Celtic Minstrel

As for your specific requests, I'm pretty sure I had Prazac's Quest and The Duel at some point, and some others sound loosely familiar (Excalibur, Hidden Valley).

Well, I'll look at it this evening when I'm back home. I might as well post the whole list of scenarios I have, just to be sure.

I also noticed one called Burano on the TrueSite archive of your old website, but all the scenario links there are broken, so it can't be downloaded. ADoS had never heard of it, so I guess that means it's also lost, unless you have it. (Or unless it also has an alternate name.)

 

 

OBoE actually prefers PNG but reads BMP, GIF, and MEG as well now, independent of OS, so don't worry about the graphics.

Well, I'd love it if this were the case, but actually the game can only load MEG files on the Mac, and even then not very well. It doesn't load GIF or PNG files for legacy scenarios. The Mac version does load BMPs, but if you have a MEG, it would be preferable to get both types. If you don't have a MEG, don't worry; the BMP can be used just fine. If you have a MEG and not a BMP, I should be able to convert it for you, so that's not really an issue either.

EDIT: CM found it on Brett Bixler's site. Thanks, CM!

It was on Alexandria. Not sure whether that's a correction or a clarification.

Blades of Exile is written in C/C++, so Java isn't really very useful to the project. If you're willing to learn C++ though, you could help; in many ways the syntax is similar to Java, though in many ways it's also very different. Take a look at the code if you think you might be interested.

 

 

When I View Source for openboe.com in Firefox, it highlights the closing body tag in red, for some reason...

edit: fyi there's a couple small things in your site, here's a patch of recommendations

Thanks for the suggestions!

 

- at some point i'm going to rewrite l.calref, and the custom shortcuts are prolly gonna go since i'm literally the only person who has ever used them. plus it's kinda funky having a link shortener when you don't need one, why did we have one again? (if you want to keep it, that's fine, but make sure to change it to an https url)

That shortened URL has been in the IRC channel topic for quite awhile. There's a limit on topic length (though at the moment I don't think we're near the limit), so having a shorter URL is handy.

I wouldn't say the MEGs are no longer useful. Sometimes the MEG may have darker graphics than the BMP does, so if anything it'd be preferable to keep the MEG and throw out the BMP (though that has its own problems since the Windows build can't load MEGs). If the MEG and BMP have exactly the same graphics, mind you, it's not worth keeping the MEG now.

 

If you let me know which ones have MEGs, I can check if they're darker than the corresponding BMPs.

Domestic Evil is indeed de.exs. I can confirm that from my attempts at recovering ADoS's zips.

I took a look at the damaged zips you have stored on openboe.com (you have The Doomed Land in with them even though it seems to be perfectly fine, by the way). I was able to extract the custom graphics from all of them, and other files such as readmes in some cases, but not the actual scenario for the most part. The archives seem to have been truncated.

 

I did manage to extract and load scenario files for Kistar's Quest, Fort Emerald Robbery, and Signs and Portents, but I'm pretty sure they're incomplete. They have 7, 13, and 2 towns, respectively. In other words, some of the towns seem to be missing.

 

EDIT: Signs and Portents and Fort Emerald Robbery are both available on TrueSite – not in the scenario archive but in the GeoCities archive on Alcritas's and BainIhrno's sites respectively. Foreshadows can still be found on *i's site which is linked from the scenario download page on TrueSite.

 

So at least the two major draws you mentioned are not lost.

However, I would be willing to offer ideas/suggestions and do some programming. I'm lousy at C++ (never mind the functional C++11/14 stuff) but should be able to manage something useful.

Well, feel free to head over to the Blades of Exile forum (or the IRC channel) and offer your ideas and suggestions. If you want to help a little with the C++ work, you could take a look at the source code repository on GitHub.

 

Might be better writing documentation though. (Am familiar with that from my time in sysadmin jobs.)

I think the documentation is fairly good now, but I'm sure it still has room for improvement. The documentation is also in the source code repository, in HTML format, so you can take a look at it there. Sylae also has a copy up on her site, though I'm not entirely sure if that's kept regularly up-to-date.

 

I can program C++ (though I wouldn't say I'm the most experienced), I have a good understanding of the games inner mechanics and balance. I do have some suggestions such as fixing certain broken skills, though I'm not sure if you are willing to make such changes.

The chance that I'll do it is a lot lower if you don't tell me than if you do, so please do give those suggestions!

