Dungeon Keeper Official Editor Manual v1.2
Modified by fans
Contents
3.1 Lights and Special Effects
4.0 Changing the Tile Textures
5.0.1 Adjusting the Creature Statistics
6.0 Single Player and Multiplayer Level Checklist
The Dungeon Keeper Editor is Windows ’95 ™ only although levels created with it will work on both the MS-Dos and Windows ’95 versions of the original game.
The Dungeon Keeper Editor is only available in SVGA high resolution modes and does not have a low resolution mode.
To install the editor, follow the instructions in Mapmakers Installation Instructions which accompanies this manual.
You are now ready to run the editor. Go to the Keeper directory and double click on editor.exe to start.
Note: when the manual instructs you to click on an item, it is asking you to click on the item with the left mouse button.
When you start the editor, the first map you see will be the special example map (see section 5.1 for more information on this map). The aim of this map is to give you an introduction to the editor and show you how your maps will look as you are constructing them. Take a few moments to look over the map and familiarise yourself with the layout. You can then either modify this map or start a completely new one.
This section describes the Pull-Down Menus that appear at the top of the screen. To access these menus, click on the heading icon to bring up the options then either click on the heading icon again to get rid of the options or just move your mouse pointer away.
This menu contains the new map, load, save and quit options.
This option creates a completely new map for you to edit. Your previous map will disappear and the new map will be blank and have no name. You will be asked to confirm whether you want a new map.
To load a map, select this option. If you have not recently saved the map you are currently editing, you will be asked whether you want to save it or not.
The Load Panel contains a list of the maps available. Scroll down the list by clicking on the arrow buttons. Click on the map you want to load.
To cancel, click on the cross icon at the bottom of the panel.
To save a map, select this option. A panel will appear listing all the maps in the levels directory.
To save the map in an existing slot, scroll the list using the arrow icons and click on the slot. Another panel will appear asking you to confirm the save.
To save the map in a completely new slot, just click on the bar at the bottom of the panel and enter a name. When you press enter, a slot will be assigned to that map and it will be saved.
There are 800 slots for you to save your maps into. If there are no more slots available (you have used them all up) the editor will not save. Also, each map has a number of files it uses to create the map (see section 5.0 for more information). These files take up about 350k in total (1024k is one megabyte) so make sure you have the space on your hard disk drive to store them.
To cancel, click on the cross icon at the bottom of the panel
Note: If your maps are not saving, make sure that you have followed all the installation instructions correctly and have altered all the files in the Levels directory so that they are not read only. To do this, refer to the readme.txt that accompanies this manual.
Select this option to quit from the editor. If your map has altered since you last saved it, you will be asked whether you want to save those changes. If you do not, you will exit from the editor. If you do, you will return to the editor and you will then need to save the map following the instructions in section 2.1.3 before quitting again.
The Edit Menu contains three options: Fill, Brush and Clear Map.
This option will allow you to flood fill an area of the map with a specific tile. You cannot flood fill areas with rooms because this can cause problems if there are objects in those rooms.
To flood fill an area, select the tile you want to fill and select the Fill Icon on the Edit Menu. Make sure the area you want to fill is fully enclosed and then click on a square inside the area. You will still have the fill option selected so that you can fill other areas.
To exit from fill mode, click on another icon on the Control Panel.
Shortcut key: f
This option allows you to store a rectangular area as a brush and place it down elsewhere.
First, select the Brush Icon on the Edit Menu. To set the area of the brush, move the mouse pointer over to one corner of the area you want to copy and hold down the right mouse button. Then drag the mouse until you have all the area you want within the bounding box. Then let go of the right mouse button. You will then be holding the brush. You can place it down anywhere by clicking the left mouse button. You cannot place it down over a Dungeon Heart or an Portal, however, as this can cause problems.
You cannot pick up in a brush Gems blocks, Guard Posts and Bridges due to the way Dungeon Keeper works.
To exit from brush mode, click on another icon on the Control Panel.
Shortcut key: b
Clear Map will allow you to completely wipe the map and start afresh.
Click on the icon and you will be asked to confirm. If you click on the tick icon, all the tile blocks will be replaced by the earth tiles.
The View Menu contains the options you need to configure the editor: 1st Person View, Plan View, Isometric View, Lights, Map and Wall Height.
This changes the Dungeon View so that you are viewing your dungeon as if you were walking around inside it. You can only go into 1st Person when the centre of the screen if over an excavated area. If it is not, you will get a warning sound.
To exit from 1st Person View, you will need to press the keyboard shortcut for one of the other two views.
To move in 1st Person, use the mouse to rotate the view and look up and down. Press the cursor keys to move forwards and backwards and strafe.
