Rachek

Oh, well, bad news. There's probably going to be a bit of a delay. I managed to work a bit too efficiently as a contractor and worked myself out of a job. I've been laid off - just after leasing an apartment and getting into college. So, I'm going to be madly focused for a while on not going massively into debt and maybe, occasionally, eating. To reiterate, I'm not abandoning this or anything, I just need to devote myself completely to getting my affairs in order. Still, I find working on this entertaining enough that I'll probably work on it regardless. I just can't guarantee anything at this point. Sorry folks.

Oh yes. You're my number one skeptic. Keep it up, by the by. The fact that you consistently point out that you don't think this will happen spurs me to try to prove you wrong. Sort of like constructive criticism, just more pessimistic. =D Depending on how insane work is I expect I might have something that could be played around with by this weekend. Maybe. It won't be pretty or great but it'd be more substantial than screenshots.

Sorry for the double post, but I'm not sure if just tacking this onto the end of my previous post would mark the thread as unread and such. Anyway, just a status update for the skeptics out there. Work is taking up a good majority of my time but things are coming along nicely. The editor can now import custom and default floors and creatures (ala corescendata.txt) so I've put together the beginning of the town editor. I put together a simple but robust method for handling informational and error messages so you can see a bit into the debug output in this screenshot. Right now I'm going to work on implementing terrain and item processing, so I can get corescendata2.txt loaded and finish up properly displaying the town. Then maybe editing would even be possible. I'll keep you updated. Not too much longer now, folks. I'm hoping to get this to the level of the original editor and then go from there. Fortunately I have enough of a framework that most of the remaining core work is essentially copy/paste with some tweaking.

Once I get it at least marginally working, probably. I'm not using anything proprietary so far so I don't see any reason why not. I'd just rather wait until I've got it working and have cleaned up my experimental and thoroughly spaghetti-ish code before I inflict it on anyone else. As far as the working bit goes, I'm quite far off from that but definitely chugging along. I just wanted to show what I currently have. I'd let everyone play with it but for the moment it doesn't actually do much and I'm afraid it'd be too disappointing. That's about it so far. It can fully read a scenario and I have some basic preliminary work on converting the data structures into a format that's more Java-friendly. I just finished the code to let it load graphics, hence the retro background and scenario icon. I'm thinking that next I'll be working on getting it to read the scenario data files and start on the insanity that is custom objects. It won't be much longer now I'm thinking before I'll get it to the point you can start to play around with it.

Just an update: got a lot of work done over the holiday weekend. I have a basic GUI and it's fully capable of reading all of the data from BAS files. Right now I'm working on the code needed to load and display graphics and their individual icons. After that it'll be relatively trivial to start making things like a map editor and such. I'm not sure when it will be in any way presentable, but I've got some of the more complex things taken care of. It seems to be going pretty smoothly.

Ha, no! It's still going. Somewhat slowly due to work/school/life, but definitely kicking. I've been hesitant to just say, "Hey, still alive! No, nothing yet!" ad nauseum. Just rest assured: until I say so, this project should be assumed alive. Anyway, after being unable to get Mono to work myself I've pretty much given up on C# and have switched to Java. That, at the very least, should be readily supported by everyone. I'm having to do quite a bit of tinkering with my existing code to translate it properly, but I'm getting there. I haven't the slightest ETA at this point as I've never worked with Java extensively before, but the good news is that now that I don't have to constantly check for compatibility I can generally move faster. Technically I tried to make my own editor in an endeavor roughly like this about two years ago but gave up due to being too busy. It was quite functional and able to load all of the data types, the scenario data, and display town/outdoor sections, if not fully capable of editing, and I'm going through its code to use in this project. Once I get the hang of Java, I feel this should take off rather quickly. Honestly I'm more focused on this version than I ever was on the old one just because I went and told people about it. Having other people interested really does help. While I'm thinking about it, is Java regularly used/available on Macs? I'm just assuming it is, as Java is about as common as Flash in some ways. Though at this point, if it isn't, I really don't know what to do otherwise.

Yeah, really the fact that Blades of Avernum is installed is kind of irrelevant. The editor will be completely standalone in the end. At the moment it just checks for a folder named "Blades of Avernum". It could even be empty - it just needs a folder. I was thinking that having it know where BoA was installed would be useful, but really that won't be needed so I'll be removing that fairly soon. As it is, it's a good excuse for testing the folder browser. I think I've got the kinks worked out in Windows, but I'm still working for compatibility on Macs. Speaking of, I've managed to convince (con) a friend of mine to lend me his old MacBook for a while so I might actually be able to test this stuff on my own. Maybe. I'm still trying to figure out how to work it.

