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Okay, I was busy working on my map. Minding my own business when I finally got a crazy idea (bare with me please) I had to make my own Dragon scripts.

I came up with this idea, because, I wanted to build an underworld. You know a place where people go when they keel over. Then they can fight their way back to the surface. But I wanted to make the place huge, so mapping it out tile by tile and then making it static is possible, but not very intelligent, as the size of my static files will go through the roof. I already have the space mapped out on my world map, I just need to change the colors once I get the scripts created.

So, I decide to take a look at the Dragon scripts (I'm using mod9plus by the way) and I instantly became confused. But I wanted to understand so I ran a search on the forums, in order to try and find some kind of info on what kind of scripts do what. But that failed miserably. I obviously figured out that the static folders contain scripts that contain the information for the statics, and that the map folders contain information about what happens when one tile meets another. This is probably why the swamp tiles didn't do well connected to any other type of tile aside from grass in the old scripts.

Okay, but back to the specifics of what I wanted to do. I created a set of custom green cobblestone tiles (because it looks cool). Next I patched the tiles into my mul files using mulpatcher (ModifyUO kept screwing it up), then I made sure they showed up correctly in the art.mul, and texture.mul and tiledata.mul. I also planned on making a set of green transition from cobblestone to cave tiles, and making some green cave tiles, and green cave walls... so Dragon can place the cave walls too. That's when I came to the Dragon scripts and met a dead end.

The hex ID for the cobblestones are 03ED, 03EE, 03EF, and 03FO.
So what I primarily need to know:
1. How do I read the Dragon scripts? What do the different integers mean etc.
2. Where does dragon record the hex ID for the different tiles from?
3. Will I just be able to copy and modify some existing scripts? i.e. the cavenew, cavedeco scripts. If so, how and which ones?
4. How do I create a new color for Dragon to read that will allow me to create the tiles in Dragon without replacing any tiles I already currently have? I was thinking about just making them use the purple cave colors.

If anyone can answer these questions, or point me to a place on the forum or url for a rundown of these things I'd be very appreciative. I'll even submit it so others can use it as well.

Thanks alot.

P.S. This is my first question on this forum.

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Better Deader

Nevermind, I think I found my answer in the maptrans.txt
Thanks though. If anyone has any advice feel free to give it.

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Better Deader

The map transition tables as you've no doubt seen follow the pattern:

Which means to place tile 023a with a z variance of from 3-5 in place of what was there (grass as this is from grass2mountain.txt)
The BAAAAABB works like this: The current tile (center) is 0 (and an A). The northwest tile (up 1, left 1) is 1 and you go clockwise winding up at 8 which is due west (left 1). A is the "from" group and B is the "to" group. So in this case you have grass, with mountain in the 3 west tiles (NW, W, SW) surrounded on the other sides by more grass. The proper tile to be placed is half mountain on the west and half grass on the left. There must be an entry in the betweentrans.txt file to tell Dragon to use the script which goes like this:

Group 00 (grass) transitioning to group 06 (mountain) use grass2mountain.txt

Next we have your walls which a sample from cave2black.txt is:

AAAABBBA you know of course means cave with black to the south (SW, S, SE) surrounded by more cave. Place one of the following tiles at random, 0270,0272,0273 which are the cave floor tiles for that orientation. 0 Z variance.
statbetweentrans.txt is the file to modify to tell Dragon to use this script:


Moding the color table all you do is add a new swatch. In your case find an empty one (although you may want to look at some of the posts about proposed changes to the colortable, we are probably going to leave the bottom line blank in Mod10 for just such purposes). Next make a new group in maptrans.txt, my example:

Swatch fc-ff are now group 17. Z axis of 0,2,5 and 10. Place at random 3dee,3ded,3def or 3df0.
Next groups.txt:

Which reiterates that swatches fc-ff are group 17. You can see which swatches are which from maptrans.txt but they go from top-left to bottom-right 00-ff.

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This space for rent.

Thanks Stormcrow. I had everything figured out except for the groups.txt. You saved me from making a terrible mistake and raking my brain for hours trying to figure out what I did wrong.

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Better Deader