Dungeon Master Forum

Gambit37 wrote:Cool, well if you've fixed all those issues in RTC, it would be great if you could share how you did it.

I've been working with Chaos Shaman on the Monster AI, and my understanding is that he plans on releasing it soon. I'll be using this AI system in my current project, Castle Lynchgate, which I'm close to releasing a demo of, which will have an earlier, simpler version of the improved Monster AI in it.

lots there to quote about, i'm one handed so i'll keep it short. first with you Gambit, shaman says hello found a way around a few bugs you could say. right now just checking out the bugs, only if someone had them, could really dig deep in it. what are the bugs? why is RTC so clunky, so difficult?. it's OLD, was in creation 13 years ago. that can speak for itself. there still is no easy way that an outside party, "someone who knows nothing about programming but has the artistic taste to do something like make a Dungeon Crawler with monster AI, going to get it without that GUI?", and unless the programmers, that being you and Sophia and who ever else having artistic ablilities, which i don't know. there will be not many that can create a dungeon mechanics with artistic skills of design. you need writters for the story, people who design the engine like you guys, then you need the creative who come up with crazy ideas. no one person here has all that. yeah, RTC has not been correctly dealt with. i know it. i bet some recognition to the source might play well for all the community, maybe i'm wrong but it's not needed to correct you.

ebeneezergude, what kind of a scrooged up name is that :::::::::) ok gude, we all know that RTC wasn't complete. treat everything as series not parallel... there will be an example that in LYNCHGATE that will be used. what is needed is all the BUGS you find in RTC in a nutshell. ever use the go around method? i think everything can be done the long road, yes and GG knows it. i bet GG is having a chuckle over this, HE KNOWS.

alright Sophia, nobody is going to say the Lua is not better language. it's not imposing to look at code, hehehe, it looks like shit. how do i get creative with it? my brain says no. has no interest. i love the colour in RTC, i can see it mechanics and most of all HEAR the mechanics working which is how i can debug things. i can do this real easy, so i can make sure every relay and action, every trigger all makes sound. i can use that to decode. can you do that with DSB easily? that is the main advantage of RTC is you can use visual, audio and colour to create... that is the artistic, you agree?

LYNCHGATE MOSTER AI will have examples, hopefully we all can have a look at how well we can control monsters. found a few bugs so far, would be nice to know them in short form. one must know the limitations before designing, spent two weeks contemplating new designs within being asked to create such impossible requests which are quite frankly, can be made possible. i think Seriously Unserious is getting serious.

have improved the monster AI SU, monsters can do all you ask, needs to be tweaked. it gets a bit tricky and one thing off and it's all hell.

Chaos-Shaman wrote:alright Sophia, nobody is going to say the Lua is not better language. it's not imposing to look at code, hehehe, it looks like shit. how do i get creative with it? my brain says no. has no interest. i love the colour in RTC, i can see it mechanics and most of all HEAR the mechanics working which is how i can debug things. i can do this real easy, so i can make sure every relay and action, every trigger all makes sound. i can use that to decode. can you do that with DSB easily? that is the main advantage of RTC is you can use visual, audio and colour to create... that is the artistic, you agree?

I actually mostly agree with you about the part about color-- if you're not using an editor with syntax highlighting, code, especially unfamiliar code, will look like an impenetrable block. Programs like SciTE, LuaEdit, and so on make things much easier, and I wouldn't want to work on a major coding project without syntax highlighting. At that point, I feel like some well-written code actually becomes clearer than a mess of dungeon mechanics where I have to unravel what triggers which action item that in turn performs what action, and then I have to look up what kind cloned relay that action item is activating, and so on.

I should probably point out, in case you weren't aware, that this isn't totally apples and oranges: there is actually a fairly comprehensive system of actuators in DSB, and a lot of simple tasks can be accomplished without writing a line of code. It's not as though you have to dive into the Lua script every time you want to open a door or change a sword into an apple or whatever else.

