Dungeon Master Forum

Hello, Dmuters, I´ve uploaded at freedrive a little text editor for DM, named textmute.zip. It´s a beta version, in an early stage, but as I´ve been away for a while and i´m sailing away very soon, I release it now.
You can contact me at bprieu@yahoo.com
Bye.

Hey, this is a great utility! I've just taken a look, and here's my initial thoughts. You probably are aware of all these already:

1) Saving doesn't work - the game is reported as damaged and can't be used. That's true even if you save without making any changes to the file. I haven't yet got it to work at all. Perhaps there is a problem with your checksums? Which version of the game is this for - PC, ST or Amiga? The data formats and checksums are different for each. I'm trying this with the PC version 3.4.

2) The help text bar at the bottom doesn't display all the options - it's wrapped around and can't be read properly

3) No way to exit the program (Need File>Exit or a X button)

4) No help text or documentation - I had to hex edit the file to see that you can press keys 1 - 8 to get some basic help

5) Window remains centred on screen and can't be moved

6) When you re-run the program, it would be good if it remembered the last folder you were viewing, or even the last DAT file

7) on the top bar, LENGTH is spelt incorrectly

Hope these notes help with the next version. Cheers.

I only had a quick play around with it before going out today, but i got all the text to edit fine (it even shows up on dmute!), but one of the edits, although displaying fine, caused a game crash (sysetm 72 error!) two steps after in any direction... I had replaced any unused letter spaces with spaces, prehaps this is bad...and i left in any returns

Also, why do some things like 'you' and 'the' sometimes get displayed as _C, etc?

This is definately something to show to george once he resurfaces from his PhD, and would be great to combine into DMute 1.4 : )

And to gambit, I was also trying this with PC DM3.4, editing a copy of my dungeon, so I don't know what the problem could be in saving <p>Merry Christmas and Happy New Year all! - Michael (Beowuuf)</p>

Thank for your suggestions, I´ll make the changes right away.
To get help, you have to press 1 to 8 keys.
Press Esc to leave the application.

After you did the changes, load the dungeon with DMUTE and make a CHECK INTEGRITY. Then save. This way you shouldn´t have corrupted savegames.

Textmute Beta will mess up Daroou, so don´t edit a savegame you care about! (I'll fix it very soon).

As soon as I can i'll send some doc about how to decrypt the texts... Also I'll try to upload a better version of textmute.

Beowulf, please tell me what was the text you edited, and the change you made.
The texts are stored with _A, _B and _C, that´s what you´re seeing them that way!
Here´s another version, which should work fine. (the bug with Daroou is fixed)
BTW, did you know that DM stores the gender of the characters? All their names are followed by a M or a F...
I´ll try to make a check integrity option for the next release.

Ok, I´m uploading textmuteB10 to freedrive.
It checks the integrity, so no need to use Dmute.
I could add a feature to edit the offsets and difficulty of each level, what do you think?

It would be a nice feauture to change the monster colour on a level, perhaps you could add this. And a display of allowed monster#, functionating door-graphics.
the difficulty of a level affects experience and also the strengh of generated monsters, and/or something else?

Hey, thanks Zyx for a fast update! Beta 10 works fine on my machine - I've only tested it a little, but I've managed to edit wall texts, scrolls and champion names and it doesn't crash.

You also implemented my other suggestions which is cool too! Now we can finally create adventures with new stories and puzzles with proper clues! Way to go! Perhaps you should contact George and let him know you've cracked the text encoding?

Well done

Way to go ZYX! I've not yet tried the utility, but I will as soon as I get home in a week or so. Great job!

Wait for a new Dungeon from me with sometime this month

Though i have a crashing comp that is making it hard to test it
I think I possibly deleted too many characters zyx, so I'll just play around and be more careful...I assume there is no problem getting rid of the _A, etc characters and replacing them?

I uploaded another version of textmute: BetaV11.

Is there is a way to delete the older versions? I don't want to choke the freedrive space, but on the other hand I need your feedback as I have very little time to test and design the program...

V11 should allow you to change the gender of a character, some stats and some level specifications. BTW, Wuuf and Tiggy are girls!

I´m still struggling with the characters´stats. If anyone has some info about the algorithm of encryption, his help
would be gratefully accepted...

About changing the colour of monsters, I'm not sure it´s so easy. I'll try it, though, on a later version.

display of allowed monster#: ok, i'll do it.

functionating door-graphics: I don't know them!
If someone know them, please let me know.

the difficulty of a level affects also the light: if you set it to 00, there´s
a permanent light on the level.

No problem about eliminating the _A, _B and _C shortcuts: it´s just a way to put 4 letters using only 2.

Beowulf, if your game crashes, please try to tell me the minimal steps I have to do to reproduce the error.

maybe its possible to change the names of the objects, i think "the executioner sounds" much better than "hardcleave", and that will avoid boringness of new dungeons in future. or maybe edit complete new weapons and stuff (a bottle of water that will disappear after drinking, a "vorpal" inquisitor, a weapon with stab, stun and berserk as attack options...)

<blockquote><b><i>Quote:</i></b><hr> <b> Is there is a way to delete the older versions? I don't want to choke the freedrive space</b><hr></blockquote>
Done.

Also, this is great. I am working on a new dungeon, I lost my others when I formatted but this new one will be great. <p><font face=arial>Ian

Pulp - Styling the pattern for life!</font></p><i>Edited by: <A HREF=http://pub17.ezboard.com/uianclark.show ... age=EN>Ian Clark</A>  <IMG SRC=http://www.ezboard.com/ezgfx/gicons/anim_1.gif BORDER=0 HEIGHT=10 WIDTH=10> at: 1/5/01 6:25:41 pm
</i>

I have had no crash problems with the text now (good idea to only allow the text to be edited now and to remove the problem bits at the end) - this has definately been a great New Year's opener!

Guest, the things you talk about are found in the Fires and actual DM code as far as I know, so you would have to change that...can anyone shed light on what actual boundaries are in all the dat/exe files?

Thank you Ian for the cleaning. Could you also delete the old mildews and leave only the mildew 113?
Thank you again.

where can i download textmute you say it`s on freedrive but i can`t find it so can you pleas tell me where to download it my email is

jlshaw@talk21.com



The Black Turning Greayish Knight

At the top of this page is the link - the 'you can upload and download' files part. You will have to register with freedrive, which takes no time. Then textmute and other dungeons are yours.