Windows Blades of Avernum Files

[Neutronicus]

I'm working on some utilities for editing Blades of Avernum Scenarios, and I'm on a mac. I intend to be cross platform, so, the OS 9-ish resource fork stuff is out.

 

With that in mind, could someone on windows send me the folders

 

Blades of Avernum Files

 

and

 

Blades of Avernum Scenarios

 

since I am failing to extract images from the .cmg files that come with the mac version.

 

Just to be clear: I'm not trying to pirate, I just want all of the .bmp's that come with the windows version.

[Ishad Nha]

If you have a Windows emulator you will be able to get the bmps and test the application too.

Private messages seem not to be capable of sending zip files.

[Niemand]

Why would you need the windows version's graphics files? The game uses the same graphics on both platforms, so if you're basing custom graphics on the game's, just use the mac graphics as your basis, then save copies as bmp files to be used on windows. On the other hand, if you really want the graphics from the window version, just download it (the Windows verison) from Spiderweb, and pull out the graphics as needed.

 

I note, however, that you say:

Originally Posted By: Neutronicus

I intend to be cross platform, so, the OS 9-ish resource fork stuff is out.

In case you've gotten the wrong idea, note that there is no single format you can use which will work on both platforms; the Mac version requires the antiquated style resource files.

 

Finally, you may find useful a program I wrote a while back, Graphic Adjuster, which you can find here. It can help with quickly transforming from one graphics format to the other.

[Neutronicus]

I suppose I should just be honest. I'm working on a ground-up rewrite of the 3D editor. I intend to use cross-platform libraries wherever possible (and I believe that wherever possible means everywhere - GUI and game development toolkits are good enough that I can get away without a line of platform-specific code).

 

I have already successfully implemented a .bas file reader and scenario data script parser. So, in principle, I can read everything about a scenario from disk.

 

The next step is obviously to draw it on the screen so that the user can edit it. My language of choice is not C/C++, so using deprecated Apple API's is more than I really want to deal with. So, I would prefer to have my ground-up rewrite work only with folders full of pictures a la windows, because there are several cross-platform solutions for doing so.

 

And thanks, your tool was indeed very useful, it was the first "resource editor" with which I was actually able to open the resource files on Leopard.

 

As to why I don't just download the windows version myself, it only comes as a self-extracting executable from the spidweb site.

[Niemand]

Quote:

I suppose I should just be honest. I'm working on a ground-up rewrite of the 3D editor.

Cool! It might be worth noting that there are some others of us working on that as well, although our approach has been to slowly build up bits and pieces rather than try to tackle the whole thing at once. As you likely also know the 3D Editor Remake team tried to do this, but got bored and wandered off.

Quote:

My language of choice is not C/C++

Fair enough; out of curiosity, what are you using? Aside from maintaining the existing editor, my hope had been to write a Mac only editor using Objective-C++, with the core parts being pure C++ and shading more into Objective-C nearer to the UI. The other part of my thought was that good core libraries, like for reading and writing the scenario data and so forth, could be reusable whether one decided to use a cross-platform UI library or not.

Quote:

As to why I don't just download the windows version myself, it only comes as a self-extracting executable from the spidweb site.

Stupidly, I had forgotten that. You could use Graphic Adjuster to dump out all of the graphics, but here is an archive of what should be all of the Windows version's graphics files.

The other thing I would suggest keeping in mind is that there is a serious hope in the community that eventually Jeff will make the game code open source, as he did with BoE. Should that come to pass we would like to be able to improve and extend that game engine, and assumedly our editor as well. It's for that reason that I've been working (although admittedly not all that much lately, real work keeping me busy and all) on an improved script engine, and a library to load and save both existing scenario data, and a more flexible format that might be usable in future. (Just to be clear, the former is up to the point where, while not yet able to do many of the things I eventually want, it should about be a drop-in replacement for the existing engine, while the latter is in nothing like a usable state.) Tridash was taking a look at re-writing the 3D Editor's drawing code to use Open-GL, which if done well could assumedly be reused.

[Neutronicus]

Originally Posted By: Niemand

Quote:

My language of choice is not C/C++

Fair enough; out of curiosity, what are you using?

Common Lisp. It is pretty obscure, but very well suited to parsing, and I can use C libraries like SDL, Qt, and even Cocoa (but not, as near as I can tell, Carbon... hence my troubles with resource forks) via a foreign function interfance.

Quote:

Aside from maintaining the existing editor, my hope had been to write a Mac only editor using Objective-C++, with the core parts being pure C++ and shading more into Objective-C nearer to the UI. The other part of my thought was that good core libraries, like for reading and writing the scenario data and so forth, could be reusable whether one decided to use a cross-platform UI library or not.

