BoE Scenarios Archive? And BoE Version

[Richard Bacon]

Nevermind I found the Links through the chat. 

 

Anyways, So any new scenarios anyones found really interesting? and exciting?  Came back from being around 2 years ago and sadly came to find out www.truesite4blades.com no longer functions to connect at all. Any Ideas where to be able to find the entire scenario archive?

 

And I can't find a version that works for Vista. text fails to load in etc. I need the 2013 build but its link no longer functions?

Edited June 23, 2018 by Richard Bacon
Found Links and changed Topic Subject(idk how to delete)

[Richard Bacon]

I had a build that Minstrel gave me years ago it was in a 7z. Can't seem to find it anylonger. It ran perfectly on any operating system. Text and everything showed

[Richard Bacon]

None of the calref links work or anything. What happened to everything? Did it all get moved or something? I remember BoE worked on any operating system i used for with Compatibility options with the CBoE Installer linked above these threads

Edited June 23, 2018 by Richard Bacon

[Celtic Minstrel]

I guess both CalRef and TrueSite are down unfortunately... and I'm not sure if there's another place that hosts all the scenarios. The download links on my site still work, but I don't have any stable builds up there.

[Richard Bacon]

4 minutes ago, Celtic Minstrel said:

I guess both CalRef and TrueSite are down unfortunately... and I'm not sure if there's another place that hosts all the scenarios. The download links on my site still work, but I don't have any stable builds up there.

Let me try Wayback Machining Truesite I'll see what i can find

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

If they're not on OpenBoE.com, I'll stick them there right now.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I hope so anyway. McDonald's wifi is worse than usual today.

[Richard Bacon]

Truesite exists in the wayback machine. But the downloads were never archived n the machine unfortunately

[Richard Bacon]

I guess theres no way to ever get anymore scenarios?

[Celtic Minstrel]

ADoS: Is this where you're putting them now or was that already there?

 

Could we get a brief (one or two sentence) description of each scenario in that list (including the scenario's actual title)? I'd like to insert said description into the "Description" column on that page. (It'd probably be better to have a proper index.html, but adding a description would be better than doing nothing.)

[Richard Bacon]

2 minutes ago, Celtic Minstrel said:

ADoS: Is this where you're putting them now or was that already there?

 

Could we get a brief (one or two sentence) description of each scenario in that list (including the scenario's actual title)? I'd like to insert said description into the "Description" column on that page. (It'd probably be better to have a proper index.html, but adding a description would be better than doing nothing.)

Would you like any help with that Celtic? Would just be copy paste over and over from the snapshots 

 

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Oh they're there already? Good. I can't get the directory listing with FileZilla. Eventually I was hoping you or someone would make an actual database, but for now they're just kinda piled there.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

As for describing every scenario, not right now. But there are probably descriptions on the Wayback Machine TrueSite, even if the scenarios themselves are not there.

[Celtic Minstrel]

11 minutes ago, Richard Bacon said:

Would you like any help with that Celtic? Would just be copy paste over and over from the snapshots 

 

If you could give me a list of all the descriptions and the corresponding downloadable filename, that should be helpful. I could probably use regexes or something to transform it to the required format. (EDIT: Also it doesn't need to be in any particular order, if that helps.)

 

ADoS: Any objections to using the formatting on my website's download list for the scenario list on openboe.com? It means copying a couple of files from my website to openboe.com.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Eh. It's better than just a file list, for now anyway.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Can I get a link to download a copy of all the scenarios to keep my own backup?

[Celtic Minstrel]

At the moment the best you can do is download each one individually from the earlier link, sorry.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

Not a problem. For anyone's reference, I used a bash command to automate the download:

wget -r -np -nH -R index.html http://openboe.com/scenarios/

 

[Richard Bacon]

23 hours ago, Celtic Minstrel said:

If you could give me a list of all the descriptions and the corresponding downloadable filename, that should be helpful. I could probably use regexes or something to transform it to the required format. (EDIT: Also it doesn't need to be in any particular order, if that helps.)

 

ADoS: Any objections to using the formatting on my website's download list for the scenario list on openboe.com? It means copying a couple of files from my website to openboe.com.

