Couple of quick questions

[Automaton]

Hilo,

I've been getting into DSB a bit and done some "stuff". I've read through most of the docs and a lot of threads, but I'm still scratching my head on a few things.

1. For the ambient sound generators, can you set the volume?
2. For the ambient sound generators, can you turn them on without a trigger? i.e. always on?
3. Will DSB freak out If I use hundreds of them?
4. Can I make doors play a different sound if you hit them? I can see another snd attached to magic and ra doors, but it seems to do nothing.
5. Can I make doors opening and closing turn on and off ambient sound generators?

Cheers

Nick K.

[Sophia]

1. No. Usually the volume is based on position in the dungeon.

2. If no_loop is true then the sound will play once, but that means looping is the default behavior. Is this what you mean by always on?

3. You can have hundreds of them but it's not a good idea to have hundreds of them active. You probably want to activate the sound generator when the party gets close and deactivate it when they're far away.

4. Set bash_sound in the door's archetype to whatever you want it to be.

5. You can make whatever triggered the door also trigger the ambient sound generator. This includes the door's button itself, as this is a full-fledged trigger in DSB (unlike in DM)

[kaypy]

1. Would it be sufficient for your purposes to make a couple of copies of the original sound file at different volumes and swap them in as appropriate?

[terkio]

Duplicating the sound file for each and every sound volume is about the worst solution one can imagine.
In DM, and DSB I presume, the sound volume is based on distance. That is not so good when there are walls and closed doors in between.
To take care of this, a dungeon designer could use a set ( hopefully small ) of several files and turn sound on and off depending of the party location relative to the sound source.
A nice effect would be, higher volume sound when opening a door, or reaching a corridor turn.

[Sophia]

DSB formerly did not account for walls but current versions do take walls into account as well when determining the sound volume.

[Automaton]

I am normally very specific, but it wears off in the early hours of the morning. Some of my questions answered, but I'll go back to what I was trying to convey in post 1.

1. I know the ambient sound generators use 3dsound. What I meant was the initial level. Not meant as a complaint, but sometimes with ESB I have to go hunting in the editor lua, the test dungeons and the base code to try to work out what parameters I can use on different dungeon things. I was guessing as with most sound type objects in any game, there may have been a "vol" pararm on ambient sounds, so "vol=50"for example would set the max volume to 50%. Yes, as a composer and sound engineer, I can quite easily make different volume samples, I am just used to normalising my sounds to 0db and using soft to limit the max vol.

2. What I meant was, ambient sounds are by default off and need to be triggered on. Given the next answers though, I would image that having 100s of ambient sound generators on by default would be bad.

Here is what I an getting at - my Ra doors, water fountains and other dungeon items always have ambient sounds. At the moment, the only way I see of doing this (maybe because my lua sucks) is to place all my ambient sounds manually, trigger them when a player enters the level and deactivate them when leaving the level. What would be way more convenient is to have the ambient sound in the item when placed. But then issues with many ambient sounds being on may happen. (does DSB turn things on and off automatically to save compute time when you enter/leave a level?)

3. Understood Sophia.

4. OK, I see. I've just done 30 mins of experimenting and this is what I have to say:

Not sure why the Ra door and magic door contain "snd.thud", I thought it was a default anyhow.

snd.bash works fine. checked off my list.

Checked for all other params (again, I've looked through the forum and docs, but find no exhaustive list of available params, eventually I combed over the door message handlers and found:

open_sound
close_sound
thud_sound
move_sound
reverse_sound
bash_sound

open_sound crashed the game, but a quick look at why bash worked and this didn't was a missing variable in the message handler (you are missing [id] 's in your open and close calls to local_sound Sophia)

Very cool though - my custom door sounds are coming along!

5. Groovy! I see and works fine.

What am I up to?

Well, I think DSB is fantastic (have a huge pat on the back Sophia) and has huge potential. I've looked and learned from the examples in test dungeon, and at Mon Ful Ir's assets and what I want to do is a remastered version of the original DM. Full of jolly graphics, amazing sound and a lot more monsters and items to boot and some fresh mechanics

What am I working on?

