DMBuilder version 0.88.g is out!

[Sphenx]

Probably nobody cares anymore about this old tool...
However, for what it's worth, I've put the current version I use as is -- with a few updates to make it more friendly, I hope (though the controls are still not those of your regular windows app) -- so that it can now edit quite almost everything within a dungeon file (specially text editing was missing in previous versions).

Here are some visuals:



Map header info:


New text editor:


More help info within the application:


Visual list of creatures within dungeon:


Visual list of items within dungeon:


I also wrote a guide for it that you can find here:
https://dmbuilder.sphenxmusics.fr/files/DMBuilder.pdf

And for bonus:
I've made adaptation to compile it with MinGW, and for Linux.
I've made almost 95% of its code published on GitHub (old student code, plenty of quick and dirt code ...)
https://github.com/gbsphenx/dmbuilder

I really wanted to build this release and deliver something more complete than before in order to make a good step with DMBuilder and be able to move on with other projects.

[ChristopheF]

I did not have time to try it yet, but that is great news!
Does it support Theron's Quest dungeons? I remember a very long time ago you worked on it if I remember correctly

[Sphenx]

I included with DMBuilder the original TQ's conversions for PC-DOS I did back then. But it can't edit directly into TQ's data. I have lost part of my notes from that time -- and it's a long time I did not try PC Engine emulation to test. Data were found in TQ02.iso and an actual dungeon is split in several parts rather than one "dungeon.dat" file. At best I may try to add direct read from TQ02.iso.

[ChristopheF]

I would be interested by any notes and tools, even incomplete, to try and document the format used in TQ, this would avoid me starting from scratch.

[Sphenx]

OK this is weird, the conversions I did do not seem to match exactly what I see from TQ02.iso and I don't remember how I did this back then. Let me some time to collect my information and make some new tests.

[ChristopheF]

OK, no rush !

[Sphenx]

I figured out again most of the map data stuff and I am currently integrating it into DMBuilder. And about the differences, it is because I forgot there are 2 versions of TQ (JP vs US) -- I don't know from which I did the conversions -- so I need to sort these things and make sure it works for both . I'll give news in few days then.

[ChristopheF]

Great!
I didn't know the maps were different in JP and US versions. I only played the US version many years ago.

[Sphenx]

I have updated DMBuilder into v0.88.g2 which can load (95%) dungeons from TQ US files (TQUS19.iso) (but not writting them back to TQ file)
I have put some documentation here for you to look : https://dmbuilder.sphenxmusics.fr/files ... Format.pdf.
If you want to check my code for it : https://github.com/gbsphenx/dmbuilder/b ... ddungeon.c then search for "loadTheronsQuestDungeonData" function.

There are some information I did not find, mainly wall, floor decorations and item activation list, so I have hardcoded them (partially) to fix a TQ dungeon after loading it.
There are also some hardcoded offsets because the data is split into several parts and I did not check how to properly get these.

I can't find anymore the program I wrote back then and how I figured out the decorations, but I know understand the differences I see with the original and my conversions because I did actually "rearrange" the dungeons when converting them for PC-DM (mainly all objects ID are renumbered depending on their position).

So far, only Ak-Tu-Ba is fully read/fixed. I would rather understand the missing parts instead of doing hard-coded fixes for all others.

[ChristopheF]

Thanks a lot for sharing this info. I'll have a look when I find some free time and see if I can help discover the missing parts.