 

 

 

By the way, in addition to the Blades of Exile forum, you can report bugs and offer suggestions right on GitHub. It may help prevent them from getting lost.

That and Ir's create special bug have been fixed in master.

 

There's also an actual web page now for Open Blades of Exile. Currently it's a lot of stuff paraphrased from Spiderweb's site coupled with a lot of relevant links. Still needs work, so feedback would be great.

A great many of the new graphics on that sheet were made by Luz Piazuelo; they were on Pixel Profusion, and we got permission to use them. Some of her graphics were indisputably in the Windows brightness; I fixed those ones up to match the Mac brightness instead (in fact I did that to several of her graphics that didn't end up being included - you can see all of them here.) Most of the rest of the new ones were done by ADoS, with several by Mistb0rn (back in 2009, the last time I put out a call for new graphics) and a few by me. There are a few made by Milu or Shyguy which are pending permission and thus may be removed. The christmas tree is also likely to be removed, and that hatch on blue cave floor in the bottom row is going to be removed too. There are a couple of other miscellanous ones that aren't 100% set in stone as well (even some of Luz's).

 

Rehashes of BoE stuff can be accepted if they actually look good, but if you can do a good job from scratch, that's probably preferable. I also have a script which usually does a pretty decent job of separating terrain objects from their background while preserving the shadow and any other shading, which was a great help.

 

If you think some of them look a bit odd, I wouldn't mind knowing which ones. If you can explain why, even better.

At the moment we're most interested in additional PC graphics, particularly Vahnatai but also potentially sliths or nephilim. If you prefer to do other types of art (for example, items or talking portraits), that would also be great. Terrain graphics are currently closed except for improvements plus a few specific things (see spoiler if interested). We want the graphics to match the aesthetic of existing graphics as much as possible.

 

EDIT: To add to ADoS's post a little, it'd be great to have at least one graphic for each race in each of a few basic archetypes, such as mage, priest, rogue, melee fighter, ranged fighter. Other possible archetypes are monk or bard, though those aren't a priority.

 

 

 

I have committed this to the repository. We still need three more Vahnatai PC graphics, though. Anyone interested? Most of what I said in the second post also still applies, but note that there is very little room left for new terrains now.

Well, I had contemplated adding spider glands (an alternative to holly IIRC), as well as toadstools and... uh, the other one that was different between E3 and E2 (maybe that's crypt shrooms?).

Why is that? To stop player summoning monsters and killing them for their stuff or something? Seems odd.

I'm not sure why. It's just how it is.

 

(Getting a bit off-topic, but unicorns dropping unicorn horns which, IIRC, have no value except you can sell them to one person in E3...that sees a bit pointless in BoE unless people are in a scenario that specifically does something with them)

Unicorn horns aren't included as an item in the base anyway, so I hadn't planned to make unicorns drop them. Asp fangs on the other hand are universally useful as an alchemical ingredient.

 

Ah, but if you were just giving a new flag to those items, what's to stop that flag number having being used in some other scenario for something else? Actually, what's to stop that happening normally, without worrying about odd things in the official scenarios?

 

The short answer is nothing: the hope is that there are enough possible flags and people will select randomly enough to avoid an accidental collision. It's not an ideal system.

Yeah, it's very not ideal. Perhaps I should implement an additional check when stacking items - for example, don't stack them if the names differ, even when the type flag matches.

Emphasis on "eventually". I have no intention of doing any functional work on the scenarios when the programs themselves aren't working properly. I'll be using different scenarios (some of my own, a tutorial scenario, and possibly Bandit Busywork) as an aid for testing any new features before I consider using any of those features in the original three scenarios.

 

Seriously, you don't need to jump on me every time I mention nebulous future plans or ask opinions on how to handle things. I know legacy compatibility and consistency is important. I know bugs are more important than feature creep.

Don't like the idea of changing the official scenarios...there's also area descriptions that probably should be one time only, but then I'd argue that the scenarios should be left as is.

I don't really agree on this and have plans to eventually make changes to the scenarios to have them make use of some of the new features, such as quests. (I guess someone who really wants to play the unaltered version could download the original .exs and play from that instead.)

 

However, in any case...does anyone actually use missile weapons? Certainly, it'd be better if there weren't errors, but not sure how often it'd actually affect anything. So I don't really have a strong opinion on this.

