MazeWarz Converter 2.52 Documentation (C) 1993 Silicon Systems ------------------------------------- IMPORTANT: You must copy the included 'iff.library' to the libs directory of your boot disk to use the converter. In addition, it is recommended that you retain a backup of the MWEditor.iff file in-case you forget to save a maze under a different name. In order to create a maze you will need the following: Converter, MWEditor.iff, and a paint program. The Editor is a picture that can be loaded into any paint program. Your paint program must support a grid. DPaint (all versions) has this, but I assume most others would as well. The following steps outline the method for creating mazes for Maze Warz: Designing a MazeWarz maze is a two step process: drawing the maze, and converting it. Your paint program is used for the former (steps 1-10) and the Converter utility for the latter (steps 13-14). (Although this is a long list, it is really a very simple process. I have just been very verbose in order that lamers may also enjoy the pleasures of creating a MW maze, so bear with me..) 1. Load your paint program. 2. Select 'Load' and choose "MWEditor.iff". Click "YES" in Dpaint in response to whether you want to change the resolution and colours. 3. Select GRID ON. In DPaint click on the gadget that looks like a window just above the magnify gadget. 4. Change the grid settings to 9 by 9 pixels. In DPaint, click with the RIGHT mouse button on the grid gadget. A window will appear. Change the 'X spacing' and 'Y spacing' both to read 9. Click OK. 5. Use the GET BRUSH tool (in DPaint click on the icon above the grid gadget) and try to pick up the red box near the bottom of the screen (1 from the right in the bottom row). To check that your grid is correct, Click the brush down in the four corners of the large grey box. If you go over any of the grey lines, or there are blank spaces between the red box and the grey box, then your grid setting is either not 9x9 or it is adjusted incorrectly. Check that it is 9x9. If the problem still occurs, you will have to adjust the grid. 6. Save this picture under a different name. This ensures you never erase the original template (MWEditor.iff). 7. The large box represents the maze. You will have to fill this box with the various maze components shown in the toolbox near the bottom. Make sure you have a clear maze to begin. (Use Right mouse button with BOX function to clear). The grid makes sure you pick up and put down the maze components in the correct place. It should be noted here that Maze Warz does not use this maze, rather Converter 'reads' this picture file and converts it to the correct file format. 8. You may quickly realise that you need not pick up the exact piece that you require to fill the maze. In fact, you only need one piece! Pick up one of the four single walls (the first four wall components). Using the rotate function, rotate it 90 degrees and you have the next wall...etc In DPaint, simply press 'z'! (caps lock off). 9. You will also need to put teleporters, a door, and havens in your maze. Pick these up and place them strategically as required. Use only the colour of haven supplied: you cannot determine the actual resulting haven colours when designing the maze. 10. Put exactly one blue arrow in a square (usually adjacent to the door). This represents the direction faced and point which is occupied when a player enters the maze, and the direction faced. 11. There are a few rules you must obey when drawing the maze: a) You may include as many teleporters as you like, or none at all. b) You must have one and only one door. c) You must have exactly four havens. Use the same colour (as included) for all: the colours are decided inside the program. 12. A few hints for successful maze development: a) Use teleporters sparingly and thoughtfully. b) Don't make it impossible to escape from a particular area. For example, don't have two segment 'cells'. c) As you draw the maze, think about how you would play each of the areas, and whether you would play the maze at all. A few minutes spent here can increase the enjoyment of the maze, as well as ensure it is played more that once... 13. Now that you have the completed maze saved as an iff picture on a disk, you will need to convert this to a MW data file by passing it through the converter. Workbench 2.0 and above users may launch the program from workbench and choose the maze file from the requester that appears. The program requires Asl.library, which all 2.0 users should have. You may use a patch for this library, however I'm sure only 2.0 users can take advantage of all this. Those of you who are stuck in the dark ages running 1.3 or below will be stuck with using Converter via the command line interface (yes the good 'ol CLI)...which of course you are familiar with if you're a 1.3 user anyway :-) ...). A single argument is required: the name of the picture to be converted. You may also specify the output filename, however this is not recommended (despite all the extra programming effort that went into that feature :-( ...) 14. The maze is saved. The datafile that is saved will be called "MWmazedataXX" where XX=n+1, and n is the number of mazes on the disk (in the same directory as Converter). You may rename this file, however its name must begin with "MWmazedata". If this seems confusing, you can also specify a name to be used for the output file as the second argument to the converter program. You can accomplish the entire procedure with one command by specifing the output file as, say, mazes/MWmazedata17 (if 17 is not used). You have finished. Move the maze into the mazes drawer and PLAY! Power users may have noticed that the method of storing the data file is not very efficient, as it uses ASCII to represent hex, and includes comments. There is a reason for this. It makes it easier to cheat! The method is left as an exercise... Special thanks go to Christian A. Weber for his easy to use iff.library.