[DK2] Map Editor Size Limit

[Nocalora]

Makes me think, there was an Entities limit in the game, right?

Do anyone of you know the exact limit of Entities/things? I want to try to raise it also.
Theres actually alot of values I'd like to extend, such as creature limits for example.

[Metal Gear Rex]

Neat. I remember finding an old map editor, I think it was just called DK2mapper or something, that allowed for up to 500x500 tiles. I'm not sure why you would need a map of that size though, that's the main thing. The game has problems with too many creatures / traps I guess, I know one of my levels used to crash at the start because there were too many Heroes. It did have 5 Keepers though but they didn't start with anything. That map's size was 90x120. I guess I could have spaced it out more but, yeah at some point it's just unnecessary to make maps that big imo.

Btw, would you be able to change availability of certain configurations in the editor? An example would be how there's two Impenetrable Rock tiles, one of them is normal Impenetrable Rock, the other is a special "Edge of Map" Impenetrable rock that is by default placed around the edges. You can't access it in the editor, which means if you do changes to normal Impenetrable Rock, you can't change the special Edge of Map Impenetrable Rock to match it.

Is this the normal Editor or the Editor Pro that you modified?

[Metal Gear Rex]

Makes me think, there was an Entities limit in the game, right?

Do anyone of you know the exact limit of Entities/things? I want to try to raise it also.
Theres actually alot of values I'd like to extend, such as creature limits for example.

Not off the top of my head. I can try and test it.

[impboy4]

Im quite sure everyone got atleast 2GB of Ram nowadays, and if not, their computer is definitely not a computer suited for normal use. Even Office computers have atleast 2GB just to run MS Word and Apache OpenOffice.

I hate to break it down to you, but sadly Its almost impossible to add another Keeper, I would have to edit INSANE amounts of Addresses and do all kinds of crazy hacks just for simple things working out, Im sorry to say that but it would be better to just re-make the game on a newer Engine than trying to implement advanced features such as a fith keeper.

Well, OpenKeeper is running in a Java engine (I hate Java) and it's really far from complete. Almost impossible is a good thing; it sets up a nice obstacle for programmers to crack their knuckles and defy the odds. It took the first Dungeon Keeper a decade without knowing how to crack it open before Mefistotelis came and made KeeperFX.

[Nocalora]

Neat. I remember finding an old map editor, I think it was just called DK2mapper or something, that allowed for up to 500x500 tiles. I'm not sure why you would need a map of that size though, that's the main thing. The game has problems with too many creatures / traps I guess, I know one of my levels used to crash at the start because there were too many Heroes. It did have 5 Keepers though but they didn't start with anything. That map's size was 90x120. I guess I could have spaced it out more but, yeah at some point it's just unnecessary to make maps that big imo.

First of all: I Know that its certainly not needed to have such huge maps, but who says you need to use it only for 1024x1024 sized maps? There were probably alot of people who got a little bit frustrated when they saw that their favourite map design idea has been flushed down the drain because the map limits too tight, myself included once.

Btw, would you be able to change availability of certain configurations in the editor? An example would be how there's two Impenetrable Rock tiles, one of them is normal Impenetrable Rock, the other is a special "Edge of Map" Impenetrable rock that is by default placed around the edges. You can't access it in the editor, which means if you do changes to normal Impenetrable Rock, you can't change the special Edge of Map Impenetrable Rock to match it.

If I do understand this correctly, you are suggesting that I should try to add the special "edge" variant of the Impenetrable Rock?, Im gonna give it a try, it hugely depends on how the game handles "tiles", it could take some time though, as I firstly need to find the correct Addresses.

Is this the normal Editor or the Editor Pro that you modified?

I used this Map Editor as the main Editor which I then edited with the Debugger: http://keeper.lubiki.pl/html/dk2_tools_mapedit.php

Not off the top of my head. I can try and test it.

I appreciate the help, thanks.

[Metal Gear Rex]

I made a BUNCH of Goblins, surprisingly didn't crash. In total, there were 580 + 4 Imps and a Dungeon Heart on a 128x128 map with nothing but earth, 4 tiles of water to put the Imps in, and the rest is Red Land. The display count was 444 Goblins for some reason. Even when I remove 80 Goblins, there's still 444 Goblins. Oh and the Dungeon Heart is gone, and I can't dispose of Imps by sacking them into the Heart as there is no Heart.

I removed 60 Goblins after that and it displayed 440 Goblins, Dungeon Heart is back. Added 1, 441 Goblins, Dungeon Heart still okay. If I add 4 more Goblins so that there's 445 Goblins, it displays 444 Goblins, and the Dungeon Heart disappears again. If I take a Goblin away and it's at exactly 444 Goblins, it displays 444 and Dungeon Heart is back. If I add a Warlock with exactly 444 Goblins, Dungeon Heart disappears again, and so does the Warlock. If I add a Hero Warlock, and then more Goblins, yeah basically anything past that just fades away. However I tried removing the Imps and that caused the new minions to spawn, but then the game crashed, either because the Goblins fought the Hero Warlock, or the DH tried to spawn Imps.

tl;dr: Seems the limit is 448 Creatures, or 449 or something like that. If there's 449 creatures, including Imps, the Dungeon Heart won't spawn. But if there's 448, the Dungeon Heart will spawn.

