Dungeon Master Forum

Heh, I'm on a roll here...

Would it be possible to make a variation of the torch sconce that can hold a lit torch? I'm thinking I'd like to clone this object and make an animated torch that's burning (like in DM2). The main issue here is that the burning torch would cast light, which I imagine would be tricky to implement given that RTC doesn't use any kind of 'localised' lighting...

If you could have soundless explosions somehow, then you could explode fireballs inside the wall as long as the torch was in the sconce...that would also lead to a flickering effect

Don't know if whatever code governs fireballs and lighting could be further adapted in the code to make this a neater idea (such as a one square range 'light' ball that explodes, no sound)

I was experimenting with this effect the other day Beo and it kind of works, but the level's ambient lighting needs to be set quite low. It's a bit too uniform too: I have the party trigger some shooters on dungeon entrance that then bounce the fireballs between some hidden teleporters very close to the torches (but hidden behind the walls). The way the screen flickers is a bit too smooth, but you could probably randomise this using giggler activated teleporters. This makes the mechanism quite complex and it would need to become even more complex if you wish to remove and replace the torhc and thereofre have the flickering come on and off....

How about a WALLITEM_FLICKER, GG?

Soundless explosions can be done in V0.35.

I'll think about the flicker!

Done for V0.39.

There's now a new object FLOORITEM_LIGHT which has a strength (which determines how much light is produced). The light is localised to the tile that the item is on so it gets brighter / darker as you would expect.

You can do the flickering yourself, by having a few of them on the same tile and toggling them off/on using relays with different probabilities of firing.

This also means you can do things like the DM2 sconces and fireplaces (have a wallitem of a fireplace with a trigger that's activated by a lit torch that turns the light object on - and a relay with a long delay to turn it off again).

Wicked stuff as ever GG, erm will they ever be coloured?

I already have working fireplaces in my dungeon - using an animation which gets turned on and off with a torch

Wouldn't produce any light though!

True. I'm looking forward to all the new stuff in 0.39.
Every time I get my dungeon close to being finished there's another load of stuff I can use to create levels. Dungeon with 3000 levels anyone?

I always remember being dissapointed with DM2 when it came out. It was one of the first games on CD ROM and they were going on about how a single CD ROM could hold 10 times more than a floppy disk - and I knew that the Dungeon Master floppy disk had 16 levels so logically I was expecting a dungeon with 160 levels. Imagine my dissapointment to find that virtually as soon as you get into the castle - the REAL dungeon, I hate outside bits - that was nearly the end of the game!

He he, your post looks silly now (sticks tongue out). I realised what I'd said and edited my post to make a totally different comment while you were obviously posting yours lol.

Of course, now you'll probably edit your post so it says something about horses and this post will look even odder. - I like lollipops btw

Chaos Awakes wrote:logically I was expecting a dungeon with 160 levels.

By some rather tortured logic, perhaps.

Um, what's odd about 16x10=160.
When they are pushing a new format that holds 10 times more, you expect them to use it to the limits and fill it with as much stuff as possible. I waited years for DM2 to come out - my friend gave me a demo version of it at least 2 years before the game came out - and boy was I dissapointed.

wher's the 10 come from? CD holds umm...i think they used to quote 70 for som e weird reason

And no, i would never edit my post to stop making myself look silly. :evil:

A CD-ROM can hold something more along the lines of 250 times the capacity of a floppy disk so that means you were clearly expecting a dungeon with 4000 levels, right?

Anyway, my point is, sheer capacity of disc is not all the only concern here-- not by far. There is efficency of program code, designer time, etc... there's a lot more at work here than just "hey, more space, let's make tons more levels." You want a GOOD game coming out of all this, not just a big one, right?

Lol, do you know, I honestly can't remember what the capacity of a floppy disk was. Actually, yes I can, 1.44Meg. I was thinking 6.5 megabytes for the CD rather than 650 so yeah, even more. 1600 levels then...

(Drools)

Probably best not to try to do maths after drinking...

I was going to say "I'd rather have a big one" but perhaps not

I didn't think like that when I was a kid, big capacity meant big games. As I say, DM2 was a huge dissapointment - forever playing this rubbishy outside bit and then get inside and thought I had just started and ... end of game

Original DM had 14 levels, not 16...

Oh yes, and an Atari floppy surely was not 1.44 MB..

nope, 700 and soemthing kb - good old DD

Just to clarify all these Floppy sizes:

Atari: 360/720 kb single/double density
Amiga 880 kb/1.68 Mb double/high density
PC 720 kb 1.44 Mb double/high density

Yes, but HD wasn't that wide-spread on Amiga during it's main era.

Wow. The whole game of Dungeon Master used to be less than a single Megabyte?

Why can't we have that kind of efficiency these days...? *sigh*

The annoying bit was that you had to swap disks every time you wanted to save the game...and therefore also when you wanted to load it .

Early versions of RTC (those before I'd written the editor) were less than a MB too!

Ah, I remember that! The Dungeon Master Saved Games disk was an item forged from weeks of work with care and attention into your party, training them and collecting things. You could always replace the Game disk, but if anything happened to your saves disk you were screwed...

*melts into happy nostalgia*

DesBroDain: Yes, DM had been programmed pretty efficient. And I know a couple of really marvelous games that got along with just 64KB when they were released on even older machines. The probelm is, that many programmers nowadays don't give a flying f*ck about such efficiency today, because the adressed users just have enough ressources on their latest machine, so they don't feel it to be a problem to waste ressources, after all there are enough of them. Of course, ressources-wasting programmers cause people to upgrade there hardware more often in order to stay compatible, which in turn causes those programmers to waste even more ressources and so on. And modern software and game companies feel this to be ok because it shortens refining and debugging time, so programmers can be expected to keep deadlines, which they usually didnt do at DM's time. After all FTL - "Faster than Light" was kinda joke back then, because they certainly were among the slowest known game designer teams, yet 'til today one of the damn best ever.

BTW: What made you choose DesBroDain among all DM syllables to be your nickname? Banish wisdom potions? Sounds a bit like forswearing psychotropic substances imho.

Ameena wrote:The annoying bit was that you had to swap disks every time you wanted to save the game...and therefore also when you wanted to load it .

Not if you had two disk drives!

Ah, the good old days, when having a second floppy drive meant you'd arrived... nowadays they sell computers with NO floppy, and people are fine with it!

Yes, I even manually inserted a chip socket with a boot selector switch attached to use my 2 drives properly...

Lunever wrote: BTW: What made you choose DesBroDain among all DM syllables to be your nickname? Banish wisdom potions? Sounds a bit like forswearing psychotropic substances imho.

I chose it years ago actually...

The element of the void, symbolised by a desolate landscape.
The form of brotherhood, friendship and mutual support.
The class and alignment of the magical realm.

It meant something along the lines of: I may be alone in the world, but I'm eager to help and I'm kinda intelligent. (As opposed to being tough or fast, etc.)

Lunever wrote:And I know a couple of really marvelous games that got along with just 64KB when they were released on even older machines.

The two cases that never cease to amaze me are Elite in 16K, and SimCity in 32K.

- Elite because of the sheer volume of information that was displayed (all auto-generated of course). I think my favourite stat from that is that the four universes are all generated from the same seed int, each universe being a ROT permutation of the same four bytes purely to save on space!

- SimCity because of the complexity of the game. An enormous quantity of data, user-interaction and complex control system, not to mention graphics (which always sucks up memory).

Both amazing technical achievements.