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AlefBet
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icon Modular mods (+3)  
Once you have JtRH patched to level 2.0.7 (or higher), you have the capability to install modifications to your tile set without having to modify the entire thing. In the attached archive are four files, two with the extension ".png" and two with the extension ".tim". The "GeneralTiles.*" files are an example of a complete mod, if you want to change all of the general game tiles. However, the "tarmod.*" files are an example of a smaller mod which only changes the appearance of tar and mud.

To install this mod, you simply take the "tarmod.*" files and place them in your "Data/Bitmaps" directory, and then edit your "drod.ini" file to add the line
General=tarmod
to the end of your [Graphics] section. (Note: this line should be included in addition to the General=GeneralTiles line that's already there, and it must come after that line, or the tar mod will be ignored.) Now, when you play DROD, everything should look normal, except for tar, mud, and tar/mud babies/mothers.

So, how does this work? The secret is in the file "tarmod.tim". This file specifies which tiles you want to replace. "GeneralTiles.tim" lists the identifiers for all the tiles in the main tile file, row by row. The "tarmod.tim" file only contains a few of these numbers. By looking at GeneralTiles.png, you can find that the tar tiles are the last five tiles on rows 24-26, and the tar mother tiles are the last four tiles on row 10. So, we can copy the corresponding numbers out of the same rows of GeneralTiles.tim into our "tarmod.tim". You can see that the first line of tarmod.tim is
248,108,249,254,253,60-63,257-258,!2
which is made by copying the corresponding entries from GeneralTiles.tim. (The final "!2" indicates that the last two tiles of this row are unused.) The remainder of the .tim file is constructed in a similar way, by copying the elements from the main .tim file into our modded .tim file.

When drod.ini is read during start up, it starts off using all the default tiles in its internal GeneralTiles. By adding the line
General=tarmod
to the .ini file, we tell JtRH to replace these tiles. In this way, any number of mods can be installed sequentially, with later mods overriding earlier mods.

I hope this gives all you creative types enough to go from. Happy modding!

[Edited by AlefBet at Local Time:05-24-2005 at 05:59 AM]

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05-24-2005 at 02:34 AM
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silver
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icon Re: Modular mods (+1)  
could you please release Style1Tiles.tim ?

and do these new graphics files have to be 16 wide? or would a 4 wide file with only 4 numbers in the .tim corresponding to each row work?


[Edited by silver at Local Time:05-24-2005 at 02:52 AM]

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05-24-2005 at 02:50 AM
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AlefBet
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icon Re: Modular mods (+2)  
silver wrote:
could you please release Style1Tiles.tim ?
Attached
and do these new graphics files have to be 16 wide? or would a 4 wide file with only 4 numbers in the .tim corresponding to each row work?
That would work fine. You may notice that the tarmod file I gave was only 15 tiles wide.

Edit: I just noticed that the tarmod file is only 13 tiles wide. So I forgive you for not noticing it's not 16 wide if you forgive me for not knowing how big it actually was even after making it myself. :blush

[Edited by AlefBet at Local Time:05-24-2005 at 04:09 AM]

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05-24-2005 at 03:03 AM
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eytanz
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For the sake of those of us who are windows users, could you use a different archive format? tgz.gz is pretty difficult to unpack in windows.

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05-24-2005 at 03:05 AM
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Schik
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icon Re: Modular mods (0)  
Here's a zip of the files Adam posted.

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05-24-2005 at 03:08 AM
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AlefBet
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eytanz wrote:
For the sake of those of us who are windows users, could you use a different archive format? tgz.gz is pretty difficult to unpack in windows.
That's odd. When I was still using Windows, WinZip would open them right up. Which archiver are you using?

[Edited by AlefBet at Local Time:05-24-2005 at 03:09 AM]

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05-24-2005 at 03:08 AM
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silver
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icon Re: Modular mods (0)  
winzip and winrar both love .tgz just fine.

(edit: and, no, I didn't notice your file was only 15 wide because 15 is darn close to 16 so when I eyeballed it, it looked like the 'standard' 16 :) ).


[Edited by silver at Local Time:05-24-2005 at 03:22 AM]

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05-24-2005 at 03:20 AM
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mrimer
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Ha, ha! Eytan's got PKZIP 0.79! :D

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05-24-2005 at 03:36 AM
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eytanz
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I just use WinXP's built in zip capabilities.

Actually, that's only on one computer I have access to. On my home computer, Winzip conks on your file, but winrar opens it fine.


