The mapedit tool allows you to create and edit individual maps (.map files) in your adventure. All maps you create must be indexed by your maplist.txt file which is included in the adventure pdb (see Adventure PDB section).

The mapeditor is a pretty sophisticated program. Originally developed for Dragon Bane I, many features were added for supporting the Dragon Bane II engine. The program should be very reliable and the user interface is fairly optimized as it has been continuously improved since it was first written in 1997 as it was used to create the adventures included in Dragon Bane I and II.

To edit an existing map, simply select it when prompted for the map name. New maps can be created by running the mapeditor, going to the directory that you want, and typing in the name of the map. The mapeditor will ask you for the starting dimensions of the map (you may change this later). A new map will be opened with generic brick walls around the border. If the map does not fit on your current screen, you will get an error, and you will have to make the font that the mapeditor window uses smaller. To do this, go to the "Map Editor" item in the start menu, or find mapedit.exe in the install directory and right click. Select "Properties" then go to the font tab and select a smaller font.

There are two main sections to the mapeditor: features for editing the map, and features for editing optional "programs" that may be stored for individual special squares.

Understanding The Screen:

• Centered above the map, in quotes is the name of the map that will appear to the player when they view their automap. It can be changed by pressing 'N'.
• Along the right side are the following fields:
  • File Name: Shows the current file name (without path).
  • Modified/Saved filed. Shows if the map has been modified since the last time it was saved.
  • Special: The number of "special" walls on the current map. These are walls that have script instructions with them to make something special happen when the player looks at or moves onto them. See below for more informaion.
  • Cur Mode: Move/Draw/Erase - Current movement mode. See Movement below for more details.
  • The following information refers to the current draw wall (the wall that will be placed on the map, the next time you press 'x' or move in Draw mode)
    • Number: Wall Number, wall character, overhead map tile number
    • Descript: Short description of the wall
    • VOSB bBS: Flags indicating Visible, Occludes, Symmetric, Base, Blocking, Building, and Special (in that order).
  • The following information refers to the wall currently under your cursor
    • Coords: The coordinates in the map that the cursor is currently at.
    • Number: Wall Number, wall character, overhead map tile number
    • Descript: Short description of the wall
    • VOSB bBS: Flags indicating Visible, Occludes, Symmetric, Base, Blocking, Building, and Special (in that order).
  • Help Menu: The mini-help menu with most frequently used commands.
• Along the bottom, you will find: MOTION SCRIPT / DISPLAY SCRIPT - Shown at the bottom of the window, these are the script instructions assigned to the wall under the cursor (if any). See below for more information<

Movement:

• To move your cursor:
  • use the cursor keys,
  • the numbers 8,6,4,2, or
  • the keys h,j,k,l. (cursor controls for 'vi' text editor)

• Movement has three modes set by pressing 'M', 'D', or 'E':

  • Move - move around the map, without changing anything
  • Draw - Place the current wall on each square you move onto
  • Erase - Erase each square you move onto
• To jump to a particular coordinate, press 'G' and enter the desired coordinates.

Creating Walls

• To change the current wall number, press '+' or '-'. To set it to a particular value, press 'W'. If your cursor is on a wall (not a blank square), pressing '+', '-', or 'W' will only affect the wall under the cursor, not the current draw wall. You can press 'g' to set the current wall to the wall that is under the cursor.
• To place the current wall on the map, press 'x'.
• To change the direction a wall faces, press 'n', 'e', 'w', or 's'. This setting only has an effect if the wall is not symmetrical. When the wall contains one unique side, this determines which of the 4 sides of the wall the unique side appears on.

• Pressing 'b' makes a wall either blocking (the player can not step onto/throught it) or non-blocking (the player can step onto/through it). When a wall is first placed, it's default blocking value is used.
• Pressing 'B' makes a wall into an empty building (or makes it not an empty building if it already was. A walls default value for building is used when it is first placed on the map.
• Pressing ' ' (space) will erase the wall currently under the cursor.
• Pressing '.' allows you to edit/create "special" code for the wall under the cursor. See the section below on editing special instructions.

Misc.

• In program mini-HELP by pressing '?'
• Save the current map by pressing 'S', save to a new filename (save as) by pressing 'A'
• "Print" the map and detailed information about it to a text file by pressing 'p'
• Quit the mapeditor by pressing 'q'
• Change the name of the map as it will show to the player by pressing 'N' - all capital letters recommended.
• Change the flags for the map by pressing 'f'. Once the flags window comes up, modify each option by pressing the key shown.
  • Floor Type: Dungeon/Town (display brick "roof" and floor, or sky and grass floor.
  • Monster Density: Determines how often random monster encounters occur (if there are monsters assigned to occor on this map). A value of 0 means that they will never occur, and 255 occours about 1 encounter every 8 steps. Lower values decrease the chance.
  • Starting Direction: If this is map number 0, this is the diretion the player will be facing at the start of a new game
  • Starting xpos/ypos: If this is map number 0, this is the position the player will be at when starting a new game. For maps other than map 0, this value is ignored
  • Ambient Light: If the floor type is town, then light is based on the time of day. If the floor type is Dungeon, then this value controls how much light is visible, not counting torches, spells, etc. 0 = no light, 4= full light.
• Copy a map square by pressing 'c' and then a register number. For example, press 'ca' to copy into register a, then move to a new location and press 'va' to paste from register a. There are 26 registers (a..z) and the contents of the square (including all mapspecial code) are stored in each register in the mapedit.rsrc file so that these squares can be copied and pasted between maps. We recommend you store some commonly used special squares in registers. For example, copy a generic door (with the appropriate animation special code) in register 'd'.
• Copy a whole rectangular region by pressing 'C' and then moving to size the rectangle, press 'c' once you are happy with the size. You can then move the rectangular region around, and press ' ' (space) to place a copy of the rectangle onto the map. Press 'q' or escape when you are done making copies of the rectangle
• Resize the current map by pressing 'R'

