SKID ROW presents CARTOGRAPHER The BEST Aid for players of DUNGEONMASTER and CHAOS STRIKES BACK For the Amiga Page 1 follows: --------------- CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 2 ABOUT THE MENU... 4 THE WALKTHROUGH... 8 OTHER NEAT STUFF... 12 Page 2 follows: --------------- INTRODUCTION Entering the dungeon can be a scary thing for DungeonMaster or Chaos Strikes Back players, especially when you enter naked, surrounded by enemies! As you move around the dungeon, you wonder what's behind the walls, around the corner, underfoot. You get lost or disoriented, and then you get DEAD! That won't happen again, because now you have THE CARTOGRAPHER! The Cartographer can help you in many ways. Use The Cartographer to create and edit dungeon maps of Dungeon Master and Chaos Strikes Back games. Use it to save those maps, then print them out, to guide you through the dark halls of Lord Chaos' Lair. Use the Annotated Spell list to help you eliminate the lurking monsters. And after you've defeated Lord Chaos, use it to change your dungeons and play all over again! Page 3 follows: --------------- Why another mapping utility? The problems with Public Domain maps and other mapping utilities is that they_never reflect the state of YOUR game. Things move around in those dungeons! Doors and pits open and close, or are blasted open. Items get picked up or moved. The Cartographer will tell you what the CURRENT state of the dungeon is in YOUR game, and you can make new maps anytime to reflect how your adventures have changed the dungeons. Since the Cartographer maps straight from your own save game file, it won't miss a thing. If you ever happen to notice that your map doesn't quite match up with the dungeon, don't freak out! The Cartographer makes it's maps in a way that if an object like a fake wall or a blue haze isn't active, it won't show up on the map. This makes your maps compatible to that specific game and only good for a certain time. But remember, you can go back and make NEW maps anytime you want! Starting Cartographer Nothing could be simpler! Just insert the disk in df0. You will then see the Cartographer icon in the window. Click and run. Cartographer runs in low resolution. Page 4 follows: --------------- About the menu... This section will go through all of the menu selections step by step, and explain what selecting each item does: DESK ---- Cartographer - Selecting this item will show you a sequence of 5 alert boxes, giving info about the Cartographer, the current version, and DreamPark's address and phone number. Just in case you want to call us up and say hi... FILE ---- Load CSB File - When you select this, a file selector box appears, waiting for you to make your selection. Besides loading regular Chaos Strike Back files, The Cartographer can also load new CSB files which have been created from the CSB prison but not converted using the 'MAKE NEW ADVENTURE' option on the CSB Utilities Disk. This allows you to make maps of the CSB prison. Regular CSB game files have 10 levels. New Page 5 follows: --------------- game files have 2 levels, the 2 prison levels. Load DM File - When you select this a file selector box appears, waiting for you to make your selection. The Cartographer can load Dungeon Master version 1.2 and 2.0 game files. DM game files have 14 levels. Quit - If you feel that you are done using The Cartographer for now, Quit will return you to the Workbench. LEVEL ----- All the items in this menu will take you to the mapping screen if they are selectable. This will allow you to view the map for the level you have selected. Depending upon which game file you loaded, some of the items may not be selectable. If no game file has been loaded all of the items are deactivated. Once one of these items have been selected, The Cartographer will go to the mapping screen. The Cartographer will then start mapping. Once it has finished, clicking Page 6 follows: --------------- the right mouse button will draw an alert box which will give you a list of operations which may be performed on the map. We will cover these in the Walkthrough section. OTHER ----- Color & Mono - These items determine the state of the tiles used in making the maps. Color is excellent for looking at the map on screen. Mono almost always looks the best for printing the maps. Spell List - The Cartographer has a built-in Spell List which you can view. The Spell List has the spell components and Subtitles. Scroll the Spell List up and down by holding down the left mouse button and moving the mouse up and down. Page 7 follows: --------------- Change Doors - Allows you to change the doors throughout the DM and CSB dungeons, removing the need for door keys, since all door selections are button type doors. The advantage of this approach is that doors are not opened until you specify, removing the possibility of releasing roaming monsters accidentally. Yoiu can also choose a door type you can see through, to help give you an idea of what lies ahead. This section left intentionally Chaotic Page 8 follows: --------------- The Walkthrough... This section of the manual will 'walk you through' a sample session using the Cartographer. Though the program is fairly simple, you really should read this section before attempting to use the program to avoid blowing up hours of hard work dungeoneering. Obviously the first rule to follow is NEVER USE YOUR ORIGINAL SAVE DISK! There, we warned you. No sniveling now if you nuke an original disk... OK, boys and girls... Here we go. Getting Started Well, the first thing we at DreamPark Development do when we use the Cartographer is to select the Cartographer item under the DESK (Fuji) menu. (Actually, we hardly ever do this, but it really is a neat set of info boxes...) The first thing to do is make a COPY (there, we told you again...) of your DM or CSB save disk. Go ahead, I'll wait here for you... That was fast.. Are you sure you're ready? Page 9 follows: --------------- Using Cartographer OK, next step is to select the appropriate load file selection from the FILE menu, depending on whether you are using a DM or CSB save file. You will see a file selector box, and you just need to choose the correct save file to load. When this operation is complete, you can move to the LEVEL menu and see that the proper number of levels for your game have been activated. 10 for CSB, 2 for new CSB Prison files, 14 for DM files. You may want to move to the OTHER menu and choose whether you want a color or black and white view of the dungeon maps. Color is very attractive and easy to read from the screen, but Black and white is recommended (strongly!) for printing out on paper. While you're here, you can look at the spell list too, but we'll cover that in detail later. Now the fun begins! Choose a level to view from the LEVEl menu. You will see the screen clear, and the Cartographer do it's thing, drawing a map of the selected level in the mode you have chosen. The map appears on the left, a complete legend on the right. The legend lists the level of the map in the right upper hand corner, and a list of visual blocks and their indentifications below. Page 10 follows: ---------------- Manipulating the maps After the map has been drawn, clicking the right mouse button brings up a customized alert box with a selection of operations you may perform (See, I told you I'd get to this part...). Draw Dungeon - using this option, you can add or delete walls from the dungeon map. This feature toggles with the next to allow either quick wall changes using this command, or slower but more varied options using CHANGE OBJECTS. Change Objects - This option allows you to change the dungeon in more ways than you can using the DRAW DUNGEON option. When you click on a dungeon tile, you are presented with a menu alert that lets you choose what to put in place of the tile. Looking at the menu will tell you what each selection represents. As you left click on your selection, it is placed on the map at the destination you have chosen. Page 11 follows: ---------------- Save Screens in IFF - This option allows you to save a map in Degas compatible format. Either color or black and white maps may be saved, both in IFF format. New CSB files (ones with new CSB characters but not made into NEW ADVENTURES with the utility disk) will have the filename "PRISONLEVEL?.IFF". DM games will have the filename "DMLEVEL?.IFF". '?' is replaced by the applicable level number. Files are saved to df0:, so you may want to insert a separate formatted picture disk before selecting this option. Printing Maps - You may use any utility that will print IFF files to the printer to get a hardcopy of your maps. Merely save the map as an IFF file as above, then use your dump utility to make a printed copy. We suggest using mono mode to save the file, since color is rather confusing on paper. Return to Main Menu - This option does just what you'd expect... Takes you back to the Main screen and gives you back the menu bar. From there, you can load another level, look at the Spell Page 12 follows: ---------------- List, or leave the program. Cancel - Makes the alert box go away and returns to the current map level. SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW SKID ROW