17 Levels

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:40 am

I posted CSB17Levels.rar.
It contains a CSBuild and a CSBwin.
I was able to make a 17-level dungeon and teleport
to level 16. So it works a little bit.

Here is how we can proceed. You tell me ***ONE***
thing that needs fixing. (I don't need another stack of
cards

). I'll try to fix it and post a new
version. Repeat until you are happy.

Post by **Zyx** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 5:22 pm

Thank you for this new version. I tested teleporters and actuators (and some common tiles and mechanisms) at level 17 and it all works perfectly! This is going to allow me to take my dungeon to the next level... I'd like to fiddle a little with texts and DSA...

The only important bug I would like to report is this:

Adding a wall decoration, a floor decoration, a monster type or a door decoration at deeper levels in the edit level dialog crashes CSBuild.

There are some other small interface problems of no importance to me. I'll give you the list when/if you have free time.

Oh, I see you are implementing a copy/paste function. This is great, but I guess it is not finished yet? I can't make it work.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Tue Apr 20, 2004 8:47 pm

Crash when adding to decorations list.....I posted
a new CSB17Levels.rar that fixed this.

Copy/Paste...Remember? ONE thing at a time.
Resubmit this problem when it has top priority.

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 1:01 am

Oooh, Zyx, you mean we'll get something that surpasses Conflux 2? I can't wait!!

Post by **Zyx** » Wed Apr 21, 2004 1:12 am

Paul: I was just asking out of curiosity for the copy/paste feature if it was already done, there was (almost) no pressure in my question.

Gambit: For now I'll just add some more rooms for Conflux II.
But I was wondering if it would be possible to make some quests and dialogs like in ultima underworld later, I'll study the question lazily this year...

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 3:45 pm

The possibility of 64 levels is astounding! But to be useful with existing dungeons, I'd like to copy level data from one level to another, or better still, just swap the order of levels.

Is there any way to make this possible?

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Wed Apr 28, 2004 4:14 pm

Swapping levels. Perhaps this is reasonable. What do you
want to have happen with references to the levels? If we swap
level m with level n. n has references to n and m. m has references
to m and n. And other levels in the dungeon have references to
m and n.

Stairs? Pits? What else gets broken?

And at 64 levels object space once again becomes scarce. It
only allows 1000 objects per level or about 1 object per cell
if all the levels are 32x32.

Post by **Zyx** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 4:02 am

Paul Stevens wrote:And at 64 levels object space once again becomes scarce. It
only allows 1000 objects per level or about 1 object per cell
if all the levels are 32x32.

Yes, but filling all the 64 levels with something coherent would take 5 or 6 years to a designer. You'll have plenty of time...

Unless... unless you plan to allow importing/exporting dungeon levels... in this case it would be possible to create a saga, where dungeons are chained one after the other

As for the references, IMHO:

1) References to the level being moved should be updated through the entire dungeon, according to the new z of the level.

2) If there's a massive change in the level ordering, because of a deletion or insertion, references should be updated through the entire dungeon.

3) Stairs and pits should be left as illegal, needing to be manually corrected.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 12:40 pm

I think Zyx's recommendations about modifying refs are sound, but I guess this is a lot of work.

I would be happy to simply be able to copy all the level data from one level to another and then manually change all refs.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu Apr 29, 2004 3:33 pm

Changing the references is not really too hard.

As far as 'Massive change' goes, it is not going to be
possible. Swapping two levels is 'universal' in that any
rearrangement can be accomplished. So swapping is
all that will be provided.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Mon May 10, 2004 1:26 am

CSB17Levels.rar now contains a CSBuild that allows
swapping of levels. Use it carfully for a while. Save
before swapping. And report any anomalies, please.
Long ago I choose to edit the dungeons in their native
format and that decision made the swapping of levels
rather intricate. Lots of room for error.

Post by **Zyx** » Mon May 10, 2004 8:44 am

Some bugs:
1)queued sound: when the party dies, the sounds should all be played before getting to the "restart" screen.

2)CSBuild: [Edit] Oh, I see you fixed several bugs in this new version. Thanks.
So I'll just suggest some other fixes

a) maximize dungeon size should work for the 64 levels.
b) in the teleporter target dialog, it is impossible to choose a destination level above the 15th.
c) same for actuators: an error message about the level appears.

3)CSBwin: just as a reminder, the poison bolt makes no damage.

I've been using, designing and playing a dungeon with more than 16 levels and so far I had no problems.

And now let's go for some testing on the swapping...

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Wed May 12, 2004 3:09 am

CSB17Levels.rar contains a CSBuild that
fixes a), b), and c).

Post by **Gambit37** » Wed May 12, 2004 12:04 pm

I just tried the new 17 levels CSBuild for the swap feature.

I have 16 levels in my dungeon. I created an empty level at 17 as I wanted to swap 16 with that. Then I clicked maximize Dungeon and CSBuild crashed -- no specific message just a Windows Error Reporting box came up.

The swap feature also crashed. After successfully adding a 17th level and manually enlarging it, I swapped level 16 with level 17 perfectly well. Then I swapped level 15 with the new blank 16, and CSBuild crashed. It also crashes if I add 2 blank levels at 17 + 18 and then try to swap levels 15 + 16 at the same time.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu May 13, 2004 3:40 pm

Maximizing Dungeon:

The original FTL code did not support 64 full-sized levels.
It could handle about 60, depending on the number of
decorations and monsters on the levels. So I had to change
a basic piece of the file format to allow 64 levels. You will
need both CSBwin and CSBuild from CSB17Levels.rar.

Swap Crashes:

Wow! CSBuild not only crashed. It caused my Windows 95
operatng system to crash. I must have rebooted that thing
twenty times before I found a slightly less dramatic way of
causing an error. I hope this is the same problem you had.
Get CSBuild from CSB17Levels.rar.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu May 13, 2004 8:17 pm

I have 16 levels in my dungeon. I created an empty level at 17 as I wanted to swap 16 with that. Then I clicked maximize Dungeon and CSBuild crashed -- no specific message just a Windows Error Reporting box came up.

As for maximising the Dungeon, I think you misread my post. I didn't even get as far as testing it in the associated CSB4Win as CSBuild crashed as soon as I used the feature...

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu May 13, 2004 8:27 pm

I think you misread my post.

I don't agree. But I am willing to listen to
your argument.

If you try the new CSBuild and CSBwin and they still
cause problems then be sure to let me know.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu May 13, 2004 9:54 pm

My point was that CSBuild crashed when maximising the dungeon. Your reply suggested that there was an incompatibility because I didn't have bost the latest CSBuild and CSB4Win. But what has CSB4Win got to do with it, if CSBuild crashed as soon as I clicked 'Maximise Dungeon'? That's why I was confused about your response.

Clearly you've updated both files since I made my post, but your response didn't seem to acknowledge what I had done.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Thu May 13, 2004 10:09 pm

I was compelled to change the file format because the
FTL format would not support 64 levels. The fact that it
did not support 64 levels is why CSBuild crashed. CSBuild
tried to put a number larger than 65535 in a 16-bit field
that was provided by the FTL file format. I had to change
the file format to allow 32-bit numbers.

I assumed that someday you might wish to play (perhaps even
test) one of your 64-level dungeons. In order to do so,
you will need a CSBwin that is cognizant of the new file
format. That is why I suggested that you get the new CSBwin
that I provided.

You are certainly correct when you say that modifications to
CSBwin can not be expected to fix problems in CSBuild.

The other problem is that I am only guessing that the bugs
you saw are the same as the bugss I saw. I fixed the ones
I saw. Your bugss may still be present and, if so, I will probably
need your dungeon file and explicit instructions to reproduce
them here.

Post by **Gambit37** » Thu May 13, 2004 10:21 pm

Aah, that's why I was confused -- I only added 1 extra level which crashed on maximising and you started talking about 60/64 levels. I couldn't see the relationship.

I'll download the latest and try it again. Thanks.

Post by **Zyx** » Fri May 14, 2004 7:22 pm

-Maximizing creates 64 levels of 1x1 instead of 32x32.

- I maximized conflux II and CSBuild crashed soon after. The already designed levels were screwed up.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Fri May 14, 2004 7:38 pm

I just maximized using CSBuild version 1.2008 and
it maximized all 64 levels to 32x32.

