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Celtic Minstrel

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Everything posted by Celtic Minstrel

  1. Just for the record, it's my opinion that "hiding something between two buildings" and "making it not obvious that there's something there" are incompatible goals. Sure, you can cheat and have a separate town with the secret room as has been discussed here, but that's ill-advised - it defies common sense about spacial orientation, so unless you're willing to explain it away with space-stretching magic or something, I would be very unhappy to see such a trick used. However, if you just want to avoid making it obvious that something's hidden, it shouldn't be hard to use a stairway for a literal basement room.
  2. There are already several monsters with the same graphic but different abilities, so I'm reluctant to accept that argument. (For example: Salamander and Fire Lizard. Cave Slime and Viscous Goo. Wraith and ... I think it was called Deva or something - the leader summoned by Summon Host.)
  3. Well, I think his process is some kinda of automated E3 -> BoE conversion. It certainly wouldn't be perfect, and much touch-up would be needed. I don't know how much; at worst it might be as much as reimplementing every little special encounter. (I don't remember if they were hard-coded or if E3 already had a prototype of BoE's special node system.) I thought Ishad Nha already completed that, actually - a terrain-only conversion of the entire E3 game. If I recall correctly, he could have converted NPCs too but was asked not to.
  4. I believe Exile III could probably be ported to the OBoE engine without too much work. One forum member (Ishad Nha) has partially done this already (specifically, porting the terrain so you can set BoE scenarios in the same settings), and I think he could probably finish it if asked; the main reason he didn't wasn't technical issues if I recall correctly. I think that won't really work. Each of the Exile trilogy is balanced with a first-level starting party in mind; treating them as a BoE scenario that you can transfer parties between would destroy that balance. I think most of Exile I's spells are in E3 too, though I seem to recall a "Recharge" spell for wands that has no equivalent in later games. The engine allows for the addition of items, at least. It doesn't allow for the addition of spells, except of course by implementing them in C++, which I already did for a couple new ones (usable by items only though). Customizing the spell lists would take quite some work as well, as it's basically hard-coded now. Now before you get too excited about the idea of remaking the Exile trilogy in OBoE, the main limiting factor is that it would need permission from Jeff. For the record, I also like the idea, but not enough to take the time to ask his permission. Another thing I'd like is backporting ... what was it, "Diplomacy with the Dead" I think? ...from BoA to BoE. But again, that requires his permission (unless he releases BoA's source under the same terms as BoE's).
  5. I've been distracted by... let's just say "games". I'm nearly always in the IRC channel, so just ping me (ie, say my name) and I'll eventually respond. (So don't join for a few minutes and then leave. Hang around for a few hours at least. You can just leave it idle while you do other things.)
  6. Well, I won't object if you want to compile the HTML files into a chm. I might do it myself someday, but I don't consider it high priority.
  7. A new build for Windows and Mac.
  8. Uhhh, why would we want a docx version? We're already using HTML for the documentation, so I don't think docx is all that useful. (You can see the latest version of the docs here. You can also view them on Sylae's site, but those may not be fully up-to-date.)
  9. I'm not really sure why you're posting this here. Blades of Exile's documentation has been HTML (not compiled) for quite awhile now. (I suppose it might actually be a good idea to compile it into a .chm for Windows users, but I haven't done that.)
  10. Ahhh. I don't suppose you happen to know a specific place where these two features are used? I could probably set up a custom scenario for it if I have to though. I don't like an option that requires having separate Mac/Windows versions of the scenarios. My preferred way would be to dynamically adjust graphics on the fly so that they match, but as mentioned above, I don't know how to do that. Hmm, can it be linked to any specific aspect of the party? Does it happen if you just accept the preset party without editing? Does the party have a vahnatai, Anama, or pacifist, and if so, does removing that fix it? I'll note that I use the preset party for most of my testing (usually bypassing the create party dialog by alt-clicking the Start Scenario button). So if it's not system-specific and not directly linked to the creation dialog I probably would've already noticed this... which means it's probably at least one of the two (hopefully the latter). Well, this is indeed an option, though I'm not sure it's possible to reliably determine which graphics are required in all cases. (It should be possible at least for legacy scenarios, though. I think. Maybe.)
  11. I've fixed a number of other bugs that you mentioned (and one or two that I noticed while investigating them). Some bugs I haven't yet gotten to or was unable to reproduce: I tested the Relocate Outdoors node in Valley of Dying things, in the connecting tunnel between the surface and the school, and there were no issues. I'm not sure where things are in A Small Rebellion, so it's harder for me to try it in the sewers or icy tunnels, but I'll probably get around to it eventually. (Possibly sooner if given coordinates or instructions on getting there with debug mode.) When I tested poisoning arrows it seemed to work just fine. I haven't looked at the crash on leaving A Small Rebellion mainly because I thought you intended to send your save file for that purpose. I haven't looked into the double timer issue. It would help if I knew where I could find a timer to test it. I haven't looked into the crash you mentioned in the latest version because you've given me no info with which I can attempt to track it down. All you said was that it crashed - no error message (from BoE's error dialogs), no crash report (from clicking the Report button in OSX's "application crashed" dialog), no instructions to reproduce. I can't fix something if I haven't even the slightest clue what I'm looking for. I do have code in there to force white to transparent in legacy graphics, not sure why that would be failing. What's AC1? I should probably test it out in the same scenario that you saw it in. This is actually extremely difficult to solve. I do want to have some sort of solution that dynamically adjusts the built-in graphics to match whichever brightness a scenario uses (or even adjusts the scenario graphics to match whatever the user prefers), but the adjustment does not appear to be anything simple. If someone could show me a set of adjustments that creates the standard Windows shades from the current built-in graphics, perhaps I could figure out how to code it, but at the moment I don't even know where to start. This might actually be nontrivial to fix since Windows and Mac scenarios stored these rectangles in incompatible ways, and the advent of Intel Macs complicates the process of detecting whether a scenario is Windows or Mac (hopefully very few legacy scenarios were actually saved on an Intel Mac). I can see if there's a fix for this, but if you come across the problem in any of the four included scenarios, it would be great to have a list of the problem towns and the correct rectangle for each.
