DMute

DMute is an advanced Windows based editor designed for the PC, ST and Amiga versions of Dungeon Master and its sequal Chaos Strikes Back. DMute's defining (and unique) feature is the ability to edit 'dungeon.dat' files (as well as save game files) allowing you to create entirely new dungeons for everyone to play.

DMute allows full arbitary editing of your characters (portrait, stats, items carried etc), the dungeon layout (corridors, doors, pits etc) and contents (monsters, items, wall features etc).

Please note that whilst this program has been tested on a wide variety of platforms (inc. Win 95/98 and NT) it comes with no guarentee of working on all systems. In particular, it was designed to be run at high res (1024x768) and 16 bit colour - lower systems will work, but information may be missing from the edges of the screen. The program (obviously) alters the contents of your DM/CSB game files - using it on other files, or any other damage caused by use of the program is your problem - always take a backup before you alter anything! This warning in particular applies to alterations to the 'dungeon.dat' file - once altered you will not be able to play the original dungeon, unless you have backed it up...

This is the third release of the core program, and incorporates many of the suggestions made by users:

DMute V1.4

There are still a few things left to tidy up so there may still be one more release at some point in the future. DMute however already does everything that I wanted it to do, but at some point the ability to port cross-platform dungeons and a more user-friendly interface would be nice. To a large extent however DMute has been superceeded by the Dungeon Master clone Return To Chaos which offers total flexibility over dungeon editing on a native PC platform. Having said that, DMute does allow you to export DM / CSB dungeons into the RTC format so it is still a "live" program; for those people wishing to do this, there is an updated exe you can download from here that reads in a wide range of dungeon.dat formats (including those from DMII and those created for CSBWin that are not compatible with DM / CSB) and can convert them to RTC format(*). Note that this update is just the exe, you will need to run it from the same directory as DMute V1.4 is installed in.

(*) The way that DM / CSB and RTC work is fundamentally different and therefore a "perfect" conversion of some of the more complex dungeon mechanics is not possible. In particular, for dungeons that contain features that are specific to CSBWin (such as DSAs), or the DMII dungeon, DMute will do its best but obviously some data will be lost. Having said that, for most of the publicly available dungeons for DM / CSB or CSBWin, well over 95% of the items and all of the basic tile types (walls / floors / pits etc) are converted correctly. It is then a relatively straightforward process to edit the RTC dungeon file to fix up the remaining few items.


To demonstrate what DMute is capable of here's a sample 'dungeon.dat' file (PC_DM only) that was created entirely with the latest version of DMute. Make a back up of your original 'dungeon.dat' (in the \data folder of DM) and copy the new file into its place. Then just load up DM and enter the dungeon...

This sample spans 4 (small) levels, and scores 0 out of 10 for originality. There's no end condition but try and pick up all the items in the 'pit' room - if you get the green gem, vorpal blade, mace and axe then you can consider yourself to have completed it. Small it may be but it is however very easy to die, woe betide anyone foolish enough to re-incarnate their champions. Have fun and try to stay alive for longer than the first minute!

New Dungeon!

P.S. If you don't want to spoil the surprises don't load this up into DMute first...copy it over and start playing!


(C) 1999-2006 George Gilbert
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