Agishalmir (under construction) RTC/CSBwin

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 1:54 pm

Its huge project so i search dungeonmakers team to finish it faster. I made many new graphics and mostly i want help about build interesting labirynths. Already progress is probably about 30-40%.

This will be dungeon totally made in Vikings style. Your task is to search "Agishjalmir" Helm of Immortality. During travell you will find many items better and better. Every armors and weapons have 2-3 class, so its olways something interesting behind corner which make motivation to go deeper into labirynth.

Demo: AGIS1v20 (CSBwin)
Demo: AGIS1v25 (RTC)

Agirshjálmur or Ayjershjelmet. Supposedly it is a symbol from the Viking Age, drawn by some Vikings on their forehead before they went to battle to make them unkillable. The name of this symbol is agishjálmr, which when literally translated means "helm of awe" or "helm of terror". It is used in various places in the sagas, where it can have many other meanings, such as "countenance of terror" or "overbearing nature".

Post by **Sophia** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 8:57 pm

Cool, but, if you're starting a new dungeon, why not use RTC?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Fri Aug 04, 2006 9:18 pm

It would be easier to co-ordinate a team effort if you still want to go that route

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 7:50 am

I tryed every editiors and i chose CSBuilder because its quick. Now i got best experience in this program and am not sure about change it. But i may have some questions:
-Do exist option to enter dungeon from RTC editor for testing?
-How made playable module? i dont know how made *.rtc file

About jobs:
Already i got almost every new graphics, dungeon concept and 10 level labirynh sketch. Only i need is some interesting riddles or places. Every member would take 1-3 levels and place here some buttons, pits, teleporters, traps, pads, keys in some combination which made riddle. And some remains of adventurer and scrolls with personal notes. It may be clue for that riddle or just something funny and frighting.

Some examples:
-When you enter room: door close behind you and only exit is trough pit, one remains in upper level and scroll "i fear jump, my friend tell that better is wait here for help" and remains on level down "there is another pit here and i broken my leg" remains in level thrid "i used my clothes like rope but now am naked and something move here"
-Or another option: remains inside pit room, its look like trap without exit. Remains, scrolls and apple "i feel him, he observe me", "he throw me apple but i known its poisoned", "what is that.. laugh? i hear something in upper level"

So it may be easy event but scrolls and remains make cool atmosphere. It will look like many adventurers tryed get artefact and everyone died, so you fear that the same may happend to you behind corner.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 8:09 am

Both questions are answered as one. You compile a dungeon by editing the config file with the line compile<tab>mydungeon.txt. You then run RTC and instead of playing normally it compiles the dungeon, tells you the amount of weird thigns, and critical errors in your dungeon. It will either then compile the .rtc module fine, or it will tell you the dungeon is too messed up, but either way it will then let you play the dungeon to see what is what

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 12:56 pm

Oh, you've again not put a config.txt file in with your package, so it's impossible to move with the usual keys

Trakl · Post by **Trakl** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 1:56 pm

Zed5Duke wrote: So it may be easy event but scrolls and remains make cool atmosphere. It will look like many adventurers tryed get artefact and everyone died, so you fear that the same may happend to you behind corner.

Now that I've intensely worked on things like that with "wall speeches" and complex arrays of triggers, I would like to encourage you to use the rtc editor, simply because it is so well constructed.
If you put some work in it you may get even more atmosphere.

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 2:16 pm

Am not sure about RTC stuff, its too slow for me. Only problem with CSBwin games is to play in windowed mode. It is possibple to turn it into full screen?
Uh and right, i dont used cfg.txt now keys work.

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 3:34 pm

See the confluxIII download for the best example of how to put it into fullscreen mode

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 3:37 pm

And about RTC / CSBwin, you go with what you want, CSBwin is very good - people would have crucified you about six months ago for NOT using CSBwin, pay them no attention

But as a warning, if you want to work on a team dungeon, then RTC is very easy to integrate seperate people's dungeons in parallel, CSBwin is not - either it will be ideas only you incoroprate so immense amount of co-ordination, or you will have to pass around the file from person to person with the associated time delays and missed opportunities in everyone else interested

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 4:41 pm

CSBwin is indeed very good ! But remember about its limitations!Some of them are vary hard to solve:
- bitmaps low resolution limit
- 16 indexed colours limit (theoreticly expandible to much more colours by using two colour changes per level, but it`s a great pain in practical use)
- not so "flexible" engine as RTC, so (as far as I know, I might be wrong!) so some additional features cannot be added to the engine, like a magic map or portrait faces visible from many angles, etc.
- limitation of 23 original monsters (expandible to 3 additional bitmaps each by CGA = over 100 bmps)
- 32x32 tiles per level limitation
- limitation of 15 wall/flor decs per level (again, expandible only by CGA)
- beside, there is a Whack program for generating a wallstes (by Sophia), and drawing wallsets for CSBwin is very hard work

RTC doesn`t have these limitations, but it`s slower in use. But then you could just buy new CPU + memory..
Besides, check out DM2 on newest RTC, it has a lot of additional stuff and possibilities.

