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Celtic Minstrel

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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
I doubt that there would be any Area Rectangles situated only on square 0,0. A square that is frequently out of the town boundaries too.

But unfortunately not out of boundaries if outside (that was why it was fixed in the first place) : take any legacy scenario and wanders around outside and you should be able to find mislabeled "Rectangle X". wink
That makes me think : legacy scenarios "Empty" rectangles shouldn't be labeled as such because they are, in fact, already placed (because of the faulty original rectangle initialisation). Or am i mistaken ? confused

Chokboyz
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I doubt that legacy scenarios would have any valid Area Rectangles that are restricted to square 0,0 only. By "valid" I mean intentionally placed there by the original designer.

Program make version could be invoked, it is going to require that the new editor have the right version number written into new scenarios.

This problem would also affect towns imported from scenarios made with older editors.

Edit:

While I am at it, I might alter the dialog for basic scenario details so that it shows the makerunver and minrunver details.

Edit:

From what I can see, the program make version numbers are always assigned by the Editor: "1","0","0". They don't reflect the real number of the Editor version. Hence there would be no way for the Editor to detect what version of program was used to design the scenario.

If you introduced a program make version now, towns and zones already made with the new editor could be given a new program make number the next time they were saved.

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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
Program make version could be invoked, it is going to require that the new editor have the right version number written into new scenarios.

If i remember correctly, the scenario would be legacy if the prog_make_version first number is < 2.

Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
From what I can see, the program make version numbers are always assigned by the Editor: "1","0","0". They don't reflect the real number of the Editor version. Hence there would be no way for the Editor to detect what version of program was used to design the scenario.

The version checking is indeed not yet implemented, but several checks are already in the code for when it will be ...
I'm wondering if we should give the option of choosing to use the legacy format (prog_make_version[0] = 1, so no ressurection balm needed, no difficulty adjustment, etc) or the new format ... confused

Concerning the difficulty problem : i've corrected the "reversed difficulty scale" for lockpicking and bashing, and implemented the difficulty setting for the new scenario format (i.e prog_make_version > 1, to insure backward compatibility). I've not commited anything for now.
Is everyone ok with those fixes ? smile

Chokboyz
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Argh, we're devolving into code discussion again.

 

A few comments...

  • The two town difficulty problems need fixing; apparently you already have, but I haven't.
  • We need to assume that (0,0),(0,0) rectangles are valid. There is a legitimate reason for someone to place such a rectangle, at least outdoors. On the other hand, we might be able to check for the description to decide whether to delete a rectangle; if it's at (0,0),(0,0) and its description is "Rectangle X" or whatever, it can be auto-deleted.
  • Any chance of putting code discussion elsewhere? It's so cluttery...
  • Oh, and Ishad, there is a way to tell which version of the editor was used.
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Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
Argh, we're devolving into code discussion again.
[...]
Any chance of putting code discussion elsewhere? It's so cluttery...

Indeed ... I suggest using the old "Compiled suggestion list" (http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=27627#Post27627) for such discussion or creating a whole new thread.
Either way, i'll refrain from posting code discussion here again wink

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
The two town difficulty problems need fixing; apparently you already have, but I haven't.

I'll commit the corrected code when the selected solution ("reversed difficulty scale" fixed and difficulty implemented for new scenario (prog_make_version > 1)) gets the community's approval.

Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel
We need to assume that (0,0),(0,0) rectangles are valid. There is a legitimate reason for someone to place such a rectangle, at least outdoors. On the other hand, we might be able to check for the description to decide whether to delete a rectangle; if it's at (0,0),(0,0) and its description is "Rectangle X" or whatever, it can be auto-deleted.

Agreed. I wouldn't bother with the legacy case, since the "delete" button does the job (remember that, for legacy scenarios, "Rectangle X" are placed game-wise). smile

Chokboyz
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Celtic Minstrel: "There is a way to tell which version of the Editor was used", what is that? Prog make ver is always assigned a value of 1,0,0 regardless of which editor created the scenario. Looking at the source code says this is the case. It is also what I see looking at scenarios with the latest version of my Editor.

Has anyone ever actually seen a 1x1 Area Rectangle situated only on square 0,0?

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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
Has anyone ever actually seen a 1x1 Area Rectangle situated only on square 0,0?

Yup, in every legacy scenario's outdoor section that is large enough (Redemption's first area comes to my mind right now ...).
The loaded outdoor shifting procedure makes it possible to have such a rectangle.

