AuthorTopic: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..  (Read 36615 times)

Offline JJ Naas

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #20 on: July 25, 2008, 10:29:12 pm
I approve of your taste, sir, and would enjoy continuing this conversation  :)

Thanks, me too. :) These are interesting games and I've spent a lot of time thinking about them and playing them.

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Funny you mention this as I was going to mention Dungeon Hack which is basically Eye of the Beholder...with randomly generated dungeons.

I've never played that.. I believe I was still trying to find something to play on my Amiga by the time this game was out.

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Dungeon Master is really a pretty clever game though, ahead of it's time in a lot of ways, and well, one of those games where it looks like the developers didn't feel too hindered by what other RPGs were doing.  They just went ahead and made their dungeon game!

I remember having read an article in Edge quite a few years back on the making of DM.. and if I remember correctly, the developer team really figured out they were on to something when they ditched the idea of going into a separate view / screen when picking up stuff on the floor and said: why not just pick them up and manipulate them in the game view. So, even my sister, who was 10 years old at the time played DM and finished it, because it was so easy and sraightforward to figure out.


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There was another game I wanted to mention on the subect of graphics, because I couldn't think of the name earlier, and that's this old Psygnosis game Obitus.  It's not a very good game, not much of a dungeon crawler, and the levels are seperated by awful sidescrolling sections (oh, Psygnosis :powl:) but it's notable because the tiles use 8 directional movement.  This is a cool idea, and it makes the forests seem a lot less mechanical (even when you're running into impassible bush walls all over).

I haven't played that either. The logo is SO Psygnosis. ;) Looks good though and the art is very atmospheric.

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"E", "F", and "G" were a little surprising because I hadn't considered them, but of course walls parallel to the player should be visible off to the sides as well and the perspective is notably different.  In EoB games they usually fade to black by "D."

In DM there's a hint of that part of the wall to be seen, in EOB it's just black.


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So tenative restrictions are to do this: a wall set (16 colours, image size...variable), a background (same colours as wall set), 4 character portraits (16 colours for all, 32x32 pixels each), an interface (16 colours again, basically a full 320x200 screen that this viewport and the portraits would fit into somewhere), and maybe a monster set (4 directions at 3 sizes, or whatever).  Or maybe do a few wall sets (wall, door, ruined wall, etc.) and some overlay objects like torches or grates or what-have.  Roll the palette for the overlays into the one for the monster set.

Anyway, this is very flexible and I'm just describing it so you have something to chew on.  I very much want people's input on this if they're interested in participating.  Colour restrictions are just theoretical.  The games are actually 256 colours and it looks like often they use a global palette, but I usually find it more difficult to be clever with virtually no restrictions like that, so I think it's a good idea to make it something a bit challenging.

Sounds good. I was thinking of something similar. 16 colours for the bg and monsters and a separate 16 colour palette for the interface and character portraits.

....

And some games we haven't mentioned yet: Ishar 1-3. Ishar 3 has got some really good art and some not so good.. photo traces for some characters I believe. Then, Abandoned Places 1-2 and Bloodwych, which wasn't much of a game but had a two-player option on a split screen which was kind of interesting.


« Last Edit: July 25, 2008, 10:33:03 pm by JJ Naas »

Offline Helm

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #21 on: July 26, 2008, 09:46:04 pm
I am back. I'm totally making a mockup for this. Really interesting thread to read too!

Offline Adamo

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Dungeon Master bitmaps extracted!

Reply #22 on: October 13, 2008, 09:40:35 am
JJ Naas wrote:
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Would anyone be able to explain what sorts of tilesets are the bg graphs of these kinds of classic RPGs made of? I've never managed to see a site where I could view a complete tileset of these games. Even better would be a graph engine to play around with, I've wanted to try my hands on these kinds of graphics for a very long time.

Yes, there`s a tool called ADGE (Atari Dungeonmaster Graphics Editor). You can extract (and, therefore, modify) all the bitmaps from "Dungeon Master"/ "Chaos Strikes Back" games.
Unfortunatelly, I don`t know how to upload pictures on your site  :-[ , so look at the link below.
ADGE tool looks like this (take a look at the pictures): http://dmweb.free.fr/?q=node/1403

Here`s what you have to do: download a CSBwin program ( http://dmweb.free.fr/files/Clone-CSBwin-PC-DungeonMaster-100.zip ), unpack it, then download ADGE program ( http://dmweb.free.fr/files/Tool-ADGE.net.bin.20080720.rar ), unpack it and install it. Run ADGE and open a file called "graphics.dat". Enjoy the graphics.
The detailed description of a wallsets for DM is descripted somewhere on www.dmweb.free.fr or www.dungeon-master.com sites.

Explanations: CSBwin is an exact translation *modified* of Atari ST code under windows.
« Last Edit: October 13, 2008, 09:53:49 am by Adamo »

Offline VisMaior

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #23 on: October 13, 2008, 05:53:35 pm
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As for a graphics engine to play around with, I'd love one too   

Ahh, a challenge.

What should such an engine be capable of?

Offline VisMaior

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #24 on: October 15, 2008, 05:49:43 pm
Ehh? Noone interested?

Also, Lackeys picture cant be right. the proportions seem off to me. Id need a correct picture to work from.
« Last Edit: October 16, 2008, 07:14:19 pm by VisMaior »

Offline Lackey

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #25 on: October 17, 2008, 03:37:20 am
Ehh? Noone interested?

Also, Lackeys picture cant be right. the proportions seem off to me. Id need a correct picture to work from.

Heck I'm interested.  I've still got my half-done wallset lying around that I need to finish.

In such a program, could you be able to define tilesets manually?  I would want it to be able to work with different view sizes and tile layouts, maybe.  A little walk-around preview would be nice too.

Also, could you elaborate on how the proportions seem off?  If you have further information it would be really helpful.

Offline Adamo

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #26 on: October 17, 2008, 03:22:23 pm
I made my own wallsets, check out the demo, if you`re interested. They`re not very beautifull though:
http://odsiebie.com/pokaz/772967---75e8.html
(download it, unpack it, run csbwin.exe, pick a character and go to level1). On level0 there are original wallsets.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2008, 03:27:44 pm by Adamo »

Offline VisMaior

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #27 on: October 17, 2008, 05:21:00 pm
OK. so A=130, thats 176/130=1.35 A/screen
B=82, so thats 176/82= 2.14 B/screen
C=48 176/48=3.6666666 C/screen
D=32, 176/32=5.5

so the viewpoint looks like this:


As you can see, the wall proprotions do not align.

Also, if we assume that the observer is in the midpoint of a square that is 1 and looks at the wall, if the wall A completely fills the viewport, then he should see exactly 3 Bs.If he sees more than 1 A, then he should se more than 3 Bs.
« Last Edit: October 17, 2008, 05:25:14 pm by VisMaior »

Offline JJ Naas

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #28 on: October 17, 2008, 07:23:20 pm
I'm still in as well. That program looks interesting. Gotta take some time to study it to see how flexible it is, is it only suitable for editing DM graphichs or can you do something totally new with it with a different and larger palette and so on.

Offline Adamo

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Re: EOB, Dungeon Master, Black Crypt..

Reply #29 on: October 19, 2008, 07:32:13 pm
There`s also a great game called "Conflux" based on CSBwin engine, but almost totally reworked (this is an old Dungeon Master fan-made with a lot of addons):
http://www.dianneandpaul.net/DMwiki/index.php?pagename=ConfluxIII
That`s really good; you might want to try it, though it`s hard as hell.