Ishad Nha

Recall Crystals send the party back to Fort Avernum, this is sometimes useful, especially if you have been spotted by a group of monsters that is too tough to fight.

Not only may the Crystals save your party from an unwinnable fight, they may avoid the need for a beaten-up party to use a whole lot of expensive Energy Potions and Elixirs.

All giving is done via dialog or by a special encounter. If his quest shows up in your list of quests, simply talking to him should bring up a special dialog option.

init_quest(11,"Lost Lore","You met Gnaeus, the trainer in Shadow Valley Fort. He asked you to bring him any scrolls you find with writing in the strange runic script of Shadowvale.");

They must be special items not Druid scrolls:

Runic Scroll.

"This papyrus sheet is covered with writing in a strange, runic script. You can't make any sense of it. Maybe someone in Shadow Valley Fort would like to see it."

It should be offset 106, but I have never attempted to add additional towns myself...

Then you might want to give a new town its own record in the header of the scenario data file.

BoA has floor and terrain while Geneforge has floor, terrain and object.

(Check the gf5... Scripts in the scripts folder.)

I think it is possible to alter the number of zones but I have never done so.

Normally if you can't get through a door, you can't get through a nearby wall. Occasionally there are exceptions...

Adze Haakai is mid-range dangerous, you can always try to see how far you get. Now you have Haste at level 3 you can haste the entire party.

Far Sight at level 3 can be cast outdoors, just the thing for exploring.

I am trying to decode the item data array, in Town.dat, to see what each item actually does. Item descriptions don't give a lot of hard information.

You can replace existing PCs with people you meet in Cotra and Silvar. I am doing a playthrough with the default party, party is playable I suppose.

The nine official classes all have no spellcasting ability or only half the ability of a Custom character. The four default classes are bad news in the spellcasting area.

If you are using the default party the idea is to head south, to the Tower of Magi, as soon as you can.

There is a lot of good stuff, once you get to the Tower and then Patrick's Tower you should be able to hit it big.

I use Custom for my PC's classes hence 9 skill points for the two front rank guys is no big deal when they start with a total of 65 points.

Priest in Chessrook's party should have started the game with as many spells as he could, the lack of Safe Travel and the two Mass spells is glaring.

You need Safe Travel at level 3 to handle lava. Which you will find later in the game.

At the least you need to have Mass Healing, and every Dragonskin item you can find.

Repel Spirit at level 3 enables you to attack both undead and demons with the same spell. Imps die quickly with this spell.

You should now head towards the Tower of Magi, the game is based upon you doing that. Keep fighting and exploring till you reach it. Honeycomb will be easier if you go to the Tower first.

Front rank guys should start with a level in Mage and Priest spells, I found it handy. Later in the game it can be picked up on the cheap. Mung Demons will target the front rank guys and dumbfound them totally, all to no real effect.

Tool Use, I started with a level of 8 in this skill. You could make sure that your level in this skill is about half the experience level of the given PC.

The batch-checking works okay, the printout is 9,000+ lines in length of course.

"Hm, curious, your example works correctly on my Mac but fails on my Windows, just as you say... I wonder why that could be..."

Have you accidentally put something Mac in your Windows code?

"-a: Check all files, not just *.txt"

This sounds like another batch-check, rewriting the description might make it clearer:

"-a: Check any file, not just a file with the .txt extension"

"I'm not sure if that last line of your post is a complaint or just a random observation."

Options only apply to files appearing after them

(That is the last line of the help printout.)

"Failing to open "*.txt" could be a result of trying to run it in a directory with no text files, maybe?"

The directory was full of the scenario's text files, so the batch-check should have worked.

It is working to a degree. But, in multi-variable calls, it won't accept commas as seperating variables!

C:\Program Files\Blades of Avernum\Blades of Avernum Scenarios\Of Good and Evil Win>alint mathe.txt

Checking file 'mathe.txt':

Error line 19: Wrong arguments to function

Have '(null)x', want 'ii'

This is line 19 from the relevant file:

set_mobility(ME,0);

(I deleted the rest of the printout for brevity's sake.)

Then it does not accept batch checking of all scripts, a good thing to do before uploading a scenario.

C:\Program Files\Blades of Avernum\Blades of Avernum Scenarios\Of Good and Evil Win>alint -a

C:\Program Files\Blades of Avernum\Blades of Avernum Scenarios\Of Good and Evil Win>alint *.txt

Couldn't open file '*.txt': Unknown error

The help command works:

C:\Program Files\Blades of Avernum\Blades of Avernum Scenarios\Of Good and Evil Win>alint

Usage:alint [-advwV] file ...

-a: Check all files, not just *.txt

-d: Print bison debug trace information (You don't want to do this)

-v: More verbose output

-w: Print warnings

-V: Print current version

--: Check stdin

Options only apply to files appearing after them

Paralyzation: cast Unshackle Mind, you may need to know spell at level 2 or 3.

