The many steps of custom portraits in Amiga Dungeon Master with WHDLoad

[JemyM]

Before replaying Dungeon Master I decided to try to make my own 'demake' portraits based on Dungeon Master Nexus. After a long journey I finally got them to work on an Amiga WHDLoad installation, handling an outdated VBS script that doesn't run on Windows 10, a Photoshop that now adds 2 bytes to .bmp files that shouldn't be there, and a different file structure in Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes back for WHDLoad. I thought I should document the process here.

I first made the updated portraits in photoshop into the "PortraitTemplate.bmp" file that comes with the converter script. This .bmp is actually prepared with an indexed color palette, ordered the way it should be to incorrectly get the colors into Dungeon Master later.

But since I had copy/pasted and downscaled the original portraits into the image (to overpaint them) I had accidentally broke the "indexed color" mode and made the file RGB. Luckily I was able to copy my final portrait into another copy of "PortraitTemplate.bmp". This reordered the colors used in my pixels so it matched the correct index.

But when I saved the result Photoshop now save the BMP into an incorrect 584 bytes which seems like an old enough problem that suggests Adobe will never fix it, and make Photoshop incompatible with the VBS script.

After a few attempts with modifying Photoshop, and testing various other software, including getting ChatGPT to update the .vbs script, or even make a file converter I downloaded and installed GIMP from which could read the Photoshop BMP and export them "without color information". This finally made them the expected 582 bytes.

But the VBS script output 0 byte files. I do not know why but it just refused to work in my Windows 10 installation. So eventually I copied the portraits in to a WM Ware Windows 98se environment where I could use the .VBS export script and convert them into DM CMP files. I also learned later that I also had to name the BMP files correctly with " - " between name and surname (like SYRA - CHILD OF NATURE.BMP) before I exported the files to CMP.

Now I booted my virtual Amiga (WinUAE with vanilla Workbench v3.1 and WHDLoad) where I could start WHDLoad Dungeon Master v2.0 and make new game save file with all four characters I intended resurrected. I then had to quit WHDLoad (num *) to properly save the WHDLoad memory to harddrive.

But when I tried to load it into the editor from WHDLoad Chaos Strikes Back v1.21 it turns out Dungeon Master v2.0 save the game into a file on the harddrive while the WHDLoad Chaos Strikes Back relies on virtual disk images. At least it was easy enough to mount the file "disk.3" as an ADF file into WinUAE, then copy the save file and the custom portraits into the disk in my Workbench environment.

I could finally start the (English) Editor in Workbench, added the portrait to all 4 characters, and saved the game as a Dungeon Master save. First time doing this I broke the whole disk. It turns out I had to properly quit the editor, and WHDLoad, and reset the Amiga before I could successfully copy the DMGAME.DAT file from the disk back into the harddrive (into the Dungeon Master WHDLoad v2.0 data folder), where it finally loaded.

[jayrshaw]

I'm glad you were finally able to get the custom character portraits you made to load correctly. Did you make portraits for any of the characters besides the four you posted? If so, I would like to see what they look like if you don't mind posting them.


--Jay

[JemyM]

Not in the same way and not at my current level.

I did my first playthrough of Dungeon Master back in 2012, but used mostly the same characters. The only portrait I thought was good then was Sonja but she was heavily inspired by artwork of Red Sonja. Chani was based on Chani from the first DUNE game. I think I based Syra on a picture from a Sierra game but I forgot which one and ultimately I ended up using Wu Tse instead of Syra, reusing the portrait I made for Leyla. I used someone elses art for Wu Tse.

[jayrshaw]

It's definitely cool that you developed your own character sprites for your playthroughs of this game. It's kind of funny that Wu Tse is supposed to be a female character but that she is also referred to in the game as "Son of Heaven."


--Jay

[JemyM]

It's definitely cool that you developed your own character sprites for your playthroughs of this game. It's kind of funny that Wu Tse is supposed to be a female character but that she is also referred to in the game as "Son of Heaven."

I checked this up. Wu Tse was based on Wu Zetian, who was the only female empress of china, and "Son of Heaven" was their title for someone having that position.

[jayrshaw]

Oh, that makes more sense. It looks like she had a long and successful reign, too (up until the time she was overthrown in a coup, anyway)...


--Jay