DelvEdit 3-12-13

Here's the next version of DelvEdit for those that want to start messing around with it. Major features:

• Entity selection and placement
  
  • x, y and z keys will lock movement to that axis
  • shift will lock movement to the x & y plane
  • alt will duplicate an entity
•    Entity editor
  • right click on a selected entity and use 'edit properties' to bring up a properties pane for that entity
  • choose textures, lighting modes, collision sizes, etc
• Static mesh support
  • Add a model entity, choose the model and texture, set to 'isDynamic = false' to have the model use the static mesh batching pipeline
  • Static meshes will render faster, have better lighting, and will receive decals
• Projected decal entities
  • Projects the chosen texture onto surfaces
  • Choose either projected or orthogonal mode
• C key displays / hides collision boxes for entities

Oh I like seeing the collision boxes.  But it doesn't seem to work for me?  I press C with out without lighting and with or without having an entity selected and it still shows me nothing.

It seems that like my UW mod project has been noticed over on the Ultima Codex:
http://ultimacodex.com/2013/02/someone-is-re-making-ultima-underworld-using-delver/

er ... it's looking more and more like delver maker, the rpg maker 3D that should have been!

Well, yeah.  The game inspired me to do my UW mod, especially after seeing how easy it was to change the content with how open the JSON files are.  I want to add features to the engine, admittedly selfishly, that are required by my ideas for my UW mod.  But the features I suggest are broad enough to be useful to base Delver and other mods so I want to continue to keep the features open and easy to mod for the next person that might be so inspired to do so.

As Chad mentioned, he has been generous enough to grant me access to his source code repository, so that I can fork his code and throw my own hacks in, and if he likes what he sees these features will be merged into the Delver base code.

Here are some of the things I am working on, and remember these may or may not make it back into the main code:

• Font scaling - In stock Delver you can change the resolution of any graphics files (textures, sprites, etc) except for the font file which was locked at 8x8 per tile.  This was not an engine limitation, just a bug in the font-loading code.  For my UW mod I've added a 16x16 per tile font.
• Standardizing graphics files to all be 16 tiles wide.
• Textures per wall face - in Delver base, you place a wall and give it a texture number and that texture will be used on all 4 faces of that wall.  I've added texture slots for the North, South, East, and West faces so that they can each be textured independently.
• Item textures, per location and per condition.  Right now all items are each represented by a single texture.  Actually, there is a second texture for a weapon that is wielded, and I take advantage of that in my UW mod.
  But image you have a separate texture for each possible location of an item: one for it being on the floor, one for it being in an inventory slot, one for it being in an equipment slot (if it's an equippable item), and one for it being wielded.  Take a pair of pants for example - when on the floor, there could be an image of the pants laying crumpled on the floor.  When you pick them up and put them in inventory, there would be an image of pants folded neatly into the inventory square.  When you equip them, there will be an image of pants being worn.  And if you wield them, you'll see your hand clutching a pair of pants and ready to lay the smack down.
  Once you have those 4 possible item locations, remember that items also have conditions like broken, worn, normal, fine, and excellent.  Image being able to provide a separate texture for each condition, for each location.  So a single item can theoretically have up to 20 textures specified, and that's not counting the 5 base textures.
  See for example my armor in my UW mod:
  
  the first column is what it looks like when on the ground, and the rest of the columns are what it looks like when equipped at various damage levels.
  
• Diagonal walls - you've seen the screen shots, not much else to say.  Just like square walls, diagonal walls can have a different texture on each of the 3 faces.  Unlike UW and SS, diagonal walls may also have slopes in their open space.
• The map has been increased in resolution to accurately display the diagonal walls.  Also an optional graphical background can be used for the map - you can see I used a UW map in the screen shot of my UW mod.
• context-sensitive action button - besides just the generic use button, I've added a get, look, talk, and attack buttons, depending on what entity your character is pointed at.  Look and Talk are not used by the stock delver engine, but they're in there for future expansion.
• Doors - lots of options for doors.  They can slide or rotate.  They can stand up straight or lie on the floor (think trap-doors and draw-bridges).  They can start out locked or unlocked.  They can be unlocked by a key or a scriptable item (like a wall switch).  They can stick open or they can be re-closable.  Lots of options in placing doors.  I've even added a special doors.png files to keep them separate from wall textures.  Right now all my door code uses sprites for doors because at first I didn't think my understanding was solid enough to deal with 3d models, but I have confidence I will be switching to models soon.
• Scripts within maps - No coding knowledge required, all editable within the level editor.  Scripting is very simple.  You start with on object that can pull a trigger, for example a wall switch.  Then on this trigger you place triggerable script nodes.  For example if you want to open a door when that switch is pulled, you just attach a DoorOpen trigger to that trigger line and then attach that to the door that you want to open.  You can attach multiple script nodes to a single trigger, and you can even place delays between them so that they fire off in sequence instead of all at once.  A trigger line can even pull another trigger line, so essentially you have routines and sub-routines.  And a trigger can pull another trigger based on a condition, so you have script branching capabilities.  All this without having to write code, just attaching objects together in the editor.
• a few other minor things, I can't remember them all right now.