  12. No, it stands for "Open Blades of Exile" - ie the version of Blades of Exile developed from the source that Jeff released.
  13. I was mainly objecting to your inaccurate comment (it might not have been important for it to be initialized to zeros). One nice thing about XML is that it can be compared with normal diffing tools. No idea where you'd find such a thing for Windows though (UNIXes generally come with it preinstalled).
  14. Ishad Nha: First of all, your buffer is not initialized to zeroes (only variables declared outside a function get that treatment); instead, it's not initialized at all and thus starts out as garbage data. (Also, why are you including <iostream> when you don't even use it?) Secondly, I wonder if it might be more convenient for you to parse the XML format that the latest Blades of Exile releases can produce? You'd just have to resave it as a .boes in the new scenario editor, change the file extension to .tgz (or .tar.gz), and unpack it with 7zip (which would produce a folder called "scenario" - not the scenario's name, just "scenario"). Just a thought. (It's also somewhat human-readable.) Barring one or two issues I fixed recently (like changing "One-Time Do Nothing" nodes to "One-Time And Set"), the conversion seems to be pretty accurate now. (And I'd love to have someone point out any places where it's not accurate.)
  15. From the code I can't see why this would happen, so it's possible I already fixed it. If you happen to remember a specific place where the "buy response, set flag" node is used, that would help me to verify.(I'm assuming you mean the talking node here.) These two are probably fixed by the overhaul to save files in the latest version (which apparently you can't run) - they're data not being cleared correctly when a saved game is loaded, but in the latest version, I no longer just reuse the existing "universe" and overwrite the data that was saved; instead I construct a new default universe (which would have no "item taken" flags and no Soul Crystal monsters) and then fill it with what's in the save file. As such, I'd like to resolve the issue that makes the latest version unusable for you before trying to pursue something that, in all likelihood, is no longer a problem.
  16. Uhh, okay, this is weird. The generic lever dialog is defined by the file data/dialogs/basic-lever.xml, which quite clearly states to use terrain graphic #13. I can't imagine why that would be - the lever terrain is #264, and the lever dialog pic is #9. The question is: Should I change it to use dialog graphic #9, or the lever terrain graphic (#264 or #265)? EDIT: For now I've gone with the former. It can always be changed later if people complain loudly enough.
  17. Blargh! Do you get an error message or crash report? And for the ending issue, your saved game would probably be helpful. So anyway, I haven't made much progress, but I did fix the issue with special nodes - when importing a legacy scenario, the code was converting all "One-Time Do Nothing" nodes to "One-Time And Set" due to a missing break.
  18. I'm here! I may or may not play a new scenario though (depending on factors like whether it seems interesting, how long/large it is, and whether I feel like I have time to spare).
  19. #2 is easy to fix. I'll try to reproduce #1 as well, but it would be helpful if you can figure out something in common with the times it doesn't work. (Just to be sure, did you update to the latest build?)
  20. So, it looks like the parse error you got is fairly simple to fix in the engine (quick-fix for you would be to add something like <item chance="1">1</item> in the storage tag, I think). It's a matter of save and load disagreeing on whether you can have a storage shortcut with no items. I'm wondering though, couldn't you have posted the full error message like so?
  21. As far as I know, no-one is really playing (or at least, anyone who is hasn't said anything) other than you and possibly ADoS. If you count the original, stable game, there might be a few others (I know one or two people on the forum didn't get the upgraded BoE mainly because it wasn't stable). If I ever finish any of my scenarios, I wonder if anyone will even play them. I'll probably work on them anyway though. Eventually. (I especially want to finish the two-town one that uses a lot of the new features.)
  22. Already addressed these. They were about as easy as I predicted - simple minor logic errors (in fact, I'd say all but the last were probably typos). I'll probably look at the opening stone / One-Shot issue(s) tomorrow.
  23. This won't address any of the things you just posted, but... I have put up a new build for both Mac and Windows. Uhh... not as far as I know? I suppose you could pastebin the file's contents (though pastebin is normally meant for partial stuff). You could also email me the file (no idea if you have my email though). (Actually, since you're a mod, maybe you have attachment priveleges? You could check the full posting page just in case.) These all seem like relatively easy things to fix (the first is probably just a typo). I'll work on them as soon as possible. (Hopefully the won't turn out to be harder than anticipated.) This should probably be fixed in the engine rather than in the scenario. Is it possible to get a list of particular cases you had problems with? Hmm, something to think about fixing in the bladbase as well, once I get around to converting it to .boes. Actually, once all the scenarios are converted to .boes, I plan to apply all bladbase fixes (and possibly ADoS's descriptions) to all four of them.
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