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I don't fix old scenarios, I don't feel it's worth the time, effort, or the risk of breaking other things. None of my notes regarding all of the old coding and what flags do what have really survived. Again, this is a fairly unique thing from what I have heard. If all items are disappearing, it sounds like it's beyond the scenario file itself. I recall, a long time ago, hearing of this happening "randomly" before, where all items in a town disappear for no apparent reason. If you don't want to play it, fine. That's your choice.

All of the items disappeared? As in each and every one? If this is the case, it sounds like a weird BoE thing. It's the first I have heard of this happening in this scenario. Generally these scenarios are pretty old and most of the bugs have either been squished or are hidden quite well. I generally don't fix older scenarios.

Easier said than done. Doing so would mean mucking about more with the resources. If you feel like implementing it, or know how, let me know.

This is the big change I've been working on for a while now. A major limitation on what we could do was dictated by the sizes of the data structures. I have implemented a way to port a BoE format scenario to an OBoE style format. All you need to do is load a scenario in the OBoE Editor and it will autoconvert it. All that remains is saving the file immediately after load to preserve the changes (editing will corrupt the file, but I put a big warning). There are still a few kinks to be worked out, with the towns, but I hope they will not be too bad. As a test, I raised the number of scenario special nodes to 1000 and it appears to read in and recognize everything appropirately. Now, there is another limit/bug/feature that I discovered with the monster, item, specials menus. If the size is set too large (about 500 items), the program crashes. I haven't been able to figure out why yet. If anyone wants to take a look, that would be awesome. Just let me know and I'll tell you where, or you can find it yourself. The other thing that is wrong is still the custom graphics not loading properly. I haven't looked at this yet, so I shall need to do that as well. So with this new format, I can do a lot more as far as raising limits and such. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

It's possible, although very convoluted. There is always the Town Number? node to have variable effects if desired.

I agree with SoT, combining the two seem to be a way to go. Things like strength and dexterity could affect the power of the battle disciplines, and intelligence could affect the power of the magical ones. Endurance is where fatigue could be handled. Perhaps endurance could be used to set how much fatigue the PC can handle before becoming unable to use more of the given ability. For instance, an endurance of 6, would mean that the PC has 6 points of "fatigue" to spend. A skill costing 4, points could be cast leaving the PC with 2 points. The PC could not use that skill again until the PC has 4 fatigue points. Fatigue recovery could be handled by endurance itself or some other skill. Weak spells, like Bolt of Fire or a standard attack or archery, could give a fatigue of 1, which is automatically recovered the next turn. Of course, a hasted PC could fall victim to accumulated fatigue. Strong spells, like Divine Retribution, could have a high fatigue cost meaning repeated castings of the thing become impossible.

I believe small.h, etc. are just lists of town names from Exile III. Nothing really to see there.

The issue is how file I/O is handled. Whenever I add anything that changes the structure of the files (say adding pointers for save files), the program cannot simply load in the changes normally, it will crash if care is not taken in the source code. For each version, special things must be added to the source code to handle backward compatability. A BoE file can be read into OBoE in its current form because I know something about the old save file and what the new format should look like. Things created in the intermediate phase are subject to have an "unknown" save file structure and as such will either be corrupted or (more likely) crash. In other words, anything created in an intermediate is subject not to work, period, in the released product. Since I won't know what phase of development your file was generated in, it will not be easy (i.e. very time consuming) to convert it over. Someone is, of course, free to port the OBoE changes over to 9.1 or before. I have no plans (or the ability at present) to do so.

What? Only global specials are called with this, not town or outdoors ones.

It turns out the run_special function passes a location of the special being called (special location, item user location, monster that triggered special location) as one of its arguments. I've noticed that in a few places, the engine simply passes a null location (0,0), but really this field is not used. I'm wondering if we should make use of this feature, and what the best way to be to use it would be. I've come up with a few options: 1) A new node that puts the x and y coordinates into two different flags which can be referenced with a pointer. Somewhat cumbersome but highly flexible. 2) Reserved "pointers", say -10 and -11 that when the field has this value, it replaces it with the x and y coordinates respectively. 3) Node specific defaults. Whereever a location is requested, -1,-1 will be replaced by the appropriate location of the special. What are people's thoughts on this matter?

