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Every layer will have an associated tool type. Tool types include stamper, tiler, wall, poly, numeric legend and icon legend markers.

The stamper is the simplest tool to use in Dungeon Demon. Using the currently selected graphic in the Graphic Selector dialog (turn this on with Tools/Graphic Selector) the stamper will drop that graphic object into the map under the cursor on a left mouse button press event. The stamper object can be rotated at 90 degree angles and will adopt the current rotation from the graphic selector object.



If you think about the typical dungeon map you will think about large areas of room and hallway that are laid out as floor - this is what the Tiler excels at! The tiling tool lets you map the current graphic into a rectangular area in the map using a click and drag methodology. Using the Tiler tool you can rapidly lay out floors, usually with the grid feature turned on. Typically you will use a 100x100 opaque texture for this purpose but you can tile with any graphic you choose. If you have used the R key to rotate the current graphic in the Graphic Selector tool then the tiler will map your tile with that rotated graphic.

NOTE: I highly recommend that you download and install David Johnston's excellent texture pack that can be found in our Art Packs section or by downloading directly here!




The wall tool is similar to the floor tool in that you can drag stretches of wall out quickly using your currently selected graphic object. There are two differences between tiling floors and walls. The first difference is that walls will be either vertical or horizontal strips - you can't make large rectangles with the wall tool. The second difference is that you can add wall lines to walls which you can read about under render effects.



The polygon (or more informally, as we are all friends here, poly) tool is used to create continent maps and can also be used to make war game maps, like these:




Every layer has it's own poly render settings, you can use this feature if you want to have a map with regions that are rendered in different colors. For example, if you are creating a war game map you will want to place each region on it's own layer so that each can have it's own distinct color and or style. When creating a polygon you left click onto the map to create a new point.

By default a new map doesn't have a poly layer so you will start by going to the menu tab Edit Layers and select New Layer and click the Polygonal radio button to create a new polygon layer. To start creating a new poly go to a polygonal layer and click where you want to add a point - for example here is a World War II map I am working on:




once I click on the image the editor will enter wire frame mode so I can see any other poly points in the map:




Once you have entered all of your poly points to form a new polygon you will press ENTER when you want to finish a polygon and the last polygonal point plotted will be joined with the point that you started your current polygon with.

To create a poly that shares a point with its neighbor you can press the T key and the closest neighboring polygon point to where your cursor is will be joined to. This feature is very handy if you are creating effects such as a continent with more than one internal country, each country could be created as a poly and you would use the T key to make neighboring border points be exactly the same.

Press the DEL key to delete the last poly point added. Press the ESC key to delete the polygon you are working on which will also take you out of the wireframe mode (handy if you are on a poly layer and you have mistakenly clicked on the map). NOTE: none of your lines in a polygon can intersect each other - finish your current polygon and create a new one if you need to.

NOTE: you will notice that when you finish a polygon that, by default, it gets rendered with irregular (fractal) lines - this is to make continent maps more realistic and pleasing to the eye and can be controled on a line by line basis so that a single poly can have both fractal and straight lines. See the poly adjustment tool for details on changing how your poly's are rendered. Press the F key to toggle between fractal and straight line mode. When in wire frame/edit mode you will notice that straight lines are rendered in green.




Dungeon Demon exports two kinds of legend types that you can use to describe all of the thrilling details of your adventures. The first is the Numeric Legend Tool which marks every legend spot on your map with a unique number. Every time you plot a numeric legend marker into the map the next available number will be dropped into the map, starting at 1. In other words, the first numeric legend object you drop into a map will be labelled 1, the second will be 2, followed by 3... you see where this is going! If you delete any of the numeric legend markers then any subsequent markers will automatically renumber down by one so there are no gaps.

To set the legend text for you right click on it once plotted and you will be able to edit the block of text associated with that legend symbol.




The icon legend tool places images instead of numbers into your map. As with the other image tools, your graphic is selected with the Graphic Selector. There are two differences between an Icon Legend map object and a Stamper object, the Icon Legend item will have a blue glow placed around it and, when it is selected for adjustment you will be able to edit associated legend text that is unique to that legend item.

The legend symbol tool will save the last legend text for any graphic and will re-apply that to the next icon legend symbol created. This is especially useful for computer game map making where something like a chest will usually have the same instance data associated with it. See Exporting for more details about how to create icon legend symbols that are used for computer game creation.




The zoom in tool (magnifying glass with a + sign) and the zoom out tool (magnifying glass with a - sign) can be used to zoom in and out of various spots on your map by left clicking on the point that you want to focus on.

With the release of 1.1 the mouse scroll wheel can now also be used to zoom in and out of the map.

As with all windows programs you can use the horizontal and vertical scroll bars to scroll around within your map at the current zoom size.

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