Other than Descent are there other games that use the same sorts of modular tiles and can they all link up together?

Also, can the Descent tiles link up to the Doom ones? (I don't know, still need to get Descent)

If so I have a rather epic idea for a Hell on Earth campaign.

Tyroki said:

There are certainly other board games that use a modular tile mechanic for map construction. Space Hulk, Legions of Steel, Munchkin Quest, Castle Ravenloft, Advanced HeroQuest/Warhammer Quest, etc. Some of those are long OOP, but I'm sure there are more besides. I wouldn't count on any of them lining up perfectly with Doom or Descent. Not only does the interlocking cut probably vary, but the thickness and size/shape of the tiles will also be different. Legions, for example, used tiles that were all 5x5 (IIRC) and simply filled in unused tile space with black.

There's also the 4e D&D tile packages, which are quite fancy if you have use for general wilderness or dungeon style tiles. Some of them are a bit specialized and may not be useful for a project like Hell on Earth, but others are quite generic. In particular, I'd keep my eye on the Master Sets that are coming out/will be coming out in the near future.

Tyroki said:

I haven't tried it personally, but I don't think so. Given how tight the cuts are on both Doom and Descent, I would be wary to try for fear of tearing up the tiles in the process.

What you could do, however, and what would probably work for any and all tiles games you care to combine, is to use end cap pieces on each distinct set of tiles and put them together in abutting fashion, then place a door from any particular game bridging the walls between tile types. It would limit your options for map construction in some regards, but it would make things much easier and it would ensure than as many different kinds of tiles as possible could be combined.

Thanks for the reply. I'm finding myself more and more interested in expanding beyond just Doom. I really like how Doom plays (as do my friends), and I really want to expand the experience for them once we finish the base scenarios.

So I'm trying to get a list of purchasable games that are similarly cut. If they won't fit together lightly, I can just set the different game tiles next to each other at a 'break' so to speak.

Also, I'm wondering how one sets up a tile set for TileSystem. I get it has to be done with a png file, but I don't get the 'how' part. I ask for the idea of making a Doom+Expansion+Descent+Basic expansions tile set. How is it done?

Tyroki said:

Every tile set has a ".set" file which tells Tile System all the information it needs - which image file to associate with each side of a tile, how many of each tile to allow before it goes "over" etc. These .set files are just text files with a unique extension. Open one of the existing ones in Notepad and read through the code. It's pretty straightforward. Just make sure you have word wrap turned off or it might make things hard to read.

Once you understand how the code works, it's a simple matter to alter it to use new tiles, or to merge two tile sets. Last time I made a tileset there was a hard limit on the number of expandable categories you could have on the left side, and I'm pretty sure the Descent WARTS set uses all of them, so to combine Doom and Descent you'd need to merge individual categories rather than just copying and pasting one set into the other.

I'm not sure if Tile System is actually restricted to png files or if that's just the format the author has chosen to use for his images. If the tiles you want to use have any kind of transparency you'd need to use something like gif or png, but if not you could probably use jpgs too.

Ugh. Thanks for the reply, but I've never, ever been good with code.

How does one go about doing this without their brain exploding? I'm a thinker, not a coder

Tyroki said:

Well to open the file in wordpad, you can right-click the .set file and choose "Open With..." Then choose Notepad (or Wordpad) from the list of programs it gives you. I'd recommend checking the box that says "always open with this program" so that in the future you can just click the .set file (this won't mess up Tile System, don't worry.)

Once you've got it open, you'll see a bunch of lines of code. Here's an excerpt from one of the Descent set files:

<TileType type="0">Floor Tiles</TileType>

<!-- =========================================
============= Map Tiles ==============
========================================= -->

<Tile name="RtL corridor/outside mud 2x4" sort="10" type="0" maxcount="1" warn="true" flipimage="descent_WART rtl_outside_4x2_mud.png">
descent_WART rtl_corridor_4x2.png
</Tile>

The first line, starting with "<TileType" just tells TS which of the dropdown categories to put these tiles in (type="0") and the part between the tags ("Floor Tiles") is the name that will appear for that category.

The "<!--" and "-->" tags are for comments. Anything between a pair of those tags will be ignored by TS.

The rest of the code is an example for one tile.

The string for "name" is what will appear if you hover over a tile while TS is running.

I forget what the "sort" variable is for, sorry. Just leave that one alone unless something explodes.

"Type" matches the type variable in the TileType tag, it will be the same for every tile you want in this category.

"maxcount" is the total number of tiles of this kind available. Once you've dragged this many copies of the tile into the map, a red X will appear over it on the left. If you drag more a red O will appear. It won't stop you from using more tiles than you have, it just warns you of such.

"warn" should always be true, that's related to the red X.

"flipimage" is the name and path for the image you want to appear on the back side of the tile. If you don't want an image on the back side of the tile (ie: it's the same on both sides or else it doesn't have anything useful printed on the back) then you can remove this variable entirely.

In between the tags is the name and path for the image that will appear on the front side of the tile.

The </Tile> tag closes off the code for this tile. After this would come the next tile in the list.

Your .set file needs to be in the same folder as the TileSystem.exe file, thus assuming you want to store your images in a subfolder, you need to include the path from the root (where TileSystem.exe is) to the image folder. That's why the example code has "descent_WART" in front of both images, incidentally. The images are stored in a subfolder called descent_WART.

Edit: There should be a backslash (the one that isn't "/") after descent_WART in each image path. The forum software keeps removing it from the post, probably because these forums use HTML.

Looking at the Descent tileset again, it would appear the author of that set has broken down the code into a variety of .set files. The .set file that's in the root directory just has a series of pointers to all the other files that are stored in descent_WART. Given that, it might be easier for you to just copy all of the DOOM tiles into the respective WART set files and put all your images in the same folder as WART. (By which I mean copy all the DOOM floor tile code out of the doom.set file and paste them into the descent_Floor_Tiles.set file you'll find in the descent_WART folder.) You'll just need to modify the pathname and "type" variable to match the Descent tiles that are already there.

Wiew. After typing all that out I can see why it might look daunting to someone who's not experienced with programming, but it is really pretty easy once you get the hang of it, honest. =P Compared to real programming languages, this set up is practically plain English. =P

Uh... I really hate to be a pain after you'd helped so much, but...

I can only find Descent WART v1.1

Where can I find WARTS?

That is, assuming there is a difference >.>

Tyroki said:

The name WART(S) is an acronym of the expansions. WARTS includes the tiles from Sea of Blood while WART doesn't (because it was made before SoB was released.) That said, I actually have WART 1.1 myself. Perhaps WARTS never got made, only talked about...

Unless you really had your heart set on using some SoB tiles, WART 1.1 will do you just fine.

WARTS =
Well of Darkness
Alter of Dispair
Road to Legend
Tomb of Ice
Sea of Blood.

Note that Sea of Blood only added 2 tiles, those really tight corner tiles, so if you only find a WART set, that's probably good enough.

-shnar

Alright, I've got you

Well I tried my hand at merging Doom and Descent. I probably did things wrong but there seems to be a limit on how many 'Tiletype' types you can have.

If you just simply merge them in to a single main .set and remove the Descent WART gui.set (because it's ugly compared to the Doom one), things get put in to their own categories AND the doom ones. But if you change the Tiletype type numbers so they don't overlap, they all get thrust out of their categories and in to the doom ones fullstop.

As I couldn't work out how to fix it, I just went back to first way >.>;; At least I can make the maps that way. It's interesting though. I can go from a huge sci-fi complex and then suddenly... it's out in the open. The hordes of hell are moving, spreading out on to the Earth.

I also noticed that Descent has some really 'demon'ish critters. I'm considering converting them in to Doom. Some of them look pretty 'horrifying', if you look at them from a marines perspective. It could also be that hell is beginning to corrupt the natural world on Earth.

But yeah. That's how I'm working the merged .set so far.