[Nocalora]

Well, OpenKeeper is running in a Java engine (I hate Java) and it's really far from complete. Almost impossible is a good thing; it sets up a nice obstacle for programmers to crack their knuckles and defy the odds. It took the first Dungeon Keeper a decade without knowing how to crack it open before Mefistotelis came and made KeeperFX.

You have to understand that you only require one person with atleast Mediocre understanding of Archive Structures (Programming wise) in order to reverse engineer and open up every compressed or uncompressed archive there is in the world.
I think its the fact that theres just alot of people who like to work on bigger projects, like your usual AAA Title, or maybe because the people who actually know how to do this kind of stuff just didn't bother or knew this game at all.
Im very sure if you would supply some samples from the custom archives and file to lets say, sites like ZenHax or Xentax they get (if the people are interested) reverse engineered in a very short time.

But thats that, Its one thing programming stuff in an actual language, its another task to do it in Assembly.

[Nocalora]

I made a BUNCH of Goblins, surprisingly didn't crash. In total, there were 580 + 4 Imps and a Dungeon Heart on a 128x128 map with nothing but earth, 4 tiles of water to put the Imps in, and the rest is Red Land. The display count was 444 Goblins for some reason. Even when I remove 80 Goblins, there's still 444 Goblins. Oh and the Dungeon Heart is gone, and I can't dispose of Imps by sacking them into the Heart as there is no Heart.

I removed 60 Goblins after that and it displayed 440 Goblins, Dungeon Heart is back. Added 1, 441 Goblins, Dungeon Heart still okay. If I add 4 more Goblins so that there's 445 Goblins, it displays 444 Goblins, and the Dungeon Heart disappears again. If I take a Goblin away and it's at exactly 444 Goblins, it displays 444 and Dungeon Heart is back. If I add a Warlock with exactly 444 Goblins, Dungeon Heart disappears again, and so does the Warlock. If I add a Hero Warlock, and then more Goblins, yeah basically anything past that just fades away. However I tried removing the Imps and that caused the new minions to spawn, but then the game crashed, either because the Goblins fought the Hero Warlock, or the DH tried to spawn Imps.

tl;dr: Seems the limit is 448 Creatures, or 449 or something like that. If there's 449 creatures, including Imps, the Dungeon Heart won't spawn. But if there's 448, the Dungeon Heart will spawn.

Thats actually very interesting, seems to me one or more functions of the game just aren't capable of handling that many entities at once.
But I was actually referencing the limit which enables or disables "incoming" new creatures to your dungeon, I know from experience that if you have a certain amount of NPCs on the map, there will be no more new creatures until the amount is reduced.

[Metal Gear Rex]

If I do understand this correctly, you are suggesting that I should try to add the special "edge" variant of the Impenetrable Rock?, Im gonna give it a try, it hugely depends on how the game handles "tiles", it could take some time though, as I firstly need to find the correct Addresses.

No, not add a new tile. The tile already exists. It's an alternative variant of Impenetrable Rock, but it exists as a separate tile. The Editor just made it so it's hidden, I'm wondering if there's any way you can make it visible, allowing for someone to modify it via editor. Adding new tiles would be great too though, lol.

I ask specifically because for my patch, I modified impenetrable rocks for a number of reasons. Mainly, I took away its ability to produce torches and made it so they couldn't support room furniture, in order to add more planning elements to dungeon building and produce dark tunnel potential. However, I noticed that I would run into issues because of that edge of map tile, as it retains the vanilla settings, and I have no way of modifying it from within the editor. My solution was to just wrap another layer of impenetrable rock around the edge of map, which works just fine. But I thought I'd ask because it would add a slight bit of extra flexibility.

Then again, the ability to make bigger maps means that I don't really lose much flexibility with the workaround, so it's not a big deal either way.

[Nocalora]

No, not add a new tile. The tile already exists. It's an alternative variant of Impenetrable Rock, but it exists as a separate tile. The Editor just made it so it's hidden, I'm wondering if there's any way you can make it visible, allowing for someone to modify it via editor. Adding new tiles would be great too though, lol.

I ask specifically because for my patch, I modified impenetrable rocks for a number of reasons. Mainly, I took away its ability to produce torches and made it so they couldn't support room furniture, in order to add more planning elements to dungeon building and produce dark tunnel potential. However, I noticed that I would run into issues because of that edge of map tile, as it retains the vanilla settings, and I have no way of modifying it from within the editor. My solution was to just wrap another layer of impenetrable rock around the edge of map, which works just fine. But I thought I'd ask because it would add a slight bit of extra flexibility.

Then again, the ability to make bigger maps means that I don't really lose much flexibility with the workaround, so it's not a big deal either way.

Oh right, well then it should be even less of an Problem, I'll let you know when I figure out what address to change to unhide it.