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[MrFlay]

Greetings to all Bloodwych fans  ,
do any of you know the Greatstone webpage?
http://greatstone.free.fr/dm/
All information about Dungeon Master is here, and a game content extractor. Would something like that make sense to Bloodwych?

[Hungry Horace]

Hey MrFlay

I'd say that's pretty much what we have here, except we just havent uploaded all the tools. Most of which i've written on the Amiga.

Anyone who wants to contribute the hacking section (which should probably be transferred to a WIKI) is welcome to!!  Unfortunately i dont have much time for it myself lately due to other projects, but i always have Bloodwych in the corner of my eye!

[FOL]

(which should probably be transferred to a WIKI)

I can add wiki to site if you like?

[MrFlay]

Yes, a wiki is a good solution. I know Dokuwiki pretty well.

... except we just havent uploaded all the tools.

Yes, and I would like to have all the graphics nicely sorted in the wiki.
I would agree to fill the wiki with data. 
A good toolkit to extract all relevant data would of course also be nice.

I had already started a ProTracker module with better music. The PC sound wasn't that great.

Let's sort all the data and throw it in a wiki ...

[Hungry Horace]

Probably worth mentioning here that I have moved all of the Hacking thread info over to the Wiki on the GitHub page for the Source Code:

https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/Bloodwych-68k/wiki

[MrFlay]

Pretty cool. Glad you wrote it, I hadn't seen that.
What really interests me a lot is how the image data can be decoded.
The data you have shown are all there, but I don't know how to decode them.

[Hungry Horace]

Pretty cool. Glad you wrote it, I hadn't seen that.
What really interests me a lot is how the image data can be decoded.
The data you have shown are all there, but I don't know how to decode them.

There's some  code given by 'bit' which is included in the WIKI under the graphics section:
https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/Bloodwych-68k/wiki/Atari-ST-Raw-Data-Format

I have some code i wrote from it in AMOS which allows me to load the graphics files. It is necesary to know the number of lines drawn at a specific width through. I'm sure this data is inside the Bloodwych code somewhere although i've never really looked for it.

If its needed, I can always add my code for this as well, although i was considering writing the same in Python at some stage.

[DrSnuggles]

Sorry,
maybe a bit late i did a SFX+GFX viewer in JS:
https://drsnuggles.github.io/BW-DataViewer/

[Hungry Horace]

looks great!! If you want my data sets for 'number of Y pixels / width for this section' for each file, let me know and i'll see if i can export this in a ueable format for you.


This would allow all of the gfx to be  viewable without manual width changes

[DrSnuggles]

Nice, i would use that info even if manual switching widths reminds me of ripping gfx in ActionReplay without shifting single bitplanes Had single step width at the beginning and was even more like that.

I also tried to use the *.colours files from bw-data.
Behemoth [9, 11, 10, 8, 3, 4, 5, 7]
Dragon     [11,10,  4, 8, 7, 9, 5, 6]
Don't know how to read that
I know there are three colors (4,8,12) for recolouring and also grade does change colours. Gradeoffset can be found in *.gradeoffset files.

[Hungry Horace]

No problem

Those entries in the .colours files will be the 'number' for each mini-palette. Each mini-palette is a set of 4 colours which can be used for any of the large monsters. In Book of Skulls i expanded the number of available min-palettes, and the number of grades for all of the big monsters, in order to add more variety.

So for the behmoth;
#9 = Light blue /yellow    (Grade 1)
#11 =  Darker blue/grey    (Grade 2)
#10 =  Green/Yellow     (Grade 3)
#8 =  Darker grey     (Grade 4)

You'll see how this matches the order of behemoths shown here:   https://djcresswell.com/bloodwych/pictures/allmonsters.gif

The grade offset is used to determine the 'minimum level' the monsters must be at before the grades come into effect (after that, the next level = next grade) , and before that every level uses 'grade 1'

This means that when we reach the first Big Dragon (in the Dragon Tower)  the first 'grade' might only be used on a Dragon of level #7 value ....   we then use the next grades on dragon Level 8,9,10,11,12,13,14   for example. This means we dont 'miss' the chance to see 8 different coloured large dragons, even though they appear much later in the game.

Large Dragons of Level 1-6 would simply use Grade 1 , and those Level 15+ would use Grade 8.


Im not sure if you've see this but this may help:
https://github.com/HoraceAndTheSpider/Bloodwych-68k/wiki/Colouring-Large-Monsters

[DrSnuggles]

Thanks for exploring and explaining this.

I added a dropdown for colour sets and interested in adding your mini-palettes.
Still not using grades or colours files to restrict sets.

Found some transparent pixels in allmonsters.gif.
Behemoth example again. Mouth is colour 0 and the 2 diagonal transparent pixels are colour 15 transpapink

[MrFlay]

Hey DrSnuggles! Your Bloodwych Data Viewer is a cool thing.

It seems that the graphics packages can probably contain multiple frames.
The upper slider should go up to 128 (for floor ceiling)?
The font consists of single bits, always in packets of eight (two colors).

Stay tuned! 

[DrSnuggles]

Thanks MrFlay,

added 128 width and also reduced step size down to 8 for fonts.
If you change width down to 8 it's now also rendered in two color mode.

[MrFlay]

Great! 
Font works now.
Floor ceiling seems correct, but there is a piece missing.
I think it is only the part above.