I have one last version to try out. Barring some new issue, it should work. I've had to make my own dialogs, so with this one you should especially run it in a directory other than Blades of Avernum to make sure the folder browser is functional. It should also be able to better handle error conditions so if anything does go wrong it should do more than just hang. It can be downloaded here: https://dl.dropbox.com/u/26820555/BoA%20Editor%20Files/Releases/0.0.0.2/BoAScenEditor.zip While waiting for results on this I'm starting preliminary work on the editor itself. At the very least I've figured out what to avoid when it's running on Mono. I don't really have any sort of an ETA there, but I should have something soon.

Yes, if you see that screen, the test was successful. Thanks! The colored bars were supposed to be split. The left has three solid colors, while the right has a gradient. I've mostly been worried that the colors could get mixed up between platforms, though it's looking like all of them use the same ARGB format which simplifies my job quite a bit. I can remove some unnecessary code that should speed up loading and converting images greatly. I've been putting together one last version using input from ξ that should be fully compatible with both operating systems. Once it's done, I'd appreciate it if you could try it again as I don't have access to an XP machine to test this on. I definitely want to make sure this will run in as many places as possible.

With any Windows version since XP, .NET v4.0 is automatically installed. Before that, you have to do it manually at the Microsoft website. Takes just a few minutes. I think I'll probably include the distributable installer whenever this thing gets closer to working properly just for those that need it. Well, I'm realizing that there's just no support whatsoever for some fairly basic features so I'm having to make alternatives. Definitely a good thing this is coming out at this point rather than later. I think it might be good for anyone that tests to also give me a copy of the EditorConfig.dat file. It has some more information that might be helpful. As it is, once I can get the test program to work everywhere, I'll be ready to make the real thing.

I've managed to track the problem down to the display of message boxes. It looks like that isn't supported across operating systems. I'll remove the messages and see if that lets it run properly. EDIT: Okay, I've removed the message boxes and updated the file. It can be redownloaded at the previous link. Now, it should either work or just close itself. Either way, the log will tell me of any issues.

Huh. There's a tool devoted specifically toward detecting Mono compatibility problems. So, I used it, fixed some other things that apparently aren't supported, and got a (hopefully) working version. It can be found here: https://dl.dropbox.c...orTestFixed.zip Considering the whole point of this test is identifying compatibility issues, the fact it didn't work is actually a good sign! As an aside for programmer types, anyone have a clue why memory mapped files wouldn't be supported by Mono? Seems like a bizarre thing to not handle given they're supported by most major operating systems. Oh well.

So, I feel dumb. Turns out the code I used to handle making the log file isn't actually supported by Mono. It just crashes. So, I'm rewriting my own, definitely supported alternative. As for making a double clickable app... maybe. I think it could possibly be possible to make a very, very simple Mac app that would function as a launcher. That seems trivial enough, though I couldn't really compile it or anything.

Testers needed! I finally have something! It's still just a test, though I'd like to get at many people to try it out as possible. It doesn't actually do anything but I'll be able to make sure some of the big things I have planned can work. Once I am reasonably certain that no gigantic bugs are there, I'll be able to finish up the actual editor without worrying about the core functionality failing. So, if you'd like to help, just download the test program here: http://dl.dropbox.co...AEditorTest.zip All you need to do is run it, get the log file, then email it to me. I'd prefer testing on a Mac, but Windows tests will be good as well.

Wonderful, thanks! I think that fairly soon I'll see if some people can run what I have so far and have it start up properly. If it starts, that means it will have been able to properly locate BoA, set up its directory tree, and install all of the resources it'll need. Seems like a good first step. At the moment, it'll assume that it's being run from the main installation directory (the "Blades of Avernum" directory) and if it's not, a browser will appear asking for its location. Simple enough I'm thinking. Once I know the basics are taken care of I'll be able to move on the the nicer things. At this point, all I need to do is finalize the basic implementation of its resource management system and it'll be ready to test. Which means likely a day at most. I'll be out of town this weekend but I should be able to work on my laptop, so expect to see something soon.