It's currently hosted at Desperance. Djur was kind enough to set up a darcs repository there for me to use. Right now the code is exclusively for OS-X, ultimately someone would need to port this for windows. Most of the changes I made are commented with the string "OBoE" nearby with a description. The resource files are another story, I'd need to put those up directly as darcs does not handle them properly. At this point, I would not recommend using OBoE for real design work. I'm planning on making changes which will temporarily break scenario compatability such that scenarios created with an intermediate version will not function. It will be possible to get a BoE scenario and convert to an OBoE one (which is tricky enough without rewriting the file I/O code completely), but I don't want to muck with intermediate version support.

In other words, the ability strength is the scenario special to be called. I have no plans (or desire to try and alter the code in such a way) to "directly link" to the scenario special. It's easy enough to go to the menu, select the special nodes, and then pick the corresponding node. In other words, what you are asking for, would take a lot of effort on my part that I do not feel would significantly enhance the code.

I added this to the Non-Spell Usable category. The ability is the special number. Comments?

I decided to fix the problem of killing things that are either non-existant or already dead. I decided that preserving backward compatability, in this case, really doesn't affect the overall functionality of the scenarios.

Update: I added the ability to check only living PCs. The option extends to: ex2b: 0 - All, 1 - Only Living

Will magic cause fatigue as well? The partial reason magic was so overpowered in GF 4 compared to weapons skills was that the player could consistently do lots of damage to lots of creatures over and over again.

Jeff does not need or desire help for his games, unless you are skilled in graphics or sounds. Also, around these boards we prefer in this community if people type in complete sentences and use correct spelling and grammar. Thanks.

The Exile series used lighting changes, true, but these were hardcoded. Changing lighting was impossible in BoE as far as anyone knows.

I think a trait ID is the easiest. There will be docs provided on what cooresponds to what.

Well, if you want to check less than 4, you could just put a 4 in ex1a field and a 1 in the ex2a field (at least). The false condition is therefore less than 4. In other words, the logic is available. Dead characters, for now, are included. I could make an option to do only living and present.

The "Any Crates?" special has been changed to a "Party Size?" special. It is still possible to check for crates in the new "Any Barrels or Crates?" node. Note that backward compatability is preserved with a -1 in the ex1a slot. ex1a: size of party (1-6) (-1 do Any Crates?) ex1b: special to jump to if met ex2a: 0 - equal to, 1 - at least ex2b: 0 - All, 1 - Only Living Comments?

The special "Any Barrels?" has been modified to "Any Barrels or Crates?". This was done to free up an extra node and is easy to preserve compatability. Specifics: ex1a: 0 - Barrels, 1 - Crates (-1 sets to barrels for compatability) ex1b: Node to jump to if any. ex2a: Unused ex2b: Unused Comments?

It is now possible to test whether or not the party has a given number of PCs is human, nephil, or slith. The "Have Cave Lore?" node has been changed to a "Has Enough of Species?" node. The only function modified was specials.c and run_ifthen_special. Note that the number is capped at the party size. Such that if the party has a size of 4, the designer can only demand a maximum of 4 of that species. If more are requested, the amount needed is set to 4. Specifics of the node: ex1a: Which Species (0 - Human, 1 - Nephil, 2 - Slith, -1 defaults to regular Have Cave Lore? check to preserve compatability) ex1b: Special to jump to if met ex2a: How many party members need species? ex2b: Unused Comments?

It is now possible to test whether or not the party has a given number of PCs possessing a certain trait. The "Have Woodsman?" node has been changed to a "Has Enough of Trait?" node. The only function modified was specials.c and run_ifthen_special. Note that the number is capped at the party size. Such that if the party has a size of 4, the designer can only demand a maximum of 4 of that trait. If more are requested, the amount needed is set to 4. Specifics of the node: ex1a: Which Trait (-1 defaults to regular Have Woodsman? check to preserve compatability) ex1b: Special to jump to if met ex2a: How many party members need trait? ex2b: Unused Comments?

The code is in place in the OS X version of OBoE to petrify monsters as well. Certain things were never implemented by Jeff, sadly. I could go back and try to add them.