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N:R Not working at all&Laptop exploding battery in Tech Support
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Friday, June 15 2007 08:33 Profile #3
Sounds like you've got something screwy installed in your OS 9 partition. Try changing your extension set to Mac OS 9 Base (use the Extensions Manager control panel to do this) and see if that fixes things.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Who has the REAL OLD Exile: Escape From The Pit??? in The Exile Trilogy
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Thursday, June 14 2007 00:29 Profile #35
Here you go.

IMAGE(http://i19.tinypic.com/62z7ixg.png)
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Blades of Exile Source Code Released in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Friday, June 8 2007 14:23 Profile #66
Incidentally, I just built BoE on OS 9 using CodeWarrior, and the windowed mode looked kind of weird there too.

I think I figured out what was causing the menu-hiding weirdness, though. BoE defines "HideMenuBar" and "ShowMenuBar", but these were later defined in the Toolbox. Changing these to "DoHideMenuBar" and "DoShowMenuBar" solved a link error on OS 9, and would probably fix some of the startup weirdness under Carbon.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Who has the REAL OLD Exile: Escape From The Pit??? in The Exile Trilogy
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Friday, June 8 2007 14:19 Profile #32
Exile II (my personal favorite) had most of the gameplay advances that were missing from the original Exile. Doors that opened, fields, more spells... if you haven't played it, give it a try.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Dialog/Quest code usability? in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Thursday, May 31 2007 12:41 Profile #1
The terms of the BoE license dictate that its code can only be reused in code that is made available under the same license.

In practical terms, though, you're probably much better off writing your own implementation from scratch. BoE is very old and messy; trying to integrate its dialogue engine (which isn't really that complex anyway) into your own code is a recipe for frustration.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Custom graphics foul up?? in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Thursday, May 31 2007 12:38 Profile #2
1008 mod 256 = 240

My guess is that the talking graphic is a byte-sized value. You'll have to use a picture ID below 256.

[ Thursday, May 31, 2007 12:40: Message edited by: Duskwolf ]
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Open Source BoE Projects Summary in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Wednesday, May 30 2007 16:56 Profile #2
A first step in open-source BoE development should definitely be merging the Mac OS and Windows ports into a single source tree. Most of the code is indeed platform-independent (Jeff's confirmed this in another thread), so there's no reason it shouldn't be possible. More importantly, merging the two trees will make it less likely that development on the different versions will diverge in the future (which would be a Very Bad Thing).

Even something as simple as generating a set of #ifdefs that'd conditionally enable code for the appropriate platform would be invaluable. As soon as someone's got a working Win32 version, merging it with the Carbon version should be a top priority. I realize this isn't a particularly interesting task, but it needs to be done as soon as possible to avoid creating an inadvertent fork.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
OBoE in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Monday, May 28 2007 21:10 Profile #11
Google Code would be an excellent option for hosting if it weren't for the license. They've got Subversion repo, wiki, downloads, and issue tracking. However, they limit projects to using a small set of open-source licenses: Apache, Artistic/GPL2, GPL2, LGPL, MIT, MPL, or New BSD. Wikipedia says the Common Public License (which the Blades code was released under) isn't GPL-compatible, and IBM's CPL FAQ says it isn't generally compatible with relicensing. I'm kind of wondering whether Jeff would be willing to cross-license under something less restrictive like the MIT License:

quote:
Copyright (c) <year> <copyright holders>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person
obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation
files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without
restriction, including without limitation the rights to use,
copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the
Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following
conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be
included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND,
EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES
OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND
NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT
HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY,
WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING
FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR
OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
The main hang-up with the Common Public License is that it's got a weird clause about granting patents. It's well-intentioned, but ends up making CPL code incompatible with just about every other OSI license.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
OBoE in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Monday, May 28 2007 15:47 Profile #7
Big idea #1: Move Blades from a "statically allocated" to a "dynamically allocated" model.

Specifically, right now, a lot of the scenario file format is based on a fixed number of "slots" for various things: 16 room rects and 30/40/60 creatures per dungeon, 30 boats per scenario, and so on. While coding Blades this way undoubtedly made certain things easier, it's also an unnecessary limitation. The zero-one-infinity rule applies here.

So move to a dynamic model for everything. This would require a transition to a completely new scenario file format, but that's doable - compatibility can be managed by either leaving in support for loading old scenarios, or writing a converter. This would involve rearchitecting a lot of the internal data structures as well, but that's really less of a problem.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Node Limit in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Monday, May 28 2007 15:20 Profile #14
As far as I can tell, increasing the limit on the number of nodes executed in a single encounter is just a matter of increasing the constant at special.c:1655:

1655| if (num_nodes >= 50) {The only effect of increasing this value would be that encounters longer than 50 nodes would no longer error out. Otherwise, functionality would be identical.

There's a completely separate limit of 50 special nodes per town, which can't be increased without modifying the scenario format. Fixing this would probably be best accomplished by "dynamicizing" allocations throughout the program - probably a good idea in the long run, but not a small task. More on this in OBoE.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Blades of Exile Source Code Released in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Sunday, May 27 2007 16:02 Profile #52
r4 is acting stranger than r1 did with regard to windowing. Now it starts up normally but sometimes adds a title bar to the fullscreen window during the startup process, right after the second splash image shows up. I can't figure out what's triggering it, exactly. I'll grab the source after I make this post and take a look at what might be going on.

Also, "never show instant help" is completely broken. I'm getting instant help every single time I open the preferences window, whether I've checked the option or not. Rather annoying.

