Profile for Ishad Nha
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Ishad Nha |
| Member number | 7662 |
| Title | Shock Trooper |
| Postcount | 292 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
Recent posts
Pages
| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| Stuck in Exodus in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Friday, January 5 2007 00:22
Profile
Make that 711 strings, 39 extra strings is ok but adding 40 will lead to an error message from the game. Some of the spell information is contradictory, starting with Bind Foe, while most is ok. Generally the information given in the spell casting states 21 thru 38 and 41 thru 45 agrees with the top lines, “add_dialog_str(1…”, in the information screens. However the information given in string 1 may not always agree with that found in string 3. add_dialog_str(0,"DIVINE WARRIOR",0); add_dialog_str(1,"PS 22, 20 SP, 4 + 4 * skill + B/5 levels of Divinely Touched; L2 4 + 4 * skill + B/5 levels of Magic Resistant; L3 1 + 2 * skill + B/10 levels of Invulnerable",0); … append_string("Minimum Priest Spells to cast: 22. Energy cost: 25."); if (get_flag(293,i) > 0) { append_string(" You know this spell at level "); append_number(get_flag(293,i)); append_string("."); } else append_string(" You do not know this spell."); get_buffer_text(dlgstr); add_dialog_str(3,dlgstr,0); Safe Travel: information in state 49 should be checked against the spell casting state 44. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Stuck in Exodus in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Thursday, January 4 2007 02:08
Profile
What the game really needs is a version of print_named_str which works upon creature type number not Character ID. Exodus text has about 712 strings, only 38 short of the limit. To include 256 strings listing creature type names will require some real deliberate pruning. The figure of 712 comes from my adding 39 numbered strings to Exodus.txt and finding the game reporting too many strings. Whereas adding 38 strings made no difference. A lot of my suggested changes were very deliberate pruning. Then you also find things rearranged to suit my personal tastes. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Stuck in Exodus in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, January 3 2007 15:25
Profile
As for the monsters I see only 256 types listed in the C1 thru C4 tabs of the scenario editor. Thus we have an explanation for Jeff’s apparently arbitrary limits. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Stuck in Exodus in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, January 2 2007 17:27
Profile
Orb of Flight can be made unsellable by giving it an item value of 0. In town 26, Fekhthen, there is a slight bug: the dummy script in the library calls a town state of 0 instead of 14. As for Capture Soul and Simulacrum, you can provide the names of the creatures stored within, if you trim the strings down a bit. I was able to do it easily enough at home. Failing which you can provide the number of the creature type. Then you can provide the relevant listings from the Scenario Data File "Creature types for Exodus: Creature 0: Null Creature 1: Merchant Creature 2: Merchant Creature 3: Beggar Creature 4: Guard Creature 5: Dark Captain &&& Creature 251: Dark slith priest Creature 252: Blue slith priest Creature 253: Red slith priest Creature 254: Slith priest ghost Creature 255: Placeholder " Knowing the number the player can look up the creature type in the list provided. [ Tuesday, January 02, 2007 17:34: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A Large Rebellion Problem in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Monday, January 1 2007 17:25
Profile
The standard Spiderweb download is missing most of the town files. You can get a full version from TrueSite. After you have done that you might want to check every file with the Alint program, I found quite a few bugs. Apparently the author was moderately talented, ambitious and unfamiliar with Alint. After I corrected all the files and made a few judicious alterations to the bas file, I was able to finish it. Another problem: he tried to have three town maps joined to form one city, and that lead to all sorts of problems with town entrances acting in funny ways. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Friday, December 22 2006 03:16
Profile
Possibly the best approach is to alter the code so that it can be compiled on any common compiler. Then give people tips about how to write their own favorite features into it. Thus everyone can test their favorite ideas here and now, and see how useful they are in practice. As for the Edit menu, it is the only menu not mentioned in the BoA Editor Docs. I had to go into the source file “Bl A Editor.c”, lines 871 thru 900, to figure out what it does. My guess is based upon lines like this: “if ((copied_creature.exists() == FALSE) && (copied_item.exists() == FALSE) && (copied_ter_script.exists == FALSE)) {” Authors sometimes want two or more versions of the same town in a given scenario, the quickest way to achieve this is to import the earlier version into the slot reserved for the latter. So if town 1 and town 9 are the same town before and after a given event, import the town 1 into the place reserved for town 9. Currently in importing a town, everything is imported in one go. Would there be any use for the individual importing of each feature: special nodes, scripts, floors, heights, terrain and monsters? Ditto, outdoor sections are imported in one hit too. In the MS-Dos Edit command, here and now some things can be pasted individually: floors and heights for instance. The beginning and the end are usually easy to spot for each section. You won’t even need to manually adjust the end of each line. (What I am referring to here is: if the floor for town 1 starts at column 11 on some line and the floor for town 9 starts at column 23 on some other line, you can’t immediately paste the latter into the former. One trick is to use the Save As command to create a (wholly expendable) second bas file, then delete the first twelve characters from the floor listing for town 1. Save the bas file then close it. If you then re – open it, the floor for town 9 should start at the desired column 11. You can then paste town 9 floor from the expendable second bas file into the listing for town 1 in the original file. In the Edit command deleting 12 characters won’t have any immediate effect on the next line, it won’t cause every following character to move up 12 spaces.) [ Friday, December 22, 2006 03:20: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
