level sharing

[manikus]

i was looking over my unfinished projects on my hard drive, dungeon craft related, of course. it seems a shame to let all that work go to waste. some of my projects i may eventually get back to, but it's time to be honest with myself, most of them i will not, and to be brutally honest, in the six or seven years that i've been doing stuff with unlimited adventures, how many modules have i uploaded for others to play? none.

what do i need to include for each level? (cocoaspud?) i suppose there would need to be the wall and background graphics. i am planning on deleting all events, except for the names of locations, anything specific to my game will be gone.

any ideas?

any interest?

as soon as i can decide which i won't work on again, i'll put 'em up on my site.

[img]graemlins/knight.gif[/img]

[Lord Killjoy]

I was messing around trying to import one of my designs into another design but I kept getting error messages.

[CocoaSpud]

The import function in the editor only works for FRUA designs, and it's a very imperfect process. The levels and global info imports ok, but many of the events don't import properly. I usually make importing a low priority and fix only the problems that get reported. If I spent a whole week (maybe two) I could probably get it fully working.

There is a general problem with sharing data files between designs. The issue is that all item/monster/spell/key/etc references are made using a unique key value. The key value is unique for the current design only. For instance, suppose you create an NPC that has a club item. This club has a unique item key of 5. The NPC inventory list doesn't store the info for a club, it just stores the key value. The NPC can reference the club details as needed using the key value.

So, now somehow move the NPC data into another design. This design may have a club item with a key value of 5, or not. Some other item may have a key of 5. Now the NPC doesn't have a club, it has some other item in it's inventory.

The same situation applies to just about every object in the design. I have anticipated a need to provide some sort of utility to facilitate moving characters between designs. After all, you run a character through Design A and you hope to transfer it to Design B and use it there too. This will work fine if A and B were made by the same author and have the same item/spell databases, but won't work at all if those databases differ between designs.

I recognize that something needs to be done about this, but haven't taken any action on it yet.

You can export items/spells/monsters as text files and then import or append them into any design. The NPC's don't support this yet. Moving levels between designs is not something I anticipated. I don't think it would be too difficult to accomplish if it's needed. To do so, the original source design files would need to be present so that any events in the imported level that reference items/monster/spells/art/sounds could be properly imported also. Importing a level without events would be really easy to accomplish, and you would only need the source LVL file for that. This would preserve the wall/backdrop/zone data. Any wall obstruction settings that use the special keys would be reset to point to keys in the current design (or none if not present), since the source info for keys is located in the game.dat file.

[Thaddeus Mass]

Or, in the words of that world-famous amnesiac: Forget it!

(I'd tell you who said it but I can't quite remember.)


Thaddeus Mass

[foody]

See, see, I told you his smart LOL!!

[SilentThief]

For the idea of transfering characters between different mods, if desired, it seems it wouldn't be hard to just transfer the character sans equipment, just the abilities and exp. For the moment, the individual peoples weapon databases may differ wildly (for example, I still would like to start a side project of Oriental Adventures). But what would keep you from doing a mini-database that goes with the character (just an idea, not that you need more work to do... ) that would be like this: I travel with only my sword and armor to someones elses land and the items I had in vault and money and such are not available.

Just for the record, I am going to do a design in the style of Ravenloft, and it is going to be more towards the puzzle and events than combat-intensive. You are going to be a heroine trapped in a castle and trying not to get killed by the evil monster-lord. [img]graemlins/evillaughter1.gif[/img] and more about that later...

[manikus]

i'm a little confused- could we swap levels if there were no events other than text events?
my idea would be to put up dungeon maps that i have made, and in the cases of towns, the names for each shop etc. would be in a text event outside the front door. also maybe a zone event that is for text to say you have entered a residential zone.

it would be cool to have a repository of maps that are ready to fill with monsters and adventure!

[img]graemlins/knight.gif[/img]

[manikus]

i just went and checked on the answer to this myself. [img]smile.gif[/img] oh well.

[img]graemlins/knight.gif[/img]

[CocoaSpud]

quote:

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But what would keep you from doing a mini-database that goes with the character

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That's what will need to happen. The items and spell definitions will be fully exported with the character data file, and then added to the database of any design that doesn't include them when the character is loaded.

[CocoaSpud]

quote:

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it would be cool to have a repository of maps that are ready to fill with monsters and adventure!

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Sorry, I guess I rambled on a bit with my explanation. The short story is won't work right now. I can change things so that levels can be shared between designs, excluding events. To share a level that contains events the editor would also need access to the other design files to resolve references to items/spells/monsters.

If you all think one or both of those features are needed I can give it a try (LVL Only, LVL+Events).