Anyway, yes, it's fairly easy to add audio debugging cues to DSB, if you want, either via triggers, or simply with direct calls to dsb_sound in whatever code you might write. It's also possible to output debugging information to the game's console or write it to the log file, if you prefer.

I start playing DM on RTC , and it is from the start different than the old DM I used to play with , the stamina start to decrease from the start of level 1 and I couldn't recover , It is really different so please I need to play DM and CSB on DSB but I need the files witch I couldn't find here , please help me in this , I need DM and CSB on DSB soon .

The original Dungeon Master was ported on X86 MS DOS.
DM PC runs fine with DOSBox.
http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/622

Sophia was going to work out something with her servers, and hopefully put back the files I believe?

Until then, there's also CSBwin that has DM and CSB on it and is based on the atari engine.


If I can find the DM / CSB dungeons for DSB on my HD I'll try to host them on DM.com in the meantime.

why CSBwin dosnt have fullscreen !!!!!!! I want to play it in full screen !

that's good Sophia. for some of us don't see numbers and letters code, instead we hear, see colour. a whole different perspective to do things. if it were not for it, i couldn't of busted RTCs AI, got it by the balls now, because i used colour and hearing, not lines of code. perhaps a little problem solving. i am wondering a bit why nobody else spent a little bit of time to find the problem??? i don't understand. i wish someone like Seriously Unserious asked me the question 2 years ago, would have found it just as fast. he was the actuator, it's his fault he summoned Chaos.

CSBwin does have the fullscreen option, you either have to change the config file or launch it through a .bat file (see Conflux as an example). I'm not sure if you have to do further work to get the actual game resolution correct though.


I've found DM and CSB for DSB 14 on my HD. Not sure how backwardsly compatible everything is, I've added them to the DSB downloads for now until Joromun or Sophia can weigh in

thank you , you are my hero ..

thank you thank you thank you beowuuf , the DM worked fine on DSB now .. I am so happy ..

Glad to hear it!

I am playing with it now , everything is good , but when I hit a closed door the game aport . why is this , is it a bug ?

Yes, it's a bug.
I'll fix it soon, don't worry.

when I started playing DM on RTC , first the stamina start to decrease I noticed now that was because the champion was out of food , but on Atari ST virsion the champions can stay alive with only water or food , no need for both , so I needed only water to train them , now I need food also on RTC , can we fix that ?

Also is there a way to make the enimies come as a groub not separate like the original ?

on DSB the enemies were so weak ?? the mumy and the plant sometimes only take two hits to be destroyed , I found that different than the original too ..

and when you put the key and turne , you see the door is alredy open , it dosn't open slowly like the original ..

thank you all for reading this , I wish my notices don't bother you , you know , we the DM fans are very demanding people after all , aren't we ..

thank you sophia , I love you all

@Magica: if you're playing DM on RTC there are 2 different versions, 1 is the classic version, which is supposed to stay as true to the original as possible, the other is the RTC version, which includes some enhancements. If you are seeing things that are very different then you're used to, such as restricted runes, then you were probably using the enhanced RTC version of DM.

Chaos-Shaman wrote:that's good Sophia. for some of us don't see numbers and letters code, instead we hear, see colour. a whole different perspective to do things. if it were not for it, i couldn't of busted RTCs AI, got it by the balls now, because i used colour and hearing, not lines of code. perhaps a little problem solving. i am wondering a bit why nobody else spent a little bit of time to find the problem??? i don't understand. i wish someone like Seriously Unserious asked me the question 2 years ago, would have found it just as fast. he was the actuator, it's his fault he summoned Chaos.

Yes, YESSSS, I have summoned you and now you belong to me! BWAHAHAHAHA! YOU ARE MINE!!!!! Now you must do my bidding! MWAHAHAHAHAHA!


well, Chaos-Shaman, I did warn you the Unserious would strike with you least expect it, and here it is, I didn't forget, I was just bidding by time waiting for the right moment to strike.

@Magica: Welcome to the forums. In future, please start a new thread when you're asking for help on a specific problem. This thread was for discussing differences between developing custom games using RTC and DSB. Many thanks

I am so sorry , I didn't notice that ..