Why yes i can certainly do that. I'll get right to it after tonight

 

[Ess-Eschas]

Hello all,

 

21 hours ago, Duck in a Top Hat said:

Can I get a link to download a copy of all the scenarios to keep my own backup?

 

Duck did post a good way of getting all the downloads from the OpenBoE list above. However, for those who are less programming savvy, I have a mostly complete list of BoE scenarios in a single zip file, which I’ll upload for a while for convenience.

 

This is a copy of the old BoE AllScen project that was put together by w-dueck ten years ago. It contains the majority of BoE scenarios written by mid-2008, which I believe is almost everything that used to be on TrueSite and Kel’s archive. It contains 293 scenarios in all!

 

Here’s a link that should last for a month or two:

 

http://wikisend.com/download/236460/

 

It also includes a few scenarios that aren’t on the OpenBoE scenario list posted above – although the reverse is also true!

[Celtic Minstrel]

Is that a zip of the actual scenarios then? That's helpful, though different from what I've asked Richard Bacon about.

[Ess-Eschas]

21 hours ago, Celtic Minstrel said:

That's helpful, though different from what I've asked Richard Bacon about.

 

Sure! However, Duck did ask for a copy of all the scenarios a little earlier in the thread. While a workaround was posted involving bash, I thought that I would put up a more conventional download link; it might help anyone in future that stumbles across this thread looking for something similar, but is not confident in using bash commands.

 

Sorry for the confusion!

Edited June 25, 2018 by Ess-Eschas
Fixing some grammar

[Richard Bacon]

8 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:

 

Sure! However, Duck did ask for a copy of all the scenarios a little earlier in the thread. While he posted a workaround involving bash, I thought that I would put up a more conventional download link; it might help anyone in future that stumbles across this thread looking for something similar, but is not confident in using bash commands.

 

Sorry for the confusion!

Too late I already clicked 343 times and downloaded everything individually lol

 

[Richard Bacon]

On 6/23/2018 at 8:57 PM, Celtic Minstrel said:

At the moment the best you can do is download each one individually from the earlier link, sorry.

I'm gonna start a private message with you and paste the descriptions of the scenarios I could find had them on the Truesite Snapshots.

Edited June 25, 2018 by Richard Bacon

[Celtic Minstrel]

Still planning to do that? It's been like two days and I haven't seen anything.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

I don't know how big scenario files are, but unless they're somehow massive, couldn't we just add the definitive version of every known BoE scenario to the CBoE repository and package them with the binaries to keep the files preserved in a player-accessible manner for as long as the project is alive?

Edited June 29, 2018 by Duck in a Top Hat

[Kelandon]

I believe a zip of every BoE scenario ever released would be in the ballpark of 60 megabytes. Pretty manageable in this day and age.

[fractalnavel]

Use GitHub.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

@fractalnavel The source code for CBoE is already on GitHub, so yeah, what I'm suggesting is to add the scenarios to the same repo to keep all the BoE content centralized under version control.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

The scenarios are not necessarily released under a Free license. That's why I've been hesitant to suggest sticking them with the OBoE project. There is lots of precedence for hosting scenarios on sites like TrueSite, OpenBoE.com, and others, but I'm not sure we can go so far as to package unofficial scenarios with the program or include them in the code repository.

I am no expert on copyright law, mind you, but that's how I've understood it.

[Kelandon]

55 minutes ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:

The scenarios are not necessarily released under a Free license. That's why I've been hesitant to suggest sticking them with the OBoE project. There is lots of precedence for hosting scenarios on sites like TrueSite, OpenBoE.com, and others, but I'm not sure we can go so far as to package unofficial scenarios with the program or include them in the code repository.

I am no expert on copyright law, mind you, but that's how I've understood it.

I can't think of a meaningful legal difference between hosting the scenarios individually without permission and hosting them in a batch without permission, and I don't think most designers gave TrueSite (etc.) permission. Also, it would take a real asshole to file a copyright infringement suit right away — the most likely outcome is that someone would ask to be excluded, and you'd just have to comply. Or maybe a DMCA takedown notice; I did that once with someone who was hosting my scenarios without permission and being kind of obnoxious about it.

