//---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dlq V1.1 - a Darklands Quest Lister Copyright (C) 2000-2001 by Michael Petzold This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA //---------------------------------------------------------------------------- The purpose of this little program is to list all pending quests in a Darklands save game. Initially, it displays the most recent save game, but you can also load any other save game. Dlq was inspired by, and takes its main conception as well as the byte- fiddling know-how of the save games, from the program Dkqw by Steven J. Cotellesse (stevec@ceba-tek.com). Steve generously made available the source code of Dkqw. I put the source code of Dlq under the GPL and include it in this package. It can be found in dlq_src.zip. If you're not in programming or are simply not interested, you might delete this file. While the appearance of Dlq is very similar to Dkqw, it's actually written completely from scratch - I used it as kind of playing vehicle for getting my first Windows program up and running ;-) While doing so, I improved some things here and there, and so: Dlq's 'selling points' are - it's more accurate in giving the direction of locations relative to other places (through a new direction finding algorithm and by giving always two nearest places) - it tells you where to report after completing a Raubritter quest (which is always a good idea, considering the reward usually paid for solved Raubritter quests...) - it eliminates the mysterious #9 entity, which showed up occasionally as the person who gave you a quest order (#9 is the 'Schulz'). As as 'bonus', Dlq includes the Darklands save game sorter "dksort", accessible through a click on a button. Dksort re-arranges your save games, so that they are listed in chronological order by the "Load Save Game" screen of Darklands. Now you don't need any longer a separate program to accomplish this! One feature that is missing in Dlq, compared to Dkqw, is that you cannot print the quest list directly. But since you can save this list into a text file, which can then be printed with any text editor, this should be no problem. //--- HISTORY ---------------------------------------------------------------- 29/07/2001 - V1.1 - The command interpreter is no longer invoked when sorting the save games (replaced system() calls with Win32 functions). 04/04/2000 - V1.0 - Initial release. //--- USAGE ------------------------------------------------------------------ Dlq was developed and tested under Windows 95, but I cannot see a reason why it shouldn't work also under NT, 98, or 2000. Just try it out. And while we are at it: Backup your save games before running Dlq the first time! I take no responsibility whatsoever for the doings of Dlq! I just can say that it works well for me, and probably will do so for you. (And you should, of course, make backup copies of your save games every now and then anyway.) There are two versions of the program provided: dlq.exe and dlqs.exe. Dlq.exe is dynamically linked against the following libraries from the Borland C++ 5.0 package: CW3220.DLL BIDS50F.DLL OWL50F.DLL. So, if you have BC 5.0 installed, or have the DLLs for some other reasons, you can use this version - it saves you 220 kB. Dlqs.exe is the same executable, but this time statically linked. If you don't have BC 5.0, you probably will have to use this version. Put the executable in, or set the working (initial) directory for it to, your Darklands directory, e.g. C:\DARKLAND\. Don't put it in your Darklands save games directory! Now start the program, and off you go! One remark concerning the direction information of the form "(NW of Salzburg, SE of München)". The first one is always the nearest town, the second one - guess what - the second closest. Both distances are measured as a straight line, as the crow flies. By relating the two statements you should be able to get the location in question quite exactly. //--- THE REST --------------------------------------------------------------- Thanks to Alexander von Lünen (luenen@rbg.informatik.tu-darmstadt.de), who created an animated GIF of the Darklands opening screen, one sequence of which I shamelessly used for Dlq's program icon and 'About' box. --- If you have questions, comments, bug reports, etc., please email to [Last change to this document: 29/07/2001]