Gharl was nice enough to grant permission to use his zones on Basternae 3. This includes “The Church of Eternal Dusk”, “The Motte and Bailey of Duke Delwyn”, and “Zalkapfaan, City of the Headless”. Thank you, sir. Forward progress!
Generating maps on Basternae 2 was a bit of a pain. It was done with about 1000 lines of hacked-together C code that I wrote that read in an ASCII file, asked you the dimensions and map type (surface, underdark, etc), and then brute-forced it into a simple zone file. It was not elegant, but it worked, usually. Unless, of course, you entered a wrong number, had an extra character on one line, or anything like that.
The surface map I showed yesterday is just an enlarged 120 x 50 bitmap. I only used 9 colors when creating it — one for each terrain type. There is no accompanying ASCII text file.
It’s entirely possible with a lot of grunting and swearing that I could convert it into an ASCII file which I could then import into that old C program. Why bother? There has to be a better way. Turns out there is.
Last night I created a small application that does one thing and only one thing — generates maps for Basternae.
Here’s how it works:
1. Load in a bitmap of any size.
2. Select a menu item and the program analyzes the bitmap and generates a list of all the different colors used in it.
3. Use that list to generate a room template for each color — title, description, and terrain type.
4. Let the user edit the list of templates so you can say light green is “The Forest of Evil” and dark green is “Drachenwald Forest”.
5. Select another menu item to have the program use the template file as it goes through the image pixel by pixel and generates a room for each pixel.
The obligatory screenshot:
I’m a bit surprised that it only took a couple hours to write. It’s the sort of thing that the serialization, bitmap, list, and datagrid classes built into .NET make very easy to do.
It is missing one major thing — it doesn’t connect the rooms together via exits yet. That will be easy enough to add (probably about an hour to do). It does, however, generate a zone that loads into the editor and can be tweaked and refined further.
There’s also one neat thing about the design — the room templates can be saved off to a file and loaded again, so you don’t have to edit it all in one sitting, risk losing your work if the power goes out, and can use the same room definitions with different image variations (provided you used the same colors).
I’ve finished converting two zones and attached them to the MUD:
Yurgoth’s Estate by Sarlac
The Defense of Longhollow by Drevarr and Ilshad
For now they’ve been attached where the Gypsy Encampment meets the Kobold pond. Things will of course move when we get world maps in place.
I solved a few issues with the zone converter and it handles some zones it couldn’t before, so I should be able to attach a few more soon.
They’ve been nice enough to grant Basternae 3 the use of their zones.
I’ve also found out that the converter needs some work — there are a few special cases that it doesn’t handle and zone format variations that it doesn’t handle perfectly yet, so it will probably be a bit before all of the zones we can use are fully converted and attached.
The Minotaur Stronghold zone I mentioned doing some testing with a few days back is now uploaded and connected to the MUD. It’s a scenario where an Orcish army has a Minotaur outpost under siege. Enjoy!
I added a few more commands to the walkthrough mode in the zone editor. The commands list, edit, createedit, exits, and version have been added. It also now understands the short versions of the diagonal commands — nw, ne, se, and sw. You can get it HERE or via the sidebar link.
As always, this is a relatively untested app, so save often.
Made more progress on the editor. The walkthrough window now has basic functionality. There are only a few commands working, mainly the directional commands and the goto command. It’s all in black-and-white, but it is enough to let you walk through the rooms and get a feel for what mobs and objects are where.
Pretty basic, but it will evolve with time.
You can get the latest version HERE (or via the link on the sidebar).
We had permission to use zones from these authors for Basternae 2. Even so, I want to be sure we have permission to use them with Basternae 3. If you know any of these folks, please pass the word that I’d like to get permission to use their zones in Basternae 3 (and/or all future incarnations of whatever Basternae 3 ends up evolving into).
Based on the severely-outdated zone list I have from Basternae 2, here’s a list of the folks I’d like to get zone permission from:
Akyura
Alachest
Baghtru
Beretorn
Clavados
Cy
Denel
Dregeath
Drevarr
Drokal
Dryn
Drzx
Dubar
Gharl
Gnosha
Ilshad
Iris
Kolut
Khiba
Kuldrim
Lortar
Losh
Malthrix
Parkan
Pesto
Phreak
Raliq
Sarlac
Scipio
Sjad
Ski
Sniktiorg
Talos
Threnody
Thugan
Timken
Trask
Trika
Xueqin
Zaeru
Zileas
We could probably just use the zones since we were given permission once, but I’d really prefer to run it by the authors first. My email address is xangis [at the mail provider] yahoo (dot) com. Any assistance in contacting these folks would be appreciated. Thank you.
I did a little more work on the editor today. Now that I’m able to convert zones created with DurisEdit, I decided to use the Basternae Editor tinker around a bit with the Minotaur Stronghold zone that I created and converted. What did I work on? The map view.
I changed it so that it generates room arrangements more accurately and also shows room interconnections. It has only been tested with and I only expect it to work with zones that have rooms that are all interconnected (reachable). I’m sure it will need some work to behave right with non-contiguous zones. Even so, I have it working with the Minotaur Stronghold, Kobold Village, and Thri-Kreen Hometown, and clicking on the box for a room will take you to the edit window for that room. Kinda neat if you ask me.
You can get the latest version HERE (or via the link on the sidebar).