12-13-00 The new map for the December patch is now up. Obviously the biggest change this month is the water, which is now very much red with blood. Also, many parts of the land now resemble the ground of the Obsidian Plains. While Dereth has changed visually, its topography has changed very little. Most of the changes I found were a result of many of the starter dungeons being updated.
11-15-00 The map generated from the latest game data from the November patch is now up, as well as a new coverage map. The biggest change this month is the addition of Vesayen Isles, which was first seen in the July patch but was inaccessible. They were removed completely last month, but have finally returned and are finally accessible this month. Also dirt has started to cover many of the craters left from the Shadow spires and this can be seen in the map data.
I haven't spent much time during the last month working on tools for AC -- I've spent more time playing. However, I have been slowly cataloging the dungeons of Dereth, so if you see me wandering aimlessly through a dungeon, I'm probably just exploring it.
10-16-00 Posted five screenshots of Aerfalle Keep. The first three provide a pretty complete map of the place. Ceilings were removed to provide interior views.
10-15-00 I have finally finished collecting all of the changed map data for the last several months of updates. So, I have generated a new map which is current for the October patch, as well as a new coverage map which details exactly where all the data comes from. The most notable changes for this patch were the removal of the ice island off the north coast and the removal of the resort island off the coast near Mayoi. This new map also reflects the fact that Arwic and Tufa are now craters as well as a number of smaller changes, such as the landscape change near the new Lugian castle southeast of Qalaba'r.
Also, I have replaced mapac.c with a newer one that uses the directory in CELL.DAT to find landblocks. This guarentees that the landblock data read is current data and not old data. Also fixed a minor bug in the lighting code of graphac.c.
Lastly, I changed the screenshot section to group screenshots of different types.
9-17-00 Removed several screenshots because I needed some space for my account. When I get a chance to play, I'll go collect the latest map data and post a new map.
9-9-00: Fixed a bug in exc.c that caused it to not read directories which are stored in non-contiguous sectors properly. This had the effect that it would not find some files in CELL.DAT, even if they were there.
8-27-00: Added some new screenshots, mostly of interesting type 2 (complex) items from portal.dat.
8-23-00: Quick addition of some dungeon screenshots, hopefully on the new island. I have never actually seen these in person, so I don't know if they are correct.
8-21-00: Okay, there's nothing really new here, but actually that is what this update is about. I'm in heavy crunch mode currently trying to get a game out the door, so I haven't had any time to play AC, much less work on tools for AC. I apologize to everyone who has written me mail that I have yet to reply to. I will try to write back though and answer your questions.
However, Todd Berkebile has been working on some cool AC tools. I defintely recommend taking a look at what he's done at Todd's AC Hacking Site
8-3-00: Added new source code for extracting "files" from CELL.DAT and PORTAL.DAT. They are exc.c and exp.c, respectively. Also new source code that extracts all of the graphics from PORTAL.DAT and makes BMP files out of them called acbmp.c. Happy hacking!
8-1-00: Just added four new PlayStation 2 screenshots. They are the last four in the list near the bottom of the page. *grin*
7-20-00: During the last week I've collected the map information for the July update and I have made a final map. Most notably, there are four new islands/island chains not on the old map. A new land type has been catalogged and an old land type changed. Also, the height features of the map have been brought out a bit more in this version, and the map is generally brighter. Source code has also been made available for generating a map file from the cell.dat as well as source code for generating the picture map from the map data. Also, some screenshots from my PlayStation 2 map viewer have been added.
More code will be made available at a later date for getting other information from the cell.dat and portal.dat files whenever I get the chance to finish them. I can rip most of the graphics out of the portal.dat file, but it is a very tricky process currently and not entirely robust. I am working on some other projects using the cell.dat currently, but they are only experimental currently.
7-14-00: After the CoD placed a link to my map page on their news page, I received quite a bit of mail from lots of people. Thanks to all that took the time to send me some mail. To those that asked me questions, it may take me a while to get back to all of you. Asheron's Call and the utilities I write for it are only something I do in my spare time. I also have a job that I work at 10-14 hours a day, six days a week or so. Making games is fun, but it is a lot of work.
Thanks to Steven Snyder for pointing out the /render radius command. Setting this to 25 allows me see much further out into the water and collect data much, much faster.
I hope to find some time to find more useful information in the CELL.DAT. I can already pull out the positional data for many of the objects that lie around Dereth; menhirs, columns, and stuff like that, but I don't know what most of them are yet. As far as I can tell, lifestones and portals are not stored in CELL.DAT, or if they are, they are stored very differently.