Luckily as a composer, I have a huge sample library and I'm currently trying to match new sounds to things (like all the door sounds for example), working on ambient sounds for certain dungeon things and putting together global ambient tracks per level.

I am working on methods to get graphics from mon ful irs library and the original DM library properly upscaled (I spent 2 hrs just looking at the best upscaling algorithms in PS and gimp!), textured and shaded, so I can preserve the DM feel. Whats important to me is keeping a theme, you know, making it better but not stupidly slapping photorealistic textures onto a cube and calling it a wall. Making it all look integrated and "of the same world"






Main goals
-Original DM remastered
-Updated graphics
-15 wallsets
-50-100 monster types
-50-100 new things (new balanced weapons and armour)
-Ambient sound tracks per level
-Ambient sounds for common dungeon items that benefit from them.
-Level themes and motifs
-New mechanics in original DM (like the no spell zones that are possible, new monster attacks like paralysis etc)
-New concept items (The original had the chest, DM2 the moneybox, MONFULIRs lib the sack and I've had this nag to make a "keyring"container for some time that can take many keys and be attached to your belt)
-New boss level mobs you are meant to avoid to start with (If I get there, expect to see a Lich wandering the ghost level and an animated armour champion down on 11)

Cheers!
Nick

P.S. I will need beta testers later down the line if anyone wants to volunteer.

[Sophia]

Not meant as a complaint, but sometimes with ESB I have to go hunting in the editor lua, the test dungeons and the base code to try to work out what parameters I can use on different dungeon things. I was guessing as with most sound type objects in any game, there may have been a "vol" pararm on ambient sounds, so "vol=50"for example would set the max volume to 50%. Yes, as a composer and sound engineer, I can quite easily make different volume samples, I am just used to normalising my sounds to 0db and using soft to limit the max vol.

There is a dsb_set_soundvol command but at the moment it is not integrated with the ambient sound object... mostly because nobody has asked for it so far. DSB is a one-person project that I work on when I have time, so the amount of features that I can actually focus my attention on developing is quite limited, and this means that some systems that haven't received as much attention can be quite primitive. This also means the documentation isn't the best either. However, the documentation is on a wiki, so you're welcome to add to the available documentation.

If you want to add a vol exvar to ambient sounds, completely replace the amb_startsound function in base/msg_handlers.lua with the following code. (This change will also be in DSB 0.78+, but I figure you might want to play with it sooner)

Code: Select all

function amb_startsound(id)
	if (not exvar[id]) then return end
	if (exvar[id].sound and not exvar[id].sound_id) then
	    local lev, x, y = dsb_get_coords(id)
	    local loop = true
	    if (exvar[id].no_loop) then loop = false end
	    
		if (exvar[id].global) then
	    	exvar[id].sound_id = dsb_sound(snd[exvar[id].sound], loop)
	    else
			exvar[id].sound_id = dsb_3dsound(snd[exvar[id].sound], lev, x, y, loop)
		end
		
		if (exvar[id].vol) then
			dsb_set_soundvol(exvar[id].sound_id, exvar[id].vol)
		end
		
		if (loop == false) then
		    exvar[id].sound_id = nil
		end
	end
	
	if (exvar[id].music) then
	    if (dsb_music(QUERY) ~= exvar[id].music) then
		    local loop = true
		    if (exvar[id].no_loop) then loop = false end
			dsb_music(exvar[id].music, loop)
		end
	end
end

At the moment, the only way I see of doing this (maybe because my lua sucks) is to place all my ambient sounds manually, trigger them when a player enters the level and deactivate them when leaving the level. What would be way more convenient is to have the ambient sound in the item when placed. But then issues with many ambient sounds being on may happen. (does DSB turn things on and off automatically to save compute time when you enter/leave a level?)

