Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

A forum for discussing all things regarding modding of Eschalon: Book III
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MyGameCompany
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by MyGameCompany »

mercy wrote:You have to make something happen with the the Strike Anvil feature in East Mirkland Delta!
Maybe recreate that anvil in your Mirkland maps?
I forgot all about the anvil! You're right, I should have tied into that somehow...
Troy
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Check out my Book III mods: The Mystery of Rockhammer Mine and Expedition into West Mirkland
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by john1v6 »

Absolutely loved your Rockhammer Mine mod, and I can't wait to try out this one, too. That first one was brilliant, and I hope this one lives up to its predecessor's standard
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by GChrisSfish21 »

I was going West to East
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xolotl
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by xolotl »

MyGameCompany wrote:SpottedShroom and xolotl: can you guys fix my 4953.map and the editor? Apparently the editor isn't cleaning up everything related to the large graphics when I delete the large graphic objects... and I can't fix it with the editor because I can't see the ships anymore. As I said, there should only be one ship.
Oh, I'll take a look at this tonight, btw.
GChrisSfish21 wrote:Entered saw this map mess and then sent out Reveal Map ping.
Eschalon stores its maps using three total files - one for the map itself, one for all the entities (NPCs and enemies) on the map, and one for the minimap. I've seen that corruption when it tries to load a map for which there's no minimap file... The mapping will work okay as you go along, but all the unexplored bits have that weird noise on it.

I'll make a note to have the editor create a "blank" minimap file if one's not found.
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by xolotl »

MyGameCompany wrote:SpottedShroom and xolotl: can you guys fix my 4953.map and the editor? Apparently the editor isn't cleaning up everything related to the large graphics when I delete the large graphic objects... and I can't fix it with the editor because I can't see the ships anymore. As I said, there should only be one ship.
Aha! Interesting. I'll have to run some more experiments with the "huge graphic" handling (and maybe ask BW about some specifics of how it actually works). Regardless, you'll be able to fix it yourself:

The quick fix:
Update these tiles to have a Wall Image ID of 0 (instead of 1000)
  • (6, 97)
  • (0, 132)
  • (4, 143)
A longer explanation: (Revised a bit from my original explanation here)
As Eschalon reads through a map, it ends up associating the "Huge Graphic" objects with particular Wall ID numbers. For instance, once it sees that you've used Wall ID 1000 for the Docked Ship #1, anywhere else that it sees a Wall ID of 1000, it'll end up drawing that ship, whether there's a related Huge Graphic object or not. What was happening in your case was that the extra Huge Graphics objects had been removed, but the Wall ID numbers for those tiles had remained at 1000, so the ships were getting drawn by the engine.

This has some other effects, as you'd mentioned in the github bug report... If you have more than one Huge Graphic on a map, we'll have to make sure that the Wall IDs are different for each one (but any repeated Huge Graphics, like the rafts you'll find in East Wylderan, would share Wall IDs). Right now the editor isn't at all smart about this, actually, and basically just assigns everything an ID of 1000. (Also, the text in the "description" always says zero, which should probably match, instead.) I'll work on updating that to be more intelligent about it, both in terms of laying down new Huge Graphics, and also removing them.

As a side note, the engine does appear to have some default Wall ID mappings. If you have a map with no Huge Graphics but have a tile with ID 1000, it'll show the Rockhammer Mine sign. If you use 1001, you'll get a docked ship. At 1002, the engine would crash. Interesting!

Some takeways for the editor, apart from just "being more smart about this" -
  1. We'll highlight Wall IDs >= 1000 without associated objects as either "objects" or (more likely) "errors" so that something like this would be more visible in the editor
  2. I also have wanted to add a feature to allow you to search for specific types of data in the maps. So you'd be able to say "highlight everything with a wall ID of N" to have the editor do so.
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by MyGameCompany »

Ok, I've uploaded v1.01 that should fix all of the issues reported so far. Thanks for the feedback everyone! Hope you're enjoying the mod.
Troy
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Check out my Book III mods: The Mystery of Rockhammer Mine and Expedition into West Mirkland
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by helivoy »

I'm playing the game on a Mac and after visiting mod maps 4952 and 4953 I can no longer go either east or west. [Update: This gets corrected if I exit the game completely and re-enter.]

Also, may I ask for a hint for reaching the castaway's cave? Many thanks in advance!
Last edited by helivoy on April 14th, 2014, 11:11 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by MyGameCompany »

helivoy wrote:I'm playing the game on a Mac and after visiting mod maps 4952 and 4953 I can no longer go either east or west.

Update: This get corrected if I exit the game completely and re-enter it.
I'm not sure what you mean. Do you mean you're not able to leave West Mirkland and go back to East/Central Mirkland?
Troy
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Check out my Book III mods: The Mystery of Rockhammer Mine and Expedition into West Mirkland
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by helivoy »

Indeed, if I'm playing continuously I cannot exit that particular map in any direction. But it gets corrected if I save, quit the game completely, then go back.
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by SpottedShroom »

helivoy wrote:Indeed, if I'm playing continuously I cannot exit that particular map in any direction. But it gets corrected if I save, quit the game completely, then go back.
This sounds like what I like to call the "void full of slimes" bug. Its main symptom is being unable to leave a map until you save/reload, but it also sometimes fills the blank area at the edge of maps with infinite enemies, and that's more fun :) See "Sometimes it's not possible to leave a map" under Engine Bugs here: http://www.basiliskgames.com/forums/vie ... =26&t=9161
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by mercy »

Wow! Clean minimaps in 1.01, excellent job!
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by helivoy »

All mods so far (Alchemist's Tower, Rockhammer level 3 and West Mirkland) are very nice! But I still can't find the castaway's cave on the latter... may I have a hint? Many thanks!
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by MyGameCompany »

helivoy wrote:All mods so far (Alchemist's Tower, Rockhammer level 3 and West Mirkland) are very nice! But I still can't find the castaway's cave on the latter... may I have a hint? Many thanks!
Thank you! I can't speak for Weird Heather, but I've had fun creating my 2 mods. Glad you enjoyed them.
[+] SPOILER
It's on the northwest shore of Mirkland. Look for a cracked rock where you can use a powder keg.
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Check out my Book III mods: The Mystery of Rockhammer Mine and Expedition into West Mirkland
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by helivoy »

Nice! I should have guessed when I saw the originally inaccessible area w/ the giant clam. I particularly like the sea ambience of this mod.
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Re: Book III Mod: Expedition into West Mirkland

Post by xolotl »

MyGameCompany wrote:Ok, I think I've found a bug in the editor. I'm seeing the large ships in the game again too. But I don't see them when I display the map in the editor. There should only be one ship in 4953.map, located at (3, 80). But in the game, I'm seeing 3 other ships that I removed (due to a bug in the B3 engine that I wrote BW about).
FYI, the recently-released v1.0.1 of the editor should address these kinds of problems in the future. The editor should intelligently handle the ID mapping for Big Graphics for both creation and deletion, and should highlight errors for you if you have "objects" set to highlight. Enjoy!
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