RnDBook
Posted: Fri Jul 04, 2008 2:25 pm
http://ambience.artsoft.org/rndbook.zip
This may well be the first level set that turns RnDs into a real working application.....an EBook! If you think about it, RnDs is a perfect medium for it as it has lots of pages (levels), font definition, bookmarks (cool!) and loading of other books (level group).
It isn't totally serious and I don't expect anybody to use or even read it (you should read the Wizard of Oz though because it's unintentionally hilarious), it's more of an exercise in the RnDs GUI than anything......
Can handle very large books (65x58x999 characters). You can get about 2 pages from an average paperback into 1 RnDBook page.
A nice readable font, a bit small though (use fullscreen)
Semi-hacked level format
Text convertor supplied,
Comes with five classic novels (all public domain and copyright free), and only 1.5MB zipped.
Looks like a Windows app...
In fact you should turn on the fading as it now looks like XP style fading.
This first big problem was size. In the old days RnDs used to save old levels in their old format (single bytes), but since the new level chucks arrived(?) it doesn't do it anymore (load BD level 1 then save it, and see it double in size)
So, that would mean any EBook I made would be twice the size as the text file,pretty useless! I defined the steel_chars as uppercase letters, then made 26 CEs that where indestructable lower case letters (so I could place them in the border)....I didn't think ahead so it was a big waste of time
I needed to use V1 type caves, or it was game over!
Of course I couldn't make the empty level using RnDs, so I had to hack an old one (BD level 1). I resized it in a hex editor.....which was a bit nasty (I crashed RnDs a good few times)
It now meant I couldn't use the CE lowercase chars as these are all over $FF,(as well as the steel ones) so I decided to use normal elements (you can't play the level so it doesn't matter). And then it struck me! I could define the characters at the actual ASCII placements.......for example the first chatacter is 32 (space), this is the red key_1 in the cave format,so by following this page I managed to slot them all into their right places. This has some great benefits:-
You can open a RnDBook page in a hex editor and read it,
You can also type straight into the level,in upper and lower case,and save it.(it has no pesky borders in the level either, so the text is uninterrupted) In fact you could say that these RnDs levels are now 100% plain text, but with a RnDs V1 header!
Making the convertor was obviously easy after setting this up.
Have fun!
This may well be the first level set that turns RnDs into a real working application.....an EBook! If you think about it, RnDs is a perfect medium for it as it has lots of pages (levels), font definition, bookmarks (cool!) and loading of other books (level group).
It isn't totally serious and I don't expect anybody to use or even read it (you should read the Wizard of Oz though because it's unintentionally hilarious), it's more of an exercise in the RnDs GUI than anything......
Can handle very large books (65x58x999 characters). You can get about 2 pages from an average paperback into 1 RnDBook page.
A nice readable font, a bit small though (use fullscreen)
Semi-hacked level format
Text convertor supplied,
Comes with five classic novels (all public domain and copyright free), and only 1.5MB zipped.
Looks like a Windows app...
In fact you should turn on the fading as it now looks like XP style fading.This first big problem was size. In the old days RnDs used to save old levels in their old format (single bytes), but since the new level chucks arrived(?) it doesn't do it anymore (load BD level 1 then save it, and see it double in size)
So, that would mean any EBook I made would be twice the size as the text file,pretty useless! I defined the steel_chars as uppercase letters, then made 26 CEs that where indestructable lower case letters (so I could place them in the border)....I didn't think ahead so it was a big waste of time
I needed to use V1 type caves, or it was game over!
Of course I couldn't make the empty level using RnDs, so I had to hack an old one (BD level 1). I resized it in a hex editor.....which was a bit nasty (I crashed RnDs a good few times)
It now meant I couldn't use the CE lowercase chars as these are all over $FF,(as well as the steel ones) so I decided to use normal elements (you can't play the level so it doesn't matter). And then it struck me! I could define the characters at the actual ASCII placements.......for example the first chatacter is 32 (space), this is the red key_1 in the cave format,so by following this page I managed to slot them all into their right places. This has some great benefits:-
You can open a RnDBook page in a hex editor and read it,
You can also type straight into the level,in upper and lower case,and save it.(it has no pesky borders in the level either, so the text is uninterrupted) In fact you could say that these RnDs levels are now 100% plain text, but with a RnDs V1 header!
Making the convertor was obviously easy after setting this up.
Have fun!
Could you send me one or two of those levels which have crashed R'n'D, so I could see how to replace the crash with an error message, to make level hacking (and testing them) a bit easier in future versions!
. I use 3.2.3. Where can I download the latest version?