12 years later...

[Ricolen]

I've been an on-again off-again member of this forum for about 15 years. Played the game as a kid back when it first came out, then when CSBWin and RTC were basically the only (or at least most common) ways to play the game on PC, I started using the forums a lot more because I was making a new dungeon in RTC. Then I stopped, I had to reregister (I think it was deleted due to inactivity? Whatever it was doesn't really matter anymore), and now after a little fiddling with it I got back into my account 12 years later! I didn't realize it'd been that long since I last worked on my custom dungeon in RTC!
Now that my youngest son is 15, he's bugging me to play borderlands, so I told him if he could beat Dungeon Master & Chaos Strikes Back, I'll play Borderlands. He's playing it, he's liking it, and I'm looking at my old custom RTC dungeon which was really very good, just incomplete, and would like to keep working on it, but I would like to ask some people about it, if and how I might convert it to a different/better engine if necessary/possible.

Mostly I'd like to talk about creating my own custom dungeon, and these forums were where I used to do so about 12 years ago the last time I got heavily into the custom dungeons.

In the years since I see there are many new tools for making custom dungeons, and such. Anyways, I'll get into that elsewhere I suppose. This probably isn't that place for those conversations, but they are what drove me to return to the forums here. I thought I'd reintroduce myself, as I'm sure this accounts' whole 6 posts (I think my original only had like 50 haha) really made an impact on all the longtime members here! lol jk

Also, what forum might I post in to discuss migration of a dungeon from RTC to something that may or may not be more commonly used these days? Should I just put it in the RTC forum and go from there?

[jayrshaw]

Hi Ricolen,

Good to see you on the forum - it's always good to see more people here. The deal you made with your son sounds like it will probably work out well for both of you!


--Jay

[Prince of Elves]

Welcome back

I'm not a developer myself but I keep reading any post that appears in the forums. Seems to me that the only engine that's still actively supported is Sophia's DSB. And I know Gambit is still here and has experience with both RTC and DSB so if he's got the time to answer he'd be my first choice to ask. There may be others around that keep more to the background, but you'll see about that once you start I guess.

[Ameena]

Ooh your son has good taste - Borderlands is great...well, the second one is fantastic. The Pre-Sequel wasn't as good and I've not played the other two. Glad to hear he's enjoying DM/CSB as well. If I'm replaying the games I use CSBWin (since it is a port of the actual Atari version that I used to play back in the day), although I've never tried making/editing a dungeon for it so I'm afraid I can't help with that part.

[Ricolen]

Seems to me that the only engine that's still actively supported is Sophia's DSB. And I know Gambit is still here and has experience with both RTC and DSB so if he's got the time to answer he'd be my first choice to ask.

I have no idea how DSB works, so I guess I'll have to look into that.

I just ran into an issue with RTC not accepting midi files, and I used to be able to use them, in fact my last working build of my own dungeon was using midis for the soundtrack. In fact it was that error that tipped me over the edge to get back on here and start talking about things with you guys again. I guess that should be the first new post I make eh? heheh

Thanks for the welcome back guys. It would be nice to get back into the swing of things again and maybe finish the dungeon I've been working on for so long. Maybe I'll be a bit more active this time around too. Last time, by spring of 2013 my wife was diagnosed with cancer so it kind of put a full stop to much in the way of any creative endeavors, and then I just never got back into it again. I swear if that happens again she is going to be PISSED!

[Sphenx]

Hi Ricolen
I wish the best for your wife.
Is it just midi your issue with RTC ? I suppose you could also render the midi into wav/ogg and do with it ; it would take more space but it should work. If you would switch to DSB, I think it would be better to have a conversion tool but I can't remember if that has been already made. Is there a RTC to DSB converter somewhere ?

[Ricolen]

Yeah, that was 2 terrible years, but thankfully she came away cancer free and is now 10 years cancer free. It was really touch and go for a while though. Glad that's over.

My issue is just midi, yeah, and I looked into what it would take to convert those 40k midis into waves, and they end up being around 50mb each so IMO it's not worth it.

I actually have some time today to work on my custom dungeon, so maybe I'll see about downloading DSB and figure out how it works.

[Gambit37]

DSB is easy enough to build with if you use the ESB editor it comes with..I never tried converting anything from RTC, I don't know how that works. If you have custom graphics, that works quite differently from RTC, you have to link them all using lua text files, but it's not that complex. Midi or Wave file audio can be converted to MP3 or ogg which dsb plays natively. Lots to learn but none of it is that hard, and ultimately it's better than RTC because it does a lot more and is still supported, whereas RTC stopped development 15 years ago. Good luck!

[Ricolen]

If you were in my position, Gambit, and you had a custom dungeon you were working on that was roughly as big as Dungeon Master down to about the level with the walking armor and materializers, would you start over in DSB, or would you tough it out in RTC and work around any issues that pop up?

[Gambit37]

I would definitely try and finish it in RTC if it's nearly done. I love DSB, but wouldn't recommend switching to it for a RTC project that's nearly complete. That said, it depends on what sort of complexity you're working with. If it's "just" a straightforward dungeon with simple mechanics and no custom assets, then movng over to DSB may not actually be that difficult.

[Ricolen]

It's pretty straight forward I would say. I mean, I have puzzles, but they're pretty much just adaptations of what I've seen in other FTL games. I've got a transporter room, a pit room, I've got a particularly annoying snake path area. You know? The classics. haha But no, nothing all complicated and weird. I've seen what some people have done here. I remember playing a dungeon called Conflux years ago (was that you that made that? I forget now) and that was definitely more than anything I'm doing. That thing seemed as complex as CSB.

I've looked into DSB for a minute or two, but not enough to figure out how to spawn monsters, or open a door with a key or anything yet. It seems like a pretty straight forward editor which I like. I'm not a coder, so I'd be completely at a loss with an editor like that. That's why I never just upgraded my dungeon into the editor for Legend of Grimrock 2. I'd love to use that engine, but dude, I'm just not that smart. lol

[Ameena]

Oh yeah, Conflux is one of the big ones - that was made by Zyx (with some help here and there from a few others - I know I wrote all the hints for the int Oracle, at least). New characters, new spells, new loads of stuff. I seem to remember getting poisoned by just about every monster I came across and never got very far .
I do love me a good map editor, as long as it's got a usable interface and stuff. I think my favourite map editor is still the one from Heroes of Might and Magic III - you could mouse over all the things and it would give a tooltip explaining what they are and how they work (need to download a file now to make that part work, because Windows, but it was fine after that), and everything is really easy to use and intuitive and stuff .