Well, I assume some people do. The reason why I need to deal with it one way or another is because when two items stack, one of the items is destroyed and its charges are added to the other item's charges. In other words, it's effectively arbitrary whether you get the stats from one item or the other. (Technically, I believe you'll always get the stats of the item you're already carrying, meaning the stats of the scenario item will be lost.)

 

Asps can be summoned by Sticks to Snakes, however, so their stats matter.

Hmm, good point. Player-summoned monsters never drop "glands", but monster-summoned monsters do, so this would have an effect if an enemy (or ally!) casts Sticks to Snakes. Maybe I'll reduce it drastically... 5% or 10% maybe?

 

I believe that the fact that asps don't drop their fangs would be surprising to a new player (once they know asp fangs are an item), and it would certainly be surprising to someone who'd only played Exile III.

I think you can't tell unless you see it use its breath weapon. In BoE, the animation is the same a cold or electricity, and it deals unblockable damage, so wouldn't be affected by items that protect from cold or electricity. I'd guess the message in the transcript would be the best way to tell.

 

It wouldn't really surprise me if people just assumed the Dark Wyrm should have darkness breath because of the name, but I would like to be as certain as possible. (Maybe someone could hack a Dark Wyrm into the crystal soul in a save file and test it that way?)

 

EDIT: Also, does anyone else have opinions on what do do about the different missile stats in the three original scenarios? And the different value of the Smoky Crystal in one case.

If I recall correctly, scry monster in legacy BoE did not show what kind of breath the monster has. I don't know if that was different in E3, though.

 

The Wand of Nullity creates antimagic fields... at least, that's what its ability is set to in the Blades Base. I suppose that itself could be incorrect.

I noticed a few more weird things - the Archer's Bow and Wand of Nullity have the concealed ability flag. The former has no ability at all, and the latter's ability seems somewhat obvious from the name. Are these items supposed to have a concealed ability? Is the Archer's Bow supposed to have some special ability?

I'll try to compile a list. #2 is easy since I can just search for the flag in the source (in fact there's a list already in the repository, which I think is still complete); #1 and #3 are a bit harder and would hinge more on memory and/or old bug lists... or even comparing against the original code.

 

(And the legacy flag is indeed set to true in ported scenarios and false in newly-created scenarios; there's no UI way to toggle the flag, though the scenario editor will offer to turn it off if it's on; it doesn't force it though. To turn it on you'd have to edit the XML.)

 

Can we get back on topic now? This thread was supposed to be about the Blades of Exile Base, not mechanics.

Part of the reason this thread is so confusing is that people keep talking about "the Intelligence ability" without clarifying what they mean. We are talking about a number of permutations of several things that could all easily be meant by that. Can you please be more specific?

 

1. The gloves had an ability listed called "Intelligence"

2. They added +1 to the Int-derived magic bonus

3. They added +1 to Intelligence (visibly)

4. They added +1 to Intelligence (invisibly in a way that affected Mindduel but not the Int-derived magic bonus)

5. They added +8 to Intelligence (visibly)

6. They added +8 to Intelligence (invisibly in a way that affected Mindduel but not the Int-derived magic bonus)

7. Something else

 

Which one or more of these items are you saying applied to Micah's Gloves in original BoE?

#1 and #2 applied. They also had an ability strength of 8, which was ignored by the game and had no effect.

 

EDIT: Furthermore, no legacy behavior which affects gameplay has been changed for the purposes of legacy BoE to OBoE, except where we feel reasonably certain that no existing scenario relied on it or took it into account during the design/balancing process. If such changes were made, and there are many (bug fixes, making things work as advertised, etc.), legacy-scenario compatibility checks are put in place to prevent altering the behavior of legacy scenarios.

Other than bug fixes (like using the archery skill for archery, instead of... I think it was defense?), I think there might be a few numbers that are off by one or two compared to original BoE. There are some definite mechanical changes (or bigger bugfixes) that are disabled with a special flag in the scenario, such as resurrection balm being required for resurrection, or timers being triggered while resting (that was Ormus IIRC). There are likely also a few mechanicla changes which are unintended consequences of one thing or another, which could be considered bugs and eventually fixed (I think I recall something related to dumbfounding).

 

So does anyone else have comments on the mysterious item stat changes in the preset scenarios? Or even on the Dark Wyrm?

I don't understand why ported items are getting ability strengths assigned to them dependent on some other factor like item level. Why don't they just use the ability strength they previously had? If this is because it's a new parameter you've created, why in the world don't they get whatever ability strength assigned as would be precisely equivalent to what the effect always was in original BoE?

