CSBwin

There is a tremendous amount of information about CSBwin at http://dmweb.free.fr/ and on the forums at http://dungeon-master.com/ . The game Conflux uses CSBwin as its platform and CSBuild as its editor. One of the features of these programs is the ability to write things a bit like scripts using a funny language (the product of upgrading a much less ambitious endeavor to do things not originally envisioned) in things called Designer Specified Actuators (DSAs).

There has been some call for a simplified explanation of how to use DSAs. I don't think it is possible to learn to use DSAs without a bit of mental effort. They use a language with unpronounceable words, a syntax backward from normal languages and discourse, and provide very little in the way of debugging the syntax or the execution.

Let us begin by discussing the backwardness of the language. If you have heard of the Forth language then what I say here will be very familiar. I did it this way because it is easy to compile. In fact, it is not necessary to compile because the person writing the code for the DSA does the compiling in his head! I just translate the strange-looking words into numbers to be executed as the game runs.

DSA tutorial

• Lesson 1 - BackwardsTalking
• Lesson 2 - The State Machine
• Lesson 3 - Messages: Set and Clear/To and Fro/Sooner or Later
• Lesson 4 - A DSA Can Speak
• Lesson 5 - Our First Example (InterLevel/LongDelays)
• Lesson 6 - Building a Torch from Sticks and Ashes

DSA unsorted

• examples of DSA to be looked at right in the game
• bug hunting Tips
• DSA Library (for copy/pasting)
• Tools and editors for CSBwin
• Graphics Library
  • Monsters
  • wallsets
  • decorations
  • items