Oneiromancer
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Make yourself an editable copy of Dugan's. Then check out the level description for, say, Level 9. The text is cut off. However, if you start playtesting right next to the stairs in level 8, and go to level 9, all the text is there.

In general I always wondered why we didn't get as much room as Dugan's to describe the levels, but assumed it was on purpose and not a bug.

Game on,

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Oneiromancer
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I just noticed something else, and I'm not going to edit the previous post since Mike probably gets this e-mailed to him. In the previous post I selected "Cancel" on the text for Level 9 after reading it. You might notice that the cursor in the text box is past the end of the text. If you select "Okay" and then open it up again the cursor is right at the end of the text. In addition, even if you hit "Cancel" but then exit DROD, the cursor has moved up to the end of the text. In both cases, the text is cut off within the game when moving from level 8 to level 9.

Game on,

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"He who is certain he knows the ending of things when he is only beginning them is either extremely wise or extremely foolish; no matter which is true, he is certainly an unhappy man, for he has put a knife in the heart of wonder." -- Tad Williams

agaricus5
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It's not really a bug.

I think it was a left-over from the days before the editor and the text length restraint on descriptions. Go to the text.dat file - you will be able to find the descriptions there if you look at the binary. You can even make your own extra-long descriptions for your hold, I think, by appending information manually to the .dat file just after the existing information stops. However, I've no plans to try this potentially dangerous pursuit quite yet as my hold is still under construction, so I don't think this procedure is proven. If you want to try...

Backup the file first!

[Edited by agaricus5 on 12-23-2003 at 01:09 AM GMT]

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ErikH2000
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agaricus5 wrote:
You can even make your own extra-long descriptions for your hold, I think, by appending information manually to the .dat file just after the existing information stops.

In theory that might work, but backup or no backup, please don't try this! The text in DROD is stored inside of binary fields which would require intimate knowledge of the Metakit format to correctly change their lengths. It would be fairly simple to change the text, but to modify the length could easily introduce a subtle corruption that will not be shown immediately and have horrible effects later.

I don't know why the limit is as short as it is. We will likely fix it in the next release.

-Erik

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The_Red_Hawk
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The limit on scrolls is pretty short too.....

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Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

eytanz
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But scrolls are far more limited in what can actually be displayed in the game, so that limit makes more sense.

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The_Red_Hawk
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True, but in Deep Hold there are several examples where I have had to make two or three scrolls to finish saying something. Why should there be a limit on how long a piece of paper can be?

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

agaricus5
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Because there is a limit on the height of the window/screen.

If there is too much text, it will have to overflow, and then you may not be able to read it if it leaves the scroll box.

Multi-page scrolls would be a good idea, but they will probably not be implemented until the next release. I think you'll just have to put up with several scrolls to display a long message, or just be less verbose.

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The_Red_Hawk
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I know there's a limited amount of space, but there are several ways to change that - multi-page scrolls is one of them.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

eytanz
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Multi-page scrolls will be clunky and annoying - and since scrolls appear to the side of the main gameplay area, people might not even notice they are multi-page and miss info this way.

I say keep the limit - DROD isn't about reading long novels during gameplay, it's about tactics, action, and puzzles. Long scrolls just distract from the main game.

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The_Red_Hawk
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I suppose you're probably right about that.

____________________________
Slashing, whirling, diving, twirling,
Snapping, turning, rising, swirling,
Screeching, flipping, gliding, sliding,
The red hawk's dance of death.

.....the king of the skies.....

Mattcrampy
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You could always work out how to tell your story in a different way. I admit this takes a bit of practice, though.

Matt

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mrimer
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Oneiromancer wrote:
Make yourself an editable copy of Dugan's. Then check out the level description for, say, Level 9. The text is cut off. However, if you start playtesting right next to the stairs in level 8, and go to level 9, all the text is there.

For future builds, I've expanded the size of the displayable text in the 2D box from ~250 chars to 500. This will work for all existing texts. (I'm not making it any larger, by default, because it won't fit on the screen.) Also put in some error checks so that this mistake will show up in drod.err if it ever pops up again.

In general I always wondered why we didn't get as much room as Dugan's to describe the levels, but assumed it was on purpose and not a bug.

Your instincts serve you well, young Jedi.