Darklands world map
Files with this format: "darkland.map".
Contains the wilderness map, with everything except for
the dynamically generated locations
(all non-cities listed in darkland.loc).
The map is constructed from tiles contained in two .pic files:
"mapicons.pic" and "mapicon2.pic".
Table of Contents
Offsets
Offsets
-
0x00: max_x_coord: word = 0x147
- Number of locations.
- This word is stored high-byte first
-
0x02: max_y_coord: word = 0x3a3
- Number of locations.
- This word is stored high-byte first
-
0x04: row_offsets: array[ max_y_coord ] of dword
- File offsets to row data.
-
[next]: map_data: array[ max_y_coord ] of array[ ] of byte
- Map data.
-
This data is RLE compressed: each byte represents 1-7 map tiles.
-
The top three bits are the repeat count,
and are always at least one (
001xxxxx).
-
The next bit is the palette set:
0 for "mapicons.pic",
1 for "mapicon2.pic".
-
The four least bits indicate which row the tile comes from in the palette set.
-
Which column the map tile comes from depends on the four diagonally adjacent tiles:
the 1's bit comes from the northwest tile's row's 8's bit;
the 2's bit comes from the northeast tile's row's 4's bit;
the 4's bit comes from the southwest tile's row's 2's bit;
the 8's bit comes from the southeast tile's row's 1's bit.
-
W: Described recipe doesn't seem to work.
The bits seems to be set by adjacent tile "similarity". Tile having same palette and row sets the bit. Plus there are other relations: river binds to bridge tile (and vice versa), most of "wet" tiles binds together, etc.
-
Odd lines (y%2 == 1) are shifted by half to the right. Therefore ie. for y==2 are north adjacent tiles coordinates x-1, y-1 and x, y-1, and for y==3 are north adjacent tiles coordinates x, y-1 and x+1, y-1.