Fog of war?

I tried out the Vormantown module. When I go into the map screen there is a fog of war, convenient because it tells you where you've already been. Is there a way to enable this on the main Arcanum maps?

 

Do you mean map when in dungeons? I could of sworn the map does that anyway.

 

someoneoo: Not really. Or at least not without some modding skills. It's part of the wait/no wait function that gets set with the townmap listings.

All the areas in Vormantown are set for No Wait, which is why you're getting that fog.
Try advancing time in any area and you'll see the downside to that.

 

Zana - The world/town/city/etc map. The dungeons still have the fog.

rroyo - What's the downside? If there's no real downside, how does one go about modding something like that. Is there an .ini file or something?

 

The downside is the player cannot "wait" for a couple hours or so and replenish the PC's health and stamina. You need to have a bed.

If you really want to hack a version that uses the no-wait everywhere, get a copy of DATBuilder or such from the downloads section.
Create a folder outside the game where you can easily get to it.
Create another one called Rules inside the Arcanum/data folder.
Use the undat utility to open the Arcanum/modules/Arcanum.dat. This will take a while, so be patient.
Extract the contents to the folder you made. (This takes a while too.)
Locate the Rules folder and inside you'll find townmap.mes.
Open the townmap.mes with a word processor - Notepad or Wordpad works just fine.
On every entry that ends with (space)[W] , remove the (space)[W]. Be very careful not to delete the } at the end!
Save the modified townmap.mes to the Arcanum/data/Rules folder.

Since it's safe to assume you'll be using this on an existing game: Go to the modules\Arcanum\maps folder (in the game) and delete the 85 to 100 oddly-named files there.
Enjoy the results.

BTW: You can delete the folder you unpacked to after this is done.

 

My modules/arcanum/maps folder has about 81 oddly named files, and a folder called ShopMap (which has a file called 0.sec in it). Should I delete the ShopMap folder too, and will any of this have an unwanted effect on the unofficial patch which I have installed?


Edit: I followed all your instructions and... nothing has changed. :-?

 

My apologies - I had never done this before but would have bet anything on it working.

I just did three tries, including the townmap.mes inside the .patch1 and a .patch2 file, and couldn't get it to work either.

I'll tinker with this a bit more and see if I can figure out what's needed. If I do succeed, I'll PM you with a download.

 

Thanks... but I feel kind of bad having you do it all for me :-/ What would I need to do to try it myself? I still have all the files unpacked. Just search for files called townmap? Also, correct me if I'm wrong, but does this method mean that the data folder exists to overwrite changes in the modules folder?

 

Don't look a gift horse in the mouth. Let rroyo deal with this now that he's said he'll do it. It'll probably be good practice to him, too.

 

I just realized something. I don't have a townmap.mes inside my patch1 and patch2 files! Also, I seem to be missing patch2-7. I downloaded the "updated" UOP from RPGCodex and not the one on this site. Was it incomplete?

Wolfsbane - Yea... but it's probably good to know about this stuff if I ever wanted to mod anything in the future. And I like being able to have some control over what I put into my game and knowledge about how the game actually works.

 

Drog released his last patch not that long ago, you can find it on RPGCodex (there's a link on this forum somewhere) but I'm not familiar with either of the ones you've tried...

I take it from this that you should try making a new game once saving the file into rules?

Don't be so patronising Wolfsbane, atleast someoneoo is prepared to do some groundwork himself and not let Rroyo do all the work (although I'm sure he appreciates the help).

 

Yea that's the one I downloaded and am using. I think it was dated December 2009.

I tried using Datbuilder to save the updated townmap.mes into Arcanum.dat but all that did was cause the game to crash before the menu. :/

 

Wolfsbane: If he can figure this out before me - great!
Because it's not working like I would have thought it would, it's got my curiosity going as to why.

Charonte: He did mention that he'd been playing for a while.
And - Starting a new game didn't get this to work either.

someoneoo: Wanting to learn - Good for you!
About adding or replacing something in the Arcanum.dat: You already found out what happens.
And - I created a patch2 file of my own just as a test.

 

I just re-read what you wrote and it looks like you put the file in patch1 and 2 yourself. Just curious... do you have patch files labeled 3-7? I only have 0,1,2,8,9.

Now, since you tried patch 1 and 2, I thought I would try patch 0. The problem is, whenever I put the townmap file in there (through add>normal), "write dir tree", then save, and try to re-open the file to check, I get errors.

 

No, I don't. Patch numbers 3-7 do get used from time to time by people tinkering with a hack, but it is uncommon.

I'm currently working from an unpacked version of a patch file.

I haven't tried adding it to a packed patch yet..... hmmmm

 

I unpacked PATCH0, added the edited townmap, then repacked it and loaded up the game. Nothing I think the problem before was that I was clicking "Save DAT" which seems to screw up the file. If I just "Write DIR tree" then exit it seems to be fine. I'm going to try it with Arcanum.dat.

Edit: Well, Arcanum.dat gives me an error before it crashes this time. :/

Are we even sure the [W] line is even what causes the fog?


Edit 2:
Well, I haven't been able to come up with anything. I did notice that if I place an edited (with bad data) MapList.mes (I was trying something) in Arcanum/Modules/Arcanum/Rules the game crashes, while the same file in Arcanum/Data/Rules does absolutely nothing. So, I think the files need to go in the modules folder and not the data folder. Seeing this, I tried putting the edited TownMap.mes file in A/M/A/R but no go. Also, changing W:1 to W:0 instead of deleting it does nothing as well. I tried visiting Tarant and Dernholm on a new game to see if maybe the problem is just the crash site but they still give a full map display....

Also, this should probably go in the modding forum.

 

Okay, I think I might have figured it out. All the maps that have the fog of war not only lack a [W] parameter but are also listed in MapList.mes. I think I know how to put in a new entry, but I need some numbers.

Does anyone know anything about MapList.mes?

For example, take this line:

{5040}{T'sen-Ang, 2040, 2038, WorldMap: 0, Area: 16}

(T'sen-Ang has the distinction of being the only town map with the fog)

What do the numbers 2040 and 2038 represent?


(I just finished arcanum and thought I would start up trying to mod a few things before I went back and played through again)

Also, how does it work if you're fixing something that's already in a PATCH file? Could I create a PATCH10 (since I have a PATCH9) or do I have to place the new Maplist.mes in the existing patch file?

 

Sorry I missed this the other day.

OK - the map in question is for the tree-top section of T'sen-Ang. It's separate from the main map.

The numbers you're wondering about are the designated X & Y start coordinates for that map.
In this instance, it actually is the spot where the PC steps out from the archway but that's not always the case. You can designate location during a map's creation and never use it.

The patch files: My favorite method is to unpack the patch into a folder with the same name and work from the folder. The game will recognize the unpacked patch. Be sure to remove the packed patch or rename it in a way the game can't recognize it. An X in front of the name works good.
Also - Remember to clean out the Arcanum\modules\Arcanum\maps folder before every test and you should be good to go.

 

Thanks!

So, just to be clear, if I was to unpack PATCH0 (which is in Arcanum/modules) I would then have a folder with the patch files in it in - Arcanum/modules/Arcanum.PATCH0/ - that Arcanum would recognize?

 

Yep.