|
written Thursday, December 21 2006 14:54
Profile
The computer is always right. If you have a type 215 terrain that is a sign the Editor will always treat type 215 floors as being signs! It will go through the whole rigmarole of asking for the text of the sign&&. Of course the party won't be able to use the "sign" in the game. Simplest solution is to make all real signs have terrain numbers greater than 255, but that will require a bit of changing of terrain. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
|
written Wednesday, December 20 2006 03:31
Profile
My Christmas Wish List of Improvements What we really need is a 3D editor that can be easily compiled on common IDEs like Dev-C++. If the Editor could be re – written to provide for a rectangular application of the Blocked property, you would not need blocked varieties of floor. Currently floor and terrain types can be applied by hollow or full rectangles, something like that is needed for the Blocked property. This would be in addition to the existing tool, #32. This function could be extended to placed objects too. All these problems are found in both versions of the Windows Editor: Needs a whole lot more (Shift + letter) hot keys. If you have the Caps Lock on, you can select functions with the keyboard while using the mouse with your right hand. Could support the functions fl_ed_icon_adjust and te_ed_icon_adjust. I suspect they are meant to show the icon adjustment in the 2-D display. The commands in the Edit menu are not explained in the Editor Help menu. Lines 886… of the file “Bl A Editor.c” suggest that the commands involve copying and pasting of creatures, items and terrain scripts. Creature default script is not implemented in the editor. (It is not automatically assigned to creatures having that script.) When you try to place special encounter nodes, it suggests states like 0,1,2 which are already defined elsewhere. The automatic terrain placement zones, (the terrain sequences 11 thru 22, 25 thru 36, 45 thru 56 and 59 thru 70) need better handling. It might be handy if you can totally customize whether and where they occur. Floor terrains will be “signs” if they have the same number as a terrain type that is a sign. If, for example, terrain type 194 is a sign then floor type 194 will be a sign too. As the supply of custom graphics increases, so will the number of scenarios with 200+ floor types. Changing which terrain types are signs will cause a corresponding change in the floor types. Terrain shortcut keys can only be given to individual types of terrain, not to whole sequences as is the case for floors. There is a funny “OK” in the Set Variable Town Entry page. It occurs on the fourth line. This is a problem in the 3D Editor only. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| How about new BoA scenarios? in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Friday, December 15 2006 02:00
Profile
The 3D editor is wonderful, except for porting, where it crashes infallibly. It has never worked for me once. One thing missing from Avernum is the Exile type 4: secret door node. One substitute is to design a specific terrain, tree or whatever, that can be walked through. Another approach is to have two (or more) out_move_party(x,y) nodes represent this feature, one node on each side of the terrain. Another solution is to have the terrain toggle to type 0, when the party activates a certain node. The snag here is that the party activates a special encounter before it steps into a square, this could be bad if they step into the square activating the node above. (The party is standing in the square containing the toggled terrain, which is currently type 0, it moves onto the special node, the terrain where they are standing is toggled back to impassable terrain, they can’t move anywhere. Unless they have an item that permits uses of the out move party(x,y) call, with random choices of x,y.) One likely problem: porting a scenario where you don’t have the list of what SDF, Stuff Done Flag, coordinates were actually used. Mercifully, Blades of Avernum has three times more places for the SDF flags than were found in Blades of Exile. If you want to add new flags to a ported scenario you just use coordinates that are found in BoA and not in BoE. As far as I can tell, any SDF should be safe if it has a 10+ second coordinate, if it is of the form (X,10+). Other than that, you will have to learn what they do the hard way. Many of them will be self explanatory, used to record the displaying of one – shot messages. From the list of Rated BOE Scenarios: Bandit Busywork - 3.91 (8.5/2.0). So this is not from the top ten scenarios. Unless you are the author you are doing someone else’s world of course. If you want the top – notch authors to ever port their own work, it helps if the basic method has been developed and demonstrated beforehand. I have mostly finished a port of River and Leaf, it really could do with some cut scenes&. (Also having trouble trying to use some BoE graphics from the Blazing Blades, grass is a lot brighter than everything else.) Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| How about new BoA scenarios? in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
|
Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, December 13 2006 20:25
Profile
Right, the wall problem is what you guys were talking about, I become indifferent to it. I don’t think it can be solved in the near future, how do you program aesthetics into the editor? (Symmetry is aesthetic to me but programming it could be tough.) Granted the town walls are usually a pill, but I have a shortcut for cave walls. Use the cave floor(BoE) from the Blazing Blade for the floor then couple this with conventional walls. Here I am relying on my ability to customize the translations. In porting I am really thinking of the greatest Exile scenarios, ones that are worth the effort. At some point I will have to finish the three way guide, this compares the BoE Editor Help file descriptions of the BoE nodes, the Bl Fileio.c source code translations for them and the descriptions of the BoA calls. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| How about new BoA scenarios? in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
|
Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, December 13 2006 01:46
Profile
Yes, Kel, I have tried it on a few scenarios, the process is quite straightforward, that is why I know it only takes a few seconds.* An entire scenario appears as if by magic, granted it may not be terribly playable. The conversion I find technically fascinating, trying to express apples as oranges. Thralni, entire towns had to be re – done? I haven’t heard about that, I don’t know why this might be. There may be problems with translation of terrain perhaps; it can look pretty shapeless after porting. One problem that can’t be solved easily is the fact that in BoE the party occupies only one space while it is exploring, unlike Avernum. Another problem is that the current Windows version of the official editor wrongly rotates the coordinates of all town specials! (The dubious thrills of ported dialog scripts?!? I have zero literary talent; I have trouble writing appropriate questions for the scripts. By contrast, deciding upon which states to give each node is not too hard.) Custom graphics, thank God for Blazing Blades and the Louvre, even so there are many graphics that have not been translated yet. Undeniably, porting is not always easy but a large number of the problems in porting come from errors in the way the translation is done. They would be easily fixed by revising the porting process itself. This will frequently, but not always, require re – writing the editor. A few can be removed by hex – editing the existing editor. Errors that can’t be fixed will always occur in the same situations, so they are at least perfectly predictable. The scripts generated by the porting process always need to be revised; an example at random is the move_to_new_town call. In Avernum this can be called only one way, so you would need to find a place to put a new special node. Another example is type 63, the trap node; here you must create a terrain script with all the relevant details. The finishing touches for an entire scenario could take a few weeks easily. Translation of objects: terrain, monsters and items. This is done by a set of tables, it is a one on one process, and an Exile object is given a single Avernum translation. It is simplistic, based upon default objects when every big league Exile author used / uses custom objects. In actual practice the translations can be customized even without a new editor.** A quick bit of hex – editing of the translation arrays is all it takes. Said arrays can be found at the following locations in the official editor: short old_monst_to_new[256] = {…} is found at line 6,734 column 47 through line 6,741 column 67. short old_ter_to_floor[256] = {…} is found at line 6,741 column 69 through line 6,749 column 19. short old_ter_to_ter[256] = {…} is found at line 6,749 column 21 through line 6,756 column 41. short old_item_to_new_item[400] = {…} is found at line 6,756 column 43 through line 6,768 column 02. These arrays can also be found in source file Bl A Fileio.c, from lines 122 thru 275. *Fine print 1, I am assuming that there are no complications like monsters or doors outside of town boundaries. **Fine print 2, deciding how to translate the custom objects does take some doing. Even with all the relevant data copied into an Excel spreadsheet, it takes me a while to decide. My approach is to copy the data from the scenario exs file then compare it with the default BoE data. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| How about new BoA scenarios? in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
|
Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, December 12 2006 03:33
Profile
Importing Blades Of Exile Scenarios The way to increase the number of BoA scenarios is mass – production: importing Exile scenarios into Avernum. If you really want to be an author but have zero literary talent, then porting is the way to go. Ditto if you are an author and want to import one of your great Exile hits into the Avernum world. It is magical; choose the Import option and a few seconds later an entire scenario appears all at once! Admittedly there are still some bugs to be worked out, a 3D editor is needed that can be compiled on any common compiler. Before this can happen the porting process commands will need to be revised. Easily enough done by a three – way reference: BoE Editor Help, the Bl A Fileio.c source file and BoA Script Reference. (The Bl A Fileio.c file is the one that actually contains all the commands used in porting, it is found in the official editor’s source code. Its analog in the 3D editor is Bl A Fileio.cpp.) At the end of the day, BoE and BoA are very much different games, so the process will require a lot of manual effort, it can never be automated. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |