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Ishad Nha

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Little Fyora made an editor for GF1, it may be in danger of being overlooked. For the download see:

http://www.directlinkupload.com/uploads/202.164.140.37/DeliciousDrayk.rar

This link originally appeared in the post:

Blades of Geneforge - How it could be done

http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/index.php?/topic/19577-blades-of-geneforge-how-it-could-be-done/page__st__35

To make editors for other Geneforge games would require him sharing the source code, I can't contact him. Hope he has not left permamently.

 

I make programs that print out the data in a town record but don't actually alter it. For the G4/G5 version see:

http://www.freewebs.com/ishadnha/G5TownDecryption.zip

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A crude Scenario Editor can be made with one of my printout programs and a spreadsheet, I am working on a version for Avernum: Escape from the Pit. It is mostly finished after only a few hours of work. On the left side of the spreadsheet page you have the decimal printout of a town. As you alter the printout, formulas on the right hand side convert the data to hexadecimal form, which can be pasted into the game file later on.

 

Edit:

I completed the spreadsheet, now I will need to write up the help notes, thus people other than me will know how to use it.

Edited by Ishad Nha
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I am careful to make a backup of the scenario data file.

 

Unknown stuff in the zone record, one sequence of 1,808 Bytes and another of 108. Does it ever do anything or is it just padding/junk?

One way to look at this is to print it out. Print out the 1,808 Bytes for each of the 77 zones. Then do the same for the 108 Bytes section.

Now for town 2, Vakkiri, the 1,808 seems to be 8 Bytes of unknown purpose, then a whole lot of locations. Locations could be mini-pathways.

GF5 has floor and wall details recorded in its zone record, these have yet to be found in GF1.

 

Edit:

I was able to draw up a list of the town names via a new program. Then I will go on to a list of the town scripts. After that I will tackle the unclear sections.

Edited by Ishad Nha
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Until I know what they do I can't say if they are necessary. In the first two towns, they were mostly blank, then in town 3, Vakkiri, they were full of stuff. I need to check a sequence of Bytes for all towns before I can say if it is always blank.

You can make a BoA mock-up of a GF# town, this may help in decryption. A spreadsheet can take a town record and translate many (but not all) of its features to a BoA town.

 

Edit:

"for (i = 33352; i < 33360; i++) { // Town Boundary"

All towns had 0,0,63,63 for this, so it is presumably the town boundary.

 

"for (i = 38688; i < 38796; i++) { // ????"

This seems to be two separate sections

(1) 38,688 through 38,751: it appears that there are eight locations recorded here. They could be the navpoints.

(2) 38,752 through 38,795: this looks like it lists floor and wall details.

 

This is the latest guess about the structure of the zone records:

Start Length Description

0 20 Town Name

20 12 Town Script Name

32 4,096 Floor mapping [64][64]

4,128 4,096 Terrain mapping [64][64]

8,224 1,920 Item Records[120][16]

10,144 14,336 Object Records[256][56]

24,480 8,208 Creature Records[108][76]

32,688 32 Town Entrances[4]

32,720 480 Special Rectangles[60][8]

33,200 120 Specials Called [60][2]

33,320 32 Town Exits[4]

33,352 8 Town Boundary

33,360 1,968 Mini-paths[12][164]

35,328 3,360 The [120][28] Path Points

38,688 64 Navpoint Locations[8][8]??

38,752 44 Wall/Floor details

38,796 EOF

 

I am currently working on a spreadsheet to create the mockups, it is mostly done.

Edited by Ishad Nha
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I am not too sure what this does:

35,328 3,360 The [120][28] Path Points

 

Special Items and Quests are hard-coded, written into the program itself.

One solution is borrowed from Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures modding. Have a special game modding program, UAShell, alter the original game program whenever a mod is installed.

A GF1 version of UAShell would need to be written.

 

 

You could run GF1 mods in GF4 or GF5. It is easy to alter GF4/GF5 to have a GF1 style outdoor map. The artwork is easy to arrange. Town placement on the map is controlled in the header, details of that are simple enough.

Edited by Ishad Nha
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What is UAShell, what does it do (I tried searching for the source, but couldn't find one) ? Also, do you know whether the byte-structure of the ScenData is the same for the Mac version also, because if it's the same then the idea of mac-friendly custom scenarios goes from 'impossible' to 'probably achievable'.

 

8d54961110835ffb7a477c69c2e4e60ebb3f95d6.png

 

^^^ I've been working on a gooey to simplify scenario editing. I'm working on putting in all of the information/memory locations you've discovered, but it will take some time. There are problems when using colours to represent floor and terrain tiles : there are too many floors and there just aren't enough colours for the human eye to have a unique colour for each floor.

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"What is UAShell, what does it do (I tried searching for the source, but couldn't find one) ?"

Forgotten Realms Unlimited Adventures was an SSI Gold Box Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game like Blades of Exile. It was all too limited, hence players wanted to mod it a fair bit, which involved alterations to the game program itself.

UAShell was a console program that enabled systematic alteration of the known parts of the FRUA program.

They may have lost the source code to UAShell.

 

"Also, do you know whether the byte-structure of the ScenData is the same for the Mac version also, because if it's the same then the idea of mac-friendly custom scenarios goes from 'impossible' to 'probably achievable'."

I would guess that the Mac version is the same as the Windows version, if the latter is little-endian then that will be different to the Mac big endian format.

 

"Still, it'd probably be better to just modify the BoA (3D ?) editor and teach it to handle Geneforge. I'm not sure how far this is possible though; but from what I see, Ishad Nha, Tridash, Niemand and Isaac are the ones who have specialized in BoA editor handling, so what do you think ?"

A G4/G5 Editor is possible, it will take some time to do. I am only a self-taught programmer.

You will need to comment-out or toss out all of the BoA stuff that does not occur in Geneforge games: fields, stains, height, outdoor zones, variable town entrances, horses, boats...

Then you need to add in all the Geneforge stuff, especially the graphics.

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