Dungeon Master Forum

Might have been covered b4 but hey...

1. Do "Rusters" rust armor/weapons (I have not got that far yet)

2. When a character gains a level the level does not show in green when i click on his eye will this be so?

3. If there is no level editor, how do you make your maps? (george)

Cheers.

1. Every monster and object has it's place and purpose.

2. Level gain is indicated by a green eye at the moment, not a green attribute - this might be wrong though.

3. With great difficulty. I enter every tile property and object in by hand into a text file!

For point 2, yes, any raised level appeared green for the same amount of time as the eye, (same with any attribute raised by potions).

As for point 3, even more respect for George!

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LMB
Unregistered User
(4/11/01 5:39:25 pm)
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3. If there is no level editor, how do you make your maps? (george)

Cheers.
George Gilbert
Creator
posts: 309
(4/11/01 6:53:17 pm)
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3. With great difficulty. I enter every tile property and object in by hand into a text file!
*************************************************************************

Will the text file be an official format for dungeons.
I hope it will.
This opens great capabilities, think what could be done with text processing to automate dungeons creations. What about an " infinite number of dungeons" generator like with Diablo?
What about a dungeon description language?
If this can be done, a language, a grammar, a parser. I see a great future.

Yes, the plan is to have the text file as the strict defined format. As some point after RTC (the game) is complete I'll write a proper GUI for the editor (like DMute, but better!) but in the mean time you will be able to write your own through any text editor.

How? Are you saying that even now we can do our own dungeons even though it's a great pain to do it?

Yes, that's right...

Well, would be so kind to tell us how?-)

ooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooh

Is this still in the same format as NewDM? You define the dungeon in grid form level by level in a dungeon.txt as a series of 0s for walls, 1s for not wall? Then you list every single item with it's ref (a number from 1 onwards), Unique ID (monster_screamer), dungeon position (x,y,z) and tile position?

What else can we mess about with?

No it isn't the same format as NewDM, but it's incredibly similar. There are some extra header bits of information and stuff that you need (e.g. the name of the dungeon, its intrinsic difficulty level, hint oracle data etc).

I have specifically withheld the exact specification of the format as it changes from one release to the next as I update and upgrade the functionality of RTC. If I'd released the specification then people will have started to write dungeons and by the next release that hard work would be obsolete and duff files would be floating about - an instant disaster waiting to happen. As soon as I have finalised a format (possibly the next version of RTC?) then of course I will write out a full specification of what's necessary to get a txt file up and running.

Having said that, the format really is *very* similar to the NewDM one - if you want to start designing the basic wall layout of dungeons following the NewDM format then please do; that part certainly won't change, but don't get too carried away with the other parts (wall items and monsters) as they are subtly different (e.g. monsters need extra bits of data to indicate if/that they're carrying items which isn't present in the NewDM format). If you *really8 want to add monsters in then you can, but be prepared that you'll have to change bits to get it to work with the new format...

I would prefer seeing the txt files for the original dungeon before 1.0 release. At a point where (as I think it is now) only minor changes are going to be made, I can live with going through my creatures and adding a bit, or making minor changes to my dungeon layout.

Where I see the problem being is that with each new release George would have to let us know what the new requirements are. ie "Monsters now need a glowpink flag (bit) which looks like glowpink=0", or whatever. Of course this is assuming that v1.0 is still a long ways off, if 1.0 and the text files is just around the corner.... then forget all this rambling.

Then again I just reread Georges post "As soon as I have finalised a format (possibly the next version of RTC?)" so now do I hit the 'Add Reply' button or not.... <i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub50.ezboard.com/uamaprotu.show ... maprotu</A> at: 5/2/01 6:16:17 pm
</i>

Let us be patient.
I believe a full format file specification is a lot of work.
When done.... there is more work trying to keep upward compatibility, and/or documenting spec. changes.
To avoid this burden, a loose spec should be enough, with a collection of debugged dungeon samples.
Defining the file format with a collection of samples that we can trust is, I think, an efficient approach.

