The Almighty Doer of Stuff

Here's the best I've got for now... http://www.OpenBoE.com/linkfile/GUI02.png

I guess just zooming the whole shebang 2x works as well as anything else. I think I was just trying to keep the height of the window under 768, although other than the fact that that's the height of my particular laptop monitor, I'm not sure why. I hear even laptops have hi-res screens these days, but for such a relatively simple game, I think it'd be nice to have it playable on non-gaming laptops. Also having separate windows for the automap and dialogs has irked me from the very beginning. Eh.

I didn't actually change the size of the text at all. I'm not sure how to improve that. Maybe adding 100px horizontally might allow more room to change things? I know I compacted the physical space of the inventory, horizontally, to make it fit. But I don't know how to enlarge the text. I did notice that OBoE compacts text vertically compared to legacy, for some reason. There's more than enough room for 2x text for 6-string dialogs, within the 2x terrain view. Hm...

It ls literally 2x. The only way to make it smaller is to bring it back down to 1x, half the size in each dimension. So what else can be done? People say it's too small but if I make it bigger it looks funky. Personally I've always liked zoomed-in pixel graphics. (If you've seen my shirt store, that's pretty obvious.) I'm not seeing what the forum is doing to the images. I click on it and I DON'T see the original. Here's direct URLs instead: http://www.OpenBoE.com/linkfile/GUI00.png http://www.OpenBoE.com/linkfile/GUI01.png The mockup is supposed to be 1100px by 700px. When I click on the image here, it shrinks it rather than growing it, resulting in blurring and uneven pixels.

I just threw this together. I've done similar arrangements in the past but this is a new one. I wonder what the BoE community has to say about it. I zoomed the playing field and action buttons 2x, integrated the automap, and arranged the other stuff how I thought I thought it would fit. Oddly, Get Item has a different icon depending on whether you are in town mode or combat mode in legacy BoE, so I just improved the combat one a bit and turned the town mode one into a Use Terrain button. Also, even the Large Dialog node messages will fit more than comfortably within the terrain view this way, eliminating the need to ever have more than one window. Legacy screenshot: http://www.OpenBoE.com/linkfile/GUI00.png New mockup: http://www.OpenBoE.com/linkfile/GUI01.png This does have the issue that there are not as many buttons to use in combat or outdoor modes, compared to town mode, so there may be blank buttons. But the current button arrangement is ridiculous anyway, I think.

Thanks. Those are the default colors that have been there since 1997 when the game was released. There are arguments for and against changing the interface itself; I'm personally of the opinion that minor legibility changes, physical rearrangement of GUI elements, merging all windows into one like a more modern game would do, etc. is a perfectly desirable idea, but some want to keep it completely authentic to the original game. If we ever have a bigger development team these discussions may be more fruitful.

It was staked out as make for much the same reason as anything else, I'd guess. Men wanted it and they didn't want women to have it, so they wouldn't let women play any reindeer games.

Something about OBoE and things like support for and interest in it. Something about if people believe they are using their time wisely with regard to the inevitability of death and most people not being able to live to see more than 80 or 90 springtimes in their entire lives. Stuff related to knowledge of neurological development. Which species of even-toed ungulate is cutest.

Thanks for being patient!

There should be a folder called Blades of Exile in %APPDATA%; if not, look in "Application Data" instead of %APPDATA%, which is a folder where BoE files sometimes get put instead. (Why? I have no idea.) Anyway, once the scenarios are in either C:\users\(your username)\%APPDATA%\Blades of Exile\Scenarios\, or C:\users\(your username)\Application Data\Blades of Exile\Scenarios\, whichever exists, open BoE and click the Custom Scenario button. Start Scenario is ONLY the preinstalled scenarios, and Custom Scenario is for user-made scenarios. If the above instructions are unclear, just ask and I'll try to clarify. The target audience is not power users. It is anyone who enjoys a good story or strategic turn-based combat. We'll be merging the two scenario buttons at some point; that's how they were in legacy BoE and it just hasn't been changed. We can have and are planning a lot of troubleshooting, bug fixing, and user-friendliness updates. The issue is Celtic Minstrel is the only programmer, more or less. There's a couple others who contribute a little code here or there but CM does most of it alone, and there's a lot to do so some stuff doesn't get done right or at all, especially now that he has less free time. I help test things and make suggestions but other than as moral support, my contributions to the team are small. I'm also having troubles running the three programs that nobody else is having, and CM doesn't seem to have the expertise to figure out why. My Blades of Exile scenario player works more or less, at least, so maybe if I start playing scenarios then it will inspire him or something. (By the way, don't use the Save or Ctrl+S functions once you get it started. Only use File --> Save As... to save your game. Another bug.)

Congratulations! I'm not trans but I'm schizophrenic which makes me also medically vulnerable, and all my freaking out about the Republican health care legislation has also consistently been met with "You'll be fine, our state will shield you from the President." Even the Republican governors we keep electing are more liberal than some states' Democrats. Which is not to say there's nothing to worry about but it at least is probably not going to be catastrophic around here. I've forgotten who you are though. I feel like I should know, especially since we're in the same state. The cat avatar is familiar but "Ambassador to Catland" is not.

