Dungeon Master Forum

Hi all,

I haven't found any information on this here,
so maybe I'm the only one experiencing it.

I'm playing Dungeon Master (original) with RTC 0.28
on Win98 and recently noticed that my dungeon is
always lit.No need to cast magic torch, and
carrying a torch makes no difference at all.

After sleeping a while, however, the dungeon is dark,
but then fading in to being fully lit.

I tried it from the start with fresh characters,
ran some test with torches, and the behaviour
was normal!
But after casting a few *magic* torches,again ,it
wouldn't get dark. Both Fullscreen and Windowed modes
brought these results.

Also, I would like to ask if there is a bug-list
somewhere with reported bugs, since I have not
been able to find it.


-Asgon VIII

Hi there, and welcome to the forums!

The fading up from dark is a new feature that was added in v0.27/8 to simulate you feeling a bit groggy when you wake up. It received a mixed reaction. Personally, I don't like it.

I've never noticed the light being a problem though. RTC uses much more discreet steps of lighting than the original DM, so it maybe that you're just not noticing the subtle change. In the original game there were only 5 levels of light, in RTC I think it uses 100. You can modify this by editing the CONFIG.TXT file and changing the STEPLIGHTING to YES.

As for a bug list, there's no definitive one. You can see currently un-fixed bugs in the RTC Bugs forum. Fixed bugs and other suggestions that have been incorporated can be found in the RTC Archive forum, at the bottom of the index page.

Thanks for the reply !

I already use STEPLIGHTING YES, but noticed
no change. It's still changing smoothly.

Anyway, the screen always lights up,
even if no light source is active.

It's even impossible for me to have Darkness in
the dungeon. Darkness-spells also won't help.

Since this is very obvious I wonder if it's
only me experiencing this,whitch is most likely.
(also tried it with the default- config)

But on the bright side - it's a cool feature to
have light,and it doesn't bother me a bit.
The game is still great.

The Hall of Champions is always lit at maximum brightness, so if you do any testing of this on that level you won't notice any change. Perhaps this is the problem?

No. I went down where it is dark.

There I light a torch and let it burn down - it's
dark again.
I cast a few magic-torch spells and sleep
some time (okay, lots of time..) - and it's still
light !

Tried this several times...

(sorry for the previous post as guest - I forgot to log in)

I think it probably is just a perception thing, but maybe there is a bug in the STEPLIGHTING command.

Try taking a screenshot before and after you sleep so that you can compare the light levels... perhaps you'll see the diference more clearly. (ALT+P)

Thanks for your suggestion,I'll try that.

But...

I played DM on the Amiga a long time,and
I'm pretty sure I couldn't run around for three
levels without torches and without casting a
single light-spell. It never actually gets dark.
(not wearing the Illumulet,of course)

Hmm.. that definitely sounds wrong. I haven't played a full game of RTC for quite a few versions now, so when I get some time I'll try it out and see if I have the same light problem.

Well, ok, I was wrong.
During some training in the rat-room on Level 8
I decided for a change and started throwing a full
chest to gain some ninja level.

Suddenly it became darker,and darker...
And dark as night.

I feel like a complete idiot now and apologize for
my premature post.

But I could have sworn that it had occured as
mentioned above. Only thing I could think of is
that the big amount of light-spells casted on
the lower levels (for training) had accumulated
somehow and didn't wear off for a *very* long time.
Failed to notice that in different versions,
but maybe it's only me beeing stupid.

Oh, and huge thanks to GG for writing such an
incredibly great program, I simply love it.

Kind regards,
Asgon VIII

That does ring a bell. In normal DM you can't get above/below the normal light levels, so casting five light spells creates full illumination, btu they are all countign down simultaniously. I think in RTC the spell happens, addign x to the light levels, that slowly fades over time. So if you cast fifty light spells, you can have 1000% light level, which slowly counts down.

The same also was the case with darkness - multiple darkness spells would create negative levels of light, requiring alot of light spells to be cast to negate it again

I rememebr this as beign reported as a kind of bug, and i thought it had ben altered...

It's one of those weird 'it's not the same as DM but can't quite explain why' kinds of issues that RTC has had in the past...

I would like to have a smooth curve for light, darkness and poison counters like having a squareroot function with light/darkness/poison effective level on the vertical axis and the sum off all cast/accumulated levels on the horizontal axis, so casting a second MonFul will not be totally irrelevant but will not increase the effective light level as much as the first MonFul cast.

Wow, that sentence is the verbal equivalent of flashing strobe lighting to my poor brain
I think it needs a warning : )

What do you mean by a square root function? In basic terms that sounds a bit harsh, so for example the first spell does, say, 1 grade of light. You would need to cast three more spells just to increase that to grade two. then five more for grade three, etc. If we take DM's orginal six point lighting scale as the model, then that's quite evil!

Also, I may be wrong but idon't think RTC has an event counter for each spell, so would there be a way to record the light? A log scale may be a better idea. You could take the current light level figure and convert it through the scale, that way a sensible maximum can be stated, and huge light levels have less and less effect.

Thanks a lot for the explanations, I felt somehow confused.

(beowuuf wrote:)

>I think in RTC the spell happens, addign x to the light levels, that slowly
>fades over time. So if you cast fifty light spells, you can have 1000%
>light level, which slowly counts down.

Ah, that would explain it.
So spell effects are accumulative in RTC. Does that only apply for
light ? (will check this myself later)
If you could store fire-shields for two hours then that would
be unbalanced IMHO, and I wouldn't use it.

Anyway would be nice to have the original behaviour for the 'original'.

Potions and fireshields worked this way in DM, each spell added points to the collective level, they just fade very quickly over time compared to light and in DM there is an upper limit, so you can't overload like you can with RTC light spells.

In DM it was just light spells that were independant, acting like torches with their own independant durations (well, that's my understanstand, PAul or someone can prove me wrong).

Fixed for V0.29