Chokboyz
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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
Celtic Minstrel: "There is a way to tell which version of the Editor was used", what is that? Prog make ver is always assigned a value of 1,0,0 regardless of which editor created the scenario. Looking at the source code says this is the case. It is also what I see looking at scenarios with the latest version of my Editor.
Yes, prog_make_ver is assigned the same value because it's always the same version of the editor. When we make a new version of the editor, one whose scenario format is incompatible with the original BoE, we will change the scenario editor so that it sets prog_make_ver to hold a larger value. If, later, another incompatible change is made, we increase prog_make_ver again.

At least I think prog_make_ver is the correct member.

Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
Has anyone ever actually seen a 1x1 Area Rectangle situated only on square 0,0?
[...]
I meant a 1 by 1 Area Rectangle deliberately placed there by the designer.
No, but it's conceivable that there could be one, so we mustn't just delete them automatically.
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Yes, the number of terrain types available in E3 was well over the 256 allowed by BoE. In E3 you had custom terrain types for each town, may have depended on whether the town was cave or surface. This is why I shelved a planned Exile 3 template:

http://www.ironycentral.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=29032&page=all

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There may also be things with the E1:E3 spells that are not easy to replicate in BoE. I have not checked this but I am not aware of any problems.

I was able to create an Exile 3 Template that had all the outdoors and a lot of the large towns, but I hit the 256 terrain type limit around Rentar Ihrno's Keep.

 

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I'd like custom alchemy too, so hopefully that skill can be made less useless. In E1 and E2 it was useful because you needed it to get Graymold Salve for a few quests, but in BoE, where you can't assign item property flags to alchemically-created potions, it's kind of a waste of skill points usually.

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Originally Posted By: Cryolemon
Random question, is there anything in E1-3 that it isn't possible to replicate in BoE?

Admittedly, attempting to recreate the trilogy in BoE isn't really a viable proposition, but it should be possible. (Not that I suggest trying it lol)
The slime pools aren't currently possible to replicate, but they hopefully will be. I do agree it should be theoretically possible to recreate E3 in BoE, though of course no-one should ever actually do it without Jeff's explicit permission.

Originally Posted By: Cryolemon
In that case, would it be possible to make the BoE limit 1024 or something?
I plan to raise it to 65535. Or perhaps I already have, I forget. Probably all the 255 limits (and other limits too) will be raised to 65535.

Originally Posted By: Cryolemon
Allowing us to edit spells in the same way we can edit items and weapons would be cool. Not sure how practical it is though.
I don't think I'll do that. However, I would consider adding a built-in mechanism for "special spells", like BoA has.

Originally Posted By: The Almighty Doer of Stuff
I'd like custom alchemy too, so hopefully that skill can be made less useless. In E1 and E2 it was useful because you needed it to get Graymold Salve for a few quests, but in BoE, where you can't assign item property flags to alchemically-created potions, it's kind of a waste of skill points usually.
Couldn't that be fixed to make alchemy useful again? Regardless, adding built-in support for custom alchemy would be nice; I don't think I want to allow editing the existing recipes though.


Ishad, would you mind moving the "I have done this" posts to another thread? Maybe "Compiled Suggestion List"?
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Dialog buttons for actual dialog, talking to NPCs in the game itself. These have been taken care of, simply choose the first letter of the button name, thus 'Ask About' is selected by 'a'.

Scenario Editor uses very few buttons anyway, I added 'o' for 'Open'.

Game itself already has a few, try the first letter of the name of each button each time you see a dialog box. Then there is Escape and Enter. Shortcut keys could be expanded because each dialog will only have a few options anyway, hence you may not have two buttons starting with the same letter.

Edit:

Exile 3 Template was not meant to re-create E3 per se, it was meant to enable designers to base a scenario in Valorim without a whole lot of unneccessary work in recreating the major towns.

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Custom dialog buttons would require some rewriting of the source code. Currently the labels used on dialog buttons are listed in an array, char *button_strs[150], this is found halfway through Globvar.cpp.