Is this any more useful? It's a copy of a version of Isaac's 3D editor hosted on Jewels's site. I don't know if it's any newer than the ones you have. It has a Windows version although it says it's unfinished. https://truesite4blades.com/Home/TrueSite4Blades/BoA/boa3DBoAEditor.html

Oh. %APPDATA% is where Windows stores things like program preferences and... I think it's more or less only used for user preferences. So why are we putting scenarios there? Why do we separate user scenarios from default scenarios in the first place? I don't know, and you're not the only one it confused. I'll ask Celtic Minstrel why he did that and if there's a better way, although if you have any better ideas you can always have input too. He checks this forum fairly often (he is a moderator here) although it's sometimes faster to find him in the chat room. I do know Celtic Minstrel is planning on having a button on the main menu that imports scenarios into that folder without the user having to figure out how to navigate to it, but it still feels unintuitive... Still, once you know how it's a pretty simple matter. I think you just use Run... or whatever they call that now, and enter %APPDATA%, and it will open for you just like that. Then you put it in the appropriate subdirectory.

There is no readme but there is extensive documentation (which I haven't actually read myself). I don't know the URL but you can get a link to it at http://www.OpenBoE.com/ I believe. We don't put user-made scenarios in the program folder the way we used to. That's just for the default scenarios. It's been split off into a userdata folder in %APPDATA% so you can update OBoE without accidentally deleting your scenarios or preferences. That's something to add to the planned tutorial, I guess.

I have a laptop with the same resolution. On occasions when it's not hooked up to my large TV as a second monitor, I have to keep the automap and party list minimized. If you click on the circle in the upper left corners of each of those, it will compact them into just a bar or open it back up.

(EDIT: nvm)

(EDIT: nvm)

Thanks. I ended up just pumping up their stats enough to make it easy without making them uncharacterized. Roleplaying, treasure hunting, and of course getting the story is mostly what I want out of this game anyway.

(EDIT: nvm) (While I'm here, does the mid-game stat reassignment feature appear in this game, or did that come later? I kinda borked up my characters' stats. I'm playing on Casual so it might not make a difference, but still, I was thinking Exile where you have more than enough skill points to buy everything useful and then some. I forgot that you get only a small number of skill points in tis game...)

I've had a number of ideas and made mockups for how to execute the 2x zoom layout, in terms of space usage, merging the different windows (minimap, dialog, etc.) into a single window, adding buttons, etc, CM gives it very low priority, although if someone would like to step in and focus on GUI-related things it might actually happen. I've even brought up the idea of merging the three programs into one, but I suppose that would probably be very complicated.

It converts them automatically when you play them. If you want to convert your own, unfinished scenarios, there's a menu item in the scenario editor, although I have a lot of trouble getting that program to not crash constantly. You cannot make the display bigger. You can make your monitor resolution smaller. I'm hoping someone will eventually make a 2x zoom option. It's been discussed and more or less desired by everyone I've heard from about it, although there's discussion on whether it will be 2x zoom or just doubling the play area to show more tiles. I'd prefer the former, partly because I like pixel graphics and partly because legacy scenarios are sometimes made with the 9x9 tile display - especially scenarios that use cutscenes.

That DLL file you need is included in a little .EXE installer, included with the program in the Windows experimental build. Run that installer and the game will probably work. Let me know what happens! (Still no sign of CM. He's been busier these days, but I'll keep an eye out for him if he doesn't find this thread on his own.)

Hi! Thanks for playing! What version of BoE are you using? Did you click the link that said CBoE in the forum header? That version is very old and not maintained. The link labeled "experimental builds" is the project led by Celtic Minstrel and is the most likely to run properly. Most of the gameplay related stuff works well, although you may have trouble using the Save function; in the currently-released build, Save and Ctrl+S don't work, but I believe Save As does work. CM doesn't seem to be available at the moment but he can post here more coherently and help when he is available later today. But definitely make sure you have the latest experimental build and try again, in the meantime. Here is the latest version at the time of this post, for Windows: http://celmin.pwcsite.com/oboe/BoE-Win-b624841.zip And here is the Mac OS version: http://celmin.pwcsite.com/oboe/BoE-Mac-b624841.zip

Oh, I see. Yeah, I know when he released the code he said it was the company's most popular game. Come to think of it, you're right. He got stressed with BoA because it came with all the complaints of BoE for less money and less community output. BoA and G3 were the ones that nearly sent the company under, weren't they? Still, if someone paid money for BoA (and he does still sell it) I would bet Jeff would do his best to help anyway.

No, he dislikes hearing about Blades of EXILE because he thinks the open-source licensing issues, and the endless complaints and insults he's received over the years from the BoE community for doing this or that wrong, are more trouble than they're worth. I guess it made him a good deal of money but he gets no money from it now that it's GNU GPL 3.0. BoA may be different. He hates it as a business endeavor because it was not enough of a financial success for the investment and the complaints continued, but AFAIK he does at least still support it.