CSBuild Version 0.785i

[Zyx]

(the other thread was getting too long:-)

1) Paul, do the fixes of 785i imply that I should declone again my dungeon from start?

2) For a pressure pad activated when party possesses special object,
I can't choose the Firestaff+, only the Firestaff.

[Paul Stevens]

1) If I were you, I would not release any dungeon built
with these 'experimental' versions. I would like you to
do a little decloning and testing but wait until we have
worked out the bugs before making a final version. As
I said...my testing amounts only to seeing that there is
no crash. I don't actually playtest the resulting dungeon.

2) Carded.

[Paul Stevens]

Subject ----- Actuators with Text graphic --------

I investigated the dungeon you sent me that has an
Actuator with Text as a graphic.

What has happened is that the FTL code processed
Wall Text by cheating a little bit. When Wall Text is
encountered, it pretends that an actuator was present
with an illegal Graphic Ordinal. Then it stores the
Text Object name in a global structure for the routine
that draws walls. That routine finds the illegal graphic
ordinal, fetches the name of the text object from the
global structure, and draw the text.

All of this is somewhat ugly. But the people who wrote
the program had constraints that were very real and
very limiting. They certainly did not have the resources
to check for all the illegal things that a designer might do.
And they made it work in spite of those limitations.

When you put that particular, illegal graphic ordinal in
an Actuator, the walldrawing routine will get the name of
the Text Object from the global variable. But there may
never have been a Text Object name put there!!!! And
then the program should crash. Of course, the DOS program
and the Atari program don't crash immediately because
they have no memory protection hardware. So they just
do funny things. Nobody could predict exactly what they
might do.

At any rate....I will change CSBwin so that illegal graphic
ordinals are ignored.

[Zyx]

1) I'll keep your advice in mind. Anyway I am testing the decloned dungeon and I didn't find bugs so far.

3) If I choose compressed and then save my dungeon: CSBuild crashes and the dungeon is not saved.

4) If I choose encrypted and save my dungeon:
CSBuild can't load this dungeon (I guess this was the point)
CSBwin crashes when loading the dungeon (I guess this was NOT the point!)
I don't know what's your philosophy about this encryption feature, but I think an encrypted dungeon should:
be readable by any CSBwin version.
not be readable by any SCBuild version

5) About the text as a graphic: I agree with you about ignoring illegal graphic indexes. But I think it would be worth it to make this graphic (the undecipherable text) available as wall graphic, as this graphic is already contained in the graphics.dat, and it would add a good atmosphere element. But I don't know if i am asking for something tedious or not for you to code. Would it be easy for you to do it?

6) Speaking of texts...
a) In wall texts, special characters like "." are replaced by letters like "N" with no warnings.
b) In scroll texts and floor texts, I can't use any special symbols like the spell runes.
c) The "text too long" warning is not accurate, as CSBwin can show correctly texts which length triggered this warning.

[Paul Stevens]

CSBuild (experimental) version 0.785j is posted.

5)
It has several changes, among them the 'Garbled Wall Text'
graphic. The dungeon you sent me achieved this result
with an illegal 'Wall Graphic Ordinal' that (by accident, or
perhaps trial-and-error) had that result. But the same result
could have been achieved legally. There is a Wall Graphic
number zero that I was not aware of. I thought they started
at one. It works now.

3)I'll see if I can make this happen to me.

4) Your description of the 'Encrytped' dungeon is exactly
what I designed. It cannot be read with CSBuild. A specially
compiled version of CSBwin is required to play it. That is
how I want it. If you could read it with CSBwin then anyone
could look at the code to find the key for an Encrypted dungeon.

6a) I fixed some of this. Let me know what still needs fixing.
6b) Should these be legal? I'd be happy to make them work if
you can provide a dungeon in which these things work (with
the PC version or with CSBwin).
6c) Carded.

[Zyx]

4) Understood, but!!!!:
a) then the dungeon is dependent on the CSBwin version: each time a new version of CSBwin is released, if you want to take profit of the new features or the ridding of the bugs, then you have to ask or wait for the designer to compile a new CSBwin.
b) For the same reason, the designer must remain active in the DM community, if not his dungeon will become obsolete as it can't use the new CSBwin versions
c) the size of the dungeon is greatly increased as it comes in a package with the special CSBwin. Which leads to upload and download problems
d) how a designer like myself, ignorant about compiling C programs, will obtain the special CSBwin?
e) What I had in mind was only to forbid the lazy dungeonner to cheat. I have nothing against the clever, perseverant adventurer who manages to map the dungeon by hacking.
Put in other words, I just wanted to change the weight of the alternatives of the common dilemma of playing/cheating. Instead of being:
it's easy to cheat, just load the dungeon in CSBuild / it's hard to play without the maps.
I'd like it to be:
It's hard to play without the maps / it's even harder to obtain the maps.

So the lazy ones will choose to play instead of cheating. The ones looking for challenge will choose what they want.

What do you think of this reasonning?

[Zyx]

6b) I was confused. It is possible to use the runes characters by modifying the graphics.dat (the part containing the texts). This way, the objects you hold can have some runic symbols in their names.
But the texts on scrolls, floors and walls are defined elsewhere. So we agree that this is not legal. This would be an enhancement. Personnally, I am not asking for this enhancement of CSBwin.
But maybe the idea will seduce another user...

[Paul Stevens]

4) OK....that is a reasonable alternative. I haved added it to
my list. It should not be difficult to do. Make it readable with
CSBwin but not with CSBuild. But very soon somebody will
write a program to decode such dungeons.