Right, this would be entirely too tedious-- you would probably want some sort of ambient sound controller that you implemented in Lua that used calls to local_sound at your objects in order to make the necessary sounds. DSB does not turn 3d sounds on and off automatically, so this would also be a good thing to include in the sound controller code.

you are missing [id] 's in your open and close calls to local_sound Sophia

Bug fixed!

Original DM remastered

Ambitious!

What are you using as a base DM dungeon? There have been a couple of conversions floating around, and not all of them are very good. The best one is probably the automatic conversion generated by the CSB conversion script (version 1.61 is the newest, I believe), but that also does things in some rather "un-DSB-like" ways in order to maintain compatibility with DM.

[Gambit37]

I've used some simple lua to activate/deactivate looping background ambience on entering/leaving a level. It's pretty straightforward.

Good luck with your DM remaster too! I started a similar thing but don't have any time to work on it currently, so you'll probably be finished before me. I posted a little teaser about it the other day: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=31351 My version stays in lo-res pixel style, so it'll be interesting to compare the two one day....!

[Automaton]

Thanks!

I am using dsb_dm.zip as a base. I'm doing a couple of play throughs to make sure the mechanics are intact - so far so good.

@Gambit37 Indeed. You are an inspiration. I have already found your ambient sound track code and am already using it I took a look at your re-imagining, very nice. I like the screamer look, I like the UI look, but not so much a fan of the floor and ceiling. Believe me, I've designed and done exactly the same thing as you.. .. and then junked them. The randomness of the cobblestones in original DM works fairly well when flipped for the illusion of moving, as soon as you get more linear tiles, blocks, paving slabs etc. it becomes unnatural IMHO.

I think you think like me. I totally agree, it's easy to mess this kind of thing up. I was grabbing textures off the webs and mucking around, but as soon as you start using warps, perspective changes and the like, everything gets an unhealthy dose of "gaussian blur" and looks decidedly un-DMish. I've been creating my own methods to stop this horrible smearing appearing in my GFX. I must have done and redone just the dungeon graphic for cheese at least 10 times, never quite happy with it.

DM is and was such an awesome game, hopefully I can stick with what I am doing and create my own homage!







Cheers!
Nick K

[Automaton]

Oh and Sophia, I have a very analytical and dry way of reporting bugs, errors, missing things which can easily be construed as arrogant or belittling.

Nothing is further from the truth, I have a great deal of respect for what you and Paul S have done and I admire what you have both achieved. Please excuse me if my dry nature comes across too strongly.

Nick K.

P.S. I have looked at the wiki - would you like me to update it when I think it's warranted?

[kaypy]

Duplicating the sound file for each and every sound volume is about the worst solution one can imagine.
In DM, and DSB I presume, the sound volume is based on distance.

Distance at least is handled automatically so I was assuming only a few variations would be needed. So not a great solution, but viable in the absence of an actual volume control.

I've had this nag to make a "keyring"container for some time that can take many keys and be attached to your belt

Are you after special behaviour, or just a container that takes keys? I have something like the latter set up if it hasn't fallen off the web again.

[Automaton]

That looks fab kaypy!

[kaypy]

Its one of the libraries with Probably Solvable

[Gambit37]

@Gambit37 Indeed. You are an inspiration.

Wow, thanks!

I have already found your ambient sound track code and am already using it

Weird, I don't remember ever releasing that!?

I took a look at your re-imagining, very nice. I like the screamer look, I like the UI look, but not so much a fan of the floor and ceiling. Believe me, I've designed and done exactly the same thing as you.. .. and then junked them. The randomness of the cobblestones in original DM works fairly well when flipped for the illusion of moving, as soon as you get more linear tiles, blocks, paving slabs etc. it becomes unnatural IMHO.

I did a lot of experiments with the floor and yes, you have a point, but this one seems to work OK during gameplay. It's certainly true that the reason the original floor is random is due to the mirroring issue, but also how items look when they sit on far way tiles -- they seem to 'move' slightly but that's a positioning behaviour that I have no control over. I may still revisit this floor, but I'm OK with it for now.

DM is and was such an awesome game, hopefully I can stick with what I am doing and create my own homage!

