Dungeon Master Forum

Hey, I'm organizing a party and prepared a room for you. Come on, join us! Let's be friends.

I would gladly join that party if it were not for that scary-looking portrait... Maybe I can get away with some more playtesting...

Omg you added a pic of Mophus to my pic...omg you truly ARE insane! Omg this is terrifyfing...omg I died about 50 times in Conflux II...omg omg omg

*runs*

This ia the funniest thing I have seen in a while...

Conflux III: Let's all be friends

When will this be out then?

When lazy people have finished playtesting it and industrious people have finished putting the final touches to it I reckon : )

Yes, I am very lazy and a lousy playtester, sorry about that... But still, everybody should be looking forward to this, as it is extremely good.

Especially if you haven't seen it since version j or earlier - I should be jaded because I've seen interrum versions, and I still get blown away by new additions

But I beg for delays. There is so much new and
little-tested code in the thing. It will need many, many
hours of playtesting after it settles down to its final
form. And it has not settled yet.

Anyone playtesting ConfluxIII----PLEASE turn on the
timer trace and recording so that bugs have a chance of
being reproducible and repairable. And Zyx should probably
have you use the MOST recent runtine. I will post them
if he tells me what he wants you to use. He may even want
playtesters to use the Debug version because it contains a
lot more trace of the DSA and Custom-Graphics code.

haha, im going to be in the party, and im gonna enjoy it ;)

*gets a red tint her eyes and laughs quietly, looking like shes going insane*

well, yes, I'll give a debug version to the playtesters.

Well Zyx, if you'll have me again I'll gladly playtest.

Regards, PITD

oh wow you're back! I'm very happy to see you again among us.
I'll gladly take you as a playtester

He lives! Hi there PitD : ) Back in time for the Christmas thread...

Thanks for the enthusiasm I'll try to put the energy into the new dungeon ;o) I have to warn you though - since my apartment was burgled and taken apart yesterday at the moment I have no computer, so please be patient. I hope to take care of that problem until X-Mas at the latest. Please sned me what I need (inlcuding possible tricky things to watch - with Paul Stevens involved there sure will be some). Email adress is available from the memberlists and still valid.

Oh and btw I hope I sent you the review for Conflux II and did not forget - because now it''s too late and you'd need to ask the burglars... but if not I'll recap in time and re-write it.

Cheers, PITD

Oh no!

Well, despite the bad circumstances, it is nice to see you about once again.

I myself came back after a long disappearance not too long ago, actually. DM always sort of sucks you back in, doesn't it? That has to be part of its long-term appeal!

Oooooh PitD returns :O. Omg wb not seen you for a couple of years or something .

Ah, he returns!

You must have that wolf running through the snow, pulling a sleigh whilst wearing a silly hat!

The buglary things sounds crap - especially at this time of year. Hope you manage to get everything sorted out ok!

Paul Stevens wrote:But I beg for delays. There is so much new and
little-tested code in the thing.

What's all this about code? Is this an integration of a custom dungeon with WinCSB or something? Or did ConfluxII have custom code as well? I thought he managed to do all that with just Dmute or CSBuild or whatever.

Paul and Zyx are in secret collaboration to take over the world and make everyone eat jaffa cakes.

CSBWin has evolved very much due to these two, with lots of additions that have made Conflux possible. Hard for the layman to understand maybe, but they have put an extraordinary amount of time into it.

Basically the engine gets expanded with new things when Paul knows that dungeon makers will actually use them, not just ask for something nice sounding. Zyx has asked for a few things, and got them, and used them and bugtested them, and now we all get alot of cool stuff to play around with that works well - filters, DSA commands, etc. All of which can be seen in obvious and not obvious ways in Conflux

Well thanks for all the nice wishes and warm welcome - and yes Sophia, DM DOES always suck you back - although it was never gone, I just needed a break. But then curiosity took over what developments had been made and... well, here I am.

Yaaay! Welcome back PitD! I remember several discussions in Flashchat wondering where you have gone. People here really missed you, it's great to see you are back!

beowuuf wrote:Basically the engine gets expanded with new things when Paul knows that dungeon makers will actually use them, not just ask for something nice sounding. Zyx has asked for a few things, and got them, and used them and bugtested them, and now we all get alot of cool stuff to play around with that works well - filters, DSA commands, etc. All of which can be seen in obvious and not obvious ways in Conflux

Well that's pretty cool. Maybe I can help? I have a computer science degree but I'm a contracting officer so am usually looking for fun opportunities to maintain the former skills.

Paul doens't do joint things much, but if there are any sub-programs like charatcer editors etc then paul is willing to share data for import/export

Indeed. Joint efforts require a lot of
coordination and can only work well
over a long term and when two minds
think alike. We almost tried this when
CSBuild and DMBuild were getting started.
Fortunately, I declared my philosophies
and we came to a mutual agreement
that we were going to approach things
too differently to get along well.

BUT....something like the character editor
is fair game because we can divorce
the two efforts. CSBuild can export the
character data, it can be edited in any way
you please because I won't see it, and then
CSBuild can import the result.

That is also why we have not gotten into any
trouble with the various graphics editors.
Those editors are pretty much orthogonal
to CSBuild. We meet at a well-defined point.

Paul Stevens wrote: BUT....something like the character editor
is fair game because we can divorce the two efforts

Okay well if you send me the relevant code I'll tinker with it. I guess there's not much to do there, just some file work and a paintpixel function, and fix up the name-changing and maybe a couple other small things?

send me the relevant code I'll tinker with it

I think you have pin-pointed the problem.
The reason there is no character editor is that
there is no code. To send or to tinker.

there's not much to do there

I cannot answer this. I don't want the character editor.
Everyone else seems to want it, however. Perhaps
they will pipe in and say how much they want done.

Here was my plan. People want to edit the
characters in a saved game. So they would load
the game in CSBuild. CSBuild would export the
character data to 'Character.dat'. Your editor would
manipulate that file. Then CSBuild would import
the edited file and write a new saved game. Voila.
Quod erat faciendum.

The data for each character occupies 800 bytes
and includes all the attributes, experience, skills,
portrait, etc. So the exported file would contain
3200 bytes of data for the four characters in a
saved game. The format of the structures is
specified by a 'struct' in the source for CSBwin.
Also, I expect that dmweb.free.fr contains a complete
description of this structure, but I don't know that
for a fact.

Paul Stevens wrote: I think you have pin-pointed the problem.
The reason there is no character editor is that
there is no code. To send or to tinker.

If there is no code then how come CSBWin doesn't crash when you click 'utility'?

[edit]

Paul Stevens wrote: People want to edit the
characters in a saved game. So they would load
the game in CSBuild. CSBuild would export the
character data to 'Character.dat'.

Oh okay I misinterpreted your need. I thought you wanted to just implement the classic CSB character editor. Sounds like what you mean is a full-fledged character editor for people who want to cheat?

[edit again]

If that's the case, I'd still want to do it, cuz it would tell me everything I ever wanted to know about dm characters... twould be fun

[and again]

Paul Stevens wrote:The format of the structures is
specified by a 'struct' in the source for CSBwin.

Where do I get that?