The other thing I would suggest keeping in mind is that there is a serious hope in the community that eventually Jeff will make the game code open source, as he did with BoE. Should that come to pass we would like to be able to improve and extend that game engine, and assumedly our editor as well. It's for that reason that I've been working (although admittedly not all that much lately, real work keeping me busy and all) on an improved script engine, and a library to load and save both existing scenario data, and a more flexible format that might be usable in future. (Just to be clear, the former is up to the point where, while not yet able to do many of the things I eventually want, it should about be a drop-in replacement for the existing engine, while the latter is in nothing like a usable state.) Tridash was taking a look at re-writing the 3D Editor's drawing code to use Open-GL, which if done well could assumedly be reused.

For my GUI needs, I am going with Qt, but that will be as decoupled from the parsing and editing stuff as I can make it - because, like you, I think a cocoa editor would be nice. I've used Qt at a job before, and, barring unexpected hurdles, I think displaying the game world actually shouldn't be too difficult, provided I can access the relevant content. Of course, the fact that I can edit .bas files by hand in my Lisp REPL has me feeling unreasonably optimistic right now - the Qt might turn out to be a bigger pain than I thought.

I also share similar ambitions with respect to the game engine, except I think that an open-source clone is a reasonable objective for a couple of people working together.

[Niemand]

Quote:

Common Lisp

Ahhhhh! I wouldn't call it obscure, but it sure isn't all that common a choice for non-research work, from what I (as a non-computer scientist) have seen. I've meant for some time to learn it, but haven't gotten around to it, in part because there a bunch of other things I ought to be learning instead (like that new-fangled python stuff my colleagues are pushing).

I'd no idea that there was anything special about Carbon that made it hard to interface with, but there's also good reason to avoid using Carbon (and Quickdraw especially) at all if possible.

Quote:

I am going with Qt, but that will be as decoupled from the parsing and editing stuff as I can make it - because, like you, I think a cocoa editor would be nice.

Sounds reasonable. I haven't worked with Qt, but it seems like one of the better cross-platform UI libraries.

Quote:

I also share similar ambitions with respect to the game engine, except I think that an open-source clone is a reasonable objective for a couple of people working together.

It's certainly possible, given that people will really devote the time to get it done. My thought was to eventually end up using none of the original code, but to have the new code have the legitimacy of inheriting, conceptually, at least from the old. Either way, a finished product is likely years off no matter what, so there's no reason to nitpick over details.

Given the editor related nature of this discussion, I'll see if I can relocate this to the Editor Forum.

[Neutronicus]

Originally Posted By: Niemand

Quote:

Common Lisp

Ahhhhh! I wouldn't call it obscure, but it sure isn't all that common a choice for non-research work, from what I (as a non-computer scientist) have seen. I've meant for some time to learn it, but haven't gotten around to it, in part because there a bunch of other things I ought to be learning instead (like that new-fangled python stuff my colleagues are pushing).

I heartily endorse learning CL. Python is nice for scripting because of the standard library but, personally, I experience about one "damn it, if this were CL I could x" per 10 lines of Python written. Just my .02

Once my project gets to a hackable state you'll be welcome to learn by contributing.

Quote:

I'd no idea that there was anything special about Carbon that made it hard to interface with, but there's also good reason to avoid using Carbon (and Quickdraw especially) at all if possible.

No already written CL bindings
Probably because it's deprecated.

Quote:

It's certainly possible, given that people will really devote the time to get it done. My thought was to eventually end up using none of the original code, but to have the new code have the legitimacy of inheriting, conceptually, at least from the old. Either way, a finished product is likely years off no matter what, so there's no reason to nitpick over details.

Given the editor related nature of this discussion, I'll see if I can relocate this to the Editor Forum.

This is why I'm starting with the editor - I figured I might as well generate some useful code before throwing code into a black hole.

[Dintiradan]

The most experience I ever got with Common Lisp was less than half a course on it during my degree. Basically, "write a Lisp interpreter in Lisp". Niemand, from what little I know there are a lot more 'real world' places where Common Lisp/Scheme is used than most people realize.

 

That said, not many people here would know it -- I certainly don't have enough working knowledge to be useful. Most people here fall into the C/C++ camp, and that would be the best language to pick to ensure collaboration if/when the time comes. I hate discouraging people from coding in the language they're most comfortable with, but I don't see people learning Lisp (not to mention wrapping their heads around non-procedural programming) just so they can contribute to the project.

 

That said, best of luck with the project.

 

(And hey, I'd love to pick up Lisp again. But then, I'd also like to learn Ruby, and Haskell, and Smalltalk... Too many languages, far too little time.)