Blades of Spiderweb Games

[Ishad Nha]

There are currently five possible new variants of Blades of Spiderweb games:

Blades of Avadon 2

Blades of Avernum 6

Blades of Avernum - Escape from the Pit

Blades of Geneforge 5

Blades of Nethergate: Resurrection

 

For brevity's sake they will be known as: "Blades of Avadon", "Blades of Avernum 6", "Blades of Avernum - Escape", "Blades of Geneforge", "Blades of Nethergate".

 

Avadon and Avernum 1 - EftP are easy to customize as they have a lot of stuff written into text files.

First four games typically have single-Byte characters for text, that makes it easy to alter anything in the game program that needs to be customized.

 

Avernum 1 - EftP is the logical choice for a second-generation version of Blades of Avernum, it is the game that most resembles BoA. It has provision for outdoor zones like N:R and unlike the other three games.

Avernum 1 - EftP may need grass graphics, for the time being we can color tint existing graphics.

Only N:R seems to have a BoA-style scenario script, Celt.dat can function in that role. So far I must access it via the Start State and I can't get it to shut off when I want to.

N:R has multiple scenario files but that is easy to handle. Instead of Bas files, Blades of Nethergate has Celt Data.dat, Roman Data.dat Shared Data.dat and Outdoor Data.dat files.

 

For N:R, actual enabling of the use of scenarios would work as I suggested in the post about Blades of Nethergate. See the Nethergate forum.

 

For the other four possibilities the "Blades of Spiderweb" game would work as follows:

Stuff that occurs in BoA but not Blades of Spiderweb would need to be cut out.

Instead of Bas files, Blades of Spiderweb would have a "ScenData.dat" file, exact name would depend on the game concerned.

Alint would need to be updated for the Spiderweb world, that would be involved, require a bit of programming.

 

Game Plan:

(1) There is a Blades of Spiderweb Scenarios folder.

(2) All scenarios are stored in scenario folders which are sub-folders of the above.

(3) There is one scenario per scenario folder.

(4) Each scenario folder contains a Scripts folder.

If there are any custom graphics, they are found in the scenario folder.

(5) To be played, a scenario must be installed, only one can be installed at a time.

(6) When a scenario is installed:

[A] Existing custom graphics are deleted. If there are any custom graphics in the new scenario, they are copied to the relevant graphics folder.

Existing Scripts folder is deleted. A new folder is copied in from the scenario folder of the newly installed scenario.

[C] If there are custom floor, terrain, object, creature or item types in the new scenario, instead of a scenario data script you would alter the core data scripts directly.

[D] ScenData.dat would need to be replaced.

 

A scenario selection dialog screen would need to be created

Ditto multiple Save# folders could be needed.

 

Earlier games would need alterations to the game program to create new Special Items or quests, this will be left till later.

 

Once one Editor can handle the Geneforge-style graphics from any one of the first four games, it will be easier to create an Editor for the other three games. The graphics should be the biggest single problem.

It might be possible to convert BoA scenarios to the Blades of Spiderweb game.

Edited October 23, 2013 by Ishad Nha

[nikki.]

Uh, what?

 

Okay. I could poke holes in what you're saying by pointing out that this

 

Avernum 1 - EftP is the logical choice for a second-generation version of Blades of Avernum, it is the game that most resembles BoA. It has provision for outdoor zones like N:R and unlike the other three games.

 

is flat out incorrect - N:R most resembles BoA, because N:R and BoA actually share an engine - but I won't. Instead, I'm going to just question your motives for making so many of these topics. The idea of a new BoA is nice, sure, but I don't think you're realising how much work it would take to make ONE of the five(!) new Blades games you're proposing, never mind several of them. You seem to have lots of ideas for how these things ought to work, but everything you've said effectively amounts to about fifteen minutes of thought, and no real strategy for making a new editor from scratch. I think at one point you said yourself that you lack the skill to make a new editor. So, I have to ask - why do you keep making these topics? One or two is fine, but it seems a new one appears every week, and each one is basically a rehashing of the last one, with no clear progress made towards a new game/editor.

 

I'm sorry if this is harsh, but honestly, I'm beginning to see why Jeff Vogel was so willing to let you mess about with the GF5 scripts - he knows how much work goes into these projects, and he knew (or had a really good idea) that nothing would ever come from it.

 

Now, by all means, prove me wrong and make these things - nothing would make me happier. But, until then, maybe not making a new post every week, all of which just rehash things that have been discussed before, would be great.

[Ishad Nha]

"Avernum 1 - EftP is the logical choice for a second-generation version of Blades of Avernum, it is the game that most resembles BoA. It has provision for outdoor zones like N:R and unlike the other three games."

I was thinking "most resembles in plot and spell system, easiest to port the plot of a BoA scenario to". N:R just uses the BoA engine, differences are not all that great in how they use it. (Then it takes hours to remove all of the differences from the code.)

 

"The idea of a new BoA is nice, sure, but I don't think you're realising how much work it would take to make ONE of the five(!) new Blades games"

I am not producing new games, I am only producing editors, just as well.

Work required for this far exceeded my expectations.

 

"...no real strategy for making a new editor from scratch. I think at one point you said yourself that you lack the skill to make a new editor."

I will be adapting the latest 3D Editor code, there is no way that I could currently make anything from scratch. These forums are graveyards for projects to make new editors from scratch.

 

"I'm sorry if this is harsh, but honestly, I'm beginning to see why Jeff Vogel was so willing to let you mess about with the GF5 scripts"

He may have been expecting that a real programmer would do it.

 

Progress in Blades of Nethergate has been adequate. I can now open the scenarios in an Editor and do editor things. I am testing the features of the game by using a ported version of the BoE/BoA scenario "Of Good and Evil". To actually play OGE I would need an N:R equivalent of the HLPM, currently my party avoids all fights because they are level 1 Britannians and the scenario is level 15+.

I can't get the scenario script to do what I want, when I want it. (Will I have better luck with Shared Data.dat?). I can't customize the names/descriptions of Special Items. I will need to alter the pathways so that it uses the graphics from the N:R Data folder, not graphics from a folder added to the BoA Data folder.

In both BoE and BoA the members of this forum have shown great ingenuity in solving all sorts of tricky problems, if I can get that behind me I should be set for success.

 

Generally you should expect slow progress. I am not the greatest programmer in the Spiderweb boards.

I will be doing new stuff all over the place, pushing programs in directions that Jeff never intended. It will take time for me to see if a new idea has merit or not.

Edited October 24, 2013 by Ishad Nha

[Ishad Nha]

I went looking for the G5 shop inventories, they seem to be in none of the scripts.

I will look for them in the G5 save game files, then I will try tracing it back to the G5 program. In Avernum 3 the inventories were recorded as arrays in the save game file.

 

So far no luck. The entries could be encrypted, no good.

One workaround:

There are 73 listed instances of "begin_shop_mode" in the G5 text files. Any scenario would have far fewer than this, so a designer could choose shops appropriate to the level of his scenario. You can customize everything except the inventory.

Edited November 2, 2013 by Ishad Nha

[Ishad Nha]

If there was ever a remake of BoA it would resemble Avernum Escape from the Pit. A remake would not happen before 2015 or 2016? Jeff would presumably do other games first, like remakes of Avernum 2 and Avernum 3 for starters.

Now I am decrypting the AEFTP, "A1 Remake", AScenData.dat file to see what is customizable and what is not. I expect problems with shops, boats and horses.

So far I have decrypted most of the outdoor record and around two-thirds of the town record.

Blades of AEFTP would show Jeff there was support for a BoA remake and would give feedback in how it should work.

 

Town record is mostly done, now I will try to sort out the odd unclear bits.

Edited November 29, 2013 by Ishad Nha

[Ishad Nha]

Avernum 1 - EftP is the logical choice for a second-generation version of Blades of Avernum, it is the game that has various BoA features. It has provision for boats and outdoor zones like N:R and unlike the other three games. It may have provision for variable town entries too.

 

Features of AEFTP:

Geneforge distinction between Terrain and Objects has been retained. Only Objects can have scripts, in BoA you have Terrain scripts while in AEFTP you have Object Scripts.

All towns are large size, 64x64, hence all town records always have the same size: 108,448 Bytes.

Fields are now Floor or Object types. Stains, bones and rocks became Floor types. Barrels, crates, webs and barriers became Objects.

There are two 64x64 floor mappings, I call them Floor 1 and Floor 2. I figure Floor 1 is straight floor and Floor 2 is stains/bones/rocks.

Each town has two separate levels. An upper town and a dungeon, the latter may be empty. Item, Object and Creatures are common to both levels. A Byte records which level something is found on.

Town/outdoor records have both BoA-style Area descriptions and Geneforge style map notes, former is for the designer while the latter is for the player?

Town/outdoor records have provision for a scenario designer to make comments for given areas.

 

I am now refining the decryption printout programs for both outdoor and town records. Latest versions are found at:

http://www.freewebs....nDecryption.zip

Decryption is still in progress.

Programs were updated again today.

Edited December 2, 2013 by Ishad Nha

[keira]

(Merging into existing topic on the subject)

[Ishad Nha]

Doors are now objects not terrain types.

 

I am trying to understand the town scripts. They usually seem not to have meaningful numbered states like 10,11,12...

Best guess is that a lot of the script stuff is now implicit. It is handled by the program not written into a script. This presumably means that Jeff has to spend less time writing scripts.

One example is found in exit town locations, here two numbers record both the x,y coordinates of the exit location and the zone it is found in. Thus square 11,27 in Zone 6,3 is recorded as 299,171. (6*48 + 11 = 299, 3*48 + 27 = 171.)

Hence you don't need an exit state with change_outdoor_location for each of the four exit directions.

[BMA]

Do you think it might be possible to create a two-player variant of any of the SW games, using the computer or enemy AI whose movements are actually controlled by the second player sitting over a network (and the reverse for the first player) ?

 

(This isn't one of those excited-newbie questions; I've been doing some actual thinking).

[Kelandon]

I don't know a great deal about the subject, but my guess is that it would require quite a lot of new code. All of the networking stuff would have to be built from scratch, and that's not a trivial task.

 

And since we don't have the source code for anything but BoE, integrating the code would be basically impossible. It's one thing to change scripts or lightly edit the terrains or something, and it's quite another to reprogram the existing game.

 

A multi-player BoE would be interesting (but probably not worth the effort).

[keira]

It would be quite difficult, but I don't believe it would be extremely difficult. Of course, I'm pretty sure I'm the only person working on BoE at the moment, so it's probably never going to happen

[Ishad Nha]

If you can rig things so that several people can use the same mouse or keyboard you would not need to touch the program at all. You would need circuitry that enabled several people to send mouse/keyboard input to the same computer. This method would be valid for any game at all.

Edited December 22, 2013 by Ishad Nha

[Ishad Nha]

The Avernum Remake town data structure, a lot of stuff is not used. I was able to compare a given unclear area in one town with the same unclear area in the other towns.

0 2 Town Number

2 26 Town Name

28 20 Town Script Name Upper Town

48 4,096 Floor 1 mapping [64][64] Upper Town

4,144 4,096 Floor 2 mapping [64][64] Upper Town

8,240 4,096 Terrain mapping [64][64] Upper Town

12,336 4,096 Unused mapping [64][64] Upper Town

16,432 4,096 Height mapping [64][64] Upper Town

20,528 960 Placed Specials Rectangles [60][16] Upper Town

21,488 120 Placed Specials [60][2] Upper Town

21,608 64 NavPoints? Upper Town,

21,672 4 Wallsets 1 and 2 Upper Town

21,676 52 Floors,cliffs?? Upper Town

21,728 256 Area Description Rectangles [16][16] Upper Town

21,984 4,096 Area Description Texts [16][256] Upper Town

26,080 120 Sign Locations [15][8] Upper Town

26,200 3,840 Sign Texts [15][256] Upper Town

30,040 80 Comment Locations [10][8] Upper Town

30,120 2,560 Comment Texts [10][256] Upper Town

32,680 80 Map Note Coordinates [10][8] Upper Town

32,760 400 Map Note Texts [10][40] Upper Town

33,160 20 Unused Dungeon

33,180 4,096 Floor 1 mapping [64][64] Dungeon

37,276 4,096 Floor 2 mapping [64][64] Dungeon

41,372 4,096 Terrain mapping [64][64] Dungeon

45,468 4,096 Unused mapping [64][64] Dungeon

49,564 4,096 Height mapping [64][64] Dungeon

53,660 960 Placed Specials Rectangles [60][16] Dungeon

54,620 120 Placed Specials [60][2] Dungeon

54,740 64 NavPoints? Dungeon

54,804 4 Wallsets 1 and 2 Dungeon

54,808 52 Floors,cliffs?? Dungeon

54,860 256 Area Description Rectangles [16][16] Dungeon

55,116 4,096 Area Description Texts [16][256] Dungeon

59,212 120 Sign Locations [15][8] Dungeon

59,332 3,840 Sign Texts [15][256] Dungeon

63,172 80 Comment Locations [10][8] Dungeon

63,252 2,560 Comment Texts [10][256] Dungeon

65,812 80 Map Note Coordinates [10][8] Dungeon

65,892 400 Map Note Texts [10][40] Dungeon

66,292 20 Unused

66,312 6,000 Item Records [300][20]

72,312 27,200 Object Records [400][68]

99,512 8,800 Creature Records [100][88]

108,312 4 Unclear

108,316 16 Town Boundary

108,332 48 Meaning very Unclear

108,380 4 Unclear

108,384 32 Town Entrances: N,W,S,E

108,416 32 Exit Town Locations

108,448 40 Unused

[Ishad Nha]

One current hassle is the inability to customize the inventories of shops, N:R excepted.

In the first Avernum trilogy the inventories are recorded in the save game files. As I recall they are written as two arrays, one for item type and one for quantity.

To customize you would need to supply a starting save game file with the altered inventories. This dictates the line-up of the starting party.

Alternately, you could write a program that alters a save file to include the new inventories. After the first saving of the game you would need to stop the game and alter the save file. Then you would reload the altered save game files.

 

Edit:

This did not work for AEFTP, the shop information seems to be encrypted in the save files somewhere.

[Kennedy]

While it'd be great if they made "Blades of Avernum - Escape from the Pit" or a game scenario creator to make games like "Avernum - Escape from the Pit" I'm afraid there isn't much likelihood of that happening. As I recall the sales for BoA were rather lackluster and Jeff said the program was quite difficult to code.

[Ishad Nha]

If Blades of Exile was successful and Blades of Avernum is not, the problem is clearly not the basic concept of BoA. Rather the problem would seem to be in the details of how BoA works in practice:

• no built-in version of Alint, how about use the game engine to run a sub-program that will parse game scripts and check them for errors?
  
• no Ascipt either
  
• porting BoE scenarios to the BoA game is an art-form that is not for the faint of heart.
  
• many features of earlier Spiderweb games are not found.
  
• Windows users have to juggle a whole lot of Avernumscript calls, the calls are a mess, frequently you can't find what you want.
  

 

Sales for BoA were probably affected by the problems the game had, not by the concept itself.

[Kelandon]

• Windows users have to juggle a whole lot of Avernumscript calls, the calls are a mess, frequently you can't find what you want.
  

I don't know how this is any different for Windows users than it is for Mac users.

 

The basic problem with BoA was that making scenarios for it was a lot harder than it was for BoE. Even with the 3D Editor, Ascript, Alint, etc., you still basically have to learn to program. You could make a lot of stuff in BoE without any real sense of how to code. You just can't do that in BoA. Also, making towns is quite a bit harder: in BoE, in each space, you just had a floor and maybe a stain, but in BoA, you have a floor, probably a terrain, a height, and maybe a stain. It also didn't help that BoE was probably Spidweb's best combat/skill/spell engine so far, and BoA was probably Spidweb's worst.

 

The net effect is that you could make a passable BoE scenario in a few hours with just some fiddling without knowing anything beforehand, but in BoA, you couldn't make your first scenario in under a few days, and it was hard to do in under a few weeks, and your first BoE scenario was probably going to be pretty fun, but your first BoA scenario was probably going to suck.

[Ishad Nha]

"I don't know how this is any different for Windows users than it is for Mac users."

I thought Ascript took a lot of the hassles out of scripting? I am Windows of course.

[Jerakeen]

Ascript is extremely useful for finding errors (frankly I'd be horrified at the prospect of trying to script a whole scenario without it), but it doesn't tell you everything. And trying to find the right calls is still a frustrating process of searching through the often sketchy documentation, then usually some trial and error, then probably begging for help on the forums.

[Vox]

Agreed!

Finding the right calls can be a nuisance if you're trying to do something for the first time...

 

I would just like to mention, Avernum 1 would make a nice blades. I'm a pretty big fan of the original Avernum history. But it would also be easier and more appealing for designers that have already been hardened by BoA to make scenarios. Blades of Geneforge may prove difficult, and take some time before anyone starts producing quality scenarios.

 

Either way, I'm doubtful anymore blades will come out. But it's fun to dream a little. (And who here isn't a nostalgia junky like me?)

[Ishad Nha]

A1 is nice, Chessrook44 is doing a Let's Play of it now.

As a Blades of Spiderweb game, it is problematic. All its special nodes seem to be both encrypted and hidden in the main program itself.

[keira]

Itd be cool of Avernum had a Blades equivalent. They'd probably call it Blades of Avernum.

 

Also, not to be pedantic, but encoding as binary and/or compiling into bytecode do not satisfy any contemporary definition of encryption.

[Ishad Nha]

I think it is encrypted. I can read all of the outdoor and town records for A1 easily enough. For the life of me I can't find where the special nodes are located. There is no room for them in the outdoor and town data files.

I am not sure they follow the pattern of BoE or BoA...

[Celtic Minstrel]

I think it is encrypted.

You can think what you like, but that doesn't make it right. It's almost certainly not encrypted. It's encoded in a bonary format, which I think is what you really mean when you say "encrypted". However, it's not encrypted. Encryption is like the XOR effect applied to the BoE save files, a way of obfuscating the encoded data.

[Ishad Nha]

Dear CM, if you can find it, more power to you. You should have a go yourself, you will see what I mean.

By encrypted I mean obfuscated, like the BoE XORing of the save files.

If I failed to find it anywhere, I think it is hidden and encrypted. I found and understood the Original Nethergate special nodes easily.

 

If A1 uses BoA-style scripting that is encoded not obfuscated, that would be hard to spot.

[Kelandon]

By encrypted I mean obfuscated, like the BoE XORing of the save files.

If I failed to find it anywhere, I think it is hidden and encrypted.

I'm pretty sure you still are using the word "encrypted" wrong. If it were encrypted, it wouldn't just be hard to find; it would be that you can find it but you need a cipher to decrypt it (a cipher that, presumably, you don't possess).

 

What you mean is that it's hard-coded and you're not sure where. No one is challenging that it's hard-coded in a difficult-to-find place. You're just using the wrong word.

 

No one would care, except that you consistently use the word "encrypted" to mean something that it doesn't mean, which is confusing and mildly annoying.

[Ishad Nha]

I figure Jeff has encrypted/encyphered it, specials need to be decoded by some sub-routine in the A1 program.

I can neither find it nor decrypt it. If I can't find it that suggests a cypher is at work or it is in a format very different to that of BoE.

Edit:

Dialog nodes are found in the town records, they work much like their BoE counterparts.

There is simply not enough room in the town records for a BoE-style array of special nodes. Only 74 Bytes have not had their meaning identified.

That seems to leave the Avernum.exe program as the only location for any special nodes.

At one point I tried to decrypt/locate the A2 special nodes, I came to the conclusion that they were obfuscated not just encoded.

Edited July 13, 2014 by Ishad Nha

[Aran]

encrypted/encyphered

 

It doesn't mean what you think it means. This is about as frustrating and confusing as a user who consistently calls their monitor a "computer" and their computer a "monitor". It's hard to take what you say seriously, especially since I'm at least the third programmer in this topic alone to point it out.

 

At one point I tried to decrypt/locate the A2 special nodes, I came to the conclusion that they were obfuscated not just encoded.

 

Jeff has almost certainly not deliberately made it harder to read this data. Why would he? It's a waste of time even if he wasn't opposed to DRM. Any difficulty in reverse-engineering the scenario format (that's what this is called, by the way: reverse-engineering) results solely from a lack of documentation and a lack of the source code.

 

This isn't just terminological quibbling. Reverse-engineering depends on guessing how it was engineered in the first place. If we (reasonably) assume that it isn't deliberately obfuscated (let alone encrypted), this makes a big difference.

[Ishad Nha]

Jeff has used obfuscation in the past, BoE scenario passwords and XORing the Exile save files.

I figure he obfuscated the A1 specials for copyright reasons. It would not take long for the A1 program to decrypt some of its own content. Code obfuscation could be quite simple but still very effective because you don't know where the specials start and stop.

Obfuscation is only a guess on my part.

[keira]

is there any evidence to show he has ever done this with scenario specials or scripts in any way. Please touch where this is happening.

 

Unless you can touch, you are speculating and it would be appreciated if you don't try to pass off speculation as fact. I mean, its certainly possible he has, but I doubt it given that no other game hides the specials like this (that I am aware). Of course, its also possible he's using advanced RSA encryption on everything.

[Ishad Nha]

I am making it clear that it is speculation not known fact.

Town/outdoor specials must be found in the main program, there is no room for them otherwise.

As the program is 9.5MB, there is plenty of room to hide the specials.

[Kelandon]

Town/outdoor specials must be found in the main program, there is no room for them otherwise.

As the program is 9.5MB, there is plenty of room to hide the specials.

I think you're right that the specials are in the main program. I also think that they're not encrypted. They're probably just hard to identify.

[Ishad Nha]

Not only do you have the problems finding anything but the program is full of an unusual number of compiled resources to add to the complication. Terrain and floor graphics for starters.

[Kelandon]

Oh yeah! I remember that. I opened some of those things in ResEdit back in the day and found a lot of the in-game text. That's why I think the specials are there (unencrypted).

[Celtic Minstrel]

If it's in the executable it might be found with a resource editor?

[Ishad Nha]

ResHacker won't do it, you would need a decompiler I figure.

[Celtic Minstrel]

You'd need a decompiler only if the special nodes were coded in C(++). Which probably isn't very likely. It's possible they're hard-coded as struct values though, in which case they wouldn't be accessible as resources.

[Little Fyora]

So for all you hobbyist/professional progammers out there, we have a problem.

 

I've been working on a program that creates a look-alike of a Geneforge game, and so far it simulates the floors and most walls quite well. The problem is, the entire coding relies on having all the floor/terrain/etc images as resources included within the executable, unlike the actual Geneforge 5.exe which dynamically loads all the *.png graphics from within the "Geneforge 5 files" folder.

 

The entire program is created with Game Maker (a game making engine which uses a C/C++ interpreted variant, and can load DLL's), and GM does have a function to load an external *.png image, but the problem is with transparency. When loading a *.png, it always considers (no workaround) the bottom-left pixel as the transparent pixel denoter for the whole image. No doubt the makers of GM did this instead of passing a colour's name as a parameter as they wanted to simplify things. Now for the game, White is obviously the colour that should be made transparent, but some of the Geneforge 5 graphics have a useless black line at the bottom. And all programs made with GM which load those images will check the bottom-left pixel, find it black, and happily go about making all the black pixels in the entire image transparent.

 

Is there a workaround for this ?

 

Edit : Btw I mentioned that all the images are included within the exe. I did this through the painful and redundant process of cutting up all the *.png graphics into new individual sprites within the program. A waste of effort, I'm sure you'll agree, and I'd like to hear your ideas/pointers regarding this.

Edited July 26, 2014 by Little Fyora

[Kennedy]

But some of the Geneforge 5 graphics have a useless black line at the bottom. And all programs made with GM which load those images will check the bottom-left pixel, find it black, and happily go about making all the black pixels in the entire image transparent.

 

Is there a workaround for this ?

 

Perhaps you could repaint that line for all the graphics and make it white, though that could be a lot of work if it takes place in many graphics.

[Ishad Nha]

"The problem is, the entire coding relies on having all the floor/terrain/etc images as resources included within the executable"

This was true for both the Original Nethergate and Avernum 1, that is why you don't see floor/terrain graphics in their Data folders.

 

I know nothing about Game Maker so I will need to look into this.

[Little Fyora]

Perhaps you could repaint that line for all the graphics and make it white, though that could be a lot of work if it takes place in many graphics.

 

I did consider that, and painting that line white is as simple as using a fill-bucket tool, but doing that will only change the graphics on one system. Then we'll have to include all the customized graphics along with the Zone Simulator and ask the user to replace the original ones (which isn't so bad, but if there's an alternative it'd be nice).

 

Here's the problem :-

 

 

The black border would have been okay if they were all precise to the pixel for all of the images, but they're not and neither does GM allow custom-set transparency.

 

This was true for both the Original Nethergate and Avernum 1, that is why you don't see floor/terrain graphics in their Data folders.

 

Interesting. That would have made modding the graphics more difficult while increasing the size of the *.exe.

[Ishad Nha]

A2 program was about a third of the size of the A1 program.

 

There is no option for telling the program that your graphics have frames around them?

 

If Game Maker were a Sourceforge open-source program you might be able to edit the source code and then compile your own version of it. You might find something on the Sourceforge site, a freeware game maker program that does not have this problem, but I don't know.

Edited July 27, 2014 by Ishad Nha

[Little Fyora]

There is no option for telling the program that your graphics have frames around them?

 

No it always takes the bottom-left pixel into account for transparency. As far as I have seen from their forums, there is nothing anybody can do about this.

 

GM's commercial and we don't have the source. Here's why one must never rely on game engines like these; creating the same thing in SFML or SDL with good old C/C++ would have taken a lot of time, but at least the programmer has complete control.

 

This is the function in GM's scripting language to load an image from a file :-

 

sprite_add(fname,imgnumb,removeback,smooth,xorig,yorig)

 

imgnumb : Number of sub-images in the file.

removeback : Here you set true to remove the background colour (which is the colour of the bottom-left pixel).

[Ishad Nha]

Sourceforge might have some suitable programs...

[keira]

why dont you just crop the border out

[Little Fyora]

Sourceforge might have some suitable programs...

 

I saw a few open source engines but it'd be too much work to port it from GM to something else (and I shudder at the learning curve), so keeping that as the last alternative.

 

why dont you just crop the border out

 

Can whiten the border but having to tell the users to swap out their original images with the modified ones is totally uncool imo, though it may come to that.

[keira]

Throw in an imagemagick binary and a batch script.

 

Hell, I doubt you'd need it, but gimp's script-fu is powerful as hell

[Little Fyora]

Imagemagick looks great, thank you ! Checking it out right now.

Edited July 29, 2014 by Little Fyora

[Ishad Nha]

Blades of AEFTP may or may not be even possible. Nearly all of the town and outdoor placed specials seem to be hard coded.

New AEFTP scenarios would need to be able to bypass the hard coding. I don't know if new or existing town/outdoor scripts can override the hard coded specials or not.

Edit:

Message dialogs are no problem, they are found in a text file. Ditto dialog.

Regular placed specials can't be overwritten. As their location in the Avernum program is currently unknown, you can't be sure how many states each town has.

Object scripts are one possibility, along with Init State and Start State of the town script.

Edited March 23, 2015 by Ishad Nha

[Little Fyora]

I've to get back to adding a character editor to the zone simulator. Whew, making a Spiderweb game is fun, but it's no joke even when you have all the data and just need to make a front-end. I don't know how Jeff does it even though it is his job.

 

As always, I'd love to share the Game Maker source (as messy as it is right now) to anyone who's interested and can develop it further.