I would support you in creating dungeon in CSBwin, I know a bit about using this editor, but right now I`m trying to complete my custom !

zoom · Post by **zoom** » Sat Aug 05, 2006 9:01 pm

Code: Select all

 taken from cows' former post somewhere deep in the galaxy, I mean forum
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  |::'     /. o o \ ::      \88`::::|   "He will join us or die."
  |:;     o|| 8 8 |d.        `8 `:::|
  |:.       - ^ ^ -'           `-`::|
  |::.                          .:::|
  |:::::.....           ::'     ``::|
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  | .. .   ..:   o:8      88o       |
  |. .     :::   8:P     d888. . .  |
  |.   .   :88   88      888'  . .  |
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  |_________________________________|

Zed5(L)uke !

Don't turn to the darkside, may the force be with you

*just kidding ^^
seriously:
it is up to you what editor and programme you want to use;
Personally, I like csbwin for being close to the original.
Rtc is not bad either, and has some nice additions to it.
But obviously, you have already decided .
And you can always change back and forth for new dungeon projects!
I am not yet ready for a teameffort dungeon, I think and maybe there
should be discussed a bit how to coordinate such a task with
csbuild .. DSA can be implemented , but levels cannot be
easily copied and pasted? Maybe one does prison and other
does main level?? I don't know..

So there has to be a way to change level layouts with each other (email?)
and that means maybe scanning a paper version of it..
maybe someone has some ideas how to do such things?

Soph and Beo could be very right about teamdungeons being
much much easier in RTCeditor than csbuild..

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 12:31 pm

I played Angels Egg dungeon under CSBwin and RTC, and its finally convinced me for using RTC (these graphics, sounds, features) So i tryed RTCeditor again. I found its really cool (random dungeons generator) Already i only learn how compile own dungeon and have lot of questions:

-it is possible to extract *.rtc files?
-how add graphics and sounds into *.rtc file?
-its possible to extract RTC graphics using DMExtract?

-did you play Legacy?
http://www.redshift.hu/indexF.asp?body=/News.asp
On site you may find demo working under win32, it have some great dungeons and i wonder about take some graphics into my mod.

And many questions about Angels Egg
-portraits was incredible and i wonder it is possible made hi-resolution graphics also for items?
-how he put so many music into less that 1MB space?

Adamo · Post by **Adamo** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 12:44 pm

remember, that if you already started a dungeon in CSBwin, you can transform it to RTC format using Dmute not to loose your previous work, as it was in Angel`s egg!

Also, with RTC, you can update graphics (make better resolution & more colours)!

George Gilbert · Post by **George Gilbert** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 12:55 pm

Zed5Duke wrote:-it is possible to extract *.rtc files?

No - this is a very deliberate design decision so other people can't "cheat" by looking at maps / solving puzzles just by looking in an editor.

Zed5Duke wrote:-how add graphics and sounds into *.rtc file?

They are automatically compiled into the *.rtc file when you compile the text file. Just add them into the editor and everything will take care of itself.

Zed5Duke wrote:-its possible to extract RTC graphics using DMExtract?

No, but why would you want to do that? If you want to re-use some custom graphics that someone else has used in their dungeon, then just ask them to have the original BMP / PNG file!

Zed5Duke wrote:-portraits was incredible and i wonder it is possible made hi-resolution graphics also for items?

Yes, *ANY* graphics (items, monsters, walls, entrance screen, interface etc etc etc) can be high-resolution and in 32bpp with full alpha channel.

Zed5Duke wrote:-how he put so many music into less that 1MB space?

No idea - you'll have to ask him! He's probably used a compressed format for the source files though (mp3, ogg, mod, midi etc) as RTC can handle all of these (and many more).

Des · Post by **Des** » Sun Aug 06, 2006 8:21 pm

The music snippets in Angel's Egg are 96Kbs Ogg files. Ogg gives better sound per byte than MP3. I made them using Roxio Easy Media Creator that came with my PC. Nero is another popular tool and there are plenty of free ones too like Audacity.

The portraits were very easy to do as they are mostly just photos tweaked in Paint Shop Pro (32-bit png format). Creating potraits in the restricted pallette used by original DM and CSBWin is much more challenging and requires a little bit of artistic talent - something I don't have.

Conflux III demonstrates that CSBWin + ADGE + DSA is still the most powerful Custom Dungeon creation choice, but RTC with all its groovee new facilities now runs it close and is *much* easier to use IMHO.

