Niemand

Dialogue Editor

Utility

Ok, I guess I'll enter Graphic Adjuster then. While I would like to make a windows version, basically none of the existing code or my current programming knowledge would be of any use, so I just don't have the time. Oh well. As long as this won't totally break your judging system, I don't mind a decreased score.

I was about to officially enter Graphic Adjuster and Dialogue Editor, but my efforts to make a Windows version of Dialogue Editor led me to realize that there is no windows version of Graphic Adjuster. Is this going to be a problem?

Ok, I've sent out v1.0.1 to all of you, now including Pyrulen.

Ok, Pyrulen, you can test when I have version 1.01 ready; Smoo has already found a bug that had been hiding dormant for a couple of years now.

Just to let anyone else know, I think that this is probably enough testers. Testing shouldn't need to take too long, so it should be publicly available fairly soon.

Lastly, if any of you tests on a non-XP system, please let me know if it does/doesn't work.

Ok, I've sent it to you three. Thanks for helping.

I believe that I have finally got a working version of Dialogue Editor for Windows, and so I could use the help of a couple of people to test and make sure that it generally works right. To use it will, I think, require that Java (1.5) be installed, and I know that it works under windows XP, but have no idea about other versions of windows. Also, unfortunately, thanks to various issues with windows and java this version isn't as pretty as the mac version, but there are no major differences.

I'm sorry to be such trouble, but I still didn't get it. If you want to keep trying you can try to send it to me at a different account;

cnweaver (at) gmail (dot) com

It's also fine if you don't want to; other people are testing and I've something of a detriment rather than a help so far.

I'm sorry, I don't think that I ever recieved your email, Nioca. Can you send it again?

Ok, I'll give it a try. My email is chniwe(at)hotmail(dot)com

I don't think that people specifically dislike the plagues of monsters idea; I don't, but rather they dislike what they see as repetition of the same old plot. One issue with plagues of monsters as I see it is that if there's a world threatening horde of monsters, there'd also better be a darn good explanation. A3 was ok, if not stellar in this regard, but A4's justification gets too weak for my liking. A complication of this problem is that if you have and use a good explanation for a monster plague. Then if you want another plague, you probably shouldn't just give the same explanation over.

My answer to 'how would I do it better' with regards to A4 specifically would pretty simply be: no A4. The Avernum trilogy + blades was comfortable the way it was plot wise. However, my motivations are very different from Jeff's; he gets money for every new game he makes, while I just play them because I feel like it.

Yes, you could do it, but it would be a good deal of work. I would do it by giving them a creature script that checks the terrain and floor to the west, and if the space is clear, uses relocate_character to actually do the move. Some thing like this:

 variables dir,do_move,n,x,y;beginstate WHATEVER_STATE_1;	dir = 1; //west	set_state_continue(WHATEVER_STATE_2);break;beginstate WHATEVER_STATE_2;	if((dir < 1) || (dir > 3)){		<complain>		end();	}	do_move = 1;	//find the coordinates of the new location to try	if(dir == 1){//west		x = char_loc_x(ME) - 1;		y = char_loc_y(ME);	}	else if(dir == 2){//NW		x = char_loc_x(ME) - 1;		y = char_loc_y(ME) - 1;	}	else if(dir == 3){//SW		x = char_loc_x(ME) - 1;		y = char_loc_y(ME) + 1;	}	//test if the terrain will allow stepping there	n = get_terrain(x,y);	if(<terrain cannot be stepped on>)		do_move = 0;	//test if the floor will allow stepping there	n = get_floor(x,y);	if(<floor cannot be stepped on>)		do_move = 0;	//make sure no one else is standing there	n = char_on_loc(x,y);	if(n != -1)		do_move = 0;	if(do_move == 1){ //if we can move, do it		if(dir == 1)			set_character_facing(ME,2);		else if(dir == 2)			set_character_facing(ME,1);		else if(dir == 3)			set_character_facing(ME,3);		relocate_character(ME,x,y);	}	else{ //otherwise try the next direction		dir = dir + 1;		set_state_continue(WHATEVER_STATE_2);	}break; 

While this is not the normal behavior of the game, a designer can choose to make a town in a scenario behave this way; monsters respawn, etc. In the cavern of bones, each monster has a 25% chance of respawning. So, I don't think there's anything wrong with your file.

For utilities: GraphicAdjuster (which I think Drakefyre meant by 'the graphics shifter') and DialogEditor. However, these and other utilites may not fit well with the Submitted to Spiderweb rule.

No, I'm afraid not. The beta test never really went anywhere so I just released the program. If, however, you want to download and use the it, you can find it at the utilities page of my website, which can be reached through the link in my signature.

