Tileset questions

[Zambaku]

I have sprites from the old Ultima games that I plan on using in Angband vanilla. Is there any way I can make it into a new tileset or do I have to copy and paste everything into an excisting tileset?

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Zambaku

I have sprites from the old Ultima games that I plan on using in Angband vanilla. Is there any way I can make it into a new tileset or do I have to copy and paste everything into an excisting tileset?

You can make a new tileset. There aren't any formal instructions, but if you look up the forum user Nomad and search through their posts, you should get a reasonable idea of how it was done last time around.

When you've done it, if you'd like to write a small howto for others, I'll happily post in on the development wiki.

EDIT: Just to be clear - there are really two different tasks here: one is creating your new tile set (the AxB.bmp file) and the other is modifying the code to find and use it. If you create a new bmp file, one of the devteam will happily modify the code to use it - more tiles are always welcome.

[Derakon]

Are we clear on the legalities of using tiles from that particular game?

[buzzkill]

Originally Posted by Zambaku

I have sprites from the old Ultima games that I plan on using in Angband vanilla. Is there any way I can make it into a new tileset or do I have to copy and paste everything into an excisting tileset?

The easiest way would probably be to paste your tiles into an existing tileset, on top of the existing tiles.

Of course if you've already got the tiles assembled into a 'sheet', it's just a matter of editing the corresponding prf file to match up to it (and then probably add all in all the missing items).

Which Ultima???

[Shockbolt]

An Ultima tileset would be cool, if it can be legally used. Also, when we're talking about using tiles from established universes such as Ultima, is there a "Star Wars version" of Angband? If not, that would be a fun thing to paint tiles for

[Magnate]

Originally Posted by Derakon

Are we clear on the legalities of using tiles from that particular game?

Nope. The legal status of abandonware has never been definitively proven, agreed or legislated for, IIUC. I'm assuming that the reference to "old" Ultima games means we're talking about abandonware. If the copyright in the graphics can actually be traced to an active corporation or a living individual then things get much easier to resolve, but usually resulting in no free usage. LucasArts are well known for forbidding any Star Wars-based free games, for example.

[jens]

Ahh, Ultima... Those were the days :-) I played Ultima III, IV and V, then went on to play I and II for good measure. Hands down my favourite game as a teenager :-) But never really tried or enjoyed the series after V, but I believe that's when they moved away from char-based graphics... Guess I have a thing for dungeon crawling with limited graphic :-)