The latter is generally what I've done, actually - I changed the scale of the ability strength for certain abilities, but set the porting code to adjust the strength accordingly. (I don't recall the details off the top of my head, but it's easily looked up in the cItem::import_legacy function in the code.) The question here was more inclined towards questioning whether the behaviour of Micah's Gloves was in error (and should be corrected in the bladbase only, for future scenarios; that wouldn't affect older scenarios that used Micah's Gloves), but after this discussion (and realizing that the ability had always been a flat bonus irrespective of level or ability strength), I'm inclined to think that perhaps the question was misguided from the start.

 

The asp dropping asp fangs is, similarly, something that would not apply retroactively to old scenarios, as it's a change to the Blades of Exile Base. Thus concerns of keeping things identical aren't quite the same as they are when fiddling directly with the game mechanics; several items have been tweaked already, such as Ogrish and Giantish Gauntlets (which were originally identical in effect).

 

3 definitely sounds troublesome. How much of a difference in stats are we talking? Creating multiple varieties with different names doesn't sound unreasonable -- that would be the closest approximation of the original, after all, in which your available ammo was apparently suddenly better or worse as you went on.

 

In Blades of Exile Base, the following stats are used:

 

Darts: level 6; value 1 (for simple), 3 (for iron), 15 (for magic)

Throwing Knives: level 9; value 2 (for simple), 7 (for iron)

Arrows: level 11; value 1 (for simple), 7 (for iron), 25 (for magic)

Javelins: level 12; value 2 (for simple), 8 (for iron)

Bolts: level 14; value 2 (for simple), 12 (for iron), 50 (for magic)

 

In Valley of Dying Things, the following stats are used:

 

Darts: level 6; value 1 (for simple), 3 (for iron), 15 (for magic)

Throwing Knives: level 9; value 2 (for simple), 6 (for iron)

Arrows: level 12; value 1 (for simple), 20 (for iron), 40 (for magic)

Javelins: level 12; value 2 (for simple), 12 (for iron)

Bolts: level 17; value 3 (for simple), 40 (for iron), 80 (for magic)

 

In A Small Rebellion, the following stats are used:

 

Darts: level 6; value 1 (for simple), 3 (for iron), 15 (for magic)

Throwing Knives: level 9; value 2 (for simple), 7 (for iron)

Arrows: level 11; value 1 (for simple), 8 (for iron), 25 (for magic)

Javelins: level 11; value 2 (for simple), 8 (for iron)

Bolts: level 14; value 2 (for simple), 12 (for iron), 80 (for magic)

(As a side note, Smoky Crystal also doubles its value in ASR - 200 instead of 100.)

 

In The Za-Khazi Run, the following stats are used:

 

Darts: level 4; value 1 (for simple), 3 (for iron), 15 (for magic)

Throwing Knives: level 7; value 2 (for simple), 7 (for iron)

Arrows: level 9; value 1 (for simple), 20 (for iron), 40 (for magic)

Javelins: level 8; value 2 (for simple), 12 (for iron)

Bolts: level 14; value 3 (for simple), 40 (for iron), 80 (for magic)

 

Basically they're kind of all over the place. It seems particularly weird that they're the same items (same name and everything), but in several cases they do different amounts of damage (because different item levels). I could imagine that this was done to balance the individual scenarios, but the issue is, what if someone brings arrows from a previous scenario? I need to make them all the same, make them not stack, or carefully codify what happens when slightly different items are combined (which is to say, make an intentional decision and implement it, rather than just letting it work out however the code happens to be).

I'm saying they always had the "Intelligence" ability, without referencing exactly what that ability does; and that in BoE they had an ability strength of 8.

 

Calculation of the Int stat adjust does not reference the ability strength of Intelligence items, only checks for their existence, and that has not changed from the original code. I think the mindduel effect is new, though. It simply adds the total ability strength from Intelligence items to your total effective Intelligence for the purpose of mindduels (with a max of 20).

 

Given all this, I guess exactly replicating the original item means it should have an ability strength of 0. Ported Micah's Gloves from other scenarios currently get an ability strength set equal to their item level, but that could easily be changed to force it to 0 always to preserve the older behaviour (ie, no bonus in mindduels). I guess I'll go implement both of those.

 

Do you have any comments on the other points from the initial post?