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05-24-2005 at 04:02 AM
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leroy00
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icon Re: Modular mods (0)  
AlefBet wrote:
silver wrote:
could you please release Style1Tiles.tim ?
Attached
I was just wondering: Is there some sort of delimiter string that can be used to comment out the entries in a .tim file? I would like to try different combinations of my mod with existing graphics, which means changing the .tim file around a lot. That is not very easy if you have to keep erasing and retyping the entries, since the numbers for the tiles seem to follow no certain order (why not, actually)? Some wiseguy is going to suggest cut-and-paste from a copy of the original file, but if there is an easier way to do it that is already implemented, I'd like to take advantage of it.

On a similar note (i.e. my lazy shortcuts), I've tried switching quickly between my mod and the original graphics by assigning my Style1Tiles.png +hidden attribute, but, amazingly, DROD 2.0 reads it anyway, at least under Win2K.

On a not-so-similar note, is anyone out there interested in writing a mod tool that dynamically loads a .tim file and all the graphics and shows them in a model room? -_- Because it is a pain to terminate DROD, reopen DROD, reload test hold ad nauseum for each change in a graphic or the .tim file.

Thanks for any info.

-leroy

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[Last edited by Oneiromancer at 12-13-2005 03:42 PM : Fixed quote tags]
12-13-2005 at 11:35 AM
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mrimer
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icon Re: Modular mods (+1)  
There's no semantic for selective commenting out of entries in the .tim.
leroy00 wrote:
On a not-so-similar note, is anyone out there interested in writing a mod tool that dynamically loads a .tim file and all the graphics and shows them in a model room? -_- Because it is a pain to terminate DROD, reopen DROD, reload test hold ad nauseum for each change in a graphic or the .tim file.
Each time a style is reselected, the style definition should be reloaded. So what works more quickly to test quick changes to a style is to switch your test room to a different style and back again in the level editor without quitting DROD.

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Gandalf the Grey. That was my name.
I am Gandalf the White.
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12-13-2005 at 05:02 PM
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leroy00
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mrimer wrote:
There's no semantic for selective commenting out of entries in the .tim.
Each time a style is reselected, the style definition should be reloaded. So what works more quickly to test quick changes to a style is to switch your test room to a different style and back again in the level editor without quitting DROD.
Hey, thanks a lot Mike. Oh so obvious. I guess I was not seeing the forest for the tims, or something like that. Have a karmatic up mod! :?

-leroy

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12-19-2005 at 10:38 AM
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Samuel
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Sorry to boot up an old thread but i must ask,
Evey time i put this patch on, i copy it in the right directorys but anytime i try to play the game with the mod on the game pauses, a loud beeping sound occurs, it stops and then the game is fine, i would like to know if there is a way to fix this?


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07-09-2008 at 08:59 AM
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Briareos
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Samuel wrote:
Sorry to boot up an old thread but i must ask,
Evey time i put this patch on, i copy it in the right directorys but anytime i try to play the game with the mod on the game pauses, a loud beeping sound occurs, it stops and then the game is fine, i would like to know if there is a way to fix this?
That beeping sound probably means there was an error message written into the DROD.err file in the Data subdirectory of your DROD program directory - could you perhaps post what it says?

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[Last edited by Briareos at 07-09-2008 10:51 AM]
07-09-2008 at 10:42 AM
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Samuel
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There is a file called drod.err, this is what the file says when opened in notepad:
Click here to view the secret text
07-09-2008 at 10:48 AM
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Briareos
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icon Re: Modular mods (+2)  
(I had edited the following into my last post, but since you had already posted I moved it into a new post...)

You probably should rename the "GeneralTiles.png/.tim" files to "NonGeneralTiles.png/.tim" (or some other name), as GeneralTiles is used in-game for the default tiles; if I just put those GeneralTiles files into my bitmap folder my DROD.err gets flooded with
Assertion error in line 1892 of .\BitmapManager.cpp: "this->TileImageTypes[wTileImageNo] != TIT_Unspecified"
since the tim file is missing a lot of tiles (all of the TCB additions, for starters), and since you replaced GeneralTiles there's nothing left to fall back to...

When you rename the files, you can just edit your DROD.ini to contain
General=GeneralTiles;NonGeneralTiles
and at least all JtRH critters should be replaced.

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"I'm not anti-anything, I'm anti-everything, it fits better." - Sole
R.I.P. Robert Feldhoff (1962-2009) :(

[Last edited by Briareos at 07-09-2008 04:26 PM]
07-09-2008 at 10:53 AM
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