Lets have a look at Knight Lore. First select the dropdown arrow in the Load Map toolbar and select Knight Lore.

The map will load and automatically generate the debug and the raw data files. This is shown by the prompt that appears after the file has loaded.

When prompted to generate the XML and IsoCis files, select No. What now appears is the entire game in the viewer.

  

What is visible is the first room. For Knight Lore this is room 0.

The title bar informs you of how many rooms were loaded (i.e. the number of rooms in the game).

Clicking on a room entry here also changes the other sections of the application that list rooms and room details.

Running along the top of the main window is the current rooms characteristics. Some are of use to everyone, some for the seriously sad. They are:

  • Id/Location: The room number. This is the room number as stored in the game. Knight Lore and Alien 8 work on a 16x16 grid and so the number fully describes the location and is how you would navigate the game, e.g. 0 is the bottom left, 31 is on the second row and furthest right. Pentagram is different in that all rooms are sequential and a further descriptor is used in the file format to show where the adjacent rooms are
  • Offset to Next Room: This is one of the 'seriously sad' bits of information and is described in the Layout section. Simply, it is how many bytes to the next room - in modern programming terms, it says the array holding the current room has this many bytes, the next byte after this is the next room
  • Room Size: There are only three room types - square, rectangular going east to west, rectangular going north to south. The numbers in this list show how many cells (think of a cell as being one object - e.g. a block) are in each dimension. Z is always 8
  • Attributes: Another sad fact. This shows the colour of the room. The number is a Spectrum ink colour. Alien 8 will not show the number properly here (you will need to look at one of the output files - 'Room Details')
  • Background Items: How many background items (e.g. walls) there are in this room
  • Unique Blocks: how many unique blocks are in this room. So if a room has, say, 10 spike blocks then that counts as 1.
  • Room Links from here: This shows what room the player will go to when they exit one of the doors. Hopefully the available exits should match the doors in the room!

 

 

 

The rooms in Pentagram are not in a grid because some rooms lead to different areas, either in a different place or are in a floor above/below. However, the rooms in Pentagram aren't all sequential - there are some missing numbers. This is most probably due to change in design, e.g. removal of some rooms. Or maybe they got confused with the 'layered' rooms.

 

 

 

 

Go Here to view the room sizes. They are for Knight Lore but are the same as in Alien 8 and Pentagram.

 

 

Alien 8 has two colours for each room. One is the normal colour and the other is the colour of the room when the cryonauts are released.

 

 

Alien 8 has the most unique blocks in total and per room, followed by Knight Lore and then Pentagram.

The focal point of the viewer is the room object details.

The first set of rows (a nice orangey colour - bisque to be exact) contain the background elements. These are usually doors, walls and door platforms. In Knight Lore the Wizard and Cauldron are classed as background items (I don't know why though).

The remainder are the objects that make up the actual room.

All of the available objects are described in the Layout section. As an aside, some objects are 'compound' objects and need to be treated in a special way. For example, if you look at the picture to the right, 'Thin Room...', describes a thin room. Normally each wall is described separately but because this type is so common (i.e. a long wall and a short wall) both walls are stored in the one type.

The columns in this grid are as follows:

  • Block: the actual bitmap of object being placed in the room
  • Name: a name I've given it. All of the non-background objects have numbers after the name. This is the actual number of the block type as stored in the game
  • x/y/z: the position of the block: background objects are store in pixel values and non-background objects are stored using grid cell values - refer to room size described above
  • x/y/z offset: from the x/y/z position how many pixels in each direction to move the object. This may seem odd but it is quite logical when memory is at a premium and you only have so many bits/bytes to play with. x/y are 1 pixel and means one half block; z is in pixels multiplied by 4, one block is 12 pixels high, so an offset z of 12 means 4 blocks.
  • Movement: this states how the object moves in the room. If an object only moves in one axis then the maths is simpler and therefore quicker.
  • Extra information: stuff that may be useful, like whether it kills on contact, attacks the wulf, etc

The offsets are usually half-cell increments

To fit in the right number of bits every object can actually only go as high as 4 blocks. To allow the blocks to go higher an offset is used. The method used to let the game know this varies from game to game.

The Specials section lists the graphics that are also in the game but not actually stored as objects. There are three types of specials:

  • Player: this shows the player. While it is obvious it is here, its both nice to see the graphics and allows the XML/IsoCis exporter to create an entry for it
  • Non-Game graphics: these are the graphics I felt would be nice to see, such as the end-game sprites shown in Alien 8
  • Specials: these are the items that are the focal point of the game, i.e. the items for the cauldron in Knight Lore, the shaped plugs for the sockets in Alien 8, the runes for Pentagram.

The columns just show extra information that me be helpful, i.e. what type of object it is (as above) and a brief description.

Although shown here the method for placing them are not, refer to the Layout section.

The section titled Have Specials shows the rooms that can have special items. Note this section refers only to the proper special items (such as the runes, cauldron items, etc). Clicking on a room entry here also changes the other sections of the application that list rooms.

Each game has a preset number of random rooms to place the objects in, but they are grouped - if you know one location, you know the others.

Finally we come to the map. This is generated from the map data. Clicking on a cell entry here changes the other sections of the application that list rooms to point to this room.

However I wouldn't recommend clicking here because there is no way (as I found out after much head scratching) to disable the row selection bar.

I would just stick to selecting rooms from the list boxes and seeing where the green cell takes you to.

As you can see, the map for Alien 8 is in the shape of a spaceship. You don't get that level of detail in modern games ;)

The map for Knight Lore generates a castle with four turrets.

The map for Pentagram is not actually viewable from the application due to the complex nature of way the rooms are described, however it is available as a map in the download section. As for the shape I have no idea.