Shortcut key: o
This is a top-down functional view which is very useful for fine tuning the map. The main benefits of this view is that you can zoom out much further and extra information about the things you place down on the map are displayed.
The only way to exit this view is to change to a different view.
Shortcut key: p
Isometric is the view of your map as it will appear in the main game. You will not be able to zoom out as far and it is slower than the Plan view.
The only way to exit this view is to change to a different view.
Shortcut key: i
The Light option turns on all the dynamic lights so that you can see how your dungeon will look when it is finally played.
Shortcut toggle key: l
By selecting this option, you will be taken to the full-screen map.
Shortcut toggle key: m
This option allows your to toggle the height of the walls in the Isometric View.
The Action Points Menu contains two options allowing you to place down the two types of Action Point.
To put down an Action Point in the editor,
go to the Action Point Menu and click on Add Action Point.
Move your mouse pointer to where you want the centre of the
Action Point to be and press and hold down the left mouse
button.
Move your mouse to expand the circle.
Once you have the circle the right size, let go of the mouse button.
Action Points are used in conjunction with your map’s script and set special areas in your dungeon which can be used to trigger traps and introduce new creatures to the level. They are also explained in the Script Commands Reference.
A Hero Door is a special Action Point that appears in your dungeon as a rippling transparent portal. This is the door heroes often use to enter your dungeon and they cannot be deleted. They are also explained in the Script Commands Reference.
When you enter the editor, you will see two parts to the screen, The Control Panel and The Dungeon View. The Control Panel contains all the objects you need to construct your dungeon. The Dungeon View gives you a visual representation of your dungeon in a number of views. This section will describe the Control Panel and it’s features before you build a map.
The Control Panel is split into three sections:
At the top is the Scanner Map which is exactly the same as the one in Dungeon Keeper. You can also still press the map icon, or press m, to bring up a complete map of your dungeon.
In the middle are a number of panels that overlap and contain all the options you need to construct a fully working dungeon.
Right at the bottom are ten numbered icons and five coloured icons. These will remain visible even if you alter the panel. They tell you what experience level you currently have selected and what player type you currently have selected. When you put down a creature or a tile, these icons will tell the editor what experience level to make that creature or which player owns that tile.
| Select Player 0 (red) | 0 |
| Select Player 1 (blue) | 1 |
| Select Player 2 (green) | 2 |
| Select Player 3 (yellow) | 3 |
| Select Hero Player | 4 |
| Select Neutral Player | 5 |
This is the first panel contains all the Lighting and Special Effects objects which you can place down to improve the look of your dungeon.
There are a number of issues you must be aware of before you place down too many of these objects. The lights in Dungeon Keeper are dynamic and are stored in a set list. This means there can only be so many of them and the more there are, the slower the game will be. If you place down too many, you may find that the list will run out of space and no more will be created. Keep the number of lights you place down as low as possible. The lava balls will create lights, torches are created as you dig out your dungeon in the full game and lights are created when certain spells are fired. These lights will not appear if you have too many.
The Dry Ice effects will also slow down your computer if too many are active at once. Use them carefully as an occasional effect.
This option will create an ambient light where you place it. Bear in mind that this light will not have a visible source and could look out of place if not correctly used.
To place one down, click on the Ambient Light Icon and move the mouse over the dungeon. If you are in Light Mode (access Light Mode by clicking on the option in the View Menu or by pressing ‘l’), you will see that your mouse has a dynamic light attached to it. To place the light, just click the mouse button where you want it. The light will remain on the map and a light bulb icon will appear at the centre of the light.
As well as just placing lights, you can also increase their intensity, size and vertical position. To do this, you must adjust the light before you place it down.
| Increase Intensity | Keypad . (full stop) |
| Decrease Intensity | Keypad 0 |
| Increase Size | 6 |
| Decrease Size | 4 |
| Raise Light | 8 |
| Lower Light | 2 |
To delete the light, select the Ambient Light Icon (if you don’t already have it selected) and right click over the position of the light.
The following objects should be placed in the Plan View as you cannot see them in Isometric.
Each effect is placed down the same way. First, click on it’s icon on the Lights and Special Effects panel. Then move your mouse over to the Dungeon View and position it in the middle of where you want the effect to appear. Now press and hold down the left mouse button. If you move the mouse around, you will see a white circle around the position of the effect. This indicates the area within which the effect will appear. The wider the area, the more spread out the effect. It is best to experiment with each effect to see how they work best. You can re-edit the area by holding down your left mouse button while over the effect.
To delete each effect, just right click on the effect’s position. You must have one of the effects selected to do this.
This creates the balls of fire that jump from the lava light and up the area around them. Although you can place it anywhere in your dungeon, it will only work when placed on lava.
