CommonGenius.com

InuYasha, I tried to go to the link in your signature, but it won't open (tries to download a file named "enano"?), and I can't find oboecross32 from the main site. Can you direct me to the appropriate link? I am interested in developing on BoE, on the Windows side. My impression is that most of the current development (what there is of it) is being done on the Mac side; but since presumably all of that work could be ported to Windows, I don't want to duplicate work that has already been done on the Mac.

The ability to target spells using letter designators (like Avernum) would be really nice. Right now I have to switch to the mouse when targeting npcs. I had forgotten how much of a pain that is. Not a simple change I know...

So if the designer demands 5 woodsmen, and the party has only 4 pcs all with the woodsman trait, the demand succeeds? Is that a reasonable interpretation of the designer's intent?

I am interested in contributing to development on the Windows side. I agree with Danielle that it seems like a terrible waste for development to be happening on the Mac side (where the community seems to be a little stronger) that the Windows side can't take advantage of because there is no integration. I am not sure that the project really needs formal direction, but having a way to get updates from development happening on both platforms, as well as somewhere to go to find out what others are working on, would go a long way toward increasing my motivation to work on this project. Danielle: I would be interested in seeing what you are doing with the rewrite of the engine itself. I agree that it could definitely stand to be object-ified, although up to this point I have hesitated to go down that road out of respect for the size of the task. But maybe with two working on it, it would go faster? I will take a look at your google repository.

Forgive me if this is already a known issue, but I couldn't find any information about it. I have been looking through the Windows source code, and I ran into the following code: void fire_missile(location target) { ... skill = (overall_mode == 12) ? adven[current_pc].skills[7] : adven[current_pc].skills[8]; ... } "overall_mode == 12" indicates firing a bow; firing a thrown missile is mode 13. So if we're firing a bow, we use skill 7, which is the bows skill. But otherwise (i.e. we're using a thrown missile), we use skill 8? Skill 8 is Defense, as evidenced by the fact that it is referenced in all of the areas that deal with encumbrance and parrying. Thrown Missile skill should be skill 6. So I ran a test. I created a new party, with two human characters each with dexterity 6, A with defense skill of 20 and B with thrown missile skill of 20. I entered VoDT, equipped A and B with darts, and went to the goblin area in the northwest of the vale. I had A and B each fire at the goblins 20 times. A hit all 20 times, though not every hit caused damage. B hit only 7 out of 20 times. Aside from the obvious lesson of using named constants and enumerations instead of numeric literals, does this mean what I think it means? Is the thrown missile skill worthless?

@Smoo: Ormus changed the scenario folders from "BLADSCEN" to "scenarios". Makes a little more sense I suppose, but it confused me at first too.

I am a little late to this conversation, but I thought I would throw in my two cents. I discovered Spiderweb through Exile II on a shareware disk, what feels like ages ago, but was probably about 12 years ago. I have been a huge fan of all of the Spiderweb games since then. I just wanted to make a comment about BoA's poor sales, Thuryl's opinion that it was due to the registration barrier, and Yama's response that the registration barrier was the same for BoE. If I remember correctly, the registration barrier for BoE was NOT the same; you could play all three of the built-in scenarios without registering, you just couldn't play other scenarios or create your own. Playing through all three scenarios gave me a good appreciation of the range of scenarios that were possible, both to play, and to create, and contributed to my decision to purchase. The lure of Spiderweb games has always been the depth of gameplay that is available before buying the game. Whenever I start a Spiderweb demo, I do it knowing that by the time I reach the registration barrier, I am going to be so immersed in the game that I won't be able to stop myself from buying it. And that's ok, because I am never disappointed. BoE accomplished the same thing, even though it used three different scenarios and no cliffhanger; the draw was what was possible when other people started creating their own scenarios. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with the quality of scenarios that came out for BoE. There were a few good ones, but nothing that I felt matched the quality of the games built by Spiderweb; and there were a LOT of bad ones, too. This was not terribly surprising; most of the scenario developers were "amateurs", without the benefit of JV's experience. Still, it left a sour taste in my mouth. Similarly with trying to create my own scenarios; I found it very difficult to do even the simplest things. Especially as a programmer myself, I became frustrated quickly at the lack of basic constructs that I am used to using to express my intent. This is not wholly JV's fault; building an editor to process complex decision trees (without using a flexible scripting engine, as he tried to do with BoA) is a difficult task, and I don't think the result was bad given the effort he was able to put into it. But it meant that I was never able to bring my ideas to life the way that I had hoped I would be able to. BoA didn't even have the benefit of three scenarios to draw people in before registration. VoDT was not bad, but that by itself didn't have the cliffhanger effect that Spiderweb has proven is so effective at driving sales. Combined with my own bad experience with BoE, BoA became the only Spiderweb game that I have never purchased, and don't plan to. All that said, I am planning on looking at BoE's source code now that it has been released. I doubt I will do much if anything with it; but its always a thrill to take a peek behind the curtain