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I'm back and I've ported Character Editor for Win32 in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Sunday, May 11 2008 23:23 Profile Homepage #11
quote:
Ishad Nha:
Re Ormus's post: why not remove it? I can barely read code, let alone program.
Then I will remove password checking.

quote:
Lazarus.:
Two bugs to report about the current windows BoE. One is that when you enter towns, sometimes random items are strewn about it for no apparent reason (I think you referred to this in your first post.) Second is that when the party dies, the game instantly ends.
First bug is hard to find in the code. :-/ Second should be easy.

quote:
Ishad Nha:
There seem to be two programmers in this forum, namely Ormus and Niemand.
We need more programmers as I don't have much time to mess with BoE. I'm busy with writing code for 8051 processors and other strange machines. :-/

I think that more people would try to edit source code of BoE if the sources were documented in some way.

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
I'm back and I've ported Character Editor for Win32 in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Sunday, May 11 2008 04:59 Profile Homepage #3
quote:
Firstly, we thought you had disappeared on a one-way trip down a black hole.
Fortunately, I didn't. :-) But still I don't have much free time to work on BoE. :-/

quote:
Second, many of us had come to the conclusion that password-protection on scenarios was a great big hassle.
So why not to remove it?

quote:
Third, I came to the conclusion that the Character Editor needed the ability to customize the items used, many scenarios have custom items.
Now that's an interesting idea! I'll think about it. CharEd source code is really ugly for me. I've spent last year working on projects in object-oriented programming languages and when I look into sources of BoE I feel confused. I hope it will pass. ;-)

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling Windows BoE Editor in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Sunday, May 11 2008 03:25 Profile Homepage #20
quote:
Originally written by Ishad Nha:

If anyone can contact Ormus, as he knows programming, ask him how the password works.
Uhm, I don't know how they work but I will try to if I find some time.

quote:
Originally written by Celtic Minstrel :

If anyone does email Ormus, tell him to check his private messages.
Just checked! :-)

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Sunday, May 11 2008 03:10 Profile Homepage #53
quote:
King InuYasha :
It has been quite a while since it was announced the change to GPLv2, and BoE/win32 is stagnant since then.
Oh, so the license has changed! Great! I will make aproporiate changes in BoE for Win32 soon!

quote:
Originally written by Celtic Minstrel:

Ormus has not read my message yet, so he either doesn't check his email often or has disabled email notification of private messages.
I have disabled email notification. :-/

EDIT:

License changed to GNU GPL 2! :->

[ Sunday, May 11, 2008 03:58: Message edited by: Ormus ]

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
hmmm... a little help please in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Sunday, May 11 2008 02:57 Profile Homepage #5
quote:
Originally written by scorpio803:

Alright so i download the source code... can i get some step by step instruction on how how to compile it.
Look on my web page. There are short instructions on how to compile these sources under GCC.

quote:
Originally written by scorpio803:

i'm using windows xp and which version of C whould i use/learn.
If you want to play with *original* BoE code then you have to learn Ansi C.

Source code edited by me has some C++ modifiactions and must be compiled as C++.

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
I'm back and I've ported Character Editor for Win32 in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Sunday, May 11 2008 02:41 Profile Homepage #0
Hello. :-) I disappeared a year ago from this forum because of some personal problems but now I'm back. I suppose a lot of things happened on this forum but now please take a look there: http://info.wsisiz.edu.pl/~kowalsg0/.

Half year ago I recieved an email reporting that there is a major bug in my ported code that causes map loss and scrambling of item locations. I have NOT checked it because of lack of time, sorry. :-/

So, could someone tell me shortly what was going on here when I was gone?

EDIT:
BoE for Win32 is now released under GNU GPL 2! :-)

[ Sunday, May 11, 2008 03:51: Message edited by: Ormus ]

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Friday, July 13 2007 04:58 Profile Homepage #34
Hi all, I was busy with exams and was applying for a job so I wasn't working an BoE for a long time. First, I've fixed links at my site and you should be able to download and recompile game and scenario editor under Win32. Now I need a lot of time to familiarize myself with modifications made by people working on mac rewrite. I suppose they found a lot of bugs and fixed them and now I need to make approporiate changes in windows version of the code.

