Dungeon Master Forum

Is this now a dead project, or still being worked on?
That would be disappointing, because this was one of the best clones...

Alandale no longer works on it. Roquen who was hacking the engine is certainly still lurking, though I'm not sure he is actively working on anything in the code.

Broken Paladin was working on a dungeon that looked as if it needed expansion of the engine, but he has only resurfaced once, so the project that might renew interest in the engine is long term at best.

It was great for coming first, and had alot of great functionality, but I think each of the other three main clones currently around have managed to bypass certain limitations of the original engine that DM Java still has. I haven't managed to make DMJ run since my old computer set up, unfortunately

beowuuf wrote:It was great for coming first, and had alot of great functionality, but I think each of the other three main clones currently around have managed to bypass certain limitations of the original engine that DM Java still has. I haven't managed to make DMJ run since my old computer set up, unfortunately

Hmm, this post has inspired me to attempt to fix the Windows download. I've found http://launch4j.sourceforge.net which should help with that. The Mac version is working fine even on the latest version of 10.6 Snow Leopard.

I'm curious what you feel the significant improvements are that the other clones have made? I haven't played any them in a long time (and never DSB), so I don't know what all new features they've added.

Ooooh, renewed life!

As to what boundaries the other engines managed to break:

CSBwin managed to implement the Designer Specified Actuator, which is essentially pseudo code. And also managed to start filtering alot of the messages in the engine, so you can 'hack' many of the events in the game like leveling, party attacks, monster attacks, monster movements, spellcasting, etc. Aswell as simply design an incredible level of detail and conditionals into an action. If you take even a quick look at Conflux, you can probably see alot of fun ways it's broken the DM engine. Zyx even approximated creature groups splitting up! That's not in the CSBwin code, but the filters and DSAs are flexible enoguh now that he was able to fake it in his dungeon!

RTC managed to add enough functionality to have DM2 reasonably approxomated, giving alot of good hooks. However it was always the core choice to free itself from the DM 'one type of tile' that meant its been able to break out of the basic DM mold in interesting ways. Later iterations have managed to grab may of the good things DM Java had like events, customised actions, customised attacks, etc. The relays it used have also started to include conditional events, and counters can be accessed and set. I think the recent Tower of Champions game by Adamski shows the engine getting pushed, and Sophia's old dungeons still ppint to how the engine could get twisted in interesting ways.

DSB is still newish, but by basing itself on lua its already got a flexible coding language built into its make up.


Obviously DM Java came first, and had some unique features like truly wandering monsters. it's a shame real life stopped its development. The event squares were the last significant improvement to the DM engine, and it is this sort of thing that would have been cool to see reach fruition and added to.

About which clone to speak to you when you said that the project died myjean????

RAF: How about DM Java?

I think Beo summed it up perfectly. I admit I never tried to build something with DMJ, but from what I gathered, it seems everything in it could be done with RTC too, not to mention DSB.
What really put me off was that DMJ didn't look and feel like DM to me, it felt like playing a different, inferior game. As a result, I only played it once for about an hour or so and never came back - maybe unjustified?

I really loved the dialogue trees in DMJava.
I was rarely stumped in doing what I wanted to do, so long as you have a LOT of switches
Please update the forum, alandale, if you repackage the installer for Windows.

So it looks like launch4j is going to work out fine. It makes nice normal .exe files for Windows that run the game/editor when double-clicked. If Java isn't installed they show an alert then take you to the Java download webpage.

I'm testing on Windows XP using the latest Java "Version 6 Update 20" and things seem to be mostly working. I want to fix a few minor cosmetic issues, but hopefully I'll have an updated version soon. Maybe this weekend?

I've put the new version online and updated the web page. See the new forum topic for details, or just go to http://homepage.mac.com/aberfield/dmj.

beowuuf wrote: Roquen who was hacking the engine is certainly still lurking, though I'm not sure he is actively working on anything in the code.

Lurking? I don't feel like I'm lurking.

Well you certainly aren't now. Hey, did you see we have two more clan members in KoL?