Crunchy Frog

Have you set the town's script to exactly "tempest" (without the quotes)? Failing that, do you get any script errors?

Actions together with code is fine. It's TWO actions at once that won't work.

I don't really know for sure why Jeff put actions in as well as calls. I suspect that he did it because actions are easier to use; you don't need to learn Avernumscript to use them.

The manual is highly misleading about the name thing.

Not sure about the INTRO thing. Sorry.

It's in the "Data" folder on PC, which is inside the folder where BoA is installed.

Yes, it depends on what version of Python you have installed. If you just chose the latest version of Python, that'll be the one for version 2.3 (PyXML-0.8.3.win32-py2.3.exe).

Sorry about the unhelpful Sourceforge-driven downloads, but I can't really do much about that.

Don't forget that if you want the actual script editor, you have to provide email address and the other details I asked for.

Edit: No need to announce it yet, really, seeing as it's only in beta testing at the moment. But whatever.

I've made a BoA script editor in Python, and it needs testing. It should theoretically run on Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux, and any other platform that Python runs on. I've only tested it on Windows, though.

I know a script editor isn't nearly as flashy as, say, a 3D version of the main BoA editor (to pick a random example out of the air)... but I've been finding it much easier to use than a generic text editor. The syntax highlighting and calltips alone make a dedicated script editor worth it, in my opinion; I've been using this myself for a while, and it's quite a bit more convenient.

Being programmed in Python, it is completely open source; and as Python itself and the two independent libraries I'm using (wxPython and PyXML) are open source too, you'll be running on completely open software. Just in case you cared.

To run it, you will need the following programs and Python libraries installed:

- Python: http://www.python.org/

- wxPython: http://www.wxpython.org/

- PyXML: http://pyxml.sourceforge.net/

The editor (called "AvernumScript editor", imaginatively enough) has the following features:

- Multiple files open at once

- AvernumScript-specific syntax highlighting

- Calltips that display, when appropriate, both the syntax of function calls and their descriptions

- Auto indent (keeps the indentation from the previous line) and smart indent (automatically adjusts indentation as you type)

- Word wrap, templates, full find/replace and undo/redo capabilities, and a whole bunch of other little features

- If a string is over 254 characters (the limit), the characters that are over the limit display in bold dark red to let you know there's a problem, making it really easy to catch those annoying "String too long" errors before you get them.

Planned features include syntax checking (probably by using Khoth's script checker), spell checking for strings, a reformatting tool to fix indentation and such, the option of saving in different line ending formats, and preferences.

Anyways, to the point: It needs testing, especially on Mac. Any volunteers? Please provide your email address, operating system (MacOS, Windows, etc.), operating system version (MacOS 9/X, Windows 98/NT/2000/XP, etc.), and a rough indication of your hardware specs. Thanks!

The limit is a standard 255 characters, but the terminating null character (that C uses to mark the end of a string) is included in that. So the maximum number of characters you can enter is only 254.

I always have too little inventory space anyway (even with all four characters); probably due to my habit of refusing to drop anything I've looted unless I really have to. (And I loot quite a bit.) So I never keep items like that.

The idea sounds nifty if the party actually has that item, but rather pointless if they don't. I'd suggest offering above market rate for the item, too, otherwise there's not much point in selling it to that person rather than anyone else.

One thing you could try is to have a shop selling one copy of the item a fair distance away from the person who wants the item. Then clever players could buy the item there, then sell it to the guy at a markup.

Wow, that IS simplified. Which I guess is a good thing, in this case.

The graphics are all in the wrong places in Mozilla Firefox... but thanks! I'm sure this will come in handy.

The much-easier way would be to just make it be an NPC hostage. Having to cope with losing one of your characters would be interesting, though.

If none of the above ideas work, could you simply move the absent character every turn to a remote part of the town (it'd have to be every turn because the character would keep teleporting back to follow the rest of the party around) and forcecage him so he can't do anything? It'd look pretty tacky though.

And I just realised that won't work too well at all, because if the party goes into combat mode they won't be able to exit it (as everyone needs to be within however many spaces it is of the 1st character).

If only you could make individual characters invisible and able-to-be-walked-through.

It's always useful to know as much as possible about the guts of the system you're programming in. Thanks!

Random guess alert: Are you sure the graphic you specified exists? It's probably only trying to load the graphic when the terrain is actually placed, which would account for the fact that it only crashes when you have the graphic there.

I must admit I haven't even touched custom graphics yet, so there's a high probability that I'm wrong.

Yeah, I realised that soon after posting. 255 characters including the terminating null character, so effectively 254 characters.

*grumbles at C strings*

It's supposed to be 255, but I made a string 255 characters long and BoA complained at me. I shortened it to 254 and it was perfectly happy. Crazy stuff.

Eh. I don't find this too useful. Colouring is helpful and the project feature could be useful I guess, but it doesn't do anything else I want it to. In particular, if you select a block of text, and press tab, it doesn't indent - it replaces the text with a tab character. Logical, perhaps, but I find it much more intuitive to press tab to indent a selected block than Ctrl-I or whatever weird shortcut key.

Oh, and if word wrap is on, it won't jump to lines correctly. Blech. Nor will auto-indent work correctly.

I'll stick with Textpad , thanks; it has shareware nag screens, but it's almost perfect for my uses. Find is mapped to weird keys, but other than that it's much nicer. It has colouring, too. Takes a small bit of fiddling to get it working, though; you have to make a new document class; Configure -> New Document Class, call it AvernumScript, use C colouring, and enable the class for *.txt files; then you have to go and delete *.txt from the Text document class to make it happy. Oh, and PC only, sorry Mac users.

High Level Party Maker.

Good idea. I was planning to play NTH and Areni at some point anyway. Time to install BoE... no, wait, I actually have it installed! Wow.

In a word: Schweeeeet!

Now someone just needs to port it to Windows.

*glances around*

Hey, don't look at me, guys. I only have four days of holiday left! I mean, c'mon!

Edit: By the way, if you want PC users to be able to download the source code, you may want to package it as a zip. Stuffit files can *theoretically* be unstuffed using free software on the PC, but in practice I ran into all sorts of problems the only time I ever tried. And I tried about ten different programs.

Thanks guys, I'll just call it a "win" then. That makes it easy.

*i - Heh. Yes. Definitely yes.

I have a little scenario I'm experimenting with. It has several endings. In one of those endings, the party suicides. However, due to the circumstances, that's actually considered a perfectly okay ending, and the easiest option to resolve the problem in the scenario. It's obviously far from ideal, but none of the other options are that great either.

I'm being deliberately vague here so as to avoid spoiling anything, just in case the scenario ever does get released (don't hold your breath ).

Now the question. Would it be better to indicate to the player that this is an acceptable ending and then kill the party, OR to end the scenario normally (and if the latter, should the "win" flag be set or not)?

Not quite right, Kelandon. If you have more than one statement in your if(), then you need braces around them, like so:

if (choice == 1) {   block_entry(1);   end();}