[Z+] Newb Questions

[buzzkill]

I new to Z+, having only played FA in the past, I thought I'd try something new. I've never played ASCII Angband, and having grown accustomed to David Gervias' Tiles/Double Tile Mode/Big Tile Mode, I find playing with Adam Bolt's Tiles/Big Tile Mode less than appealing. Unfortunately, it's the only graphics I can get to work. Aside from the apparently inferior cosmetics, I often have trouble spotting monsters for some reason and the game just seems less fun in general. I'm not knocking Z+ here, just the graphics I was able to come up with.

EDIT: and some monsters don't seem to have graphic tiles associated with them at all. For example, the kobold archer (k) and the giant yellow centipede (c) simply show up as thier respective ASCII characters in an otherwise graphic world.

Problem is I can't get David Gervias' tiles to function in Z+. I've imported the .bmps from my FA directory, but when I try to switch to them in Z+ the game reverts to ACSII.

If there's anyone out there who knows what the heck I'm talking about, or can help me come up with a fix, or a graphics package that they are impressed with. I would greatly appreciate it.

By the way, I'm fully on board with the way the town and wilderness flow seamlessly together in Z+, rather than being split apart on different 'levels'.

Should I make it past this hurdle, I'm sure I'll have a million more questions regarding race/class soon to come.

[Mangojuice]

I new to Z+, having only played FA in the past, I thought I'd try something new. I've never played ASCII Angband, and having grown accustomed to David Gervias' Tiles/Double Tile Mode/Big Tile Mode, I find playing with Adam Bolt's Tiles/Big Tile Mode less than appealing. Unfortunately, it's the only graphics I can get to work. Aside from the apparently inferior cosmetics, I often have trouble spotting monsters for some reason and the game just seems less fun in general. I'm not knocking Z+ here, just the graphics I was able to come up with.

EDIT: and some monsters don't seem to have graphic tiles associated with them at all. For example, the kobold archer (k) and the giant yellow centipede (c) simply show up as thier respective ASCII characters in an otherwise graphic world.

Problem is I can't get David Gervias' tiles to function in Z+. I've imported the .bmps from my FA directory, but when I try to switch to them in Z+ the game reverts to ACSII.

If there's anyone out there who knows what the heck I'm talking about, or can help me come up with a fix, or a graphics package that they are impressed with. I would greatly appreciate it.

By the way, I'm fully on board with the way the town and wilderness flow seamlessly together in Z+, rather than being split apart on different 'levels'.

Should I make it past this hurdle, I'm sure I'll have a million more questions regarding race/class soon to come.

David Gervais tiles -- never got them to work with Zangband myself, though they are supposedly supported. Has anyone else? That's probably why they don't work with Z+. And I certainly didn't make graphics for the new things.

Adam Bolt tiles -- I didn't touch these. But if you want detailed graphics they are probably the best. A lot of things in the game won't have graphics... but if anyone out there is interested in drawing some I can give you detailed instructions for how to make them show up in the game, and if you're willing to share your work, I'll include it in future versions of the game.

Old tiles -- Many of the new things have graphics in the old 8x8 tileset, but there are probably some missing. But the old tiles are more or less supported in Z+.

Someday when the features I'm envisioning are fully in place and tested, I may turn my attention back to graphics.

[buzzkill]

[Z+] David Gervias tile set working, a little bit.

Thanks for the reply Mangojuice. I know graphics aren't a high priority in Angband. I just kinda figured since they worked in FA, they worked in all variants.

Anyhow, it's was really bugging me, so I did some screwing around, and got something working.

First I copied my entire FA pref folder and overwrote the Z+ pref folder. This broke all graphics and left me with ASCII only. Totally unacceptable!!!

So, I re-downloaded Z+ and overwrote my old Z+ directory with the freshly downloaded one, overwriting all files. I re-open my save game and the Adam Bolt tiles were working again. So I switched to David Gervias tiles, expecting nothing, and an error occurred but then, surprise, surprise, surprise, it worked... somewhat. I only looked at this first screen so far, but that's my old familiar DG tile set. Of course there are some obvious problems. All those doors in that chamber are actually columns, and that pink potion you see is actually a mold, a brown mold IIRC. If someone can fill me in on how to substitute one tile for another, I think I may be able to nail this down before too long.

See attached .jpg for my results.

[Pete Mack]

if Z+ doesn't have the modern (unangband) graphic selector, you will have a hard try doing this. You are better off installing the "knowledge menu" and generating a new Adam bolt pref file by hand. IMNSHO, porting the knowledge menus is pretty easy now.

[Mangojuice]

Thanks for the reply Mangojuice. I know graphics aren't a high priority in Angband. I just kinda figured since they worked in FA, they worked in all variants.

Anyhow, it's was really bugging me, so I did some screwing around, and got something working.

First I copied my entire FA pref folder and overwrote the Z+ pref folder. This broke all graphics and left me with ASCII only. Totally unacceptable!!!

So, I re-downloaded Z+ and overwrote my old Z+ directory with the freshly downloaded one, overwriting all files. I re-open my save game and the Adam Bolt tiles were working again. So I switched to David Gervias tiles, expecting nothing, and an error occurred but then, surprise, surprise, surprise, it worked... somewhat. I only looked at this first screen so far, but that's my old familiar DG tile set. Of course there are some obvious problems. All those doors in that chamber are actually columns, and that pink potion you see is actually a mold, a brown mold IIRC. If someone can fill me in on how to substitute one tile for another, I think I may be able to nail this down before too long.

See attached .jpg for my results.

You just made me figure this out. Ok, the deal is that all the thing-to-graphics mappings are in the "graf-dvg.prf" file... which isn't included in Z+ at all. When you copied over the FA folder, that file must have remained and not been overwritten. But it's totally messed up because FA and Zangband use different internal codes for things like terrain and monsters. For instance, in Z+, a pillar is terrain feature number 33, whereas in FA, 33 is a locked door.

It would be as frustrating to modify that FA file to Z+ as it would to just start from scratch... BUT! This made me look around for a graf-dvg.prf file for Zangband, and I was able to locate one at http://tinyurl.com/4kuaen .
Try replacing your lib/pref/graf-dvg.prf file with that one, and see if it works better.

There will still be tiles that don't show up properly because I added new things without giving them any associations, but this should work for everything that was in Zangband (unless it was also buggy...)

Here's how the file works, if you want to tweak it. It contains a lot of lines like

F:70:0x9A:0x8B

This can be parsed as

[Type code]:[Serial number]:[Row]:[Column].

Type code is F for terrain features, K for objects, R for monsters, and T for "fields" (such as traps, that go on top of features). S is for spell projections; leave those alone. The serial number is the corresponding number of the thing you want to have a graphic for, from f_info.txt, k_info.txt, r_info.txt, or t_info.txt (in lib/edit). The "# Black Market" lines are comments that do nothing.

Row and Column are hexadecimal numbers specifying the row and column in the grid layout you can observe if you look at lib/xtra/graf/32x32.bmp. The upper-left corner is 0x80:0x80.

Let me know if it works.

[Nick]

Thanks for the reply Mangojuice. I know graphics aren't a high priority in Angband. I just kinda figured since they worked in FA, they worked in all variants.

The double/triple tile thing in FA was originally done by Andrew Doull for Un, and AFAIK hasn't been done anywhere else (although Leon has done something to the same effect for Sangband).

If someone can fill me in on how to substitute one tile for another, I think I may be able to nail this down before too long.

Going to the 'interact with visuals' menu (probably '%' in Z+) will allow you to change tile allocations; then you can save that to a pref file.

[Pete Mack]

the old-style interact with visuals is realy awful. The unangband knowledge menu model
Is much, much better.

[Nick]

the old-style interact with visuals is realy awful. The unangband knowledge menu model
Is much, much better.

That's what I was thinking as I pinched it.

[buzzkill]

[Z+] Problem swapping scroll graphics

if Z+ doesn't have the modern (unangband) graphic selector, you will have a hard try doing this. You are better off installing the "knowledge menu" and generating a new Adam bolt pref file by hand. IMNSHO, porting the knowledge menus is pretty easy now.

The Adam Bolt tiles work fine, it's the David Gervias' I'm working on.

I don't know what you mean by this. What is the knowledge menu? I've had some success using the 'interact with visuals' (%) in Z+, but it is kind of a pain in the ass. I'm able to swap monster and floor/wall tiles, but like I said it's a pain.

I ran into a problem trying to establish the proper graphic for a scroll of light. It originally displayed as something similar to a pick-axe. I then swapped the graphic for the correct one, and it still displayed as a pick-axe. I have a feeling there's something more to establishing the proper graphics for scrolls, wand, rods, because the graphic for a particular flavor may be different from game to game. If somebody could please fill me in on what I'm missing, I'd appreciate it.

[buzzkill]

[Z+] Squelching corpses/skeletons...

Mostly unrelated to the Gervias tile problems in this thread... Is the a way to squelch corpses/skeletons?

Optionally... if mangojuice or someone could fill me in on where the find the corpse and skeletons graphics so I could swap them out, I've been unable to locate them and am getting tired of seeing blank spots on the floor every time I kill something... appreciate it.

Ohhh, wait. Am I missing something. Do these corpses serve some purpose that I'm unaware of, like re-animation or something?

[Nick]

I don't know what you mean by this. What is the knowledge menu?

The knowledge menus are reached by hitting '~'; they contain lists of monsters, objects, terrain etc. Some variants (Un, FA, V) have the ability to change graphics within these menus, but older ones require you to go through '%', or edit .prf files directly.

[buzzkill]

More Gervais graphics questions

The knowledge menus are reached by hitting '~'; they contain lists of monsters, objects, terrain etc. Some variants (Un, FA, V) have the ability to change graphics within these menus, but older ones require you to go through '%', or edit .prf files directly.

I finally broke down and got out a sheet of paper and made a 'crappy hand drawn map' of the tile set, in general terms (with the hex values). I should be able to edit the graf-dvg.prf directly now, rather than using the 'interact w/visuals'.

I'm still not sure how to align the scrolls (and/or rods, staffs, wands) with the proper graphic. Which .prf file would I need to edit?

And while I've got your attention, how does the program know which graphic to use to represent my character?

Why any some entries in the .prf preceeded by an '&' and/or followed by a '~'?

Feel free to add your own 2 cents, and chime in with anything I havn't thought of yet.

[Nick]

I'm still not sure how to align the scrolls (and/or rods, staffs, wands) with the proper graphic. Which .prf file would I need to edit?

FA has files called flvr-dvg.prf etc., which are used for this - Z+ doesn't have them, so I'm guessing it doesn't have the capacity to do that.

And while I've got your attention, how does the program know which graphic to use to represent my character?

xtra-xxx.prf for old tiles, xtra-new.prf for Adam Bolt.

Why any some entries in the .prf preceeded by an '&' and/or followed by a '~'?

It's the form used in object.txt so as to allow different descriptions of items in different settings; it's irrelevant in the .prf files because it only appears in commented lines (those starting with a #).

[Mangojuice]

I finally broke down and got out a sheet of paper and made a 'crappy hand drawn map' of the tile set, in general terms (with the hex values). I should be able to edit the graf-dvg.prf directly now, rather than using the 'interact w/visuals'.

I'm still not sure how to align the scrolls (and/or rods, staffs, wands) with the proper graphic. Which .prf file would I need to edit?

graf-dvg.prf. These are the "S:" lines; there's a batch of them for scrolls, there are others for potions, wands, etc., as well as for spells (projected animations). Z+ doesn't have the capacity to make them look different before & after they're ID'ed, which is sort of too bad because the dvg set has all those nice specific scroll pictures. Anyway, I would probably use 0x87/0x92 for all the scrolls: Z+ only uses one flavor picture for scrolls anyway.

Edit: BTW, the ones for the other types (with colors) go in an order like this:

Black - White - Medium Grey - Orange - Red - Green - Blue - Brown - Dark Grey - Light Grey - Purple - Yellow - Pink - Light Green - Light Blue - Light Brown

So, for instance:

# Potions (!)
S:0xE0:0x88/0x87
S:0xE1:0x88/0x97
S:0xE2:0x88/0x80
S:0xE3:0x88/0x8D
S:0xE4:0x88/0x92
S:0xE5:0x88/0x91
S:0xE6:0x88/0x85
S:0xE7:0x88/0x89
S:0xE8:0x88/0x87
S:0xE9:0x88/0x8C
S:0xEA:0x88/0xA0
S:0xEB:0x88/0x93
S:0xEC:0x88/0x8E
S:0xED:0x88/0x95
S:0xEE:0x88/0x84
S:0xEF:0x88/0x81

[buzzkill]

For any one interested in the David Gervais' tile set for Z+. VERY PRELIMINARY, but if you've got to have graphics, it's better than nothing. Contact me through the forum if you would like a copy, I was going to post it here, but can't (apparently, too large).

This is .prf far from complete (or perfect), but most of the low level monsters are correctly aligned. I changed the dry mud dungeon floor to a blank grey tile for better visibility. The scrolls, potions, and probably a lot of magic items will have missing or wrong graphics. I haven't gotten around to that yet, plus I'm still not really sure how to fix that. I've commented out a lot of lines in the .prf to avoid duplicate entries while it's still a work in progress (I'm not sure how multiple entries would effect the game).

Aside form the above, I'm pleased with the results so far... at least once you get under ground... haven't play tested much at all. Once my character dies or recalls I'll start working on the surface.

Misc Z+ questions...

Still looking for a way to squelch corpses during game play?

What's with all the padded armour? and why doesn't it stack?

Why is my Cloak [1,+0] 'cursed'?