Post by **linflas** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 10:34 am

Zed5Duke wrote: -did you play Legacy?
http://www.redshift.hu/indexF.asp?body=/News.asp
On site you may find demo working under win32, it have some great dungeons and i wonder about take some graphics into my mod.

wow, impressive stuff there ! time to rip some bitmaps

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 10:57 am

Ok i get some exp in using RTC and finally decided create my new dungeons under it. Its powerfull tool which can change everything and give best dungeon quality.

Already i made my hi-res wallsets using Sophia WHACK (also great tool)

Here is some screen: picture1

I tell later about progress, probably first i will try change every graphics into hi-res stuff

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 4:39 pm

Looks lovely, I hope you follow through because you seem to be an enthusiastic dungeon designer, and of course enthusiastic dungeon designers = dungeons

.

Post by **linflas** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 5:33 pm

nice work but i have a question : do you plan to use hi-res bitmaps for everything in your dungeon ?

Post by **Gambit37** » Tue Aug 08, 2006 6:14 pm

Oooh, nice, looking good, though I'd make the floor darker to match the walls better, or vice versa.

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 2:33 pm

linflas wrote:nice work but i have a question : do you plan to use hi-res bitmaps for everything in your dungeon ?

I will change that many as i can (walls and interface), items are much more problematic.

About progress:
-new floor
-alcoves & few statuets inside hall of champions

screen: picture2

Interface from DM2 but i try change it

Lee · Post by **Lee** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 3:15 pm

Don't like the interface like that, why don't you try making your own? When I was messing around with RTC I just imported the bitmaps to Paint Shop so I had the correct dimensions, and created my own dark purple high res patterned interface. Just a thought!

The rest looks very promising

.

Post by **linflas** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 5:26 pm

Same opinion as Lee, making interface is fast and easy.
And believe me, the hardest work is on items and especially on monsters !

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Tue Aug 15, 2006 8:56 am

I still work on this dungeon. Some about progress:
-Interface; arrows, weapon boxes, spell box. They are simple white-gray.
-Door frame and door (metal grate). It was most hard stuff, the doors are little nonstereotype but i think better from original. I made it from real castle entrance photo.
-Resurect heroes by click on statues instead of portraits, so they look like turn into stone. When you select champion the statue disappear and remain only empty alcove. Its made similar to DM2, button make one picture invisible and second visible.
-Champions Portraits, i search them trough Icewind dale, Baldurs gate and other fantasy.
-Dungeon entrance, made from hi-res art picture of dark castle. Its similar to DM2 entrance but 3x better.

Hall of Champions its almost complete, now i try put some hi-res beasts. Probably i will take concept art pictures from some game. I seen few great but only front view. Items can be taken from Rage of mages (probably best items in CRPG ever) Already file weight over 2MB but its worth for that quality.

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Wed Aug 16, 2006 10:45 pm

RTC VERSION DEMO1 RELASED
Download: AGIS1v25

Its only shown some new hi-res graphics. Seem like nobody used before full RTC possibilities, i will try to made that. Dont expect too much from this dungeon, its only hall of champions and small room behind. To resurect heroes click on statues. Its brand new idea, they look like turn into stone.

Champions: some iron toys, Interface: "Realms of Arkania" (ofcourse modified little), Items: "Rage of mages". Wall, floor texture and door frames: real photos. Intro: "Dark Castle" art mexed with DM2 graph.

Still i need team of dungeon makers to finish it. Anyone interested?

beowuuf · Post by **beowuuf** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 12:02 am

Quickly looked at it, the interface seems fine with the stark contrast, the inventory looks nice, but of course both those suffer from having the basic elements (symbol fonts, or simple low res parts) still in. Similarly the opening screen shouldn't use the DM2 signpost either, as again the low res and high res doesn't work well

I think that is the key to why you don't see high res dungeons yet. Look at Gambit, off and on he hasbeen doing a high res DM dungeon for a while, and to take every item, interface element and dungeon elemt takes quite a while, and they then have to blend together. Linflas seems to be doing nice work in this regards.

The walls look good, as do the doors...the 'statues' need to be taken down a notch though, they look too photorealistic compared to the walls, so stand out. If you can blend them in they would look very nice.

Anywya, good luck with the big task of graphics!

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 9:29 am

Thats the problem, when you change one part, you need also change every other stuff to fit them all together. But when you try made it perfect this will take incredible amount of time, so it must be wide toleration limits. I think my new graph dont hurt eyes much and are ok.

Post by **linflas** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 11:02 am

hehe well, that's an excellent start ! welcome to the crazy Hi-Res makers band

btw, how did you make the door open down instead of up ?

Zed5Duke · Post by **Zed5Duke** » Thu Aug 17, 2006 2:23 pm

When create new door you can set its options about how open. There is many possibilities and some less popular like open down. I used it because shape of door frame.
BTW can you tell me some about your hi-res projects, progress?