Celtic Minstrel

What about older games like Baldur's Gate or Neverwinter Nights? Baldur's Gate can be set to be effectively turn-based, as I recall. (I haven't tried NWN yet so not sure.)

 

Legend of Grimrock is definitely a dungeon crawl. I haven't tried Legend of Grimrock 2 yet, though.

Are you using the "classic" version or the "beta" version that I recently released? If the latter, you'd be working with a new-format scenario (.boes). New-format scenarios expect the graphics to be bundled inside the scenario, and as I recall they don't search for them alongside it. Read the "How to Make Your Custom Sheets" section of the docs for more information.

 

If you're using the "classic" Ormus version, then I have no idea what the problem could be.

CodeWarrior was an IDE (integrated development environment) for the old Classic Macintosh computers. Nowadays Jeff would no longer be using CodeWarrior since (from what I can tell) the Mac version of it is discontinued. Most likely he now uses XCode, which also happens to be free (unlike CodeWarrior). In addition, it's possible that he has only really written an engine from scratch once (namely Exile: Escape from the Pit), with all games after that being incremental improvements on the original engine. (I don't know if that's true, but it's one way he might have reduced the amount of work required.)

I suggest that if you have trouble finding graphics, just use default ones that are vaguely close to what you want. You can easily change the graphics for a monster or terrain or whatever later.

 

Also, colour adjustments can be quite useful for making newish graphics from existing ones.

Yay, looks good!

Erdos (iasEnvy on github) was trying to work on a Makefile (for compiling the Mac version), but I think he actually made less progress than you did. I might start working on something too at some point.

 

Ligrev just said there was a build, but the documentation here seems the same. Do I have the wrong URL or something? These URLs are also hard-coded into the source code (in the function handle_menu_choice in all three *.main.cpp files), so if they're wrong, feel free to update them.

Someone requested it, so here's a downloadable version of the Blades of Exile HTML documentation. It includes both the game documentation and the editor documentation; however, keep in mind that parts of it may still be out of date.

 

Download

 

By the way, I noticed that Sylae's copy of the docs is out-of-date now - is there any way to get them to automatically update as part of the Jenkins build process?

I don't recall any serious lag from animations in the cross-platform port, but it's possible I just so happened to never open a dialog with animateable graphics... it's not a problem on my Mac, at least.

What, really?!

 

Does the PC version of Sorcerer's Apprentice just use the default cliff graphic? I had no idea.

I don't know for certain. However, that sort of thing works due to the Resource Manager's fallback mechanisms - basically, when searching for a resource with a given ID, it checks the most-recently-opened file first. Since the Windows version obviously doesn't use the Resource Manager, Jeff would have had to implement his own way of mimicking the fallback mechanism, which I doubt he would've thought of. So, it would surprise me if substituting default graphics works on Windows.

 

That said, I don't recall ever testing it. So I could be wrong, I guess.

Joined NPCs in the first Avernum trilogy are true party members that fill one of the 4 PC slots, but in Blades of Avernum, joined NPCs are a special thing. That might be why a special power is needed.

Changing the outdoor cliff graphics is possible if you just include a custom graphic with the same number (657 I think?).

Though this probably only works on the Mac?

 

I doubt PC 0 stays as 0 if you swap character position.

The relevant place in the source is here.

 

Monsters that are larger than a single space, monsters that have the Splits special ability, and monsters with the Important race are immune.

 

To determine the chance of capturing, the game generates a random percentage, then multiplies by 0.7. It checks this against a reference chance based on half the monster's level (which is used as an index into an array) - the chances array is the same one used by the Charm spell and a few other effects.

 

Here's the array itself:

const short cCreature::charm_odds[21] = {90,90,85,80,78, 75,73,60,40,30, 20,10,4,1,0, 0,0,0,0,0, 0};

 

 

So, in short, the only factor is the monster's level.

I think the only way is to place it on the tile "below" where the (N)PC stands. Depending on the order things are drawn in, it might be possible to do this and use adjusts to make it look like the terrain is on a space other than the one it's "officially" placed on... of course, if it's something other than a decoration (ie, anything with a mechanical effect), this won't do what you want.

 

...oh wait, come to think of it, there should also be a way that's used with walls to paint them on top of the (N)PCs... I can't remember.

Unfortunately, there's no way to exit town other than crossing the town boundary. To connect a town to an outdoor section like you describe, you need an additional intermediate town like Excalibur described.

If you mean creating new spells or skills for player use, it's impossible. There's documentation somewhere on creating custom special abilities (they go in the "Use Ability" area); they work by calling a scenario state. Try searching the official docs (the two files that come with the editor) for something like "ability"?

 

You can also create new "spells" attached to an item by making the item call a scenario state when used, possibly even allowing the player to select a target.

 

If you mean you want to give the player a spell or increase their level in a skill, you should search through the appendix for the relevant script call(s).

There are a few cases. I think the main one is joined NPCs. I can't remember if there are many others.

some things would return that they were blocked per the is_blocked() call but wouldn't actually be blocked from a PC being able to step there.

Is there a separate way to test for those things, I wonder? For example, isn't blocked-to-NPC a type of field?

edit: if you mean i used "coins_amount" rather than "coins_amount()", then TM did too.

Yes, that's what I was referring to. (I missed the first instance.) Does it actually work like that?

You forgot to invoke the second instance of coins_amount.

 

Also, I know the code tag is messed up, but I think it's kinda still better than what you did there...

Yes, I'm aware it depends on that, and I think I mentioned it earlier. (Note that according to the official download page, it can install on XP; however, the above build likely won't run on XP for other reasons.) We also noticed it doesn't work on WINE. ADoS is having much trouble getting it to work even on Vista (emulated) or Win7, though, and I can't figure out why; maybe you could help?

 

There's someone working on a Makefile system that Sylae could probably use in her MinGW build on the Jenkins site. I don't know if a MinGW build will fix all the issues ADoS is having, though.

Maybe the default "special encounter" dot, or an exclamation point, or a question mark?

I kinda meant among the existing items graphics, but I guess adding new graphics isn't difficult.

 

As for the rest of your post, I'll think about it.

After discovering a few fatal problems with the above Windows build, here's a new one that should work.

Well, my plan for the preset original scenarios (and the Blades of Exile Base) is to store them in the repository not as a tarball but as a directory with the same contents as the tarball. The scenario editor is already set up to load and save in this alternate format, so I think the only thing needed to complete it would be a command to re-archive the scenario into a tarball for distribution - it'd be best, I think, if the scenario editor itself could be used to pack and unpack scenarios.

And here it is. A version with a fully-functional scenario and a new scenario format. This version could probably be used for developing scenarios, though there are still likely a lot of bugs.

 

There's one major issue still with Mac custom graphics in legacy scenario, though. Some custom graphics files will fail to load. It should be possible to get around this by copying the picture to a BMP. There might be other ways around it (the cause of the issue is that my PICT loader doesn't support QT-compressed data embedded in the PICT resource).

 

Download: Windows | Mac

Okay, the implementation is pretty much done. I'll do a bit more testing and then release a build, probably tomorrow, or maybe Saturday.