Celtic Minstrel

Ah, yes, it's quite possible that he licensed terrain graphics designed for RPG Maker.

15 hours ago, handle with air said:

I don't think that use extends to games not made with RPG Maker.

Correct. RPG Maker's terms can be summarized as "if you buy version X of RPG Maker, you can use the assets bundled with it in games made with any version of RPG Maker".

On 7/20/2022 at 8:59 PM, Ivanaikos_Magno said:

I have noticed some RPG maker assets on Queen's wish, but I cannot belive that this game was made on RPG Maker.

1. I doubt there are any RPG Maker assets in Queen's Wish. RPG Maker assets are not free to use. Queen's Wish does use a similar style and perspective to RPG Maker, so I could understand why you might think there are similarities, but I don't think Jeff would use something that's obviously not allowed.
2. I could totally believe the game was made in RPG Maker. It's not, but I believe it could have been without much (if any) noticeable difference in mechanics. Admittedly, that would require some fairly heavy customization of the RPG Maker engine (the battle system in particular is completely different from vanilla RPG Maker), but it's certainly doable. (I have dabbled in RPG Maker myself, for the record, so I at least somewhat know what I'm talking about on this point.)

People dunk on RPG Maker because it's so easy to use that people can slap together a poorly made game in a few days and put it out there, but it's actually pretty decent as a game engine. If you treat it like any other game engine and spend the time customizing it to your liking and really put time and effort into the maps, dialogue, etc, you can still make a good game with it. There are quite a few good games made with RPG Maker, or so I hear at least.

I'm not sure whether the Queen's Wish game engine is entirely custom-made by Jeff, but it hasn't changed that much from his older games, so it wouldn't surprise me. (For example, the pop-up dialogs such as the saved game list or conversation dialog, and the UI around the edge, are almost identical in form and function to Avadon or Geneforge.) I did hear something about him maybe licensing an engine, but that might have been just for mobile.

On 7/12/2022 at 1:49 AM, Lord Viator said:

There's also a set of four corners (the last one after the other frills) that I can't figure out where they are used, on MIXED.BMP. They're the very square angled ones.

I think those are used to round off the corners of the walls of buildings.

I believe Skill increases your chance to hit, while Will allows you to resist sleep and paralysis and also improves your mind duel.

As far as I know, WINE no longer works on the latest Macs though, since it relies on the ability to natively run the game's code, and new Macs can only run 64-bit code (or something like that). That said, the legacy Mac version works just fine in Basilisk ][ as long as you can find an old Classic MacOS ROM somewhere, and there's also the option of a WinXP VM.

On 11/22/2021 at 1:41 AM, Sokhbep said:

Also, I wonder, through hex editing, if it may be possible to perhaps change it so that PCs change their graphic based on whether or not they have a shield equipped, like Nethergate. The reason why should be very clear in the fact that about 99.9999% of the time players would scramble and put on anything they find, like even a shirt, to get any sort of protection possible, which results in the armor-less PC graphics almost never displayed.

 

Shields, on the other hand are more prominently equipped or unequipped based on whether the PC is using a one-handed or a two-handed weapon. We could then have graphics of PCs holding and attacking with a spear along with a shield. I frankly find it kind of a dumb decision on Spidweb's side to have picked on-off graphics for something that is literally worn as the first thing imaginable by someone - body armor.

 

The sheets would then be modified to look something akin to this:

I have no knowledge of the binary so I can't say with any certainty, but I highly doubt this is something you could do with just a little hex editing. I mean, yes, theoretically you could definitely do it with hex editing, if you want to deal with writing machine code by hand, but it's going to be quite a challenge.

Making the text white would probably require hex editing the executable, so yeah, that probably isn't viable.

It shows a "no entry" overlay for me on 10.15, so I presume it doesn't work. I'm not sure that's the latest version, mind you.

I'm pretty sure you can also bypass Gatekeeper with the following steps (at least, it's always worked for me before):

1. Try to run the program. It'll warn you but not provide an option to run anyway.
2. Go to System Preferences and click in Security -> General
3. There should be a notification about the app you just tried to run, with a button to allow it to run.
4. Try to run the program. Though it'll still warn you, this time it'll provide an option to run anyway.

I think if a give item event fails it usually only prints something in the log rather than giving a popup message… I'm not quite sure, though.

#1 is already fixed on master, if I recall correctly.

#2 is a good idea, actually. The easiest to implement is probably a symbol on the area description bar, would that do?

#3 is known, it's probably not too hard to fix but I haven't gotten around to it yet; the missiles system has other issues too.

#5 is unnecessary? Just use Look if you want to scroll the view.

#6 is known; it's putting the splat on a space instead of offsetting it for the larger monster. I doubt it's hard to fix but I haven't gotten around to it yet.

At some point when I find time I'll merge in some of osnola's fixes too. Unfortunately, it's not an easy task, since I need to comb through everything they've done and figure out whether it's still fine on my older machine.

Making it tablet-friendly would require a virtual keyboard, yes, but if you're using a controller on your computer, you still have a keyboard.