Any guesses on how large a grid RTC can support? Could someone easily copy DM2, which had a first 'level' lay out that must be many hundred squares long and broad?

Currently x,y,z parameters are stored and calculated as ints so that's a limit of several billion in each co-ordinate. I will however (probably) be reducing this to 256*256*256 for the next release as it makes the monster AI routines run *much* quicker. If there's a large rebellion against this though, then I could keep it as it is.

Anyone wishing to design a dungeon *bigger* than 256*256*256 however probably needs their heads examining, and the result would probably be unplayable so I don't see this as being a problem - speak now or forever hold your whotsit...

Even 256 x 256 is pretty big by anyone's standards - are you sure it needs to be even that large? And 256 levels deep! Again, massive.

Considering that the original DM was something like 32 x 32 x 14 and it took a long time to beat, perhaps you could reduce the limits further if it would help speed the game up?

Now that I have spoken, I can hold my wotsit...

There's no performance gain to be had dropping from 256^3 to anything lower until you get to 16^3 which is definitely too small.

I might as well leave it at the upper limit for that particular speed...

I have a feeling the dungeons in Theron's Quest are 16x16 - perhaps this is the reason why (it's not an especially fast piece of kit).

According to my calculations at 256*256 (is DM is 32*32*14 which I think it is) you can fit 4 and half full DM master maps (all the levels) on one RTC level. If that is not big enough for anyone they have serious problems.

The math (so you can tell me if I'm wrong):
Number of squares in all of DM:
32*32*14 = 14,336 (each level is 1,024)
Number of possible squares in RTC level:
256*256 = 65,536 (16,777,216 squares possible in one game)
65,536/14,336 = 4.57. (you can fit the entire DM game into one RTC game 1,170 times)

Ok ok ok, I'm bored.

- Amaprotu

00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 x 5 is alot of space! I was planning to have a flat first 'level' like DM2, but could anyone use up that much?

So yup, trap shut, whatsit held, mind racing...

The larger levels are 32x32.
Not all 14 levels are that large.
There are about 70% 32x32x14 squares in DM.
About 10.000 squares

the wandering conversation....

Are walls a set height? In otherwords if I want to make an outdoor zone with trees that would be taller than the walls of a dungeon, could I?

Can you set what level your party starts at? I would like to have a large dungeon with buildings that go up and down - ie a castle with towers and a dungeon, where you start on the ground floor. I imaging the best way to do this would be to start the party on level 10 or something. Is that possible? a related question is how do stairs work? Do they always go to the floor directly above or below? Or can they jump 6 floors (without the player knowing it)?

I forget did you say we could or could not design our own interface elements (the turning arrows, inventory screens, spell symbols etc.)? If you can ... can you add that to the override file hehehe.

More questions when I think of them.

- Amaprotu

if the roof image were an image of the sky then you would have your out doors. since walls are drawn at all distances instead of being scaled you could also draw large trees the would appear you could see the full tree at a distance and 2/3rds and then 1/3rd .. so it would apear as if it were taller than the dungeon walls are.

so really with the current engine you could more or less do it.. however if you wanted a different distance image (like in DM2 with the tower) you would need a different roof depending on which way you were facing..

Start positions are defined as x,y,z co-ordinates (two of them; one for new entrants, one for imported characters) so they can be absolutely anywhere.

Stairs (and pits) however always lead straight down (and up) one level. There would however be nothing stopping you putting a teleporter on the up set of stairs taking you down 5 levels. That way when you went down one level and hit that teleporter you would end up going down 6 without the party knowing about it.

As a general point what I've found when doing the DM dungeon is that you can achieve quite complex effects with only a very limited number of active objects; there are literally only about 5 or 6 in RTC - every effect you see is done by putting them together in different ways.

came up with another question.

Can buttons (pads etc) have more than one effect? I mean like you click on it once and it opens one pit, click it again and it closes another, a third time togles the first pit again etc. ?

- Amaprotu