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Compiling with winelib (again) in Blades of Exile
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It wouldn't be that tough, just a little tedious. It looks like handle_action() only gets called about 35 times, so unless other functions are having the same problem, it shouldn't take too long. (I once got to change every almost every '.' operator to a '->' operator throughout a 12,000 line program, by hand. Now that took a while.)

Also, the fact that it's being linked against what's actually a different library means that this makes some sense; the same functions should be present, but the details may differ subtly.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Compiling with winelib (again) in Blades of Exile
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You can probably ignore any warnings that mention deprecation, as this code is so old that it relies on all kinds of deprecated things, and it's not worth fixing.

As those those errors, they seem to all be about calls to handle_action() that confuse the compiler. You could maybe try casting the parameters when calling the function so that they will match its signature exactly. Other than that I'm not sure what to recommend.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
OS X Native Character Editor in Blades of Exile
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Sorry, sorry, things have been busy around here. Also, I'm not sure if I have an email address for you.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
I'm back and I've ported Character Editor for Win32 in Blades of Exile
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Already done for the Mac version. Turned out to be pretty easy after all. It falls back on bladbase if the party isn't in a scenario or if it can't find the scenario that the party is in. It also warns the player if it couldn't load the scenario specific data.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Episode 5: 'Spiderweb Resistance'. in General
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'Twas no trouble at all; I'm just happy to have another chapter to read. Thanks!

EDIT: And I love the rats' names.

[ Sunday, May 11, 2008 07:32: Message edited by: Niemand ]

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
I'm back and I've ported Character Editor for Win32 in Blades of Exile
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Ishad Nha: It looks like fixing the list of items used by the editor won't be too hard. However, there are two possibilities and I'm not quite sure which is needed: the easy one is to dump the item data out of bladbase.exs and hard code it into the editor. The harder way is to try to figure out what scenario the party is in (if any) and load data from it at runtime. Is the second needed, or will the first suffice? It seems that the second is required for customized items in third party scenarios to present in the editor.

Secondly, I've been reading through the material you've compiled on the scenario format, with an eye to solving the aforementioned problem, and I wanted to make a suggestion: It would be far more useful for rapid reference to display the locations of data within the file as absolute offsets in bytes. Since you gave the column width you were using it should be possible to reconstruct actual offsets from your numbers, but when I've tried the results have always been a little off. I suggest this because every hex editor I've used uses offsets not line numbers, and an offset is what will be required for the editor to read the file and skip the right amount of data to find the item definitions.

BTW, switching the data structure used by the editor for items will be easy, the short_item_record_type is only used for the item list and the first thing the editor does when an item is added is use convert_item() to convert it to a proper item_record_type. So, just change the type, size, and contents of item_list and then eliminate convert_item().

EDIT: Found it for myself. Item records always begin at offset 41942 within the exs file, each record is 66 bytes long and there are indeed 400 of them.

[ Sunday, May 11, 2008 06:59: Message edited by: Niemand ]

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
hmmm... a little help please in Blades of Exile
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The version of C you'll be wanting to learn is technically ANSI C and C99 specifically, but you shouldn't need to worry too much about that.

In order to learn it you can either get a book (which I highly recommend as it'll be a great reference to have around) or look things up on the internet. If you can get ahold of "The C Programming Language" 2nd edition by Kernighan and Ritchie, do so, as it's a very useful book to have. It's perhaps not the easiest to learn from, however. To be honest, I don't really know another good in-print book to learn from off the top of my head, although at a glance "Programming in C" by Kochan looks reasonable.

If you don't want to buy books (which can be expensive) or try to find good ones at libraries (which can be tough), you can always search the internet. This page is a really basic introduction, and this one looks ok too. This page seems to be a university course and looks like the best I've found just browsing around.

As to what compiler you should use, or, more to the point, which IDE, I can't answer very well, as I work primarily on Mac OS. There's always Microsoft Visual Studio, which isn't too bad and seems to be freely available to students. There's also Dev C++, which I didn't like very much and other people have had trouble using with BoE, and there may be others.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
OS X Native Character Editor in Blades of Exile
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I have now actually, so that problem's fixed. The first time I tried nothing happened, because, as it turns out, the constant used was defined in three different places with two different values, and I'd only found one at that time.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Macintosh Architecture Poll in General
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Thanks for your info everyone, this was interesting. Frankly, I'm surprised to see how fast the adoption of Leopard and Intel systems have been. However, I also see that it's probably not going to be time to drop support for Panther for a bit of a while yet.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
OS X Native Character Editor in Blades of Exile
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I believe that I have the character editor essentially working on modern versions of Mac OS. What I need now is a couple of people to test it out for me, especially since I have no actual in progress games to try it on.

So far I have found it to work on my Intel 10.5 system and PPC 10.4 system, and it will hopefully work on 10.3.9, so I could use a couple of people with different setups to try it out.

(For anyone interested in the technicality: the app itself is PowerPC for now, but seems to work great under Rosetta. It also still uses Jeff's old bad event polling system and will eat your processor if give half a chance.)

[ Friday, May 09, 2008 19:20: Message edited by: Niemand ]

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
hmmm... a little help please in Blades of Exile
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Glad to hear that someone else is interested. In order to get started you'll need to tell us what platform (Mac OS or Windows) you are working on, as this will determine which compiler you will need and what type of problems you'll likely encounter.