LOL. This really turned into a flame-war didn't it?

Anyhows, as a programmer myself I have to say that I could switch over to DSB, but I have stayed with RTC due to the GUI. That, and the whole "I've been building this awesome dungeon in RTC... I'd have to start from scratch" feeling that's really standing in my way.

I have to say that if the editor for DSB was as user friendly as the RTC editor, I'd consider the switch. I personally feel that improving the editor should be Sophia's primary goal, due to the fact that it'd draw a whole lot more people into using it. But, that's just my opinion.

that would be dandy Bones! if she'd do that it'd be great.
Bones, as soon as Seriously Unserious is done with Lynchgate, i'll post RTCs unlocked monster AI txt. all is true, no false you'll be able to command every monster if you like, have groups even, little more ticky to introduce others to either, attack, neutral or attack you. it is those three things combined with fear tactics is what makes the series work together. i look at the relays just like a computer chip, my first design on making a computer, didn't know shit about it, but when i was done, it looked like a computer chip would, but more like a large circuit board. it is that visual i am getting, not the lines of code. once you see the picture, forever you may have its worth. i understand lines of code, i just don't like it when we have a gui that can provide another way. maybe we don't like the keyboard, i like using the mouse to program. just the way i am. colour and sound is a bonus! using a txt file to make all this, holy man, what mastery. people like GG interest me.

I think we need to offer better feedback if we want to see improvements in DSB/ESB.

So If you've used the DSB/ESB system and have practical suggestions for improvements (rather than just vague statements about user-friendliness), then please make your constructive suggestions heard (either in this thread, or start another). Sophia may not be able to implement them, but at least with them written down, they will be a great starting point for improving the tools.

And if you've resisted using DSB/ESB, now would be as good a time as any to give it a go. You might be surprised at what you can do with it.

To see about DSB versus RTC, I made the same dungeon puzzle I had made before in RTC.
With DSB, it was fast and easy right away.
You can play with these sources to compare the GUI editors: ESB versus RTCEditor.
You can run these games to compare the engines: DSB versus RTC.
For DSB http://twinfalls.free.fr/dejavu/dungeon.lua

Spoiler

To run it, make a folder and put the Lua file inside, run DSB.exe

For RTC http://twinfalls.free.fr/dejavu/Dejavu2.txt

Spoiler

To run it, update config.txt, run RTC.exe

From this limited experiment, I have seen, it is quite the same to make simple dungeons with the RTC or DSB Graphic User Interface editors.
I think it is quite the same, with RTC or DSB editors, to create dungeons with all the stuff one can see in the original FTL Dungeon Master.

Edited to remove "update dsb.ini" ( see side note below ).

That's pretty interesting, and kind of how I thought it'd work out.

As a side note, you don't actually have to add anything to dsb.ini. If you don't set it to compile, it won't compile, but you can still play a dungeon from an uncompiled Lua file. It's been so long since I've used RTC I don't remember if you explicitly have to tell it to compile or if you can play from a .txt file similarly.

an example of how colour helps




my first computer looked like a chip

You can do a simple beta test from the txt file, by adding the line in the config file, and it'll load you dungeon up, but with the save feature disabled.

Once you compile your dungeon, then you get full load/save access.

EDIT: the blank space after the word "test" has to be a tab, space won't work. It's to do with the engine reading the files in a tab-delimited format.

EDIT2: this is in response to Sophia's post a couple of posts above. (just to eliminate confusion due to a double posting between me and CS)

Chaos-Shaman wrote:

Is this your fix for monster AI?

hahaha, you're such a joker gambit, heh, no, it's example of work i did years ago using colour. tried a lot of funky things with RTC, oh i wish i could get a hold of GG. he could probably significantly help me out.

Both DSB and RTC are not good enough , I swear I would stay playing DM original on atari ST Steem emulator , but the sound there makes me mad ..

here we have endless bugs .. EFFFF

Magica, please don' t throw the baby out with the bath water .