13 hours ago, roney33 said:

- implement a ide style interface in this game, separating each part of the interface into different tabs, and making the gameplay window occupy the entire screen as a tab

Not gonna happen as described, tho I do have vague ideas of making the UI mutable so you can move the various components around. It's not a priority, though.

13 hours ago, roney33 said:

- implement diretional buttons and controller suport for make actions and char movement

 

- and add a stable version os this game and installer

I'm not sure what you mean by directional buttons and the second point. I don't think controller support is likely - the controller probably won't have enough buttons.

2 hours ago, joleneth said:

Both strings also crop up in the three bundled scenarios, but it's binary data so I can't just read the values out.  Of course, the stats could also have changed since Exile 1.

You can just open those files with the scenario editor to read the values out. Of course, your point about them possibly changing since Exile 1 is still valid.

7 hours ago, joleneth said:

Poking around the BOE code also gives some other answers, as you expect.  A ring of skill has an item ability level of 2,5,8 for bronze, silver and gold, respectively.  A fang necklace has an ability level of 4.  The other items aren't in the list (PC editor/ITEMDATA.H in the original open source BOE).

I think that item data list isn't actually used by the game. It might be used by the character editor if you add items to the party, but the game loads the item list from the scenario that you're playing. There are a few hard-coded items as exceptions though (mainly the starter items that a new party gets).

Huh, that sure is weird that town 13 is just gibberish. I could understand if it was blank or something but being filled with random stuff? Even if it's something other than town data, why would it be dropped in the middle of the town data?

12 hours ago, IMakeMaps said:

I think Exile 3 has unique tiles for frills, so it's just a matter of checking neighboring tiles for the same type and swapping out the picture.

Above-ground frills are handled that way, but underground places an overlay on top of water, lava, and pit tiles.

On 6/16/2021 at 5:32 PM, IMakeMaps said:

There is no town 13, that segment of TOWN.DAT contains stuff might be metadata or something else.

That's interesting… does attempting to interpret it as a town just produce gibberish or something?

On 6/16/2021 at 5:32 PM, IMakeMaps said:

I also haven't done the work to map the monster ID to the graphic, so most monsters appear as either red (hostile) or green (friendly) boxes. I'm hoping to find something in the binary to help with this.

The Blades of Exile source code might give some insights into the file format. You can get it straight from SpiderWeb Software's website. (The open source project is probably inappropriate for this purpose since many things have changed.)

The format probably isn't identical, but I believe the series is an evolution of a single code-base, so there may be enough similarities to help you figure out the format.

Yeah, I'm not sure what's up with that… I poked around and found what seems to be another version of the same page but all the links there are broken too. I'm not even sure if that page you did find is actually correctly credited to Dahak, as the page itself is called "splash.html". There's a few graphics here though.

8 hours ago, BJ Back From the Beyond said:

Second, I see many of the links to user-made BoA sites no longer work.  That makes me very sad, and it makes me wonder if any of the custom graphics hosted on those sites have survived (I see Louvre is still around though.  That makes me happy).  I'm also remembering seeing a black sand terrain set somewhere that I would love to work with, but I can't seem to find it.  If anyone has info on where those graphics can be found, I'd love to hear it.  These works of art should not be lost.

Some of these might still be available from my TrueSite for Blades mirror (you can also try the older home page). I haven't fully updated all the internal links to be host-agnostic, so you can let me know if you find broken links. TrueSite also contains mirrors of some older GeoCities sites, so even if the link is an external link you can feel free to report it. I think there's a BoA graphics archive somewhere on there, no idea how complete it is though.

Here's the link to Libera's webchat interface, for anyone who doesn't have an IRC client. I've also added it to the forum header.

Small update: The FreeNode channel is now officially shut down… or, more precisely, it has been stolen by the FreeNode administrators. Do not under any circumstances join either #openboe or ##openboe on the FreeNode network. The official IRC channel from now on is on Libera.

The FreeNode IRC network where the #openboe discussion channel was hosted recently underwent a meltdown of sorts. Because of this, I'm moving the channel to a new network, Libera.Chat, which is the spiritual successor of FreeNode.

You can join the channel by clicking here if you have an IRC client. I've also updated the links in the forum header and on OpenBoE.com to point to the new location.

Unfortunately, Libera does not (yet) have a webchat client on their website like FreeNode did. If I find they've added one though, I'll include a link to it as well.

I will be leaving the FreeNode channel open for awhile longer (perhaps a month or two) in case of people showing up who missed this announcement, but after that, the FreeNode channel will cease to exist.

11 hours ago, Nephil Thief said:

that logic on the commented line will never be invoked, because comparing a boolean expression with an integer is always false.

It might be true that it'll never be invoked and is definitely true that it doesn't do what it's supposed to, but that's not the reason for it. Comparing a boolean to an integer will convert the boolean to an integer value of 0 for false or 1 for true, then do the comparison.

It looks like that error is already fixed in OpenBoE, by the way.

I don't know where you got 95% from, but I do remember noticing that a lot of percentile rolls end up being out of 101 instead of 100 – it generates a random number from 0 to 100, inclusive, and it probably matches if the random number is less than the reference value… so if you try to set a 100% change, there's a 1 in 101 chance that it will roll a 100 and fail. That means 100 is actually a 99% chance, not 95%.