Probably want to get rid of the shareware window, too. Replace it with "license info", perhaps? There's certainly no point in telling users that they can send in $30 to get the program on three 3.5" floppies anymore.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Blades of Exile Source Code Released in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Saturday, May 26 2007 23:52 Profile #41
Khoth's Carbonized build works quite nicely on my PPC machine. It looks a little "off" in windowed mode, though - the content ends up shifted to the left a bit (maybe 16 px or so), and the splash doesn't quite draw properly.

Haven't tried loading an old-style save, so no idea how that works. Issues with those are probably just a matter of a missing or an extra endian swap, though, and might not manifest on PPC anyway. Loaded its own savefiles just fine, though.

And yes, the initial "i can has 256 colors plz" dialog is completely redundant under OS X. Kill it with fire.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Blades of Exile Source Code Released in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Sunday, May 13 2007 16:59 Profile #14
quote:
Originally written by Tesseract:

Khoth, I haven't encountered a VCS that will handle resource forks out of the box. You could probably do some AppleDouble magic using commit hooks, but that's a pain. The first thing I did with the source was to move all the resources to the data fork by running "DeRez foo.rsrc > foo.rez && Rez foo.rez -o foo.rsrc -useDF" for each resource file.
Easier solution:
dd if=foo.rsrc/rsrc foo.rsrcNo need to roundtrip through Rez format.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Exile 2 spontaneously quitting in Tech Support
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Saturday, May 12 2007 17:09 Profile #7
I've run into this problem too. It also showed up in the Tower of Magi. A few technical details are behind the link.

It's not a data corruption issue. Don't bother redownloading (again, if you already tried that) - it doesn't make a bit of difference. It's a bug. My best guess is that it has something to do with the friendly-monster AI in large towns.

Your best bet is to find a real OS 9 (or earlier!) machine to play on. For whatever reason, the crash isn't triggered on that OS. I don't know whether it's just due to some sort of different API behavior or because OS 9 doesn't mind bad pointers quite as much, but the battle went off without a hitch on an older machine I had around.

If you don't have an OS 9 machine, you could also try running Exile under SheepShaver. It's a bit of a pain to get working, and it'll probably run really slowly, but all you need to do is get through that one battle.

Alternatively, you can just send me a copy of your save file and I'll run through the battle for you. :)
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Song from exile One in The Exile Trilogy
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Monday, April 2 2007 10:18 Profile #8
Actually, Exile 2 used a nonoriginal piece for background music as well (CARTHAG.MOD).
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Customizing the first 91 terrain slots in Blades of Exile
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Friday, January 12 2007 14:46 Profile #1
quote:
Morality of hex – editing, I don’t think Jeff really minds, the program is about to become open source soon anyway.
And besides, you're just editing something that's coming out of the scenario editor. I don't speak for Jeff Vogel, but I'm pretty sure that "no discussion of hex editing" rule is meant to apply to executables and to data files in the non-Blades games.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Old Exile II Character Sheet in The Exile Trilogy
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Thursday, December 21 2006 17:49 Profile #3
What are you looking for, then? I can probably get it.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Avernum 5 Early, Early Notes in Avernum 4
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Monday, December 11 2006 00:05 Profile #71
While we're speculating on new locations: How about the river blockage to the west of the Mass Teleporter, in the Northern Waters? That looks like a prime candidate for a bit of opening up.

Alternatively, east of Silvar and/or Formello?
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
The Future of Blades of Avernum in Blades of Avernum Editor
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Sunday, December 10 2006 19:02 Profile #37
What would probably help a lot* would be Jeff making specifications available for the BoE/BoA data files. That way, third parties could create their own tools for scenario editing.

*: If it isn't already available, officially or unofficially
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Complete Exile 2 outdoor map (massive spoilers) in The Exile Trilogy
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Saturday, December 9 2006 20:47 Profile #17
I've got most of the format worked out, save for objects; I'll probably have complete indoor maps available pretty soon. Here's an appetizer: Fort Ganrick.

IMAGE(http://i10.tinypic.com/2lbkruv.png)

(Apparently, the Nephilim always exist in town, but are hidden until the attack gets triggered. Interesting.)
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Distorted Fonts in Geneforge 4 in Tech Support
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Saturday, December 2 2006 15:31 Profile #1
Open up the Font Book utility, select all your fonts, and tell it to validate them (it's in the File menu). If it turns up any problems, have it remove those fonts. If that doesn't do it, look through your fonts to see if you've got any that look like the distorted text.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Installing on 10.1.5? in Tech Support
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Sunday, November 26 2006 23:52 Profile #3
10.3 will run on any Mac with USB. 10.2 will run on anything that runs 10.1. Both are pretty cheap ($20 or so) to get off EBay or somewhere, and justifiable too - almost all new software nowadays requires 10.2.8 or later.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Installing on 10.1.5? in Tech Support
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Sunday, November 26 2006 00:10 Profile #1
10.1.5 is pretty ancient - about four and a half years old now. You'll probably have much better luck with a more current version of the OS.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Complete Exile 2 outdoor map (massive spoilers) in The Exile Trilogy
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Saturday, November 18 2006 00:34 Profile #14
... and I just noticed that, in an unforgivable error, my map duplicates one terrain block (third from the bottom on the right edge). Unfortunately, this isn't trivial to fix. I'll fix it later, when I do the towns.
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00
Complete Exile 2 outdoor map (massive spoilers) in The Exile Trilogy
Duskwolf
Warrior
Member # 7633
 written Tuesday, November 14 2006 22:09 Profile #11
Oh, very nice. I might just have to figure out the format for "town data" and post maps for those.

I like your color/pattern scheme, BTW. Mind if I borrow it?
Posts: 66 | Registered: Saturday, November 4 2006 08:00

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