David Millington

projectshome.atlantisdhd.frequentlyaskedquestions




How do I edit the XML file?
You can edit a number of settings for the DHD via the XML file. In the same folder as the dhd executable you should have a file called “atlantisdhd.xml”. Drag and drop that into your favorite text editor, I use Crimson as I like its feature set including syntax highlighter but you can use whatever your comfortable with including Windows Notepad. You dont need to be proficient with XML to make alterations to the file, you just have to be careful. Its always a good idea to make a copy of the file before making any alterations so you can easily revert back to your last working copy.

Lets say you want to change the direction that the shield button drains. Open the XML file and look for the <dhdconfig> section. Inside that look for the <shielddirection> element. As default it will be:

<shielddirection>RL</shielddirection>

which means it will drain from right to left. To change make it drain from left to right replace RL with the LR i.e:

<shielddirection>LR</shielddirection>

Save the file and reload the DHD. Now the shield button will drain from left to right.

How does the Point Of Origin work?
The Point Of Origin is the last symbol to be dialed in a gate address. It is always the same for each location i.e. if you dial an address from Atlantis the last symbol will always be 31. If you dial from Planet X then the last symbol might always be 12 (I just made Planet X & 12 up). The POO number can be changed in the XML file so you can emulate the dialing computer being used from a non Atlantis source.

The Point Of Origin autodialing system is getting to have quite a history. In v1 it wasnt implemented at all mainly because I didnt believe it was supposed to be autodialed, then some people wanted it to be autodialed so I did that for v1.1 but then a bunch of other people weren't happy that they couldn't manually dial it so now I've made a hybrid instead, heres how the POO now works:


It sounds pretty complicated but really its pretty easy, either dial the address minus the POO and press cancel/engage or dial the address including the POO and press cancel/engage.


How do I change the messages that are shown in the Status Panel?
First make sure you understand how to edit the XML file by reading How do I edit the XML file? above. All the messages are stored in the XML file. If you wanted to change the message that is displayed when an unknown address is dialed then open the XML and look inside the <messages> element for:

<addnotlocated>404 – UNKNOWN ADDRESS</addnotlocated>

which is the default message. Now change that to your preferred text i.e:

<addnotlocated>ADDRESS CANNOT BE LOCATED</addnotlocated>

How do I change the sounds?
First make sure you understand how to edit the XML file by reading How do I edit the XML file? above. All the sounds are loaded from external mp3 files. The path to these files is stored in the XML file under the <dhdsounds> element. Lets say you want to edit the sound that is made when a dhd button is pressed. You would look for the <engagedsym> element and change its path i.e:

<engagedsym loop="1">sounds/dhdbutton.mp3</engagedsym>

If you had a new sound called “mysupernewdhdbuttonsound.mp3” in the “sounds” folder then you would change the above to:

<engagedsym loop="1">sounds/mysupernewdhdbuttonsound.mp3</engagedsym>

Sound files can be stored in other folders but they must always be inside the dhd folder i.e. you cant load sounds off another hard drive.

How do I loop sounds?
You would probably want to do this for the shield button or the puddle sound. You can set the number of times the sound will play by changing the “loop” attribute of a sound element i.e:

<engagedsym loop="1">sounds/dhdbutton.mp3</engagedsym>

to make that loop 5 times would mean changing it to:

<engagedsym loop="5">sounds/dhdbutton.mp3</engagedsym>

I might change this in the future to automatically loop certain sounds as it would make more sense to only loop the shield sound while the shield is open whilst at the moment it means it will loop for x amount of times reguardless of whether the shield was still active or not.

How do I add my own gate addresses?
First make sure you understand how to edit the XML file by reading How do I edit the XML file? above. A gate address is handled a little differently than the other XML elements as it consists of multiple parts. If you look inside the <addresses> element you will see several <gate> elements. Each one of these is a possible destination that you can dial.

<gate>
<destname>Athosia / Athos</destname>
<address>16,9,19,32,27,21,31</address>
<anim>athosia.swf</anim>
</gate>

<destname> is the name of destination and will be shown in status panel
<address> is the actual address to be dialed. this is a comma seperated list of numbers.
<anim> is the path to an animation to load after the gatescreen finishes dialing the address, this can be blank if you dont have any content for your new destination yet.

To add your own destination is pretty simple. Just copy and paste one of the current <gate> addresses, so you would copy the whole thing you can see above from and including <gate> and </gate> and then change the three sub elements. Then save the xml file and reload the DHD. You should now be able to dial your new address. Make sure that when you paste the copied <gate>...</gate> elements that they are inside the <addresses> block otherwise your address will be undialable.

