Celtic Minstrel

It seems I had a pippen.exs in my old BoE scenarios folder, so I've sent that off.

Though the archives are corrupt (or, incomplete), they still contain index information, so I was able to determine the filenames.

 

"The Claim" is Lt. Sullust's well-received second scenario (a collaboration IIRC).

AClaim.exs

 

"Foreshadows" is part of *i's "At the Gallows"/"Spears" series, probably released under the name Stareye, and I believe it's a cinematic scenario. *i, if you have a copy, please send.

spearcdt.exs

 

"Kallaskagathos" and "Signs and Portents" are part of Alcritas's super-popular series, "The Arc", so I'm sure someone has those too. Please send. "The Za-Khazi Edit" is Alcritas's attempt to "fix" "The Za-Khazi Run", a scenario many didn't like, but I loved it. Regardless, it would be good to have the edited version.

pippen.exs, portents.exs, and zedit.exs

As Lilith said, armour reduces physical damage only (this includes undead and demon damage, which I've considered removing in Blades of Exile).

What can I add? Hmm... The Junk Bag. Phenomenal storage powers!!! Itty-bitty Interface. I suggest giving it its own window, and maybe some sort capacities.

Isn't the Junk Bag meant to be a dumping ground for things you don't want, so that you can sell them later with a single click? I don't think something like that needs sorting or more interface space.

I've experimented in Exile II and can confirm that Force and Ice walls have the same duration (ok, chance of disappearing to be precise) even in that game, despite the fact that the in-game help claims otherwise.

Perhaps he meant to write "fire" but instead wrote "force".

Field spells do not have a duration per se; instead, they have a chance of fading each round. According to the code, Ice Wall should in fact last longer on average than Fire wall, but the same as Force wall - Ice/Force have a 1/6 chance to expire each turn, while Fire has a 1/4 chance. (And Blade Wall is unique in having a 1/5 chance each turn to fade.)

 

I consider the Spark spell to be an electrical spark rather than a fiery spark, since there are other situations where magic damage is used to represent electricity.

It does work in Windows XP mode on Windows 7 Pro (which is basically Virtual PC, I think).

Maybe a better idea would be to clear the last played sound at the end of each move...

Regarding not hearing the sound, I believe there's something in the code that suppresses a sound if it's the same as the last sound played. The rest, I will look into.

Oh, whoops. I misread the code, confusing "slow" with "haste" since they're inverses.

L4 - Slow Group. Having your enemies lose every other turn is extremely useful. Also, you often get it before Major Haste and it costs less SP.

Looking at the code, it appears they do get the same total amount of action points while slowed, just distributed differently. Which is actually kind of weird...

I emailed Jeff about this, but no response yet. It's been more than a week. I have no idea if he's just busy or if it's gone into the junk folder. (Though I don't know why it would go into junk.)

Yes, the code in the Win32/ directory in the repository is essentially the old CBoE code.

Actually, it's not: there's a cap on the amount of blessing you can get from Avatar, but no cap on the amount you can get from certain other blessing spells (at least in the old Mac version; I don't know what its status is in the current version of OBoE.)

Avatar does have a cap of a static 8 for Bless, but anything past 8 only increases duration. Trust me, bless already lasts for a long time.

Bless is capped at 8 globally, unless there's somewhere that still directly accesses the status effects rather than going through the apply_status function.

Ah, sorry, if you're using CBoE I can't really help you. That does make me think of something ADoS said about a screen-blanking bug, though. It should work in my builds, if you don't mind a few bugs and don't want to wait for that non-beta version I mentioned.

 

if you use that version of BoE to make a scenario it will not run in OBoE.

This is not exactly true. I think the only thing that won't work in the coversion is the Display Picture special node. Mind you, I haven't actually tested this... I should probably download Sylae's scenario to make sure it works.

Magic Damage sometimes uses the Shock animation (See Wall of Shock for instance). Perhaps we could use that for magic attacks?

No, that's already used for magic attacks. The thing here is that there are two completely separate sets of "boom" graphics - static boom graphics, such as the one you call a "shock animation", and animated boom graphics. Here they are:

 

 

The top row is the static booms, which are, in order: fire, magic/unblockable, poison, physical, cold. Subsequent rows are the animated booms, which are, in order: fire, teleportation, cold/unblockable, magic. (And magic used to be the same as cold/unblockable, but since that boom inverts nicely, I added it as an extra animation and now use it for magic damage.)

 

Static booms are normally used for things like terrains and fields that damage you, as well as attacks with weapons. (The "shock" boom is also used for assassination damage, for example.) Spells, however, use the animated booms, as do spell-like effects such as breath weapons.