Yep, looks like you're well on the way, good luck!

[Sophia]

I am using dsb_dm.zip as a base. I'm doing a couple of play throughs to make sure the mechanics are intact - so far so good.

From just the filename I can't tell what that is.

There is a conversion of RTC DM floating around, but it's not the most accurate, and I wouldn't recommend using it as a base for your own work. You're probably better off using the automatic conversion of FTL DM to DSB, which I believe is the version that Gambit was using in his own conversion.

The easiest way to tell is to open startup.lua; if it is a conversion script, then you have an automatic conversion. If it's something else, then you have... something else.

You can also make your own conversion, of course, if you have a version of CSBwin that makes ASCII dumps in Lua. I can give you more detailed instructions if you want to do this.

[Automaton]

OK, thanks for the info Sophia.

I was just going on what I grabbed off the one shared drive. I have found the other versions there too. Checking how good they are.

Been quiet as busy designing GFX and SFX. Its moving along.

But I ran across something and I just wanted to know if it is expected behaviour. I've been replacing a crap ton of stuff and currently working on GFX and SFX for potions. However, when I replaced the dungeon graphics in my own objects file, the potions started crashing the game. After a bit of trial and error, I found that unless I duplicate the effect functions of the potions they will crash the game. I kinda thought that maybe the function was intact and I was just altering properties but it seems like if I re-create a potion object, I must reattach the function to it?

Or am I doing it wrong, should I be altering objects in a way I don't know? i.e. adding or changing properties of an already existing item?

Thanks.
Nick K.

[Sophia]

You're probably doing it wrong, but without any code I can't tell you what you've done wrong.

If you just want to replace graphics, you should probably use graphics.cfg, which is admittedly poorly documented, but the purpose of it is to define associations between DSB's upper case symbolic file names and actual file names on the disk.

Information is here: viewtopic.php?p=156460#p156460

[Automaton]

You're probably doing it wrong

Ha ha ha ha ha hah

OK, I don't think you need the code as it would be long ass - but I can describe the scenario I want fairly briefly and that should give you an idea. I am interested in what you think and what you believe is the correct method to go about what I should do.

At the moment each potion in base/objects.lua looks like

Code: Select all

obj.flask_neta = {
	name="NETA POTION",
	type="THING",
	class="POTION",
	shortdesc="CONSUMABLE",
	mass=3,
	icon=gfx.icons[157],
	dungeon=gfx.flask_full,
	fit_pouch=true,
	hit_sound=snd.dink,
	on_consume=drinkpotion,
	namechanger=potion_namechanger
}

At the end of the objects file are all the functions describing the potion effects (I don't think this is news to you )

I am going for different "dungeon" gfx for each potion type.

Currently, I am just reinstating each potion object in my own custom objects file in my dungeon folder and changing the graphic there and that of course, as I have mentioned, breaks the link to the potion effect function. The solution - repeat the potion effect functions in my own custom objects file.

So, how do I correctly, change the "dungeon" graphic of an already setup obj?

..And I don't mean replace it, I am not simply altering gfx.flask_full, I am altering each flask obj to have a unique dungeon graphic.

Cheers,
Nick K.

[Automaton]

On another note.

I've been trying to replace the fonts in game, but my success is limited.

1. I have the DSB graphics package that is in one of the threads somewhere.
2. The fonts are included there as PCXs, but as far as I can tell they do not override in DSB.
3. I got the allego grabber, I can open and modify graphics.dat (P.S. that allego grabber program is the most convoluted piece of crappola soft I have ever seen, is it an old atari ST thing ported to PC?)
4. After a few modifications of AAASYSFONT and despite using exactly the same colours in the index as the original, when grabbing in allego it suddenly turns into a colour font with 136 glyphs instead of mono with 128 glyphs. I am perplexed - I've scrutinised my file and it uses exactly the same 3 index colours as the original and it still imports incorrectly using allego.
5. Is the only way to change the sys, wallfont and scrollfont by changing it in graphics.dat? I have tried to override them in several ways but to no avail.

