The Magic Seal Joiner
Documentation
This is the documentation for The Magic
Seal Joiner. This file contains important information that will help make
the joiner easier and more fun to use. Refer to this file, whenever you are
having difficulties using the joiner.
The purpose of the joiner is to connect
the rooms you created together, to create a full stage...
Starting the joiner
Click on "Join Rooms" in the start Menu, the joiner will open
The joiner start screen looks like the following... Each empty cell
represents a room.
The tool bar has 10 buttons, here we
quickly give an explanation of each one...
Starting from the left...
New: Creates a new map
Save: Saves the current project to a file
Load: Loads a project from file and opens in the joiner
Extra column left: Adds an extra empty column of rooms to the
left of the map
Extra column right: Adds an extra empty of rooms
column to the right of the map
Extra row up: Adds an extra empty row of rooms to the
top of the map
Extra row down: Adds an extra empty row of rooms to
the bottom of the map
Shrink to wrap: Removes all unnecessary empty rows or columns
Specify starting position: Selects the location from which to start
the stage
Generate: Generates the stage and map files for use in the game
Scenario for using the joiner
The joiner is extremely easy to use. Here
are easy-to-follow steps to show you how to use the joiner
1. Have your room files ready
The joiner just joins the rooms together. It does not create them. You
should have your room files already designed. So, the first step is always
to use the editor to create all the rooms of the stage, and save them. Now,
start the joiner.
2. Load your rooms in the joiner
Double click on any cell in the joiner, an open dialog will appear. Choose
the room file you want to put in this cell, and press OK. A thumbnail of
your room will appear in this cell. Keep loading rooms till you have loaded
all your rooms of the stage...
It should look something like this...
You may need to add extra rows
or columns up, down, left or right. Don't panic. Just use the 4 red arrow
buttons in the toolbar, to expand the map as necessary.
Note: It is extremely important that you
verity that the rooms do connect together correctly. Each door in a room,
has to have a corresponding door from the other side that is the same color.
Each wall has to have a corresponding wall from the other side. If you don't
do that, storage results may arise!
3. Modify the map attributes
Now, the rooms are connected. We need to specify which rooms appear on the
map, which rooms are secret, and which rooms don't appear.
As you can see, there is a small map icon
at the top right of every room. Right click it to change. There are three
possible settings. If there is an icon of a map as appears in most of the
rooms in the screen shot above, it will appear on the map, as a normal room.
If it is a map with a red X on it, this room will not appear on the map at
all. If it is a map with a big exclamation point on it, this is a secret
room. It will appear as dim blue room when discovered by the player.
A special room is the room with the map in it. This one shows a map, with a
green flag on it. You can't change the attributes of this room.
Note: There can be only one map per
stage! you can't put more than one map in the same stage.
4. Connecting rooms with elevators, if
there are any
If there are elevators in your stage, you will need to connect the rooms
together. You have to specify which room leads where.
If there are elevators in you stage, a small elevator icon should appear at
the top left, or the bottom left of the room thumbnail. Here is an
example...
As you can see the room to the left, has
2 elevators, one going up, and one going down. The 2 other rooms have one
elevator each.
To connect the rooms together, click on the appropriate icon, and drag to
the destination room. In other words, for the example above, if you want to
connect the three rooms, you should...
1. For the leftmost room, click on the red arrow, and drag to the room with
the down elevator
2. For the same room, click on the blue arrow, and drag to the room with the
up elevator (the one below)
3. For the room at the top right, click and drag on the blue arrow to the
room to the left.
4. Do the same for the room at the bottom right.
And done, they are connected...
Note 1: It is very important that when
you design rooms with elevators, that you take care each elevator is at
exactly the same location as the one it leads to! If the game detects an
elevator that goes to a room without an elevator, in exactly the same
location, it will simply close!
Note 2: For the rooms with elevators,
only the one at the base level should appear on the map. You should remove
all the other rooms from the map, by clicking on the map icon till it
becomes a map with a big X on it!
Note 3: If you click on any room with an
elevator after connecting, the 2 rooms it is connected 2 will be
highlighted. The upper room will be highlighted red, and the lower one will
be highlighted blue. (the same colors as their corresponding arrow).
5. Specifying the start location
Click on the room to start the game from. Click on the icon with the prince,
an image for the room will open. Just click on the square you want the
player to start from, and click Done.
6. Generating the stage, and the map
Click the globe icon to generate the stage. If there are no errors (All
elevators are connected, and the starting location has been specified), an
open dialog will appear. Choose the name of your stage, and click Ok.
And done! You can run your stage now, by
double clicking on it in the Explorer...
Note: Two files will be generated, one
with the extension (.stage), and the other with the extension (.map). They
should be kept together.
Note 2: Because your stages are not the
official stages, the game will not be able to detect the end of your stage.
It is recommended that you have a special room that indicates the end of
stage. An example of such a room is winningroom.room found in the samples
directory. Feel free to use it, or modify it to better suit your stage. Or,
of course, you can create your own.
If you have any questions or problems
with the joiner, please feel free to contact us at our email
editor@themagicseal.com
We hope you enjoy using the editor and
the joiner...
