Creating new map texture packs
by Spatulade,Trotim,YourMaster,Rainlizard
Dungeon Keeper supports several different sets of textures (such as Moonbrush Wood's snow theme, or the Deeper Dungeons' green stone tilesets). Keeper FX additionally allows new, custom tilsets, which this page will detail the process of creating.
Dungeon Keeper FX contains many sets of textures (texture packs 0-3 are from Dungeon Keeper, 4-7 from The Deeper Dungeons, 8+ are fanmade), which can be accessed in various editors.
(For a visual list of the textures in each set, see the ingame texture List).
Each individual tile texture is 32x32 pixels in size and use the ingame 256-colour palette. These tiles are grouped into files of related textures (see the ingame texture list).
In short, the process is:
- Download the relevant texture files.
- Copy a texture set and edit the images inside it with an appropriate graphics editing program (GIMP is recommended, due to templates and palette files already existing).
- Compile the images into a
tmapa*.datfile that the game can use, using Unearth (highly recommended), or a copy of the Keeper FX graphics directory, Keeper FX source code and Ubuntu (not recommended). - Ask really nicely if it can be put in the game officially if it's good enough (currently campaign-specific tilesets are not possible).
- The DK ingame palette
- Templates and resources (GIMP palette, templates, some documentation)
- Ingame Texture List
It is highly recommended to use GIMP, as it allows you to convert your images to the ingame palette and use the supplied templates and palette file. Inside are a series of templates for GIMP created by Trotim and tweaked here and there by Spatulade (If these come up with errors, download the newest version of GIMP, which should fix this). These contain various cutouts of certain parts of wall/floor textures to make it easier for people to import their own wall textures below these and combine.
The best way is again to use GIMP. Import Dungeon-Keeper-256.gpl into GIMP (or create a new one from DKpalette.png). For each texture you complete, right-click on a layer and click "New from Visible" to make a layer combining what is visible at the time. Then, click on Image > Mode > Indexed, make sure "Use custom palette" is selected, then select Dungeon Keeper 256 from the list and click Convert (dithering is optional, try it out!). Have a look and see if this looks okay. If it looks gross, it's because the colours you used didn't map well to the palette (either multiple colours mapped to the same one, losing definition, or the closest colours weren't very close!). If these look bad, undo this and try to adjust the colours to something that maps better, or look at the palette and make your colours match the palette. Once you have converted these to the palette and you're happy with it, save!
If you have any issues, check up on the Keeper Klan discord.
- Don't forget the ingame palette limit. Plan your textures with this palette in mind.
- It is important that you make your textures darker than you expect - the textures in the files are how they look before any lighting has been applied, and the lighting system will make the textures appear much brighter when they are lit.
You can use Unearth's features to create a texture set.
In your Dungeon Keeper /data/ directory each texture map file (/data/tmapa000.dat, /data/tmapa001.dat, etc) corresponds to a different texture map, they contain all images compressed into one file. Let's build one.
Click the first button Convert tmapa*.dat file to filelist pack and select tmapa000.dat in your DK's /data/ directory to use as a base for editing. A list of .PNG files will be extracted into a folder on your hard drive (to: /Unearth/textures/pack000/), you can now edit them like this in your favourite image editor.
Click the second button Load filelist pack and find the filelist_tmapa000.txt file that was extracted (/Unearth/textures/filelist_tmapa000.txt). Load this .txt file as a filelist pack and your window will now look like this:
The bottom export button is now available to be used. Any edits you make to your .PNG files will be exported into this tmapa file. Keep in mind Dungeon Keeper can only use texture map files if they're in Dungeon Keeper's /data/ directory, so export them there. Unearth will detect any new files there and allow you to set your Dungeon Style to them in Map Settings.
If you're particularly insane you can build the files yourself. Read How to compile.txt for a brief guide for compiling the game and the graphics. You will need to make this into a file called tmapaXXX.dat (choosing a number in place of XXX) and put it with the rest, then edit a map's .inf file (in a hex editor) to match the number you have chosen (in base 16). Then run this level and it should work!