I'll keep plugging away, but any help would be appreciated.

Cheers
Nick K

[Gambit37]

I'm not at my computer right now and don't have easy access to all my DSB bookmarks, but for now I'd suggest reading the DSB wiki which answers all this stuff, or going through the forum in detail which had tons of specific threads for these issues. Fonts in particular are weird and I wrote a full page in the wiki about them.

[kaypy]

the potion graphic should be a matter of

imported via lua_manifest:
gfx.new_flaskneta_floor = dsb_get_bitmap("path/to/image/file")

imported via dsb_import_arch:
obj.flask_neta.dungeon=gfx.new_flaskneta_floor

note that you only want to change the "dungeon" property of the existing object arch, not create a whole new object arch.

[Automaton]

Groovy - that makes sense

I did figure out my font issues and thanks to your help, gambit, 50% solved.

I was making my own fonts fine in gimp - specifying colour indexes 0,1,255 for the creation of.... then I found out that my 255 white was being substituted by gimp at export for the first pure white in the palette (index 15 and 16) I had to change both colours 15 and 16 to something else before gimp would stop changing the damn thing at save and use 255 like I was bloody asking it to. A very odd bug. I am sure the makers of gimp see it as an optimised feature, but shitty when you are asking for 255 and it's swapping it for something else at export.

As to the fonts themselves, I say 50% solved because...

If I replace sysfont in the graphics.dat, it replaces it for the entire game.

If I override as you have shown gambit, it replaces it in.... ..parts?



Thanks for the tip kaypy - Im gonna try that now.

Cheers (and still a bit confused)
Nick K.

[Gambit37]

You shouldn't be changing the contents of graphics.dat, that's a base file that you leave alone. Instead create new fonts in your own graphics.lua and assign them to existing font names.

[Automaton]

....and what I was saying was I did that but that replacing the sys_font does not replace it entirely in the game as shown in th screen shot above.

Cheers
Nick K

[kaypy]

Problem seems to be that sys_font is a special case and not a regular font. scroll_font and wall_font are created via dsb_get_font but sys_font just appears via black magic. (Or at least via a definition in dsb_lua.c)

const char *Lua_FontHandle = "sys_font";

[Gambit37]

Yeah sys font is weird. When I'm back at my computer tomorrow I'll check how I set it up.

[Gambit37]

Not sure if this thread helps you about sys font:
viewtopic.php?f=53&t=30798

[Gambit37]

Ok, I checked my code and this is how I've setup my sys_font:

Code: Select all

gfx.font_mini7 = dsb_get_font("FONT_MINI7", path .. "font_mini7_condensed.pcx")
sys_font = gfx.font_mini7

Note that "path" is a variable setup in one of my global lua files that contains the path to my override graphics folder.

The key thing is to make sure your font has the correct colour indexes setup as discussed in the Wiki:
https://dmwiki.atomas.com/wiki/DSB/Fonts

[Sophia]

The other issue is that the stats are drawn via sys_render_stats which pulls the font it uses from inventory_info, which is set up before you've done the font replacement. Therefore it still contains references to the old sys_font so that is the one that ends up being used.

Here's a fix. I'll make this code a bit more wordy than it needs to be in order to make it clear what's going on:

Code: Select all

local new_sys_font = dsb_get_font("AAASYSFONT", "path/to/font/mysysfont.bmp")

sys_font = new_sys_font

inventory_info.objlook.nametext.font = new_sys_font
inventory_info.objlook.shortdesc.font = new_sys_font
inventory_info.objlook.longdesc.font = new_sys_font
inventory_info.objlook.mass.font = new_sys_font
inventory_info.stats.font = new_sys_font

[Automaton]

Well thanks all.

@Gambit - yeah I since got fontED and no problems now making custom fonts and using them in wall writing etc (In fact I have about 7 different wall fonts now), I am using the dalelands font in game (The TSR forgotten realms one) because I think its perfect for the job.

@Sophia - Code works like a charm!



Cheers!
Nick K