Remember those are my suggested changes, Chad may or may not accept any or all of them into the official Delver base.

I could post some screenshots but some of these things don't convey well in stills.  If someone can point me to a tutorial for recording an app and uploading it to YouTube (or whatever is easy/modern) and I'll do that and post a link here.

[MikeRatzlaff]

MikeRatzlaff has been proven to be a Cool Dude, and given a fork of the Delver code to work on to try out some improvements he had been asking me for, he's been working on some cool stuff like exposing more properties for modding, angled walls and better doors:

WOOT! Recognition!  By name!  I'm no longer "Someone working on an Ultima Underworld mod for Delver"! 

Fuck yeah, angled wall! I wonder how this is stored in the map?

I mean original delver had drawn heavily on map system like Tomb raider or system shock: each cell has wallID + ceiling/floor height + extra slope height for each, how the hell you can add slanted wall?

Also the minimap still show square data, yet the room is rather roundish

Funny you should mention System Shock - I'm storing the wall angles in the exact same way.  SS keeps each map square data in a 16-byte entry (128 bits).  Take the value of the first 3 bits of that (or 4 if you prefer even numbers) and cap it at a value of 5.  What you have left is exactly how I'm storing the diagonals for delver.

Also, you seem rather excited about diagonal walls.  I bet you'd crap yourself if you ever saw a curved.  Oh hey look at this:



I suppose I owe you a new pair of shorts now.  Sorry about that.  My bad.

But seriously, Chad has said he has no interest in putting curved walls in the base delver engine.  After seeing how much work is it going to be to get diagonal walls in, I can see why:  They are purely cosmetic, add little value to gameplay, and add stress to the collision detection, path-finding, and other systems, plus the actual work to code and debug them.  I'm all for adding features but not at the cost of simplicity and speed of the engine.  I'll be focusing my efforts elsewhere.

The trap looks fantastic in that!

Meh, it looks alright on the ground.  I don't like the way it looks when it sets off.  I'd need to adjust the color values in the graphic.  But I no longer care to work on it.

Defiantly gives a very medieval look, and is that trap a pentagram?

Indeed it is.

Mother of God... 

Eh, doesn't take much to impress you, does it?

For sake of posterity here is the mod I was working on before I started on the UW1 mod.  I'll probably never finish it.



Download it here: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80735913/DelverMods/RPG1/DelverMod-MWR-RPG1-20130219.zip

Thanks MikeRatzlaff.

I noticed one issue with the graphics. The wands go into the floor.

I also had a question. Are money piles like skulls and bones, just random loot?

Yeah, the wands are weird - UW draws them at a 30 degree angle, but Delver assumes they are drawn at 45 degrees, so it rotates them into the ground.  I could either redraw them (but I wanted to stick with authentic UW graphics as much as possible), or I could shift them up a bit (so they'd be floating), or I could try to talk Chad into giving me control over the object rotation (which would require a code change).

There are a lot of items in there that are "teaser" items - items that were useful in UW but just junk in Delver because they have no purpose - coins can't be spent; lanterns, torches, and candles can't be lit; boots and gloves can't be worn; books, bedrolls, runebags, anvils, etc can't be used...  All just teaser items and decorations.

It's pretty awesome, I love the details like different debris spawning on wooden floors. When I renovate the website I need to make a whole section related to modding (and link to the wiki) so more people know that stuff like this is possible.

Thanks!  Yeah that's why I was saying that I was really digging through the dat files and the code trying to figure out all that was possible.  I've learned a lot about Java and JSON along the way.

oh and I guess I might as well post this here too for the rest of you:

The current progress on my UW1 mod:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80735913/DelverMod-MWR-UW1-20130212.Zip

That has the textures, items, decorations, music, and UI skins.  Doesn't have the new monsters, dungeons, or sounds yet.

