# Troll Bridge: Utilities

Unfortunately there is very little documentation on the utilities for Troll Bridge. Most were designed to be functional and not pretty or user-friendly.

builddata: If you check the data directory included with Troll Bridge, you will notice all the images are stored in ".txt" and the level data is not stored in the ".trb" format used by Troll Bridge. Instead many of these other utilities are used to build the game data. Since such a task is tedious and repetitive this script was developed to automate it. It has some variables at the beginning which will need to be modified depending on where you put Troll Bridge. It builds the troll bridge palette, the sprite file, and any level in the levels directory. It takes no command line arguments but does read information for building the sprite file from standard input. Included in the source distribution is "sprite.lst" which is the information to build the Troll Bridge sprite file.

createmap: Createmap is used to combine a collection of screens into a single level file. It takes a single argument, the map file. The map file is a text file that tells what the screen files are. For an example look in the files included with Troll Bridge.

pcx2text: A simple text picture format was made where color entries are given names so that they automatically change when the palette is modified. This utility mostly converts a pcx file to the text picture format. A text palette can be specified on the command or with an environment variable. If exact color matches are found, the color name will be substituted otherwise the color values will be used in the output. The input file is the first argument. The second argument is the output file or the program simply uses the input filename with a ".txt" extension.

pcx2zsp: A zsp originally stood for Zelda sprite file and was used by an earlier project to make a clone of the Legend of Zelda. For simplicity the format is used by Troll Bridge as well. The program pcx2zsp takes several pcx files that show different frames of a sprite and converts it into a zsp. Three arguments are required, filename of the output file, number of facings and number of frames. The pcx files must have the same name as the output file except they have a letter indicating facing, a number indicating frame and a ".pcx" extension. For example "pcx2zsp thing 2 1" would make a file "thing.zsp" that combines "thinga0.pcx" and "thingb0.pcx".

text2pal: Over time the palette of Troll Bridge has required change. To facilitate such changes a text format of the palette was created. It included names for the colors so that a picture could specify colors by name and automatically change when the palette entries were moved. The text palette consists of the red, green, and blue values followed by a color name. Comments may be included with a pound sign. (As a side benefit simply adding "GIMP Palette" to the beginning of the file allowed use in the gimp.) The program has one required command line argument, a text file. If no other argument is given palette will have the same name as the input file but with a ".pal" extension. Otherwise the second argument specifies the output file.

text2pcx: This programs converts a picture from a simple text format to a pcx. It is currently hard coded to read "../data/trollpal.txt" for a palette. The first argument is the input text file. If a second argument is included it is used as the output file. When no output file is specified it uses the input filename with a ".pcx" extension.