What version are you using? There have been several
bugs fixed in the last couple of days.

Post by **Zyx** » Fri May 14, 2004 10:23 pm

I can only reproduce this bug after loading maximizing conflux ii, starting a new dungeon, and then maximizing. So I guess this is related to maximizing conflux ii.

I'm using version 1.2008

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sat May 15, 2004 2:36 am

I loaded ConflusII. Maximized.
File/New. Save? No.
Maximize.

Everything went well.

I loaded ConfluxII. Maximize.
File/Open a test file. Save? No.
Maximize.

Everything went well.

So I guess I need to know VERY EXACTLY the steps you
took to get this to happen. Perhaps I even need your
copy of ConfluxII. But first let us try the EXACT steps.

Post by **Zyx** » Sat May 15, 2004 10:14 am

Aha! I took an old version of conflux ii and the maximizing worked perfectly!

I checked what were the differences with the version I'm using: I added a 17th level.

So I'll mail you the current dungeon that is leading to a crash. With the exact steps.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sat May 15, 2004 9:13 pm

Oh what tangled webs we weave......

Remember that the FTL format did not have a large
enough field to contain the number of cells in a 64-level
dungeon with decorations, etc?

There is also an array that contains the index of the
first cell in each north/south column of cells. That entire
array has 16-bit values. And of course it needs to be
changed to 32-bit values. That will once again change
the file format. And the array is referenced absolutely
everywhere because it is used to find what objects are
stored in each cell of the dungeon.

So I have to either examine/modify a very large number
of these references or limit the number of levels to 60.
Beauty demands that I do the work of allowing 64 levels.
Practicality demands that I limit the number to 60.

If I fall back to 60 levels then I would also like to 'undo' the
changes that I already made to allow 64. That would break
any dungeons that already have 64 levels.

If I do the work to allow 64 levels there is always the chance
that some other problem will arise that needs a lot of work
or cannot be fixed at all.

What to do????????

I am going to backup my current CSBwin and CSBuild so that
I can fall back to the current versions if things go badly. Then
I am going to spend some time attempting to do the 'right'
thing - allow 64 levels.

So don't make any dungeons with 64 levels for a while. Zyx
already has such a dungeon, I believe. If all goes well then
we will accomdate it. If things go badly, I appologize and will
try to provide a way to delete the last four levels without throwing
out the whole thing.

Post by **Zyx** » Sun May 16, 2004 12:50 am

If it's easier to do 60 levels, I would suggest this solution. Nobody currently needs 64 levels. I'm currently using 25 levels, with a very loosened design.

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun May 16, 2004 1:09 am

Yes, I agree -- 60 levels is excessive enough; I doiubt anyone would ever be able to create a playable, fun dungeon using that much space. It would be verrrrrryyyyyyy borrrrrriiiingggggg...

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sun May 16, 2004 7:33 am

I think the latest CSB17Levels.rar will repair the
64-level capability. Please use it carefully. I don't want
you to lose dozens of hours of work.

I doiubt anyone would ever be able to create a playable, fun dungeon using that much space

Don't be silly. Give you guys an inch and you want a mile.
Someone will think up something like the following:

Make four identical, 16-level dungeons. They represent a
single dungeon at different points in time:

a) The creation
b) the time of Zeus
c) the present
d) the future

Of course they are not exactly identical. The inhabitants have
dug a pit here and built a wall there in the thousands of years
that have passed. And there are Sacred Portals that allow
time travel. In fact, rumor has it that a wall that is presently
blocking passage was built sometime between The Creation and
The Time Of Zeus. By traveling back to The Creation and digging
a pit it is possible that we can change history by making the
wall unnecessary. The pit will finally be filled in sometime between
the Time of Zeus and Present. This will make it possible to traverse
the passage that used to be blocked. We have successfully changed
the present by altering the past. One little problem solved. There
will be others, I am sure.

At any rate, if anyone dreams up such a time-warp dungeon then
he will probably want all 64 levels. I have tried to make such things
possible.

Post by **Zyx** » Sun May 16, 2004 9:51 am

Time warp dungeon?... *runs CSBuild*

[Zyx's last words for the next 5 years]