gargoyle transferred to DM - yours looks better! If you have increased the graphic sizes of the monsters that would give me a lot more flexibility. I am unsure how to hex edit the values to alter this, but by just comparing your graphics.dat to mine should tell me where everyting fits and I may just use your expanded values, if that makes sense. I am getting to know these graphics quite well!

Agiain, thanks

Post by **Gambit37** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 1:11 am

Offsets for monster gfx sizes are all specified in Charlatan's notes -- you know about that right?

Anyway, if ADGE come sout soon, you might not need to worry about that if it provides an interface to all those values. The fact that a tool might soon be available to make this easier actually makes me think I'd quite like to hold on to this stuff.... hmm, dilemma now.....

Post by **PaulH** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 8:08 pm

Can I just have the wall set then? Pretty please?! You saw my efforts...

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Jul 06, 2005 3:18 pm

I've spent a bit more time messing a round with CSBWin graphics over the last few months but I'm not getting anywhere coherent with it. I would rather develop stuff for RTC to be honest.

So I'm going to make all my stuff available to whoever wants it. It'll be in an utter mess and I won't offer any support on it, other than the odd question through this thread.

I'm off to Spain for a week at the weekend. I'll sort out a download on my return.

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 5:19 pm

As promised, here's the RAR file with all my stuff in:

http://resonantedge.com/downloads/CSBWinGFX.rar

There's a very brief start to a dungeon with some test graphics in it using an older version of CSB Win and CS Build. These files should be playable straightaway if you extract the RAR as it stands.

The graphics.dat was heavily hacked by hand -- hex editing structure 0558. This was all done before ADGE was available. I didn't document anything. It's a mess. Wall decorations in particular were masisvely hacked to enable full wall tiles. There's a custom entrance and title graphic and file dialogue. Lots of other things I was going to change I never got around to.

There's a ton of customised creatures from other games plus some of my new wall graphics and stuff. These are all in Photoshop format. Won't be much good to you if you don't have Photoshop.

Anyway, that's all the pointers you'll get. If you use any of the stuff I dveleoped in one of your projects, please give me a little thumbs up in your docs. Ta.

Have fun!

PS: I'll be deleting the file again in a month to conserve bandwidth -- grab it while you can!

Post by **PaulH** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 5:44 pm

Thanks Gambit!

Got a few error mesages downloading: 'unexpected end of file format' and then two more uncompressing. Not sure if I have got the lot. Cut out after 5megs of a 22mb (?) file.

But what I have seen, amazing! Some great EOB converts there, and some things I have never seen before. Look at the size of that dragon! I shall certainly use some of this: I can now spend my time designing the rest of my dungeons rather than my endless quest trying to draw. And of course, full credit to the things I use.

Thanks again

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 5:52 pm

Weird. I just did a test download and got thew whole file with no problems...

Some of the creatures were too big to work properly in the dungeon -- be careful of that....!

Note that some test stuff ended up in some of the walls PSDs but has been obscured by other layers. remember to turn layers on and off to see what goodies might be in there...

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 6:30 pm

hmm you threw *Everything* in there including all the avatars for this site, and the few images I gave you as well. Not that I care at all.. but just wondering if you intended that. Might save some bandwidth if you don't think they need to be in there.

looked through it all and some really cool stuff in there.. nice job pulling it all together.. lots of good references in there for other things too.

moo

Post by **Gambit37** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 6:59 pm

Ooops, sorry, I'll clean that up! I didn't look in detail at what was there.

Off out now to a stag party: such cleaning may not occur for several days...

Post by **Zyx** » Sat Aug 06, 2005 7:26 pm

Brilliant work! So many graphics in there... Your project was very ambitious, it's a shame you're stopping it. Ah well, this will give you time to finish the maps, eh?

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 2:20 am

Exactly!

And yes, it's 1:20 am and I am home and sober. A very dull stag party indeed!

Post by **cowsmanaut** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 9:06 am

meh, no problem to me.. they have access to the images as it is already in other sources, so it was really your bandwidth I was concerned about.. if you don't care.. then just keep it as is

moo

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Sun Aug 07, 2005 12:16 pm

Would any of this stuff be useful to anyone?

big thanx for great stuff Gambit! of course it would be VERY usefull for all, I was searching for some of these graphics for months!

Post by **PaulH** » Mon Aug 08, 2005 1:25 pm

Just can't get it to download fully. Weird, it just bugs out after a few meg.

Polaris · Post by **Polaris** » Tue Aug 09, 2005 11:37 pm

Hello there!
Great work!

I have test and look all of that stuff and must say it's great.
So i permited myself to mirror all the stuff and that way to let it online.
here's the link:CSBWinGFX.rar
BTW i have some free web space for hosting so if the community need i can store some things if useful and needed,so just ask.

And i have a question:

Once you have extracted all the graphics from the graphics.dat how do you master to put them again (after modifications) in the graphics.dat?
(i can't use ADGE since the memory bug that is related in this forum)

thanks and see you.

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Aug 10, 2005 10:31 am

I originally used DMExtract, the first program written by `rain -- who later wrote ADGE.

DMextract will extract all the data to a folder -- you then make the changes you want, overwrite the files you want to modify, such as monster graphics, then use DMextract again to rebuild the graphics.dat. You can get it from the temporary links page I made for all of rain's tools:

http://www.resonantedge.com/downloads/rain/

You must be careful using it, as the structures such as 0558-0562 were heavily Hex edited in my graphics.dat. If you inadvertently overwrite the edited one with a good one for example, you'll lose all that work.

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 8:58 pm

Anyone done anything interesting with any of my stuff?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 10:51 pm

I've set aside a few of the graphics, but nothign I can yet use (love the full wall features alot liek the bookcase, winecase, fountain, table recess, etc). Grabbed the occasional object (like the book , added a floor view to it myself )

sucinum · Post by **sucinum** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 11:03 pm

hmmmm...
didn't know of this, maybe i can use 1 or 2 for the game

Post by **PaulH** » Wed Oct 05, 2005 11:09 pm

Hi Gambit,

Yes I released a test version of a few levels of my new Dungeon to Trantor using your wallsets and some monsters (to Trantor and Ameena) and the feedback was promising.

Post by **Zyx** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 2:04 am

I plan to implement some wall sets for CSBwin with your graphics. I didn't started yet.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 10:38 am

Actually, Beo, I think the book you speak of was originally from Conflux 2 -- there was such a mess of stuff in there I honestly can't remember!

As for wall sets, you'll all know by now that I never completed a full set. But what's there shouldn't need too much extra stuff added -- just the very furthest side views, pits and stairs (or the stairwell effect that I was going for with those archways but never finished).

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Thu Oct 06, 2005 2:39 pm

Lol, wasn't sure who took from who! Can adge resize graphics yet? A few of your full wall images are great, but I have no way to use them in a normal graphics.dat