Rotghroth Rhapsody Prince of Kitties Posted June 3, 2012 Share Posted June 3, 2012 Between the horrible unfriendliness of the BoE Scenario Editor and running out of decent BoE scenarios, I'm thinking of buying a copy of BoA. But I'd like to get some info on it first. First off: I've heard some not-nice things said about BoA's scripting system. How does it compare to to BoE nodework for debugging? How about transparency - if I create a scenario and comment the scripts well, will I be able to come back to it a month later and understand what they do? (Noting that my most familiar languages are Java, which I'm rather terrible at, and Perl, which I can write passable scripts in... I also hack around with roguelikes in C, but pointer arithmetic gives me the heebie-jeebies.) Second: does anyone here run BoA under Wine? If so, what version and how well does it work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody BJ Back From the Beyond Posted June 3, 2012 Share Posted June 3, 2012 Originally Posted By: Miramor First off: I've heard some not-nice things said about BoA's scripting system. How does it compare to to BoE nodework for debugging? How about transparency - if I create a scenario and comment the scripts well, will I be able to come back to it a month later and understand what they do? (Noting that my most familiar languages are Java, which I'm rather terrible at, and Perl, which I can write passable scripts in... I also hack around with roguelikes in C, but pointer arithmetic gives me the heebie-jeebies.) The learning curve for BoA is significantly steeper, but having any experience with other scripting languages means you can pretty much bypass the biggest hurtles. Plus, if you ever do run across a problem that you can't fix yourself, you can post it on the BoA boards and get an answer pretty quickly. As for transparency, it's hardly a problem at all. I barely comment my code, and can tell you just about what every piece does just by looking at it. If you're still not sure, you can download the demo of BoA and then download the Scenario Editor (it's free, but make sure to get the official editor off of Spiderweb's sight; that's the one with the documentation in it) and take a look at the documentation and sample scripts. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk nikki. Posted June 3, 2012 Share Posted June 3, 2012 As for your question regarding commenting, oh goodness yes. Before BoA, I had no experience with coding, or computing languages, or C, or all that. And, not being the best at coding, I've still managed to write a few scenarios. I would like to say my secret is commenting; adding a few lines to code does help. A lot. But, the real thing is that BoA is really not that hard to write for. A lot of the time you'll be using the exact same calls, and there are always people around to help you should you try to do something new and awesome. My advice, as always, is to read the editor docs. Then, look at some scripts in scenarios you like. Finally, look at some articles like Erik Westra's Cookbook. By the time you get through that, you should be perfectly capable of writing a basic scenario. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast keira Posted June 3, 2012 Share Posted June 3, 2012 Originally Posted By: Miramor Second: does anyone here run BoA under Wine? If so, what version and how well does it work? I haven't personally, but I know Iffy has and iirc he said it worked fine but with a couple little sounds issues. I'm assuming the most-recent Windows version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted June 3, 2012 Share Posted June 3, 2012 Originally Posted By: Miramor First off: I've heard some not-nice things said about BoA's scripting system. How does it compare to to BoE nodework for debugging? How about transparency - if I create a scenario and comment the scripts well, will I be able to come back to it a month later and understand what they do? (Noting that my most familiar languages are Java, which I'm rather terrible at, and Perl, which I can write passable scripts in... I also hack around with roguelikes in C, but pointer arithmetic gives me the heebie-jeebies.) The scripting system works best for me when I treat it like an actual programming language, not like creating a scenario. having a programming background helps, but probably isn't necessary. And as far as pointer arithmetic goes, you don't have to worry about it. As for documentation, a well-commented script should be easy to return to. Rule of thumb: When in doubt, document it. Originally Posted By: Miramor Second: does anyone here run BoA under Wine? If so, what version and how well does it work? I've heard it does, though I've never tested this myself. This is only because I'm pretty much a total noob when it comes to Linux, including how to download. (I'm using Ubuntu 11.10.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Ishad Nha Posted June 3, 2012 Share Posted June 3, 2012 You will also need up to date Editors: Isaac's: http://boaedremake.sourceforge.net/ Mine: http://www.freewebs.com/ishadnha/BoA3DEditor.zip http://www.freewebs.com/ishadnha/VariantBoA3DEditor.zip Tridash's: http://redsaurus.net/blades/Bourgeois%20Bat.zip Don't know if they run under Wine or not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody Prince of Kitties Posted June 3, 2012 Author Share Posted June 3, 2012 Thanks. Guess I'll check out the demo (which I'd completely forgotten about when I wrote this for some reason)... D'oh. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody Prince of Kitties Posted June 3, 2012 Author Share Posted June 3, 2012 And it turns out it crashes immediately with a popup about "unhandled exception c05" and the following fixme: Code: fixme:d3d_caps:select_card_intel_mesa Card selection not handled for Mesa Intel driverfixme:d3d_caps:init_driver_info Unhandled vendor 8086. followed by lots of stuff about an unhandled page fault. Yay. Edit: got the demo game running under the latest stable Wine version, but I find it highly annoying to use - isometric view is really not my favorite, the graphics are hugely inferior to BoE, and changing my screen resolution is annoying. The editor I'm not yet sure about, but this is looking like a nonstarter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk nikki. Posted June 4, 2012 Share Posted June 4, 2012 Originally Posted By: Miramor the graphics are hugely inferior to BoE Sure, in the demo. Drop the $15 on the game, and play something by Ephesos or TM (but definitely Ephesos). If you don't find it indescribably pretty (for a SW game), I will personally reimburse you. The demo for BoA sucks. There is no two ways about it. If you take the plunge though, there is so much good stuff to play. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Magnificent Ornk Kelandon Posted June 4, 2012 Share Posted June 4, 2012 As far as I know, there is no reason that BoA asks to change screen resolution. I stopped having it do that a long time ago and have suffered no ill effects. I'll second that people (not me) have made some really nice-looking BoA scenarios, considerably more so than VoDT (the demo). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody Prince of Kitties Posted June 4, 2012 Author Share Posted June 4, 2012 Not to sound whiney, but it's not that the graphics are poorly done... More like the isometric aspect incurs some loss of detail, given the size of the pixmaps. Character graphics in particular look really blocky and awful compared to BoE. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted June 4, 2012 Share Posted June 4, 2012 Yeah I agree, VoDT kind of sucks compared to several other scenarios; I played both versions more than enough to know this. However, it actually shines when compared to the tutorial scenario. As far as screen resolution goes, I agree it's very annoying to be asked every time I play. Since I play most of Spiderweb's games in Scale Mode in VirtualBox, I just set them all to either "always" or "never," just to avoid making a decision. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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