Can I use the keyboard to control the DHD?
Yes you can. As with most other things you can configure the keys via the XML file. Just look for the <keys> element and then change the relevant key binding. The numbers used are decimal keycodes which you can find in several places such as lookuptables.com. You can also press the – (minus) key to enable keyboard reading which will display the code for each key you press in the Status Panel. Press minus again to turn it off.

How can I work out the button numbers?
Make sure that the DHD has keyboard focus i.e. there are no windows on top of it and then press the + (plus) key. This will toggle number overlays onto each button. Press plus again to hide them. You can dial with them visible.

Can I turn on/off the power bars in the bottom right corner?
Yes you can. You can do this in two ways. The permanant way is to edit the XML file. Look for the <powerbar1> thru to <powerbar4> elements inside the <dhdconfig> element and change their values from true to false or vica versa. You can have any combination activated or deactivated at any one time. What you set in the XML file will be used each time you load the DHD. The temporary way to turn them on or off is to simply click the appropriate bar once the DHD has finished loading. You'll see the bar appear/dissapear to reflect its state as well as an output message in the Status Panel (as default).

What do you use to make the sim?
The sim started with Flash MX/ActionScript 1 and since then has been upgraded to Flash 8/ActionScript 2.

For editing the source code I use Crimson Editor along with some ActionScript syntax files.

For taking screen shots and making the initial sound files I've just started to use Avidemux. Its an excellent free video editing package. Well it does the two main things I need anyhow which is (a) to easily fastforward/rewind and mark segments (b) export short mp3 snippets.

The next stage is to tinker with the mp3s i.e. remove unwanted sounds I use Audacity which is another neat little free app. It has all the basic sound editing controls and supports reading and writing mp3s. By “remove unwanted sounds” I just mean from the beginning and end of the sound files.

For picking colors off screenshots plus any other drawing need I've been using GIMP which is a freeware graphics package.

On my mission to find the correct dhd console font I've been using AMP Font Viewer which is a freeware font viewing program. You can type a sentance in one of the boxes and then scroll through your fonts to see what it looks like. Whilst on the subject of finding the right font; I've also been trying out various sites like What the font? which let you upload an image of a sentance written using a font you want to identify and then they are supposed to be able to tell you what its called. Hasnt worked so far but I might take another stab at it :¬)

Where can I find out absolutely everything about the Atlantis Stargate?
Besides being a constant viewer you can read everything here in this excellent guide at answer.com.

Where can I get the source code for the sim?
I've decided not to release the source code until the sim is complete at which point every single line will be made public so you can modify it as you wish. There's a few reasons for this:

How can I dial an 8 symbol address such as Earth?
Most addresses require 7 symbols. To dial a gate address you manually dial 6 symbols on the DHD and press cancel/engage which does two things. First it adds the Atlantis point of origin to the list of dialed symbols and then it dials the full address. The process is much the same for addresses that require 8 symbols such as when Atlantis dials Earth. In cases such as these you would dial 7 symbols and then press cancel/engage. Alternatively you can manually enter all 8 symbols as long as the 8th is the POO.

What laptop do they use in the show?
I think they use a Dell Inspiron 8500. I five fingered a bunch of screenshots of this particular laptop model which you can see here. You can compare them to various show laptop screenshots in the concept art section. I based most of my hunch off the Communications section.

How long does it take an address to be verified by the DHD/gate system?
“3.5 microseconds is the length of time required to confirm a Stargate connection” – ep1x09, Gateworld.net

When are the best times to see the actual show DHD in action?
The DHD isn't actually shown very often. Here is a collection of episodes and the rough times within those episodes that you can see it, I'll add more as I find them:


How do I edit the icon files?
The .ico files have been created using Adobe Photoshop CS3 and the free icon plugin from Sib Code. The plugin allows you to create multi-image icons so that you can have a different icon for each size. I'm using Vista at the moment so I created the multi-image icon set for Vista. This includes the sizes 256x256, 48x48, 32x32 and 16x16. I'll make another set for XP and the 8bit and 4bit color sets later on. There is an awesome guide to creating Vista and XP icons here on the Microsoft site. It contains all the information you need to know. Here are the steps to create a multi image icon:


Are there any keyboard shortcuts?
Yes, these can be configured via the config.xml file included in the current release version. The default keys are: