Garrulous Glaahk ixfd64 Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Since the original Exile series is becoming old, would it be a good idea for Spiderweb Software to release a new bundle containing both the trilogy and Blades of Exile? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 The trilogy has been available as a bundle for over a decade. The price of the bundle has been lowered at least once in that time. Blades of Exile, meanwhile, has been released in open source. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 It would be a good idea if Blades of Exile were not open source and therefore free now. —Alorael, who assumes Jeff would do something to make the original sell better if he thought both that its sales were unsatisfactory and that it would be possible to get people to buy such old games. It's quite probable that he's simply not concerned about Exile at all anymore. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgeoning Battle Gamma Paroxysm Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Any chance of the trilogy ever getting open-sourced? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 I doubt it. But perhaps you could convince him to release it as freeware but not open-source? I dunno... I think the problem with open-sourcing it is essentially that he has lost the source code, or doesn't know where it is, or something. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Other than not having to register, what would be the point of open-sourcing it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 The only reason I can see (maybe) is if someone found a bug/typo to be really, really annoying and wanted to fix it, or to rewrite them from the ground up again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Or to add OS X compatibility for people who can't use Classic and don't want to use emulators. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Easygoing Eyebeast The Mystic Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 I hadn't thought of that. Then again, I don't have a Mac, and the trilogy works great for me in Vista. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Oh yeah, Carbon compatibility would be nice... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seasoned Roamer Emz Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Originally Posted By: Athenry Any chance of the trilogy ever getting open-sourced? Jeff himself has already said no. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 He has said no to many things. That doesn't mean they won't happen, just that they won't happen now. —Alorael, who trusts that Jeff's ornery nature will mandate prolongued refusal to release the games as open source in proportion to the number of people who ask for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgeoning Battle Gamma Paroxysm Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel I think the problem with open-sourcing it is essentially that he has lost the source code, or doesn't know where it is, or something. I find that funny for some reason. Originally Posted By: Cunning Lx = Cx Other than not having to register, what would be the point of open-sourcing it? That's the main draw right there. Heh. Otherwise, open-source software is never a bad thing. I'd love for the series (or at least the first two games) to be updated to fit with BoE and/or E3. I doubt it would ever happen, but perhaps some enterprising souls would take it upon themselves. Originally Posted By: Cataclysm: autocausal recursion —Alorael, who trusts that Jeff's ornery nature will mandate prolongued refusal to release the games as open source in proportion to the number of people who ask for it. Inversely proportional, I trust? The way I see it, OBoE happened because he got tired of dealing with it (plus the people nagging) and had better stuff to do. With Avernum 6 on the horizon, as well as the possibility of a whole new game, if we really put our hearts into whining, he'll do it. Of course with Ormus off doing... whatever it is he does, there's not really anyone who could do much. But I'm sure he'd pop up eventually. Quick! Email Jeff! A lot! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Lilith Posted February 9, 2009 Share Posted February 9, 2009 Originally Posted By: Athenry That's the main draw right there. Heh. If that's the main draw, it'd be easier for Jeff to just make the keygen freely available. I mean, assuming he doesn't use the same one for later games. Quote: Originally Posted By: Cataclysm: autocausal recursion —Alorael, who trusts that Jeff's ornery nature will mandate prolongued refusal to release the games as open source in proportion to the number of people who ask for it. Inversely proportional, I trust? Nah, he meant what he said. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Originally Posted By: Me Jeff's ornery nature —Alorael, who is quite certain that Jeff would respond to a sudden email campaign. How he would choose to respond remains to be seen. Hopefully with a new SEP screed! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Burgeoning Battle Gamma Paroxysm Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Instead of annoying him, we could try melting his cold, cold heart with the warmth of our love for his games. Kind of like at the end of the The Grinch. Would that work? Or is he far too jaded and cynical now? Fah who for-aze! Dah who dor-aze! Welcome Christmas, Come this way! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Randomizer Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 I think Jeff best responds to cash. There's nothing like that warm feeling of rolling around in piles of bills. And you can use them for insulation during the winter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Mea Tulpa Posted February 10, 2009 Share Posted February 10, 2009 Originally Posted By: Thuryl Or to add OS X compatibility for people who can't use Classic and don't want to use emulators. Because this has worked so well for BoE. Not to bash on the OBoE people -- I think what they're doing is awesome. But it's been two years now and I have yet to see any mostly stable, public OBoE release that people can download-decompress-and-run as could be done with BoE back in the day (and as can still be done with BoE if you have Basilisk ][ set up already). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Garrulous Glaahk ixfd64 Posted February 16, 2009 Author Share Posted February 16, 2009 Originally Posted By: Murmilladillo The trilogy has been available as a bundle for over a decade. The price of the bundle has been lowered at least once in that time. Blades of Exile, meanwhile, has been released in open source. I know the original Exile trilogy has already been released as a bundle, but it seems that no collection is complete without all four games. I'm sorry if I wasn't very clear in my original post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chittering Clawbug King InuYasha Posted April 6, 2009 Share Posted April 6, 2009 Originally Posted By: Dark and Starstormy Originally Posted By: Thuryl Or to add OS X compatibility for people who can't use Classic and don't want to use emulators. Because this has worked so well for BoE. Not to bash on the OBoE people -- I think what they're doing is awesome. But it's been two years now and I have yet to see any mostly stable, public OBoE release that people can download-decompress-and-run as could be done with BoE back in the day (and as can still be done with BoE if you have Basilisk ][ set up already). If you have ever looked at the source code and attempted to port something over from an old unsupported platform to one that is, you will realize that it is extremely difficult. The code is an extreme mess, and the Mac people have it somewhat worse, because of the deprecation of the Carbon framework, but it isn't likely to go away for at least one more Mac OS X release. Rewriting BoE to use a modern framework is a pain because the code is cryptic. I tried once to port it to wxWidgets. I just didn't have the time and I still don't. Besides, if I were to do that again, I would not use wxWidgets anyway, since Qt is LGPL and it does follow the one-source/multiple-platform thing far better than wxWidgets did, it would probably be easier to port back the Carbonized code to Qt and make the whole game work on Mac, Windows, and Linux. This would effectively give the Mac version Cocoa support without rewriting it in Objective-C too. Possibly even 64-bit support, who knows? Then the Exile gamedata could be forward ported to work with the BoE engine and WHAM! Instant working trilogy and then some. At the moment, Nikmind is doing a direct port of OBoE to Linux using GTK+ UI. It seems most of the development is focused on the Mac OS X version, which really isn't much of a surprise to me, since this community seems have a higher Mac population than most. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 [quote name=ixfd64I know the original Exile trilogy has already been released as a bundle' date=' but it seems that no collection is complete without all four games.[/quote] And since BoE is open source and therefore free, adding it to a bundle makes absolutely no difference price-wise. Getting it to run is another problem. —Alorael, who will now go ahead and respond to the actually new reply. Yes, open-sourcing BoE was a good idea, and the OBoE project is good stuff. Slarty said it and meant it. That doesn't mean that open source means it will immediately be executable on modern systems. BoE gets far more attention than the original trilogy would, and it still isn't fully ported. Open sourcing the trilogy probably would make no difference for years except for losing Jeff some potential (but probably negligible) sales. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Well-Actually War Trall Ishad Nha Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Windows is going quite well. Ormus ported the source to 32 bit. I don't know much about programming but Chokboyz does. See the topic: "Compiling the Blades of Exile Game". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rotghroth Rhapsody Thaluikhain Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Originally Posted By: Athenry Otherwise, open-source software is never a bad thing. I'd love for the series (or at least the first two games) to be updated to fit with BoE and/or E3. I doubt it would ever happen, but perhaps some enterprising souls would take it upon themselves. Wasn't that the point of Avernum? If a third, version of the original trilogy was to be released...well...I can just see us all wearing "The Empire shot first" shirts Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted April 7, 2009 Share Posted April 7, 2009 Originally Posted By: King InuYasha Then the Exile gamedata could be forward ported to work with the BoE engine and WHAM! Instant working trilogy and then some. Apart from the obvious fact that the Exile trilogy is not free, that would run into the problem of the engines being different for the Trilogy. E3 uses almost the same engine as BoE, so that one would be fairly simple. But E1 and E2 use significantly different engines. Basically what I mean is it wouldn't be sufficient to make the original trilogy as BoE scenarios. You would have to fork the BoE source and modify it for each one. And all that is assuming Jeff gives permission, which is probably rather unlikely. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chittering Clawbug King InuYasha Posted April 8, 2009 Share Posted April 8, 2009 Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel Originally Posted By: King InuYasha Then the Exile gamedata could be forward ported to work with the BoE engine and WHAM! Instant working trilogy and then some. Apart from the obvious fact that the Exile trilogy is not free, that would run into the problem of the engines being different for the Trilogy. E3 uses almost the same engine as BoE, so that one would be fairly simple. But E1 and E2 use significantly different engines. Basically what I mean is it wouldn't be sufficient to make the original trilogy as BoE scenarios. You would have to fork the BoE source and modify it for each one. And all that is assuming Jeff gives permission, which is probably rather unlikely. I didn't assume that the trilogy game data is free. I was assuming that it would be possible to write a converter of the gamedata from the older engine to the open source one. It is true the Exile 1 and 2 do use significantly different engines, after all, they were developed to improve on the previous. With a converter, it should NOT be necessary to fork the BoE engine for each revision of the Exile trilogy. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon The Almighty Doer of Stuff Posted April 8, 2009 Share Posted April 8, 2009 What CM meant by "not free" is that it would be illegal for us to port E1-3 to BoE by any means without Jeff's permission, and he could sue us if we tried. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hatchling Cockatrice Alorael at Large Posted April 8, 2009 Share Posted April 8, 2009 Isn't all of this starting with an open-source trilogy as an assumption, though? Trying to make a converter without the code would probably be possible, but it would be even more of a huge pain. —Alorael, who supposes this is some kind of fan loyalty test: how far will you go to make a game playable on modern computers. Will you update code? Will pick apart available data even without code? Will you start from scratch and try to reverse engineer and remake the entire thing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Understated Ur-Drakon Celtic Minstrel Posted April 9, 2009 Share Posted April 9, 2009 Originally Posted By: King InuYasha I didn't assume that the trilogy game data is free. I was assuming that it would be possible to write a converter of the gamedata from the older engine to the open source one. It is true the Exile 1 and 2 do use significantly different engines, after all, they were developed to improve on the previous. With a converter, it should NOT be necessary to fork the BoE engine for each revision of the Exile trilogy. The reason I say a fork would be necessary is because I don't think Exile 1 and 2 would be quite the same if they had the BoE spellset rather than the original spellsets. For example, the Recharge Wand spell in E1. There are likely other details about the engine that I would want to retain if the trilogy were ported to the Blades engine. I wouldn't mind porting the dialogue to the new system, though I wouldn't mind leaving it in the old system either. Oh, and E1 has only humans and no traits, so you'd have to modify the BoE code to eliminate those. And I'd want to modify the BoE code for E2 to retain the Pacifist trait, even if no-one uses it. This may be just my opinion, but making E1-3 as a BoE scenario simply wouldn't be the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chittering Clawbug King InuYasha Posted April 9, 2009 Share Posted April 9, 2009 Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel Originally Posted By: King InuYasha I didn't assume that the trilogy game data is free. I was assuming that it would be possible to write a converter of the gamedata from the older engine to the open source one. It is true the Exile 1 and 2 do use significantly different engines, after all, they were developed to improve on the previous. With a converter, it should NOT be necessary to fork the BoE engine for each revision of the Exile trilogy. The reason I say a fork would be necessary is because I don't think Exile 1 and 2 would be quite the same if they had the BoE spellset rather than the original spellsets. For example, the Recharge Wand spell in E1. There are likely other details about the engine that I would want to retain if the trilogy were ported to the Blades engine. I wouldn't mind porting the dialogue to the new system, though I wouldn't mind leaving it in the old system either. Oh, and E1 has only humans and no traits, so you'd have to modify the BoE code to eliminate those. And I'd want to modify the BoE code for E2 to retain the Pacifist trait, even if no-one uses it. This may be just my opinion, but making E1-3 as a BoE scenario simply wouldn't be the same. In that case, it WOULD be just easier to branch the engine code and be done with it. If those requirements were put into place, it would make more sense as a build time option rather than forking the whole code. That is assuming that these requirements wouldn't cause the engine to require significant rewrites for each revision of Exile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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