Dungeon Master Forum

That's also what i think : the problem comes from the side3 and front3 tiles in RTC. The center Y value should be 145 instead of 136. This will certainly affect all flooritems and probably monsters position too.

btw, the absolute positions (tlc) of these items are written into a file called 'masks.ini' in RTCWM directory. Don't forget that it is only a 3d approximation of CSB view !

linflas wrote:Don't forget that it is only a 3d approximation of CSB view !

I think that's the problem - if you move the centre of the far tile to 145, then it's far too close to the wall at 152; with the walls as they are, the centre has to be much further back (at ~136!).

So; there are two ways forward here:

1) Leave the perspective as it is (maybe tweaking a bit here and there to cover up any glaring errors).

2) Change the perspective so it's properly 3D.

I'm happy with either. The only votes I can see for option 1 would be from the purist lobby, but as we've discovered over the past couple of months every version of DM / CSB has a different perspective (and the fact that we've only just noticed this 20 years on, shows how little difference it makes to the feel of the game, but obviously proper 3D would greatly aid the auto-generation of new wallsets etc)!

Any thoughts?

I've been having a closer look at this, and can now see what the problem is. It's not the walls but instead the scaling of the door. Basically, the door at the "3" distance is too small and so the door frame is too small which means to get it to "fit" into the walls it's placed too far back.

The fix is to widen the door, then the door frame and then bring everything forward in the view - hopefully that should make it all work!

I'll post up a screen shot when it's looking vaguely respectable...

OK; no change to the wallset, just a quick jiggle about of the doorframe bitmap and moving the centre of the far left tile to 92,144 and the far centre tile to 224,144.

Here's the result - hope you agree it looks somewhat more plausible now:



My artistry is a bit naff so if anyone wants to have a better go at drawing the new perspective of the doorframe, then here's the new source bitmap: http://www.ragingmole.com/images/Doorframe_s3.bmp

I have been trying to follow this thread but some of it is a bit over my head... please let me know if any of this means WHACK will need changes

Sophia wrote:please let me know if any of this means WHACK will need changes :)

No - the sizes of walls / floors remain the same. If you ever what to expand whack to generate doorframes / stairs / pillars however...

I'm sorry to bring this up again, but you're solution isn't really a solution GG -- it just hides the fact that the short far wall is, well, still too short!

Look here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/matt_hill/ ... rwall2.jpg

I've boosted the brightness/black fade offs so you can see what's going on.

The view of the corridor straight on (left) is more or less right -- the walls finish at the furthest extent of the floor.

The short far wall however is about 1/3 - 1/2 too short -- it should also extend to the furthest edge of the floor graphic.

It's been easy to overlook this with original DM graphics because they use a lot of dithered black blending into the dithered black fading of the floor. With higher res graphics you can clearly see the problem.

If you ignore all the fading/shading and simply build a model of this using solid colour graphics, to be accurate, the short far wall MUST extend to the end of the floor graphic.

Your new wall pillar/positions just hide the fact that the wall is still too short. As I noted before, in changing the perspective you've also ditched wall items that would appear on this wall (although as I have also noted before, the perspective of these items looks wrong -- you'd need to extend their definitions with an extra image for this wall)

I really think this should be changed back to how it was several versions ago -- it was much more accurate/usable in my opinion, and it makes my higher res images look wrong when in fact it's the engine that's wrong.

OK, here's conclusive proof using Linflas' tool -- if you brighten a screenshot of the corridor, you can see the short far wall is much longer than in RTC and has a different (correct) perspective.

I really do think that the perspective should therefore be made true 3D or at the very least that the short far wall should be increased in size and have it's perspective changed to be more accurate.

Dunno if this is of any use, but there is a full set of wall templates (blank grids) in the DM2 graphics.dat. I just descovered them at the weekend whilst extracting the monster and inventory images to use in RTC

I don't think George needs to go back to the old perspective (please no!) but maybe readjust these 2 bitmaps a bit.
As you're using WHACK, maybe Sophia could modify the WALL_FAR3 and WALL_FAR3_ALT generation ?
And RTCWM users only have to resize the wall_far3.bmp mask.

Gambit37 wrote:I'm sorry to bring this up again, but you're solution isn't really a solution GG -- it just hides the fact that the short far wall is, well, still too short! :(

If you ignore all the fading/shading and simply build a model of this using solid colour graphics, to be accurate, the short far wall MUST extend to the end of the floor graphic.

I really think this should be changed back to how it was several versions ago -- it was much more accurate/usable in my opinion, and it makes my higher res images look wrong when in fact it's the engine that's wrong.

Hmmm - I fail to see why this is the engine that's wrong. I'd say that it's your higher res images that are wrong!

You rightly point out that the far side wall isn't long enough, but that's nothing to do with the engine, it's your (and RTCs) graphics that are too short. If I've understood this wrongly though, do let me know...

Assuming that it's just a problem with the graphics, I'll change the default far image in RTC, but just to reiterate the point, that won't make any difference to your high res images, it's them that are wrong in the screenshots you've posted.

OK, let's not get hung up on definitions. Engine, wall, old perspective, whatever.

All I want is for that far wall to be made the correct shape/perspective/size.

I'm getting really frustrated with this and clearly I have confused the issue with a mixture of terminology, but how hard is it to see the evidence of your own eyes?

The image in my shots is generated by Whack which takes it's sizes from the default RTC walls -- the furthest of which is too short and has the wrong perspective.

If it were just a question of making my own shape to fill the space correctly, that would be easy and this would never have been an issue. But because I'm using Whack, which uses your images GG, the fact that your image for the far wall is wrong has meant Whack is also wrong. Whatever way you look at it, the far wall is too short and has the wrong perspective.

RTC needs to have a correct far wall that can then be used by all of us as a base for our images and tools. I would be happy to do this if it helps.

errr.. i think we got it

Good. Then why on earth was the 'fix' to widen the door?

Because it seemed to be a report on the door being wrong, not the general far perspective. And it also sounded liek the engine was drawing thigns badly, rather than the graphics simply being off...or something

*hides*

Well, the door frame *was* wrong (as well).

Right, just to make sure i've got this

1) The problem isn't in the RTC engine, it's the fact that your graphics are the wrong size.
2) The reason that your graphics are the wrong size is that they're auto-generated by WHACK.
3) The reason that WHACK is wrong is because it's using the default RTC graphics sizes.

Is that it?

If so, I need to sort out the far3.bmp and Sophia needs to update WHACK then you need to re-autogenerate everything then everyone will be happy (or not )

Yes! Exactly!

Sorry if I sounded off before, I was in a bad mood.