void*_dup1

In most RPGs (in all the RPGs I know, at least) most NPCs don't have any kind of daily schedule. For example, shops are open 24/7, people wander the streets at any time of day or night, etc. I realize this is an abstraction of reality, one of many that are common in RPGs. But, though I think some abstraction is useful (because is helps avoid micromanagement), I think towns would look more 'alive' if the NPCs went around purposefully following a daily routine. I think this could be done to some extent in BoA. What do you think? is this kind of thing worth the trouble?

Here's a place with lots of original iso tilesets: Reiner\'s Tilesets Lots of great, free terrain tiles. The catch is they have to be resized AND reshaped: like most isometric tiles out there, their proportions are diferent to those used in BoA (vertical-to-horizontal dimensions, or vertical angle of view). I have already adapted a few tree tiles to BoA format and sent them to The Louvre.

Some things that i'd like to see changed: 1) NPCs initialize after towns. So NPCs can't use SDF values defined in town scripts in their own initialization. 2) There's no call to move NEAR a blocked spot (like approach_ter_script). 3) There is no way to send a message to a NPC before it is spawned (so the message can be used in the initialization of the NPC) 4) There is no way to access NPC cells from other scripts. 5) run_town_script apparently doesn't work before town initialization (so no workaround to #1) 6) There is no way to run a NPC state from other script. Now, the solution to most of the above is messaging, except when you need to set up a lot of things in the one turn that the party enters a town. 7) A couple calls to manipulate the tick counter would be great too. 8) Having more than 8 waypoints per town would make them much more useful. I noticed all of the above while experimenting with a NPC with a complex, 'realistic' daily routine. They are not important (I found the way to do what I wanted to) but force you to use awkward solutions to problems that would otherwise be simple

I had objected that town variables are not stored in savefiles but, as keep has noted below and I have just checked, they ARE saved. Please ignore this post

Looks like there is one ')' too few.

Quote: Originally written by Jawaj: I for one would really like #defines. I guess we could just use any c preprocessor, GNU for instance.

Talking about tweaks, how about a new function that would call an external library (DLL in Windows)? It may be really simple (like load library, call function, release library), Spidweb need only publish a .h file with the internal game data structures (or one of the BoA Editor might do) and add a new script function. After that, any desired functionality might be added to the game, without making it open source. Ok, it's a wild idea. But at least it would make a great toy for programmers The only bad thing I see is that this might release Spidweb from the need to update the engine

Editplus is a great editor for any kind of programming task. The line break format can be configured to Unix, Dos or Windows. And the evaluation version is free. Besides, I've already made a syntax file for BoA Script syntax highlighting

Thanks!

Is the source code for the editor included in the Mac download? if it is, how could a Windows user extract it from the compressed file?

Maybe we're in a binary system. Did Jeff ever mention the number of suns? That would help explain the very long days too... the precise astronomic details are left as an exercise to the reader. Scenario authors might as well use the new script calls to manipulate time outdoors if they really cared, but pre-Keplerian speculation is much more fun

I agree that time and space have to be somehow abstracted; I don't think it's a problem once you accept the conventions. But I miss some challenge when traversing all those wastelands. You never feel lost outdoors, pathfinding is trivial; for example, you can 'see' distant tiles and monsters regardles of intervening terrain or actual accessibility. I guess this is just to improve gameplay -- so you are not forced to traverse all those tiles to explore them.

Since you mention the outdoor sizes, don't you think they are too small? I mean, if you assume the following: a) 5000 ticks/day 10 ticks per tile traversed c) 24h/day d) speed of 4Km/h on foot (day average) then you get an outdoor tile size of about 200m or 1/9 mile! The entire outdoors of Avernum 3 would fit easily within New Hampshire, even if you stretch estimations c) and d). Not that it matters much but maybe time should go faster or outdoors should be bigger; otherwise you feel like walking on a park. I do prefer huge outdoors, even if mostly empty