I tried something different:

 

First Node: Secret Passage

Second Node: Checks for Woodsman

If Woodsman do nothing

Else goto Third Node

Third Node: Can't Enter (1)

This implies you're not using my experimental build, as neither Can't Enter nor Secret Passage exist by those names in it. What you describe is essentially equivalent to what I described, and would convert to that when importing into the new BoE.

 

As to your most recent experimental build -- Have you worked on images, because if so, they definitely aren't showing up properly for me.

What do you mean by "worked on images"? What do you mean by "not showing up properly"? A screenshot could be useful (you can upload it to an image-sharing site such as imgur, imageshack, photobucket, tinypic).

Shockwave can be used effectively against large groups of monsters provided they don't have immunity to magic (think x wound (magic damage not darkness though) spells for the price of 3 where x is the number of enemies hit).

You're wrong - shockwave deals unblockable damage (what you're calling "darkness" damage).

 

Summoning is more annoying than effective. Especially those enemy spellcasters who spam Major Summoning and Daemon when they could just cast avatar every few turns making them far more dangerous!

Of the summoning spells, Capture Soul and Simulacrum probably have the greatest potential. With luck, you can get them to summon monsters that would never be summoned by any of the other summoning spells.

 

Does Wound work on temporarily invulnerable monsters?

Invulnerable monsters take one-tenth damage, and Wound does at most 7d4 damage, so technically it can if your level and intelligence is sufficiently high; however, it won't be very effective (that's a maximum of 2 damage per hit!).

 

By the way, is Divine Thud suppose to be magic damage? The animation has always made me think it was cold damage.

Divine Thud does magic damage. Your confusion is understandable though, as magic, unblockable, and cold damage all used the same animation. (However, I believe I changed magic explosions to be yellow at some point.)

I have no plans to improve monsters' default AI. In fact, I'd prefer it stays the way it is. However, I'm open to adding more ways to customize how monsters behave. I haven't figured out yet how that should be done, though.

Did you try what I suggested? Also, you could always use a terrain that looks like it can't be walked on but is actually set to allow being walked on, like the built-in cave secret passage terrains.

 

As for the docs, that's kinda strange. I'll look into it later.

...wait, so you got an email response even though I still haven't? :|

Does the GPL, as a software license, actually govern use of images and logos in a non-code work that's being sold?

Don't quote me on this (I'm not a lawyer or anything), but it was my impression that images and logos can be counted as part of the source. Some projects release assets under a different license, but I don't think Jeff did that.

1.) Secret Passage currently cannot be chained/must be the first in a chain. I would like to be able to do stuff like check for Woodsman/Cave Lore before allowing a secret passage

It must still be the first in a chain. However, you can undo a secret passage node later in the chain. (At least, you're supposed to be able to. I haven't specifically tested it.) In other words, to do what you want, you'd have a chain similar to this:

 

@block-move = 0 # A "Prevent Action" node
 ex1 = 0 # Allow entry
 ex2 = 1 # Force
 goto = 1
@if-trait = 1
 ex1 = 4, -1 # If woodsman trait is present, do nothing (end encounter)
 ex1 = 1, 2 # Same as legacy behaviour (succeed test, ie call node in ex1b, if there's at least 1 member with woodsman)
 goto = 2 # If no-one has woodsman, go to node 2
@block-move = 2
 ex1 = 1 # Disallow entry
 ex2 = 0 # Cancel "force" setting

 

2) The editor docs links are broken -- for some reason, each one adds an extra /appendix/ to the url before the page name.

Really? That doesn't happen in my version, nor in the version up on Sylae's site. Maybe you're looking at an older version of the docs?

 

3. Is there any chance you will release a beta of this new and improved game? It sounds super neat!

I consider the builds released in the "Finally some progress" thread to be beta versions. I think a non-beta OBoE 2.0 build may be ready "soon". That could potentially be sooner if I had more testers than just ADoS. And how soon is "soon"? That's a very good question that I don't have a good answer for, but you should allow at least a month before getting impatient.

 

(Note that I'm calling this project "OBoE" rather than "CBoE", partly because I like how it looks like an actual word and partly because it's not really based on any of Ormus's Classic BoE work; I copy-pasted+tweaked or reimplemented a few things from his code, but I was working from Mac source that was updated by Khoth, and even the Windows version is now based off that source.)

It might be polite, but BoE is GPL-licensed, so it's by no means necessary to ask him.

I don't have any quality standards for scenarios. You're welcome to do whatever you want with them. I'm not soliciting for scenarios to be included with the game, though I'm certainly happy that someone besides myself is working on a new one.

 

If you want to try again with compiling the source later, let me know (and either post the errors or join the IRC).

 

 

Also! If you happen to notice any bugs while making your scenario, please let me know so I can fix them.