MAHK 7/27/98
Mission-Specific Data Resources
Here's stuff you need to know as an artist or designer to get various
mission-specific data mojo going in dark.
Setting Up Your Level
The Mission Parameters dialog will have an entry called
Dark Mission Description. Before you can have any
mission-specific data you need to set these parameters correctly:
- Mission Number should be your integer mission number.
- Mission Pathname should be an 8-character pathname. It
is the directory where your mission specific art and text will live.
It is generally a subdir under art\finals\intrface, but it
could be other places as well.
Mission Goals
A mission can have any number of goals. They are numbered, starting
with 0. Goals will appear on the various goal displays in numerical
order.
Quest Variables
For each goal in your mission, the following mission quest variables
must be defined:
- GOAL_STATE_N
- 0 = Incomplete
- 1 = Complete
- 2 = Inactive
- 3 = Failed
- GOAL_VISIBLE_N: Whether this goal is displayed on the
objectives screen and other places.
To create a mission quest variable, use the command
quest_create_mis variable,value.
Goal quest variables must be numbered consecutively starting
at zero. If you skip a number, then later numbers will be ignored.
Text Strings
The file art\finals\pathname\goals.str contains
the text for all the goals. Each goal has two descriptions, a short
game description that is seen during the game, and a longer fiction
description that is seen in the briefing summary.
Here's a sample string file:
// Goal #0
fiction_0: "You hate the guy. You must kill him" // fiction description
text_0: "Kill the Guy" // short description
// goal #1
fiction_1: "You must complete the ritual of self-sacrifice, which can only be performed by drowning in the pool."
text_1: "Drown to Death"
Maps
Setting up your page range.
Two mission quest variables control the range of automap
page numbers. They are MAP_MIN_PAGE and
MAP_MAX_PAGE. The page range is inclusive. You can change
these variables on the fly to hide or reveal map pages.
Art Needs
Each page has a piece of "background art" and a number of "decals." Each room the the
room database specifies which decal it uses, and on which page, according to its
"automap" property. When the automap is drawn, the decal that
represents the player's current room is pasted onto the automap.
Backgrounds
-
The background art must fit inside the "automap
frame" found in art\finals\intrface\map.pcx
-
Put the background art for each page in
art\finals\intrface\pathname\pageNNN.pcx,
where NNN is the page number, padded with
zeroes (e.g. 001, 002, etc.).
Decals
Artists should take the "background art" and mark it up with all the
decals you want to exist.
-
It's ok to put them in the same file, or in multiple files.
- Pink-box the decals and put them in
art\src\pathname.
- You may discover you need multiple files per map page in order to keep
your pink-boxes from overlapping.
- Name the decal files pNNNrX.pcx where NNN is the
page number and X is a letter of the alphabet, starting with
"A" (e.g. p001ra.pcx, p001rb.pcx, etc. ).
- For each page, run:
makerect pNNNra.pcx pNNNrb.pcx
... pNNNrc.pcx
This will create the file "pNNNra.bin". Copy it to
art\finals\pathname.
- For each page, run:
cutout pNNNra.pcx pNNNrb.pcx
... pNNNrc.pcx
This will create several "pNNNrXXX.pcx" files. Copy them to art\finals\pathname.
Properties
In the mission, set the automap property for the rooms that want
decals. The location should specify the decal number.
Decals are ordered primarily by which decal file they come from.
Within a file, decals are ordered according to the top-left corner of
their bounding boxes.