Celtic Minstrel

Well, the C stands for "Classic", though I'm not 100% sure whether "Classic" is supposed to refer to an original untouched version or the updated version. For my part I've always used BoE or OBoE, where the O stands for "open". I guess "original Blades of Exile" would refer to the versions still downloadable on Spiderweb's site. The only obvious modern versions to use are the various snapshots I've uploaded to my VPS, most of which are for Windows (which is only because I hadn't been getting any feedback from Mac users). None of those are entirely stable, though I think they're somewhat playable. I guess I should make another Mac build soon though; I think I might've fixed the skill training problem awhile back. The first of those also may not exist anymore, though if Ormus's build still works, then I guess that would suffice for Windows users. (ADoS couldn't run it, but he was using WINE on Linux, so that might've been the problem.) The second of those isn't especially polished and stable. While you may kinda have a point on the IF implications, "adventures" nevertheless seems like an accurate description of what a scenario is. I also agree that "software suite" is a bit of an odd choice of words.

It's written in C++.

I don't know what happened to him. I ended up basing my work on Khoth's Carbon port rather than Chokboyz's Win32 port (since I was working only on the Mac at the time), though I did cherry-pick some of Chokboyz's code. His email is probably around somewhere, so I guess I could try contacting him. Hopefully he's still using the same email. (I also cherry-picked some of Stareye's code, but I don't suppose there's much chance he'd become interested again?)

I wish there were three or four programmers working on this, not just one more. Ideally, people on different platforms would be great, as I can really only test on Windows 7 (I have a Mac too, but it's so outdated now that I'm not sure if I can call it a decent test). Linux users would be great too; there's already a fork which compiles on Linux, but it's not quite fully functional yet. (From what I've heard, the game is playable on Linux, but the menubar is missing. Thus, the two editor programs would be unusable.) ADoS has certainly been quite helpful in discovering bugs (along with a couple others), and as mentioned he also drew some new sprite art for the game - new status effects, new terrains, some UI art such as cursors and the scenario editor toolbar. Luz has also given permission to bundle some of her BoE artwork with the game, though I haven't gotten around to doing so yet. Still, no amount of new art is helpful if the game won't run, or crashes, or malfunctions, and furthermore it's very hard for me to fix a crash that I can't even reproduce on my own computer (which covers a number of ADoS's more recent reports). I haven't been working on BoE at all recently, for various reasons, but perhaps part of it is the fact that all the work is on me. I won't let it die - I'll certainly get back to it eventually (like last time when I disappeared from BoE dev for years). Having more programmers to help out, though, might motivate me to help them out and work on it sooner. Given actual work, I seriously believe that BoE could be ready to release within, say, six months or so? Nearly all the grunt work of porting to new libraries has been done. The new scenario and saved game formats are essentially complete, though still potentially subject to tweaks here and there, and my unit tests to verify the integrity of the save/load code are mostly done but could use another pair of eyes to see if I missed anything (and perhaps a few more tests for saved games). Basically, most of what needs to be done now is just fixing bugs. There are a few bigger things I still want to do (like enabling a pref to scale up the game interface in order to account for today's larger resolutions), but they're mainly things that could be put off until after 2.0 if I had to. Much like ADoS already said, I want to keep the basic look and feel of the original game, which means no major GUI updates unless they can be made optional (with a preference). (Erdos for example was in favour of completely rearranging the elements of the game interface.) I want the updated version to be able to load saved games and scenarios from the original game; this is important because there's no reason to expect old scenarios to be updated to the new format, and some scenarios shipped with prefabricated parties. I would like to reach a point where the original Exile trilogy could, in theory, be re-implemented in the Blades of Exile engine. (Note: I have no intention of actually doing that, and if anyone else wanted to, you'd need Jeff's permission. But I want it to be possible.) If the BoE community reignites, I guess that would be nice, but I wouldn't say it's why I'm working on this. I have scenarios lying around that I'd like to finish and maybe finally release to an unsuspecting public, and to do that, I need a working BoE. I'd also like to finally play A Small Rebellion and The Za-Khazi Run; the latter I never completed, and the former I never even started, and while it's possible to get the original BoE to run on modern computers (for example in DOSBox or Windows XP mode), it's a huge pain. Trying some of the other scenarios by various designers could be nice too; maybe finishing the few I started (like the babayaga one and the spheres series). But if I'm the only one working on it, fixing all these bugs is going to take time. Possibly a lot of time. If there's anyone who can program, who can fix bugs and work on the game, please announce yourself, and once announced, please try to stick around for awhile. There have been five or six people who showed up, talked about things, maybe got the game to compile, and then disappeared again. Only two of those actually got anything done; Ultra produced a barely-functional linux port while Erdos managed to fix a few bugs (if I recall correctly) and also contributed brand-new file and application icons. In order to get BoE released in a timely manner, I really need more programmers helping. Myself, Erdos, ADoS and Bain-Ihrno simply aren't enough.

I did change the save format slightly, though it's not difficult to convert interim saves - you just need to strip off the first 10 bytes of the file. And this has nothing to do with ancient saves, which should still load. I'm afraid it's been awhile since I looked at Blades of Exile, so I can't give an ETA on when these bugs will be fixed. Hopefully sooner rather than later though.

Since you were wondering, I think you can usually resurrect by visiting a healer in town.

Aren't arrows reusable in Avernum? Or at least have a chance of being retrievable. That's one improvement I recall compared to the Exile trilogy. I tend to forget to use consumables too (wands, potions, scrolls), but arrows and throwing weapons don't seem to fall into that category quite so much, at least if I have someone who has no magic skills. (If they have magic I'd just use a spell instead. Unless they're out of mana.) Still, I can definitely understand your reasoning.

Speaking of fighting tactics, I've repeatedly wondered why you keep gathering arrows but never using them. I'm also way behind though, so if you've used them since Marralis then I would have no idea.

Hehe, in episode 4 you accidentally said "Avadon 3". I wonder if you know that light spells work outdoors at night? Though I suppose it doesn't matter that much.

I've only watched the first two so far, but I noticed that up to that point you had yet to view your quest list... you even got and completed a quest without ever (apparently) noticing (the rats in Fort Talrus). (It also surprises me that you seem to use your mouse so much, but I guess that might just be personal taste.)

Oh my, seriously? All player-made scenarios? Even my Melliput Mobsters with its unfinished edges? Mind you, I don't really mind you playing that; the unfinished edges were more of an optional cool thing than anything else. Anyway, I have no idea which BoA scenario is which off the top of my head, so let me hunt up a list of them and get back to you on that. EDIT: Well, from perusing the list in the reviews subforum, the only obvious candidate for skipping would be "Nine variations on point B". I assume that list generally omits utility scenarios. The only relationship I can recall between two BoA scenarios is that Kelandon's "Magic" follows somewhat on his "Exodus". I'll let more knowledgeable people fill you in further.

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.

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.)

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.

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).

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.)

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.

You can do that with HTML too.

A new build for Windows and Mac.

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.)

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.)

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.)

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.

No, it stands for "Open Blades of Exile" - ie the version of Blades of Exile developed from the source that Jeff released.

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).