To install on a PC just blow it up in the same folder as your delver.exe.  For other OSes I have no idea, probably the same (blow it up in the same folder as the main delver jar) but I can't say for sure.

And someone feel free to post it on the wiki.  I haven't made an account there yet.

On the bat hit-box bug I mentioned before:
it's not just the bats, but certain monsters it happens on ocassionally.  It doesn't always happen but when it does, it's always the same monster defs.  It's like the xoffset gets set to about 0.5 because the actual monster is about half a block away from their graphic - if you attack the graphic you miss but if you attack the space to the right of it you'll hit, and blood will come from the space, and the item drop will drop in that space.  I can't find a way to reproduce this bug reliably but the fact that it always happens on the same monster def makes me think maybe you're changing an xoffset on an object and using a hard coded index and that index is wrong.  But that's just my guess.

And I found a cheat:  If you pick up the orb but never put it in an inventory slot, the undead will never start to spawn.  Just click on the orb (use inventory mode or "Z" mode to get a cursor) and hold the mouse button down but never release it.  You can still turn inventory on and off with "C" or "I".  You'll walk slow because you're charging your weapon, so to fix that just unequip your weapon (put it in a hotkey slot and use that hotkey).  You can go up and down stairs while holding the mouse button and the orb will still be on your cursor when you get to the next level.  And you can still use spacebar to attack.  The only time you have to actually put it in inventory is before you leave the first level.

And a request for mobile: Can you make it so that when you tap an item in the world it will pick it up and put it in inventory?  Right now if you tap an item he picks it up and then throws it away.

I've discovered that the current engine (0.65) doesn't tolerate translucency in the 3d world (translucencies are rendered as transparent), but does allow it in the 2d interface.

Yeah, I'm currently using alpha clipping or discard to have transparency be on or off in the world hoping to make the renderer a bit faster, although from recent reading it'd probably be just as fast to just turn alpha blending on. I'll give that a try and see if it makes any difference.

I noticed that, in one of the files in the shaders folder, there was a line something like "If pixel.alpha<0.9 then pixel.discard" or something like that.  I figured that's where I need to mod to "fix" the translucencies, but my knowledge of shader code was insufficient to make any headway.

wow I just wanted to say that this game has really inspired me.  I found it looking for a cool game for my new Android phone, then found the wiki and saw people modding it.  I thought I'd try so I started by replacing textures, then I started digging into the dat files.  To understand those I decompiled the class files and read the java files.  I din't know ANY java about 3 weeks ago, but I learned it in a hurry trying to understand the code.

I wanted to rip graphics and stuff from UW1 to do a mod but couldn't find any apps for that.  I found a file format spec sheet and started writing a ripper of my own, in Java.  Now I've ripped all the screens, graphics, items, critters, sounds, fonts, and levels (created a crude UW->Delver level converter) out using a Java app, and I didn't even know any Java until about 3 weeks ago.

Anyway, just wanted to say, thanks for making this fun game, and thanks for the inspiration.  Keep writing it and I'll keep modding it

I suggested footsteps but envisioned them more as subtle disturbances on the floor.  Can decals be something like a 50% transparent dark color?

I've discovered that the current engine (0.65) doesn't tolerate translucency in the 3d world (translucencies are rendered as transparent), but does allow it in the 2d interface.

This is a bummer, I couldn't add the ghosts and smoke/steam/mist effects I wanted to put in my mods.

However, it does give a new feature - any pixels that are translucent become invisible in the 3d world and appear only in inventory, so you can use this to make items look different in inventory than they do on the ground.  To demonstrate this I created a new item called the Cursed Helmet.  It looks normal when it on the ground but when you go to pick it up - GAH!  THERE IS A SEVERED HEAD IN IT!

MikeRatzlaff

Can you post your texture packs on the Delver wiki? I've been trying to make one, but not very good at it.

I can.  Nothing is finished though, it's all just experimental right now - just throwing in different textures to see how they look.

I'll write up a quick-start tutorial on the wiki, it's really not too hard once you get the hang of it.

One more "bug": If you have your inventory open, and there is an item on the ground behind your inventory, when you hover over items in your inventory it actually shows the details of the item on the ground.  And also, hover text appears under other text on the screen (like your current AC, hit damage, etc) so it's hard to read if that text is in the way.

And about my previous comment about items falling in the water:  You can still get them if their sprite is showing above the water.  So I'm guessing that you're doing some kind of vector cast to see if there is an object to get, and that vector stops at the water.

Some ideas of things to add, some you probably already know of:

• Add transparency slider for the hud to the options screen.  I made a cool UW1 paperdoll for the inventory slots but I can barely see it.
• Fix arrow stacks.  Other items should stack too, like scrolls and potions
• Potions should identify after you drink them.  And maybe scrolls and wands shouldn't be identified until they are used also?
• can you increase the "get" distance just a little?  I feel like I have to stand right on top of things and look down to pick them up.
• Maybe traps should show up on the map after you've seen them go off?

Some things, kinda bugs, but more like just some stuff I broke while trying to do mods:

• trying to spawn items with the dungeon info.dat files makes them not getable
• Ranged Weapons don't seem to care what missiles you use.  for my UW mod I created sling, bow, and crossbow, and stones, arrows, and bolts.  Any weapon can fire any missile.
• Trying to create a healer, I made a monster with a negative attack.  This crashes the game whenever it attacks.  I then gave it a zero attack and a spell with a negative baseDamage.  A negative randDamage will also crash the game.  But this works - I can get healed from this monsters spell attack but it ignores maxHP and I can heal as high up as I want.
• I was trying to make a fishing pole so I made a weapon with a range of 3 and a knockback of -2.  This does weird things.  Sometimes I can bring an enemy right through me and they end up behind me.  Sometimes they are "inside" me.  And sometimes they come, hit me, and then go flying back further away then they were before I hit them.  Also it seems the knockback calculation is purely 2-dimensional as I can't knock things up or down even when I'm standing way above or below them.
• Can you made it so that items on the ground are affected by knockback?  Then my fishing pole would be really cool - there could even be a part where an item is up out of reach, or a part where an item is out on an island in lava so you have to decide to either brave the lava or go find a fishing pole.
• Can you made a flag for monsters like isWaterMonster so that I can make my UW lurkers?  Obviously a water monster can only spawn and move on water.  Also, isLavaMonster so I can make my fire elementals.
• also entities need flags for floatsOnWater and floatsOnLava.  When an entity floats it will bob with the surface of the water, instead of being on a fixed y-offset like it is now.
• I've tried creating enchanted items (like ring of fire resist or amulet of poison resist, etc) in the items.dat file but it crashes the game.  I am doing it wrong or is this not implemented yet?  I'm trying it like this:
           {
              class:com.interrupt.dungeoneer.entities.items.Armor,
              itemType:armor,
              tex:48,
              name:"RING OF FIRE RESIST",
              armor:0,
              equipLoc:"RING",
              yOffset:-0.11
              enchantment: {
                 class: com.interrupt.dungeoneer.entities.items.ItemModification,
                 fireResist: 3
              }
           }
  

You need to post some screenshots of your UW mod

For sure!  I'll have to get the package to you so you can play it yourself.

It's looking pretty good - I've got all the textures replaced, and added quite a few more.  I tinkered with the files inside generator.zip to get them all to show up.  Why do you have a ZIP inside the JAR?  Why not just have those files in a folder?  I made a generator folder in my assets folders but it doesn't pick files out of there.  I have to add them back into the zip every time.
I also completely replaced all the items with UW items graphics, and added the new weapons (axe, mace, etc)  I haven't balanced them properly, I just copied the sword definitions and changed their graphics.
I added a bunch of decorations. In fact the sprites file is full.  I've got 5 different plants, 2 mushrooms, 3 rocks, and a bunch of other stuff in there. The dungeons are well decorated

RE: Bugs:

1) I think I'm shaving a bit off of the wall width due to a bit of the next texture trying to bleed in sometimes. Probably need to reduce that amount when using larger sized texture packs.

I'll show you what I mean.

Here with 16x16 textures (stock):

See most pixel columns (like the one bracketed in green) are 25 pixels wide.  But the column bracketed in red is only 22 pixels wide.  That is the right-most column in the texture.

Here in 32x32 (using textures from Stone Soup):

Here most columns are 12 wide, but that one on the right edge of the texture is only 7.

Here in 64x64 (using Ultima Underworld textures):

Here most columns are 6 pixels wide.  Column #63 is only 2 pixels wide, and column #64 is missing completely.  See the blue bracket - if you count columns, there is only 62 complete, 1 tiny, and 1 missing (out of 64).

I'm guessing it's all just some kind of rounding error.  When scaling the textures it's calculating them slightly bigger than the wall.  Or something like that.

Anyway here's a few other bugs you may or may not be aware of:

• Lights seem to go through walls - if a mage or a trap or whatever is on the other side of the wall and causes a light to appear then you can see that light even tho the source is blocked to you
• An item dropped in water or lava will just keep splashing.  Also you cannot pick up items from water or lava.  Is this intentional?  I thought I saw a video of an older version where someone dropped something and then picked it up.
• You can move an equipped item and put it in inventory and it stayed equipped.
• If you pick up a weapon from the ground and put it in your equipped weapon slot, then the new weapon will be equipped.  But if you take a weapon from inventory and put it in your equipped slot, the change places but the old weapon is still equipped.
• If you pick up an item off the ground, you can hold it on your mouse and walk far away.  When you finally put it on an item in your inventory, that item will go back to where you picked up the other item, even tho you are far away.
• decorations hanging from the ceiling, if they are hanging from a sloped ceiling, seem to hang from height of the lowest point, even if they are not at the lowest side of the tile.
• decorations should not be allowed to spawn in a square that has a ladder

Hi! This is my first post so I'll throw out a quick introduction:

I found Delver while searching for some cool rogue-likes for my androids.  I bought it on my phone, then on my tablet and my PC (so you could say that I support Rogue three-ways  Oh I'm so punny!)  Like many here I'm a big fan of UW and SS and all LGS games so of course I see huge potential in Delver.

I've been playing with Delver a bit:

• My first mod project was that I noticed that the "Seiseki's Enchanted Delver" package on the wiki doesn't work with the latest (0.65) version of Delver, so I've been fixing that.  It mostly works now but still has random crashes and since there is no log output I can only guess at what the problems are and then guess at how to fix them.
• Next I started working on my own mod, based on graphics from Tiles for NetHack, Stone Soup, and other open-source RPGs.  That's mostly done except for the monster animations.  Mostly I did this because I wanted to see how Delver looked with 32x32 instead of 16x16 graphics.
• Now I'm working on a UW1 mod for it and it's looking pretty nice.  I've got most of the textures, items, and UI done.  I haven't yet found a utility to rip monster sprites from UW but I've seen the file specs posted so I might just have to write my own.  This one I'm doing at everything at 64x64 and it looks pretty sharp.
• Another project I'm trying is to enhance the map generator - Sometimes it makes very small maps (I once got one that had a begin, 2 curves, and an end - boring!) and I want to make it either fill the entire map or guarantee a certain number of tiles are used (say a minimum of 8 or so) on a map.  I also want to add a chance to create an isolated area that is only accessible via ladder from another level (like level 7/8 in UW1).  I could also made it so that a series of connected isolated areas would form a tower (like the tower in UW1 at the top of which is a piece of the 3-part key) and would put the key to level 7 at the top of this tower but I don't know if all that back tracking would just be annoying.

Anyway, on to a few bugs I've been seeing:

• When rendering a wall texture, it seems the the engine isn't quite rending the whole texture.  It's shaving a few pixels off the pixel column on the far right side of the texture.  This isn't very noticeable with 16x16 walls, but you can see it with 32x32 and really notice it with 64x64.  Same with the floor tiles - if you stand facing north and look straight down, the right-most pixel column is smaller than all the other pixel columns.
• It seems that flying mobs have a bug in their collision detection and can often fly into the ceiling and the floor.  Seems like they are clipped against solid walls but not clipped when flying in a high ceiling tile to a lower ceiling tile - they can pass right into the ceiling of that tile and fly around there.  Also it seems that the bat hitbox is to the right of center.  I haven't seen this on other monsters.
• I think mobs can spawn and there is no check for existing mobs in that space.  I sometimes see mobs stuck together and I assumed they both went through a teleporter.  But then I will kill them and scour the level for a teleporter that lands on that square and I can't find one.  Also, sometimes I am just walking around and suddenly I can't move and I'm taking damage.  I start attacking wildly and eventually something dies and I can move again.  I think a mob just spawned into my space.
• Sometimes the text over-lay stops working.  If I am near an object and looking directly at it, then the description won't show  Also if I try to pick it up but can't then I won't see the "No Room" message.  But other text like my health display and hovering on items in my inventory still works.
• On the map, sometimes it marks the stairs in a square next to the square that the stairs are actually in.  Also the arrow isn't centered properly - it can sometimes show that you are in a wall when you're not.