 

As for hot keys, BoE game has quite a few dialog buttons. Here I have arranged them by first letter:

Abilities, Accept, Advanced, Advantages, AffectPCs, Alchemy, Animated, Answer, Approach, Ask, Attack,

BashDoor, Burn, Buy, Buy, Buyx10,

Cancel, Cast, Choose, ClearSpecial, Climb, Close, Create, Create, Create/Edit, CreateNew,

Delete, Delete, Destroy, Done, Drink,

EditAbilities, Enter,

Flee, Free,

General, GeneralAbil., Get, Give, GoBack, Graphic, Graphic,

HealParty,

If-Thens, Insert, Invisible, Items,

JustQuit,

Keep,

Land, Leave, Leave,

MageSpells, Missiles,

Name, NewGame, NextTip, No, NonSpellUse,

OK, OneShots, Onward, Open, OtherSpells, OutSpecs,

Pay, PickLock, PickPicture, Pray, PriestSpells, Pull, Push,

Quit,

Race, Race/Special, Read, Reagents, Record, Refuse, Remove, Rest, Restart, Restore,

Save, SaveFirst, SelectIcon, Sell, Sit, Skill, Spells, SpellUsable, Stand, Steal, StepIn,

Take, Touch, TownSpecs, Train,

Under,

Wait, WeaponAbil,

Yes,

 

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It is basically just a problem of strings. BoA solves this problem by allowing the relevant script to customize what appears in the dialog box.

You don't know how many custom buttons a designer will want or where the buttons will be wanted. So this problem will be hard to resolve in the matrix-based way that BoE currently works. BoE typically has a set number of any type of strings, they may have zero length of course. In the short term you could allow creation of custom button labels in an external file.

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Originally Posted By: The Almighty Doer of Stuff
Something still just doesn't seem right about someone with no stats and crappy lockpicks being able to pick any non-magical lock with ease. Is this going to be addressed?

Town difficulty setting has been implemented (in Windows version, see above) for new format scenarios (e.g now lockpick level 10 on a town with difficulty 10 don't give any bonus ... You'd better invest in Lockpicking and Dexterity if you plan on lockpicking a door in a town with high difficulty and a crappy lockpick) and the "reversed difficulty scale" has been fixed.

Chokboyz
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Number of scenario strings will be radically increased. Is there any plan to increase the number of town and outdoor strings?

If you are going to have 65,535 strings in a town or outdoor zone, you will need 65,535 bytes to record their length, assuming that they are each less than 255 characters in length. On the other hand, if you have a short number to record N, the number of existing strings, then you only need N bytes to record the string lengths.

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Ishad Nha, almost anything stored in an array will theoretically have its limit increased to 65535, by using a variable length array which is just long enough to support the actual number of strings needed. (In fact, using a vector variable.)

 

And yes, I would like to add Skribbane addiction support.

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Originally Posted By: Cryolemon
Did Jeff ever give a reason why boats can't move diagonally?


I'm about 99% certain the original reason was simply to make it easier to block a river with one or two rocks at a diagonal to each other, instead of making an unaesthetic wall of them.
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PCs are like Angels, they have no clearly defined gender. There is no provision whatsoever for gender in the BoE game. At some point the game could be altered to declare some portraits "male" and others "female", and the death sound would depend upon the portrait number, but in the meantime...

 

I have introduced a full printout of dialog into the town report, it shows what the dialog node screens would show, except that irrelevant lines are not shown. Now I am working on the same for special nodes.

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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
PCs are like Angels, they have no clearly defined gender. There is no provision whatsoever for gender in the BoE game. At some point the game could be altered to declare some portraits "male" and others "female", and the death sound would depend upon the portrait number, but in the meantime...


This is ignoring the Feodric business lol.

I would certainly be in favour of using the gender as you say.
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Originally Posted By: Thaluikhain
Sorry if this has been said before, but it would be nice if you could specify the death noise and blood/slime created when something dies...for humans, it randomises between the male and female sounding ones, which is odd when you've got a character of specific gender.
I think this has come up before, though gender wasn't mentioned then.

Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
PCs are like Angels, they have no clearly defined gender. There is no provision whatsoever for gender in the BoE game. At some point the game could be altered to declare some portraits "male" and others "female", and the death sound would depend upon the portrait number, but in the meantime...
I'm against the whole idea of making something depend on the graphics. That's what I went to the trouble of changing for terrain; I'm not going to introduce it somewhere else.

I'm divided about the idea of having a gender switch. Jeff purposely did not include one, if I recall correctly from the documentation. It might be better just to have a generic PC death noise.
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Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha
PCs are like Angels, they have no clearly defined gender. There is no provision whatsoever for gender in the BoE game. At some point the game could be altered to declare some portraits "male" and others "female", and the death sound would depend upon the portrait number, but in the meantime...


If Angels don't have gender, how did they mate with human women to breed hyrbids known as "nephilim"?

Seriously, though, I meant for monsters, not PCs. I'm against linking various bits of the characters...I liked having a human with slith bonuses, which Avernum, or at least the later ones, won't let me do.
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