This creates the effect where water drips from the ceiling and splashes onto the floor. This can be placed anywhere in your dungeon and adds to the general atmosphere.
Although there are two icons, they can be treated the same as they have similar properties. Both create a cloud of fog that floats over the ground before dissipating. The difference between each is that the Portal Ice starts a little way off the ground and drifts down while the Dry Ice constantly remains at ankle height.
The second panel contains all the building blocks you need to create your dungeon, namely the floor tiles, gold and rock and all the rooms.
Click on the toggle button at the bottom of the panel to switch between the Tiles and Rooms panels.
This manual assumes that you have played Dungeon Keeper and know what each tile and room does.
You paint down the tiles in exactly the same way as you would draw a picture. Select the type of tile you want to put down and move your mouse over to the Dungeon View. Press the left mouse button and the tile will be pasted down.
If you press the right mouse button, a blank earth tile will be pasted down.
Two tiles, the Claimed Floor tile and the Reinforced Wall Tile will be individual to each player so make sure you have the right one selected. You can select each player by clicking on one of the five coloured buttons at the bottom of the Control Panel.
You can quickly reinforce your dungeon without painting your entire perimeter wall. To do this, select the player whose dungeon you want to reinforce and press ‘r’. This will not work if the player does not have a dungeon heart.
| Select Gold | F1 |
| Select Rock | F2 |
| Select Impenetrable Rock | F3 |
| Select Dirt Path | F4 |
| Select Pretty Path | F5 |
| Select Pretty Wall | F6 |
| Select Lava | F7 |
| Select Water | F8 |
| Select Diamond | F9 |
You paint down the rooms in the same way as the tiles. Select the room from the panel but make sure you always have the right player selected before you do. Then press the left mouse button to put down that room tile.
There are two special rooms which need mentioning. Also on this panel are the Portal and the Dungeon Heart. Both of these are three by three square rooms which have to be placed down in one go. You cannot draw over an Portal or a Dungeon Heart once they are on the map and the only way to delete them is to right click on them when you have either a room or tile selected. You will be asked to confirm whether you want to delete them and if you do, the ground will be replaced by the earth tile.
Note that you cannot save a map without a Dungeon Heart for the first player (red).
This panel allows you to place down any creature or hero and assign them to any player.
Click on the toggle button at the bottom of the panel to switch between the Evil Creatures and Heroes panels.
Note: When you place down any creature, first make sure that you have the right player and the right experience level selected. Both of these can be found at the bottom of the Control Panel (see section 3.0 for more information).
Click on the creature’s icon and find an area of the dungeon to place the creature down. Press the left mouse button and the creature will appear on the map. It will have an energy indicator above it’s head to show what experience level it is and what player it belongs to.
To delete a creature, make sure you have another creature selected and right click on the creature.
Note, you can only have up to 255 creatures on the map at any one time. Bear this in mind when placing lots of creatures because each player still has to attract a certain amount of creatures to their dungeon and quite a few can be created in the Graveyard.
The fourth panel allows you to place down objects to improve your map.
Click on the toggle button at the bottom of the panel to switch between the Traps & Doors and Items panels.
Traps need to belong to a player otherwise they will be set off by the wrong person. You can place them down in same way as you do in the game, except now you can also place them down on unclaimed land. You cannot place one down on a square already occupied by a creature, item, spell or secret.
You can delete a trap by having a trap selected and left or right clicking on it’s position.
Note that boulder traps will always roll to the left when they hit a wall. This may cause problems if you have branches in your corridors.
Doors are placed down in the same way as Traps but they can only be placed down on the claimed floor tile of the same player and they also have to be placed directly between two walls (either earth or reinforced).
You can delete a door either by right clicking on it when you have any door selected.
You can lock a door by holding down right Ctrl key and left clicking on the door when you have any door selected. Note that pressing left Ctrl won't work.
Items are used to both reward the player and make your dungeon visually pleasing.
To place down these items down, click on an icon and click on any excavated area of the map. You can only place one item down in each square (a tile in Dungeon Keeper is made up of nine squares) but where you place it within that square will depend on where your mouse is. You cannot place one down on a square already occupied by a creature, trap, spell or secret.
You cannot place down Gold Bags in the Treasure Room.
To delete an item, right click on it when you have any item selected.
This panel contains all the spells which you can place down for the player to find.
Click on the toggle button at the bottom of the panel to switch between the Spells and Secrets panels.
This manual assumes that you know what all the spells and secrets are and what they do.
To place one down, click on the icon on the panel and left click on the dungeon where you want the object to be. You cannot place one down on a square already occupied by a creature, trap or item.
To delete one, right click on it’s position.