As to your second question, learning Java is a great thing, but to work on Blades of Exile you'll need to study up on C. It is simply not feasible to convert source code in one language to another language. Luckily, C is not a hard language to get started with, and shares much of its basic syntax with Java. Unfortunately, for either version of BoE, if you want to make any serious changes or really learn how the program works you're going to have to learn about the system libraries which it uses, which at least in the Macintosh case are so old they're unsupported. Still, that's no reason not to try.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Macintosh Architecture Poll in General
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I would like to point out that my edit above was more than a hour before Thuryl posted. He should read more. :P

As to incompatibilities, what has annoyed you say greatly, Alorael? I'll admit that the lack of Classic is an irritant, but aside from that I'm finding quite little to bother me while using a setup equivalent to yours.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Macintosh Architecture Poll in General
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As I like to create bits of software for this community, largely for use with BoA, I'm interested to know what types of Macintosh systems people around here use.

EDIT: Curse you UBB! I swear I said the first question was to use checkboxes! So, uh, kindly interpret the first question as "Which version do you use most frequently?"

Also naturally enough, as I'd like serious answers to these questions, could those of you who don't use Mac just refrain form messing with the poll please? You can always post in the thread if you have a burning desire to tell us what kind of Windoze box you use. ;)

[ Tuesday, May 06, 2008 18:58: Message edited by: Niemand ]

Poll Information
This poll contains 2 question(s). 29 user(s) have voted.
You may not view the results of this poll without voting.

function launch_voter () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=vote;pollid=dBpLNpCojxxU"); return true; } // end launch_voter function launch_viewer () { launch_window("http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=poll;d=view;pollid=dBpLNpCojxxU"); return true; } // end launch_viewer function launch_window (url) { preview = window.open( url, "preview", "width=550,height=300,toolbar=no,location=no,directories=no,status,menubar=no,scrollbars,resizable,copyhistory=no" ); window.preview.focus(); return preview; } // end launch_window IMAGE(votenow.gif)     IMAGE(voteresults.gif)

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Petition for Carbonized Character Editor in Blades of Exile
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Fear not, adherents of antiquated software, for I, Niemand, shall come to your rescue!

Ahem. That is to say, I'm working on the Character Editor for Mac OS. I now have it running, displaying its main window, and loading parties. Unfortunately, every button in the user interface turns into a "Done" button, and every sound is a system alert chime, but progress is being made.

Also, although I'm developing on 10.5, I think I should end up with a product which with be backwards compatible as far as 10.3.9.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
message_dialog error in Blades of Avernum Editor
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Let's see the portion of the script surrounding that line, particularly before it. As far as I or Alint can tell, there's nothing inherently wrong with the line you posted.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Dialog Editor for Windows??? in Blades of Avernum Editor
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To be honest, I never use the Dialogue Editor myself; I don't really like it that much. It's just easier to write the code.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Dialog Editor for Windows??? in Blades of Avernum Editor
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Yes, I did some time ago. You can find it on my utilities page.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
About my scenario in Blades of Avernum
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It's good to have lots of ideas, and I'm glad to hear that you're actively working on one. I'll admit that I haven't played your first scenario yet, but with school work I've gotten a bit behind on such things. I'm very glad to see though that you've persevered, not just to create a finished scenario, but to start work on others.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Comics in General
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I recently tracked down and assimilated the 8-Bit Theater archives. I also have a strict regime of reading Oots, Erfworld, CAD, Girl Genius, Gunnerkrigg Court, Dresden Codak, Sluggy Freelance, and XKCD. A halo of others are checked more sporadically.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Custom Graphics in Blades of Avernum Editor
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Images must be copied in PICT format. Copying from Preview or Appleworks should work, copying from newer version of Safari will not work.

(The problem is that GA only understands the PICT pasteboard flavor, which many newer programs do not supply.)

The import feature is a batch conversion tool which converts wholesale all of the Windows versions of graphics (all those dumb G___.bmp files) for a scenario into a Mac version cmg file. It is only intended for rapidly porting graphics, so it's not what you want if your assembling the graphics for a totally new scenario.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Party Size? in Blades of Avernum
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The only call provided removes all but one member of the party, and is intended to be used only while the party is in the same town. It can be used for a little more as TM showed in MA, but not much and not very well.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Party Size? in Blades of Avernum
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No, not really.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
Party Size? in Blades of Avernum
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If you want to do something like this, put in a check at the beginning of the scenario and warn the player if the party has less than three members that the scenario is not likely to function correctly, I'd say.

The trouble is, from my experience most people play with parties of either four characters or only a single character, so it's not good to assume that they have either. This can be handled in some cases by using script to beat the player's party into the shape you want, thus likely ruining it for any other use, but as a player I'd rather just be told that I should use a different party that meets the scenario's needs.

EDIT: Tsk, tsk! ES, party_size() is no variable, just look at those parentheses. :P

[ Saturday, March 22, 2008 20:00: Message edited by: Niemand ]

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
A Quick Debug in Blades of Avernum Editor
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See here for an explanation.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00
New user titles in General
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I am greatly dissatisfied.

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Überraschung des Dosenöffners!
"On guard, you musty sofa!"
"Verbs for the weak!"
Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00

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