Quick introduction to DK levels

The preset Dungeon Keeper levels are on the Dungeon Keeper CD, in the directory \keeper\levels. To use your own levels, you need to copy the \keeper\ldata and \keeper\levels directories into your normal Dungeon Keeper directory, and edit keeper.cfg to say where to find the files. There is a setting (whose name I forget) which should currently point to X:\keeper (where X is your CD drive letter). You'll need to change this to point at your normal Dungeon Keeper directory. That done, you can happily modify levels. Keep your Dungeon Keeper CD in the drive to get the music though.

Each level in Dungeon Keeper has a set of files associated with it. They all use the same filename with different extensions... for example, level 19 files are all called map00019.ext (where ext is the appropriate extension). Not all levels have all files, and it is unknown as yet whether the "extra" files are needed or not. Most of the "core" files needed by all levels have been investigated, and others like me are working hard to discover the format of the rest.

Many files in Dungeon Keeper are compressed with Rob Northern Compression (RNC). You can tell if a file is compressed, as the first three bytes will be 'R' 'N' 'C'. The fourth byte is a 1 (as distinct from '1'). See the RNC page in this site for more detail.

Each map is divided into 85x85 playing tiles, as seen on the map. Each tile is sub-divided into 3x3 subtiles - look at the game carefully, examining tiles, and trying to break them into subtiles, and you'll see what I mean. I'll use the terminology above extensively, be sure you understand what I mean.

Please send any comments to skeet@pobox.com
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