From - Sat Jun 13 13:56:04 1998
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Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 13:06:34 -0700
From: Jim Winkler <jameswinkler@netgate.net>
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To: jason@med-web.com
Subject: Re: Lode Runner: Hacker's Editor
References: <357923D9.23CEF40D@netgate.net> <357C3B89.7E1C9599@med-web.com> <357C62BA.B314F9B8@netgate.net> <3581D5EF.38DE35C@med-web.com>
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Hi, Jason.

I have not noticed the text problem.  I did only use a general description of the font rather than a specific font.  Something I need to figure out.

I was also thinking of being able to dump a level as a hex or pseudo hex file that can be edited with Notepad.  Another function would read it back in again.  

I will add the version number.

What is the difference between Pre-made and Play-only?

I think that the title text in the tile edit box was basicly read-only.  I think that it looks better with the white background rather than the gray background.  I could easily bring up a "not editable here" dialog box if you click on the title or file.  I had a problem where I was working on the wrong puzzle, so I added the file and title boxes.  I am now bringing up the tile editor with a left click on the specific tile.  That would reduce the need for the title and file name.  Do you think that I should remove it?

I will add a seperate title dialog.

Do you think that world, image shift and Night/Day should be in three seperate dialog boxes?  

The monk fix is a rather strange phenomeman where if there are ten monks, the puzzle block is one byte shorter.  I think that it is alwass shortened in that case.  I have not seen anyother times that it is shortened.  Mayby I should add a force to short and force to long state as well?

I am using MFC and started the application using the wizard.  I would have had to do more work to not take command line startups!  I added the drag/drop feature.  It was only one line of code.  It took me awhile to get the syntax right.

Tool bar added.  I am also adding some more tool bar buttons for left click funtionality.

I like the white background!  It looks so different from the regular puzzles.  It seems to show up some minor differences that are sometimes not readily visiable with the LR editor.  Do you really think that I should change it?

The transporters are rather complex affairs.  There is a destination X&Y on layers 5&6 that specifies the location.  This is what is used by the puzzle execution code rather than the hook numbers.  You can have a transmitter 1 and a receiver 1 and 5.  If the transmitter's destination coordinates are set to 5, you will go there.  If you set it that way and just load it into the LR editor and play without changing anything, it will be reset back to 1.  If the coordinates of transmitter 1 again are set to an empty tile, the transmitter will be dead even though a receive 1 exists.  I will need to think about that one!

The transmitter lines should not be too hard.  I will add it under the view menu.

Move up and move down should not be too difficult.  It may be tricky to get it user friendly.  I was thinking that you would flag the puzzle to move with a pull down under Edit.  Then go the the screen where you want to move it and then click on Edit | Move.

There is a problem with non-linear puzzles.  Exit doors that go to the next level are door zero.  Any other levels are given the actual level number.  Actual level numbers may then be in error.  An auto fix would be alot of work.

I have been thinking on how to fix corrupt files.  There is no obvious header on a puzzle.  There may be a couple of zeros in a row that would otherwise be eliminated by the compression algorithm.  I might be able to just try to decompress the puzzle, if it fails to come out to the correct number of bytes, try it again at the next byte!  You probably could do this with a hex editor.  Just look for the title text of the next good puzzle, then clip out everything from the last good puzzle to about 9 bytes before the title block.  Would you please send me a few of these corrupt puzzles, so I can try it out?

Have you ever created a corrupt puzzle?  I did it once after playing some of the "weird" puzzles.

I have not tried this on a Mac puzzle.  I don't think that it would work.  Send me a few of the Mac puzzles and I will check them out.  Would it be desirable to do a save as Mac?

It took me about three or four hours of work to get these images to work!  I had to do a mask so I could overlay tools and runners on top of turf.  I might try to do the turf as a single color and modify the tools so that they would not be a copyright infringement.  It would likely be a couple of days of work.

Have you had any problems playing weird.pzl?  I did try to do some random values.  I suspect that I was changing the turf layers, but I don't know.  Some values would make LR terminate immediately.  Other values would create this clear turf that Jake and Monks would get stuck transitioning from a ladder to it.  Jake could be coaxes through, but the Monks were stuck until you went into a position where they would come back down the ladder.  Also if Jake or a Monk dropped onto it, he would fall through as if it was not there.

Maybe I should put a hacked puzzle check to verify that no radical changes were made to them.  Otherwise some wiseguy will add LR crash levels, or maybe even worse and have you add them to your archive!

Has anyone sent you any comments on the Hacker's Editor, threats of lawsuit or such?  I have gotten five or six e-mails.

Jason Summers wrote:
> 
> Jim Winkler wrote:
> >
> ...
> > Suggestions would be nice.
> ...
> 
> Okay, here are some suggestions. Most of them are pretty minor, I think.
> Keep up the good work.
> 
> ------
> 
> A small intermittent bug I noticed: the font used to draw the ruler
> round the puzzle sometimes jumps back to a larger default Windows font.
> Maybe it is not being allocated correctly?
> 
> I think that the only setting your editor has that pertains to the file
> as a whole is "Play only". I would add two more:
> 
> - Version number  (byte 0x64, a value of 3 means TLR, 4 means On-Line)
> - Mark as Pre-made  (byte 0x68, 1 means play-only; a way to make files
> play-only that also works on Legend)
> 
> Put them together in a separate dialog box, or a separate section of a
> menu.
> 
> Have a separate dialog box for settings pertaining to the current puzzle
> (don't include them in the tile-edit dialog):
> 
>  - Title
>  - World
>  - Background image offset
>  - Night/Day
>  - Music
>  - (Monk fix?)
> 
> Implement drag/drop of files into LodeEdit.
> 
> I was going to suggest that you allow files to be read from the command
> line, so I could configure Windoze to start LodeEdit when I double-click
> on a PZL file. But then I saw you already did that. Thanks!
> 
> Tool bar buttons for Grid/Show Players/Full Bounds/Hooks.
> 
> Maybe make the puzzle background a darker color, instead of white?
> 
> Draw a visible line or arrow from each teleporter to its destination.
> (Maybe.) (Or have a View setting to toggle this.)
> 
> Edit-menu functions "Move up" and "Move down" to quickly re-order levels
> without Cut/Paste.
> 
> How feasible would it be to, if the decompression fails (due to a
> corrupt puzzle), attempt to find the beginning of the next puzzle and
> continue gracefully? I suggest this because I have no realistic way to
> repair damaged files, and I have encountered several of them.
> 
> If a file doesn't appear to be a Puzzle file, try skipping over the
> first 128 bytes and starting from there. Since LR is popular on Macs,
> there are a lot of files floating around that have those annoying
> 128-byte Mac headers. Actually, I haven't tested to see if you do this
> already, but I thought I'd suggest it.
> 
> I'm not sure whether to suggest importing the graphics for all of the
> worlds (a big waste of memory, but image is everything!), or to
> recommend removing the graphics you have (it's probably some sort of
> copyright infringement, but companies don't pursue minor stuff like
> that). So I'll do neither!
> 
> -----
> 
> Take care,
> --
> Jason Summers
> jason@med-web.com  http://www.med-web.com/~jason/
