NetHack Tile Editor v1.02 by Adam Dawes 27th May 1996 Introduction For some time now, I have been playing what I firmly believe to be one of the best, if not *the* best game ever written: NetHack. Recently, a new version of NetHack was released, v3.2.0. Amongst many other enhancements, perhaps the most striking was that the game now had a fully graphical interface. Whilst the textual interface had its merits (forcing the player to use his or her imagination, for one), the "tiled" version really did make NetHack seem almost another game. However, there were a few things I wanted to change about the graphics. For a start, the walls seemed a little boring. Some of the monsters looked a little odd, or were the wrong colours. So I decided to write a tile editor. In actual fact, it's possible to change the tiles that are used by editing and recompiling one of the NetHack sourcecode files. However, in order to do this, you need to edit the graphics as text files, and it's very difficult to know which colour goes where, and what your tile will look like when it's finished. The NetHack Tile Editor allows you to draw your tiles directly on the screen, just like in any art package. A preview graphic will be displayed at the bottom of the screen so that you can see how your tile will look in the game. When you're finished, just save the tiles and they are immediately changed. Now you can have your own personalised copy of NetHack! If anyone makes any striking new tile sets, please let me know, and I'll include them on my Web site for other NetHackers to download. Using the tile editor The NetHack tile editor is very easy to use. After starting the program up, you first need to load one of your NetHack tile files. *Make sure you back up your original tile files!* Otherwise, if you want them back after saving over them, you're going to have to download the whole NetHack archive again! Select one of the three tiles files to load, "Monsters.iff", "Objects.iff" or "Other.iff" (these can all be found in the Tiles directory in your NetHack game directory). The Tile Editor will recognise which file you have loaded, and will display in a list on the left all the tiles contained within the file. To view one of the tiles, click on the list or use the cursor up/down keys to scroll to a tile. Below the list is a colour palette. Clicking with the left or right mouse button will set the paint colour that button will use. Then you can draw on the tile edit grid to paint in those colours. You can cut, copy and paste tiles via the "Tiles" menu. Also in this menu are functions to flip the tile, and scroll it inside the grid. Scrolling can also be achieved using the numeric keys on the keypad (I think you should feel at home using those). When you've changed your tiles as desired, select "Save" from the Project menu to save your tiles back to disk. Please be careful not to save your tiles over one of the other NetHack tile files: I don't think NetHack will be too pleased if all its graphics are suddenly completely scrambled! System Requirements NetHack Tile Editor should run on any Amiga with KickStart 2.04 or above. You will also need a copy of NetHack 3.2.0, in order to have any tiles to edit. I have no idea if the Tile Editor will continue to work with releases after 3.2.0; if not, I'll release updates so that it continues to work. Legal stuff... I will not accept responsibility for any damage done to your system, or data lost, directly or indirectly, as a result from using this program or any of its associated files. You use the program entirely at your own risk. Of course if you *do* experience problems then I'll do what I can to sort them out, and please let me know so that I can try to cure them in a future release. Tile Editor and its associated files are not public domain. They may be distributed freely as long as no unreasonable charge is imposed. They may not be included within any commercial package without express written permission from the author; the exceptions from this are the AmiNet CDs and Fred Fish's collections. Tile Editor may also be distributed with the official NetHack archives, if the DevTeam so wish. Tile Editor may only be distributed if all files contained within the original archive are present. History/Future v1.0 (27.5.96) Initial release v1.01 (28.5.96) and v1.02 (1.6.96) Filled in a few of the unknown tiles (thanks to Carlos Gonzalez and Ove Zakrisson for their assistance in this task!) Fixed a bug that could cause some messy crashes on occasion There are still one or two tile descriptions missing in the tile lists. If anyone can identify what on earth these tiles are, could you please let me know? Then I can correct them in the next release of Tile Editor. Acknowledgements I must of course send my sincere thanks to all the members of the NetHack DevTeam. Please keep up the excellent work, and continue to amaze and amuse me with NetHack! Contacting the Author If you like Tile Editor, have found a bug, or have suggestions for its future, please contact me! I can be contacted via electronic mail or snail mail. I can't promise to reply quickly to snail mail, but I will always do my best to reply to email messages. I won't complain if anyone decides to send money! :) InterNet: Adam@beachyhd.demon.co.uk ad32@brighton.ac.uk FidoNet: Adam Dawes@2:441/93.5 Snail Mail: Adam Dawes 47 Friar Road Brighton BN1 6NH England Tile Editor is a "BeachWare" product from the Beachy Head Amiga BBS, Eastbourne, UK 2:441/93@FidoNet +44 (0)1323 520999 7 days, 24 hours 300-28800 bps 2 lines