Editing Special Instructions:

Introduction:

When it is desired that a square in a map do more than just look like whatever wall is placed there, you will need to add special script instructions to tell the Dragon Bane II engine how to behave for that square. There are two scripts (optional) for each square. The first script is executed only when the player steps onto that square (or bumps into it if the square is blocking). This script can then perform many actions based on this player movement. The second script is the display script. This script is executed any time the screen is redrawn, and the wall is in the player's view. This script is mostly used for changing the look of the wall based on runtime parameters, but has other more complex uses too.

• Pressing '.' when in special edit mode pops up a list of instructions that are available. Move around the list of instructions using the normal cursor keys. Select an instruction by pressing (enter). Cancel the instruction by pressing either 'q' or (escape).
• Pressing 'i' when in special edit mode inserts an instruction before the current instruction and pops up a list of instructions to insert
• Pressing 'd' deletes the current instruction.
• Pressing (enter) on an existing instruciton allows you to re-edit the values for that instruction
• Pressing 'D' deletes the entire current script
• Pressing (tab) moves between the motion and display script

State Bits, Variables, Timers, and Toggles.

• All state in the game is controlled by state bits, variables, counters, and toggles. These can be used to determine if a party has found a chest with a key, unlocked a door, killed a special monster, etc. Each map has 64 unique state bits numbered 0-63. The value of these state bits is "local" to each map. This means that if you set state 7 on map 0, and then check state 7 on map 1, they are not related because each map has a different state 7. State bits 64-255 are "global" to the game. This means that you can set state 69 in one map and check it's value in another map. You should try to use local state bits whenever you can because there are plenty of them around. Only use global state bits when something that happens in one map affects something that happens in another map. State bits 64-255 should be used for global game state such as killing a big dragon boss.
• Variables are more complex. There are 8 variables, shared for the whole game. They can have a value from 0-65535. They can be set, operated on, and checked.
• Timers count down from a given number. There are 8 timers, shared for the whole game. They can have an initial value from 0-255 and will count down with each step the player takes (until the reach 0).

• Toggles change in value as the player moves. There are 8 toggles, shared for the whole game. Toggles are either on or off, and change value in a given number of steps
• Cycles range from 0 to max, moving up or down and either ping back and forth or wrap back to the bottom/top. There are 8 cycles, shared for the whole game.

Using stats variables, timers, and toggles, you can create an interactive world. You can make a disappearing wall that is only gone for a single move. You can make a tree that grows bigger, you can create a complex door lock, and much, much more.

Motion Script

The motion script is executed only when the player steps onto the square containing the script (or bumps into it if the wall is blocking). This script is used for giving treasure, pressing buttons, triggering traps, exiting to a new map, and many other uses.

Display Script

The display script is executed each time the screen is redraw and the wall is visible. This section of the script can be used to change the look of a wall based on conditions. For example, after you pick up a treasure chest, you need to have the wall display a blank square instead of a treasure square

Example:

In this example, we have a wall with an inlet and a chest in it. The chest contains a robe. If the player bumps into the wall, the script will attempt to give the player the robe in the chest. If the player has room in his characters' inventory, the robe is taken and the wall changes to become an inlet with no chest in it. If the player does not have room, the game switches to Party View and displays a graphic with a treasure chest and a message saying your party does not have enough room for the object.

MOTION SCRIPT                            DISPLAY SCRIPT

01: JUMP IF SET 019 007                  01: JUMP IF CLEAR 019 003
02: GIVE OBJECT 0209 006                 02: DISPLAY WALL 041
03: MESSAGE 003 0124                     03: END
04: SET STATE 19
05: BREAK
06: MESSAGE 003 0125
07: END
	

Let's look at the lines of the motion script.

• 01: Jumps to the end of the script if state 19 is set. Here, state 19 is a local map state being used to indicate that the object available at this square has already been given. When the game starts, all state is initialized to 0, meaning the object being given away here has not yet been given out. Later in the game, after the object is given away, state 19 will change to be 1, meaning the object has been given away already. So this line will abort the program sequence in the case that the object has already been given away.
• 02: Attempt to give object number 209 (in your objects.txt, that should be a Robe), and jumps to line 6 if the party doesn't have room in their inventory.
• 03: Displays a message to the player, showing tile number 3, and text number 124.
• 04: Sets state 19 (to indicate that this object has been found).
• 05: Stops execution.
• 06: (which we get to only if we didn't successfully give the object displays a message with tile 3 and text number 125 (saying that you found something but didn't have room). Note that text number 125 (in text_game.txt) has a "@o" in it. This will be expanded during the game to contain whatever object was last referenced in your mapspecial code. In this case, the last instruction to reference an object was line number 2 which referenced object 209. So the name for object 209 "ROBE" will be replaced for the "@o" in text #125.
• 07: End of motion script marker

Now lets look at the display sript.

• 01: Jumps to line 3 if state 19 is clear. This means that if you have not found the object yet, display whatever wall was placed there in the map editor (in this case, probably a chest).
• 02: (which only executes if state 19 is set) changes this wall to display wall number 41. So this script displays the wall from the map editor if you have not found the object yet, and displays a different wall after you have found the object (to make the chest disappear).
• 03: Ends the script