ack3d/map_edit/README.md

DOS Map Editor for ACK-3D

Source code and assets for the DOS map editor contained on the CD that was included on the book "Amazing 3-D Games Adventure Set" by Lary Myers, published in 1995. The source code has been fixed up a little bit and sources/assets for a second, older version of this map editor have been removed. A Watcom makefile has been added, replacing a build script for Lary's custom MK.EXE build tool.

Unlike the version that shipped on the book's CD, this version has been updated so that it does not assume that files are all located in the current working directory. Instead the following is what happens for path handling:

• The medit.dtf file required by the map editor is assumed to be located in the same directory as MAPEDIT.EXE
• Files specified by the map editor description file are assumed to be located in the same directory as that description file.

These changes make it possible to do things like place MAPEDIT.EXE and MEDIT.DTF somewhere on your PATH instead of needing to copy them around to all of your project asset directories.

Requirements

To build you will need Watcom C++ and Borland TASM. I used Watcom C++ 10.0a and Borland TASM 4.0, but you should be able to build with newer versions (maybe even slightly older versions too).

You must build ACKLIB.LIB prior to building this project. Please check the /ack_lib directory at the root of this repository first.

Because the DOS map editor requires it's own medit.dtf resource file, you must also build the BPIC.EXE tool prior to building this project, as the included makefile will attempt to build this resource file as part of a normal build. Please check the /bpic directory at the root of this repository first.

Building

Within this directory, run

> wmake

This will build using the included makefile using a debug build settings.

To build using a release configuration:

> wmake target_config=release

In either case, you should get an output artifact MAPEDIT.EXE on successful build.

How to Run

To run the map editor, you must provide it with a text map description file or "configuration file" as it is referred to in the book. This file specifies what .MAP file to load, in addition to what bitmaps to load, what objects are available for placement and a bunch of other things. These are very similar to the .INF files used by ACK-3D resource files (e.g. pics.dtf) but do NOT confuse the two! They are not the same thing!

This map editor does NOT read ACK-3D resource files like pics.dtf. It is only capable of producing .MAP files that are to be included in resource files. This is very much unlike the Windows version of the map editor that was included on the book's CD (which is not included in this repository).

Please read the last section of Chapter 15 in the book for more information on using the DOS map editor and what needs to go in configuration files. Unfortunately, the book's description of configuration files is very light (only a single page), so you will also want to refer to the /fdemo/assets/fdemo.l01, /mall/assets/mall.l01 and /example/assets/example.med configuration files found in this repository as examples to help you write your own.