 

Note: Not legal advice, though I am a lawyer and I studied copyright law at one point.

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

Well, yeah, but I'm not talking about a batch generally, but rather including them with the open source project. I don't know if that would be any different, but it kinda feels a little shakier somehow, like it would feel more like a direct claim that the scenarios were under an equally Free license.

 

Is anyone actually talking about that? I'm not sure. Maybe I misread something.

[Duck in a Top Hat]

We could include a separate license file acknowledging that copyright is held by their original creators, not the maintainers of OBoE, but the scenarios are bundled with the source code under the conditions of Fair Use. I'm not a lawyer but I've read up on it, and here's a quick resource: https://fairuse.stanford.edu/overview/fair-use/four-factors/

 

Quote

The four factors judges consider are:

• the purpose and character of your use
• the nature of the copyrighted work
• the amount and substantiality of the portion taken, and
• the effect of the use upon the potential market.

 

Including them in the repository would fall under the purpose of historical preservation of the material, all of which was created in the spirit of being shared for community members to experience without charge, and stands to have no effect on any scenario designer's potential market unless anyone is still specifically relying on website traffic driven by the Blades community (doubtful).

Edited June 29, 2018 by Duck in a Top Hat

[The Almighty Doer of Stuff]

I hadn't thought of Fair Use being applied here, but it doesn't strike me as unreasonable. Thanks. And like Kelandon said, anyone is free to object and I'm sure none of use would object to something being taken down if someone does.

[Kelandon]

1 hour ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:

Well, yeah, but I'm not talking about a batch generally, but rather including them with the open source project. I don't know if that would be any different, but it kinda feels a little shakier somehow, like it would feel more like a direct claim that the scenarios were under an equally Free license.

Distributing is distributing is distributing. Copies are copies, whether individually, batched, or batched together with something else.

 

Note: Still not legal advice.

[fractalnavel]

You may want to use a separate site / GitHub user / repository for items with different perceived risks, just in case.

[Celtic Minstrel]

I'm not going to include the scenarios in the OBoE repository. Including them in a separate GitHub repo might be a possibility, though. (I guess I'd want to create an OBoE organization and move the repo over to it if we're gonna do that.)

[Richard Bacon]

On 6/27/2018 at 7:02 PM, Celtic Minstrel said:

Still planning to do that? It's been like two days and I haven't seen anything.

I do apologize about this ive been busy with work and having to work alot of hours. If and whenever I am even here I only have a few minutes. I looked and there are no more descriptions for the scenarios on the wayback machine. Most were lost

[BainIhrno]

So I'm curious - any scenario editor other than the new experimental one that will run on Mac OS X? I've tried some windows and PowerPC emulators, but they don't work on my computer.

[Ess-Eschas]

Hello BainIhrno,

I'm not aware of any complete port that will run on Intel Macs, I'm afraid. One of the new experimental builds can open old scenarios, so you can use it to browse through scenarios if needed, but you won't be able to save any changes. I do have a pre-Intel version that works like a charm, but it sounds like that won't be useful for you.

 

This might not be a helpful suggestion, but have you looked into going back even earlier in time and emulating Mac Classic? It is a little bit of a pain to set up, but I feel it's easier than setting up Windows or PowerPC emulators – at least if you're not paying money to do it. I can run the editor this way using the program 'SheepShaver' to emulate Mac OS 7.5.5, and it works like a dream. The advantage of setting up the system this way is that you can also run Blades in its original environment, so you're getting the full experience as Jeff originally wrote it! However, it's also easy to move scenario files to and from the 'fake' Classic machine, so you can always use the scenario editor in Classic and move the files over to your Intel machine to play them there – so you can use the editor and enjoy the quality-of-life improvements that have been added in newer versions.

A number of people have set up convenient Classic emulators using SheepShaver over the years, so you should be able to find some good advice by searching online. If you're having problems, I might be able to give you some pointers.

 

One other, much easier, option is to see if you can get hold of Tyranicus. He made a Wineskin version of the editor back in 2013. The link he posted seems to be down now, and it's not on the Archive, but he (or indeed some others on the forums) might still have a copy floating around for you. That won't require any porting – the editor will behave just like a normal Mac application, but it's actually pretending to be Windows. It can run straight out of the box!

[zugzwang]

I was distressed to see how fragile this part of our history seems to be. It should take more than a website or two going down to wipe it out!

So for insurance, I downloaded the scenario collection from openboe.com and made a trackerless torrent out of it.

The hash is d5356f060c104e9fd1dbf7a23fe348c6c26897da.

That should be all you need in a modern bittorrent client: just enter that hash and you should find it on the DHT as long as someone in the world is sharing it.

Then you can share it yourself until the world ends.

Magnet link: magnet:?xt=urn:btih:d5356f060c104e9fd1dbf7a23fe348c6c26897da

P.S. a quick WWP to Slarty, if he's still around!

Edited August 24, 2019 by zugzwang
attempting to relinkify magnet link

[Slawbug]

Holy crap.  You're that Zugzwang!  It's been... 10 years probably?  11?

 

Hope you're well!

 

...We won't talk about how long I googled what I thought was an acronym before I realized what that really was.  Please enjoy the DPP from me.

[Celtic Minstrel]

Nice! I've added it to my torrent program for indefinite seeding. Also just for the record, it's openboe.com, not .net.

 

EDIT: Speaking of which, I also added a link to the torrent right there on openboe.com.

 

EDIT2: I also noticed there doesn't seem to be a link to openboe.com in the forum header? Anyone want to add that for me? I'd do it myself but I'm not sure where to fit it in... also, the documentation links should probably be updated to point to openboe.com too (you can find that link from the openboe.com front page).

[zugzwang]

Celtic Minstrel: I fixed the openboe link in my post. Thanks for seeding and
adding the magnet link!

Slarty/whatever: yep! Glad you still exist, and got the reference. I hope
everyone else is jealous that they don't get it. Those were the days, eh?

Meanwhile, you'll never guess (and I'll never tell) which of these scenarios
represents my own pretentious juvenalia! Those, too, were the days.

[BainIhrno]

Question: I'm running Parallels Windows 10. I did get it to work, but the game runs very slowly, and the sound and animations seem very messed up in combat. I tried just downloading the original version of the game from Spiderweb's site (so I could at least play), but it says that it "doesn't run on this computer". Any ideas what might be going on?

[Celtic Minstrel]

The original version from Spiderweb's site probably requires a 32-bit machine, so if it's possible to set Parallels to emulate 32-bit, that might allow it to run. Otherwise I'd just recommend using a DOSBox-based Windows 3.1 install instead of Parallels for the original version (same as the Exile trilogy).

 

The messed up animations might be an actual bug in the open source copy, I can't remember.

[relayer250]

Celtic Minstrel,

Came across your archive of the scenarios on openboe.com and I am thankful for you maintaining it. Knowing also that the True Site 4 Blades site is no longer, there are resources from there such as the Extras and the Comprehensive BoE Walkthroughs that, while some of the pages are available on the Wayback Machine, many of the files are not. Are these kept or hosted anywhere? I ask because I came across this http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/24403-true-site-for-blades-is-down/ thread and was wondering what happened. Thanks!

[Sokhbep]

Downloaded the entire catalog from http://openboe.com/scenarios/ as the magnet link seems to not work.

 

The scenario called "ShottsModland" results in an empty folder when extracted.

Edited September 3, 2022 by Sokhbep

[Celtic Minstrel]

I think I forgot to keep up seeding on the torrent when I got my new computer… I think there are some other issues with the archive though, so it's likely better to fix those and then make a new torrent.

 

Also note, an archive of TrueSite 4 Blades is available at truesite.openboe.com – it's also missing a few things, but it's likely more complete than the Wayback Machine as I got the files directly from the website's original maintainer.

[Misc Staple]

On 9/3/2022 at 3:00 PM, Sokhbep said:

The scenario called "ShottsModland" results in an empty folder when extracted.

When I open it, there's two files from 2005: "hpothb07.dat" which is one kilobyte and "hpothb07.tif" which is a tiny version of what looks like a sprite sheet of BoE party members. They are both flagged as hidden, though.