You should be heading to the Tower of Magi: you can rest, get healing, get items identified, sell excess junk and buy spells. You can also get some interesting quests.

9,000 is the limit for money. If you already have that much, the program won't tell you that you are selling stuff for no additional money!

By the middle of the game you will be made of money, you need to find stuff to spend it on..

Hell, have to learn two new programs: Visual Studio and Bison. Need a donation of gray matter fast.

Edit:

XP is not a supported operating system for Visual Studio Express! Is there any other way to handle this?

Lex.l, known errors:

line 72 ends with:

fl_shortcut_key|fl_anim_steps|floor_shimmers|fl_out_fight_town_used return

Should be:

fl_shortcut_key|fl_anim_steps|fl_shimmers|fl_out_fight_town_used return

line 128:

print_big_str_color { yylval.t = 'v' ; strcpy(yylval.args, "sisi"); return FUNCTION;}

should be:

print_big_str_num { yylval.t = 'v' ; strcpy(yylval.args, "sisi"); return FUNCTION;}

(This is true for Windows, don't know about the Mac version.)

Intelligence seems not to be as useful for spellcasters as Strength is for warriors.

Spell Energy (Base: 4 * INT + 4 * MAG + 4 * PRI) - How much energy you have to cast magic spells. When you cast a spell, you lose some energy. It comes back slowly with time when you’re outdoors. Otherwise, you need to rest to restore this

For Spell Energy, Priest Spells and Mage spells are each as effective as Intelligence.

B is the spells bonus. Your bonus for casting mage spells is your mage spells skill plus half of your intelligence. Your bonus for casting priest spells is your priest spells skill plus half of your intelligence.

For the spell's Bonus, the spell skill is twice as effective as your Intelligence.

Your PCs can cast any spell in the game with only an Intelligence of 4.

I can't run the Windows version of Alint, I am on Windows XP SP3.

I get a Pop-up message:

"C:\WINDOWS\alint.exe is not a valid Win32 application."

Then the Command Prompt prints:

"Access is denied."

Nothing then happens.

Searching the Windows program I found "print_big_str" and "print_big_str_num" but not "print_big_str_color". I don't know about the Mac version.

It is easy to write a program to get a list of the calls found in Blades of Avernum.exe, even I can do it.

Hopefully we can work towards a bug-free Alint.

Also, knowing how Alint works we can better understand its error messages.

I can now download it and check it on Of Good and Evil.

03 August 2014

Latest build is found at: the link shown in post #19 below:

http://te.calref.net:8080/job/alint/

"Hm, I'm not getting errors on sanctitem.txt in The Za-Khazi Run..."

I am getting the error on my copy of it. So it is a fault in my version of Alint or there is an issue with my system.

"How does print_big_str_num work, by the way? I don't see it in the docs."

Now, print_big_str_num is found in the Wiki:

print_big_str_num(string str,short num,string str2,short color)

Like print_big_str, but gives the text a different color. Colors are listed in the description of print_str_color.

(One of the print color calls does not print the color, is this the one?)

Its si format is supposedly: sisi

"One more question - do set_flag and set_sdf both work correctly? (In the game, I mean.)"

In all four Spiderweb scenarios they are both used, the former is used far more than the latter.

Recall Crystals send the party back to Fort Avernum, this is sometimes useful, especially if you have been spotted by a party that is too tough to fight.

Mind Crystals give you permament, once a day, abilities. (Which I usually forget to use.) Alternately, they boost skills. Should be used immediately when you find them.

If the PC already has the ability, he presumably does not gain a second daily use of it?

If the two front guys have spell points, they get targeted by Mung Demons. This spares the spellcasters. Front rank guys can't kill serious opponents in one go, but they can Haste the entire party when they find the level 3 version of the spell. If Hasted, spellcasters can cast two spells per round!

When you need to find higher level spells:

Alint accepts:

beginstate 102;

It does not accept:

beginstate SANCTIFICATION_STATE;

Problem seems not to be the spelling of SANCTIFICATION_STATE, so it must lie elsewhere.

It does not accept SANCTIFICATION_STATE as a string, if you can alter it that would be handy.

I did not know it accepted the state as a number. I never use the numbers myself.

Good thing FlexBison is freeware, that will encourage more people to have a stab at it.

In the first post I listed the errors that I know of, under the headings False Errors and Unreported Errors.

ResHacker won't do it, you would need a decompiler I figure.

Alint source code can be compiled with Flex or Bison. Sourceforge has freeware Flex and Bison compilers for Windows.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/winflexbison/?source=directory

Don't see any help files anywhere in the download.

On the Files page I was able to find a flex_bison_doc download, hopefully that will tell me how the program works.

If the source can be compiled that will be handy. Known errors of spelling, for example "floor_shimmers", can be easily fixed.

In the long run we may be able to introduce other improvements too.

Not only do you have the problems finding anything but the program is full of an unusual number of compiled resources to add to the complication. Terrain and floor graphics for starters.