As you were playing Dungeon Keeper, you would have noticed that not all the levels had the same textured tiles. There are a number of texture sets in Dungeon Keeper and more in the Deeper Dungeons. You can change the texture set of your map by pressing the ‘t’ button. This will cycle through all the sets you have available on your computer and the level will save it automatically.
To get your map to work in Dungeon Keeper, you will need to script it first. If you do not, the map will not load properly and you will not be able to play it. The script will tell Dungeon Keeper what spells are available on the level, what creatures appear and other settings that are unique to the level.
When you first save your level, a number of files are created in the Levels directory. For example, for level 200 (the example map), the following files are created:
Map00200.apt Map00200.clm Map00200.dat Map00200.inf Map00200.lgt Map00200.lif Map00200.own Map00200.slb Map00200.tng Map00200.txt Map00200.wib Map00200.wlb
You will notice that there is a .txt file included in the list. This is the script file which you will edit.
If you open it, you will see that it contains many commands which the game uses to create the level. When you have looked at the example script, open the script file of your own level.
Note: You can enter commands into the script in any order. The script does not run like a proper program or an HTML script. Instead, Dungeon Keeper stores it all in memory. This means that IF commands will be triggered immediately when their conditions are met. Bear this in mind when you are writing your scripts.
The example scripts are laid out in the following way:
This is done to keep the script readable and easy to look at when searching for errors. Although not necessary, it is good practice to keep to this format so others can look at your script without finding it incomprehensible.
In the Data directory of Dungeon Keeper is a file called creature.txt. This is a text file that Dungeon Keeper looks at every time it loads to find out all the statistics for all the creatures and rooms etc. in the game. You can adjust these easily in any text editor and they will directly affect the game.
Make a copy of the file first before making any changes. You may need a backup if something goes wrong. This manual will not explain the features of the creature.txt file but will leave you to experiment with it.
Included with the Dungeon Keeper Editor are two example maps that you can use to study and cut and paste from. The single player example map is level 200 and the multiplayer example map is level 201. They are playable levels with as many features included as possible. The script files have been heavily commented using the REM command to explain the script at every step.
The scripting language of Dungeon Keeper is quite simple and easy to master. All the commands, variables and parameter values are explained in Dungeon Keeper Scripting Guide, which should be treated as continuation of this manual.
Note: The script commands reference once was inside this chapter. It was moved to another file to make this manual, and the reference, shorter and more clear.
This section is a checklist for your finished Single Player or Multiplayer level. Follow each one and hopefully your level will be complete and ready to play.
Multiplayer maps are easier to script than single player maps. Unless you want specific events to happen, you can just script what creatures, rooms, traps and doors each player has at the start and then what is required to complete the level (usually one player conquering the others by destroying their Dungeon Hearts). Look at the multiplayer example map for more information.
Remember to add at the top of your script the line of text which must be included in the Levels.txt for it to be available on the Levels Map in the game. This can be found at the start of the script e.g.
201,4,550,300,Multi Example
Now that you have learned how to make levels for Dungeon Keeper, you can create your own and distribute them for others to play and enjoy. To help you do this, the Dungeon Keeper Level Designers and Testers have made a list of tip to help you:
The following keys are shortcut keys for the Editor:
| Toggle Lights | l |
| Cycle through Texture Sets | t |
| Toggle Map | m |
| Fill Mode | f |
| Brush Mode | b |
| Isometric View | i |
| 1st Person View | o |
| Plan View | p |
| Reinforce Selected Player’s Dungeon | r |
| Select Gold | F1 |
| Select Rock | F2 |
| Select Impenetrable Rock | F3 |
| Select Dirt Path | F4 |
| Select Pretty Path | F5 |
| Select Pretty Wall | F6 |
| Select Lava | F7 |
| Select Water | F8 |
| Select Diamond | F9 |
| Select Player 0 (red) | 0 |
| Select Player 1 (blue) | 1 |
| Select Player 2 (green) | 2 |
| Select Player 3 (yellow) | 3 |
| Select Hero Player | 4 |
| Select Neutral Player | 5 |
| Increase Light Intensity | Keypad . (full stop) |
| Decrease Light Intensity | Keypad 0 |
| Increase Light Size | 6 |
| Decrease Light Size | 4 |
| Raise Light | 8 |
| Lower Light | 2 |
Producer: Sean Cooper
Project Leader: Alex Peters
Lead Programmer: Mark Stacey
Additional Artwork: Peter Amachree
Manual and Documentation: Jon Rennie
Manual Verification: Shintaro Kanaoya, Nathan Smethurst, Barrie Parker
Testing Manager: Andy Robson
Testing: Nathan Smethurst, Steve Lawrie, Tristan Paramor, Jeff Brutus
Documentation Modifications: Tomasz Lis