Yes, there is a wall that can be broken with move mountains that you can go through to avoid Sixus killing himself. The wall is in a hallway that you are going south in and is on the west side. I think the hall has hydras in it or some such. If you go on from that hall without going throught the breakable wall you fight a group of Sixus' people who have a nullbug with them. If you get to that fight you've gone too far on that route and Sixuss will kill himself. I hope all this is accurate; it's been a few years since I played this part last.

Naturally, the moment I release the new version, a bug shows itself. It seems that version 2.0.1 will remove all non PICT resources from a file. This won't concern most people, but I hope to fix it. In light of this, you may want to hold off on downloading it just yet. Hopefully I'll get this sorted out quickly.

EDIT: Ok, so it looks like things are not as bad as they first appeared. It turns out that if you open a file with pict and, for instance, snd resources, and then use Graphic adjuster to save the contents of that file to a new name, the new file will contain all the pict resources but not the snd resources. The original file will be unaffected. If you open a file with both types of resources and do stuff to the pict resources, then save, the snd resources will remain untouched. So, you can probably just go ahead and use version 2.0.1

Something that may come in handy is that I think GraphicAdjuster can fix the black line next to a graphic bug. This comes form the fact that the sheet remembers it's original location. Apparently some applications like appleworks don't set this to (0,0) when you copy. Then some applications like ResEdit don't set it when you paste. . . and some applications like Blades of Avernum don't correct the locations when they load the graphics, even though it causes them to mess up. However, if you take a file like the BoA character graphics file, open it in GraphicAdjuster, save it, and close it, all of the sheet should have their locations set to (0,0). What I don't get is why Jeff didn't just make BoA do this when it loads the sheets, but oh well.

I think that I am finally ready to release GraphicAdjuster version 2. Version 2 has many improvements over version 1, such as opening multiple documents, creating and changing cmg files, and importing and exporting sheets to .bmp files and vice versa. This version also shouldn't be plagued by the terrible repainting issues that version 1 had. It isn't perfectly stable, but it behaves well enough, I think, and hopefully it has no fatal flaws. Note that as before it is a Mac OS X only application. So, if you want it, you can get it here .

The black shade's summoned creatures are very useful as they give handy targets for cloud of blades. In my experience black shades' very favorite spell is probably ice lances, which has the disadvantage for the player that it is one of the few attack spells that don't clearly give away the location of the caster.

Were they ordinary pants? I can't remember exactly, but the game may not take things like pants of power and so forth.

If by values you mean the number of towns/outdoor sections and that kind of thing, the answer depend on what you decide to make. As examples Xerch'de uses 4 towns and no outdoors, babysitting uses 4 towns and one simple outdoor section, and A Good Beginning uses only 3 towns and one outdoor section. That's certainly the size range to aim for on a first try, but the exact choices you make will necessarily depend on the idea you have for the scenario.

To the first question: There are none. The program consists almost entirely of code that has to do with resources (which don't exist with Windows), Quickdraw (which is deprecated even on Macs), or the user interface (which is in an old and if not deprecated, certainly antiquated form), so porting would as best I know involve throwing away 99% of the existing code. Better then for some windows user to make a new program from the ground up.

To the second question, No, I don't think it is. Theoretically I think this program might run on a Mac with an Intel processor, but it might not. As mentioned above, as far as I know essentailly none of the code is compatible with a windows environment.

If anyone is wondering the reason so much of what I used is old/deprecated stuff, the resources used by BoA are deprecated, and I borrowed the key grapic adjusting code from the 3D BoA Editor, so it uses Quickdraw. After I finish this, I hope to never write another Carbon program again. Never.

*Bump*

I could really use some help.

You've been hired to test a computer program. Will you follow orders, or switch to using a different program?

Actually, there is only one program, and I need a few testers to try it out. The program in question is GraphicAdjuster 2.0, which is a vastly improved version compared to the original. It can now open multiple documents, edit cmg files, and repaint its windows properly. However, it occaissionally crashes in ways that I can never get to repeat. So I need a 3 or 4 people to try it out for a while and see how it works and if they can find a reproducable way to make it crash, so I can fix it. The program only works under Mac OS X, and I have no idea how it would behave or even work on an Intel processor.

The else statements are just fine, the whole reason else statements exist is to avoid having to go to the extra work of writing things like all those end statements you used, Lazarus. Besides, while it doesn't look like it's needed for this bit of script, if one uses end statements, one can't have any code after the block of if statements. Using else statements control will skip any if statements that shouldn't be executed, and then go on to any code that follows that you want to always execute, which can be good in some situations.