New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

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Sir Xavius
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New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Sir Xavius » Wed Jul 06, 2011 11:04 pm

Yes, i'm late to the party, but here it is!

I've always hated going into the Maggot Caves in Act 2 because of the limited room. Forced to fight one-by-one in the tunnels, this was the most limited maps of the whole game. I've always wanted to expand the size of the tunnels, and i recently finished this project.

Everything is pretty much the same (except for the Queen lair), except the tunnels are now 2 tiles wide in most places. You will notice a marked increase in the number of monsters as well, but this is due i believe to the fact that there is more possible space for monsters to be spawned in map initialization.

The license is open, so feel free to edit and distribute, but mind the terms in the READ ME.

Enjoy!

UPDATE:
This is the new version 1.2, which fixes a couple of glitches i found. See the READ ME for more info.
Attachments
SX_WiderMaggotCaves.rar
All Act 2 maggot caves are now 2 tiles wide instead of 1!
(13.08 KiB) Downloaded 531 times
Last edited by Sir Xavius on Thu Aug 11, 2011 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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mirecek
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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by mirecek » Thu Jul 07, 2011 7:07 pm

Sir, you are my Hero!

Thank you very much. This will probably save me a lot of time.
Also, you have won 9000 internets. ;)
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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by kidpaddle94 » Thu Jul 07, 2011 8:25 pm

Yes, thank you for this. This is a good idea. Very useful.

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Lady Isabelle » Wed Jul 20, 2011 6:43 pm

Thank you very much!
And id agree that these were one of the most terrible levels. Especially in b.net when you wanted to go one way... then the other person goes the other way........ MOVE!!!!! It also forced spell casters into tanks and had the beetle hit you w/ there shock when struck 100% of the time :x

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by kidpaddle94 » Wed Jul 20, 2011 8:59 pm

and when you want to go take your body but a monster is in the way ;)

and this is the same for arcane. I remember in Median I had to quit every times a shredder would kill me because they were walking over my body, blocking the way and spamming frozen orb.

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Sir Xavius » Thu Aug 11, 2011 2:29 pm

UPDATE:

Updated to 1.2 to fix a couple of bugs. Get it in the first post.

And thanks for the encouragement! :cool:

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by wupday » Wed Aug 24, 2011 9:23 pm

Much love.... was SO extremly tired of that place but this spice it up to make me do it again xD

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by kalans » Fri Aug 26, 2011 6:38 pm

Really simple concept, but amazing results! It brings whole new life to the maggot caves!

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Drac0 » Sat Sep 24, 2011 1:51 pm

Been doing this myself, will see what your new version is like.

Can tell you a couple of things from reading your readme.
*** Some of the room entrances can only be entered by double "wormholes" (y'know, the entrances covered in slime before you can enter). If one is blocked with slime but the other is not, you cannot enter unless the second one next to it is cleared. Odd but minor issue.
I fixed this in 2 ways, either removing the "wormholes" or replacing one of them with a wall. Yes, the passage through is no longer 2 wide, but it makes it no worse than a doorway on other maps.
When opening the maggot tunnels with DS1 Edit thru the DS1 Loader, you can't load more than one DS1 at a time, and you must also force DS1Loader to use the Act2 palette as well as not check the Act #.
I found this as well. The easiest solution was to use win_ds1edit directly through a batch/ini file combination using the -no_check_act -force_pal 2 switches. If your version doesn't support it Paul posted a link to a beta version that has it & it seems to work just fine.
There are 3 important "non-floors" within (actually outside of) these caves: the empty floors (where no floor tile has been placed), the "194" floors, and the "224" floors (the latter two are named by values in their labels when viewing the map in DS1Edit). I have yet to determine their significance or difference. But there is no rhyme or reason it seems in how they were placed outside the cave walls. But the 194s seem to block all passage, while the 224s only block walking. Not every tunnel is surrounded completely by 194s, nor is every empty space outside of the tunnels occupied by one of these designated floor tiles which don't seem to come from any DT1.
Likewise, I have no idea what these tiles are for but I haven't noticed any problems with deleting them.

With the maps I've been making I haven't removed all the 1 tile areas, but most of them. The few I've left are very short and I think leaving some is good.

Cheers

***** EDIT *****
While trying to do something in another act I discovered a little about these 'special' tiles.
1. They are hidden by default.
2. They are unwalkable by default.
3. Using Pauls editor doesn't seem to recognise them properly, the 224 tiles don't show as such. Changing the hidden bit seems to do nothing but setting it as unwalkable makes it appear correctly.
4. You can use them on any level in any act without needing to change the dt1mask!

I was trying to make an Arcane type level in another act but just leaving the areas blank resulted in monsters spawning off my floored area & you could walk on them as well. It was an interesting effect, walking on the stars, but not what I wanted.

Copying these tiles to my new map solved the problem. Put them everywhere I didn't have a normal floor tile & now everything stays where it should. So the can be quite useful elsewhere.

Cheers

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Volf » Sat Sep 24, 2011 2:23 pm

Drac0" wrote:Been doing this myself, will see what your new version is like.
When opening the maggot tunnels with DS1 Edit thru the DS1 Loader, you can't load more than one DS1 at a time, and you must also force DS1Loader to use the Act2 palette as well as not check the Act #.
I found this as well. The easiest solution was to use win_ds1edit directly through a batch/ini file combination using the -no_check_act -force_pal 2 switches. If your version doesn't support it Paul posted a link to a beta version that has it & it seems to work just fine.
I usually just change the act in the ds1. just open in a hex editor and change the 13th byte to 00 for act1 01 for act2 etc
13th-bite-leveltype.jpg
13th-bite-leveltype.jpg (15.96 KiB) Viewed 4231 times
After this you can open them all

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Drac0 » Sat Sep 24, 2011 3:04 pm

Hehe, I've only just moved on from text only modding & using other peoples plugins to making my own maps. Haven't even looked at the easiest code editing yet. Thats on the agenda for once I get the mapping pretty much sorted out. :)

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Volf » Sat Sep 24, 2011 3:35 pm

Small hex edits like this do not require any ce knowledge at all, you just open xvi32 - drag the ds1 file in to it and change the value in the 13th column!

Anyway tiny attachment for anyone looking to edit maggot ds1s
Attachments
fixed-act-maggot-ds1s.zip
Maggot ds1s with corrected act - can be opened in DS1 Loader
(28.65 KiB) Downloaded 166 times

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Re: New Map DS1 -- WIDER Maggot Caves

Post by Drac0 » Sun Sep 25, 2011 7:54 am

Volf" wrote:Anyway tiny attachment for anyone looking to edit maggot ds1s
NOW you post this..... lol

Doing it my way wasn't that difficult either. Loaded all the maps into the GUI Loader, used it to create the batch file/ini then edited the batch file to work how I wanted it.

The advantage of your way is that it's a lot easier to only load one or two maps. Will get these for later work on the lair.

***** EDIT *****
Ok, bit the bullet & changed the ds1's to act 2 on all my edited ones. Maybe the visit to the CE forum is a little closer.....lol.
Thanks Volf

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