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Wednesday, June 6 2007 02:53 Profile Homepage #28
quote:
Originally written by Reve:

Just wondering, why not put them into a directory as separate sound files? Then people can much more easily remove/replace individual sounds.
Because I don't know how to load sounds from files using Windows API only. :) In the future I am going to add support for external files, but now I have other priorities.

quote:
Originally written by Reve:

Why not put it somewhere like SourceForge?
I don't have time to do this. If somebody could do this for me, I'd be happy.

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Wednesday, June 6 2007 01:04 Profile Homepage #26
Good news, I've compiled Scenario Editor! Now I need your help to test it and find all existing bugs which could be made during porting process. Go, test, modify.

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Question about licence in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Wednesday, June 6 2007 00:45 Profile Homepage #0
My English isn't very well so I have question to you. Take a look at this text taken from CPL licence attached to the BoE source code release:

quote:
Blades of Exile Game/Editor Common Public License

BLADES OF EXILE GAME/EDITOR ("PROGRAM") IS PROVIDED UNDER THE TERMS OF THIS COMMON PUBLIC LICENSE ("AGREEMENT"). ANY USE, REPRODUCTION OR DISTRIBUTION OF THE PROGRAM BLADES OF EXILE EDITOR CONSTITUTES RECIPIENT'S ACCEPTANCE OF THIS AGREEMENT.

THIS LICENSE APPLIES ONLY TO THE PROGRAM "BLADES OF EXILE EDITOR", AND NOT TO THE PROGRAM "BLADES OF EXILE," DEMO OR FULL.
I don't understand. BoE Game/Editor is provided under terms of the licence, but licence applies only to the BoE Editor? Could somebode explain this to me, please?

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Main Menu "How To Order" button and scrolling text in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Tuesday, June 5 2007 04:14 Profile Homepage #1
Thanks for changing that scrolling image! I will include it in the next release. And the idea of button bringing up CPL is great! I don't want to play with dialogs now so this button will open licence text in the notepad window. I don't fully understand this custom dialog thing and that's the reason. :)

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Tuesday, June 5 2007 03:51 Profile Homepage #25
The Almighty Do-er of Stuff, I am going bring to back splash screen and intro music soon. I've turned them off because I was chasing some nasty bugs and it was distracting me. This problem with displaying background in high resolutions must wait until I find computer with suitable monitor and graphic card because now I am working on laptop computer which can't go beyond 1024x768.

Andrea, I've just uploaded cursors on my website. Go download them. Btw, I don't remember where I found "look.cur". It's not included in original package with BoE sources and I don't remember to extract it from original BoE executable (but it is the same one). Strange. :) And that's great news that ported code compiles under Winelib! I've checked yesterday how it compiles under diffrent compilers and I've fully succeded in doing so by using Borland C++ 5.02 and Digital Mars 8.49. However, both of these had problems with resource files.

For my next releases of the BoE for Win32 I've decided to separate sound resources from main executable and I've moved them to DLL file. It is so because I don't like big EXEs, especially when I have to upload them on the net, recompile, replace etc. (Do you know that BoE executable without sounds can be packed by UPX to ~300kB?). Also I've replaced BLADMISC.DAT with simple BLADES.INI configuration file, which can be easily edited with notepad.

EDIT: I would like to invite other people to work with the code. I'm a student and there comes slowly time of exams for me. Soon I'm going to disappear from the net and you won't see me here until I pass all exams.

[ Tuesday, June 05, 2007 06:09: Message edited by: Ormus ]

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Monday, June 4 2007 03:43 Profile Homepage #21
quote:
Originally written by Spidweb:

Meh. Just make them. Copy-paste the function/procedure headers over and you got it.
You're right! Sometimes the simpliest solutions are the hardest to imagine. :D Unfortunately, TOWNOUT.CPP doesn't exist, so I can't create appropriate header file for it. :(

The Almighty Do-er of Stuff, I've changed the code responsible for color palette changes. Now the game should work without any problems. And now it works really fast (at least on my computer). Please, download the game from my makeshift website (link is in the signature).

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Sunday, June 3 2007 07:56 Profile Homepage #19
r.Q, thanks, I''ll check it. It would really help.

The Almighty Do-er of Stuff, probably you don't have image files in right subfolder. Download this, unpack and run. Then tell me if you still have problems with colors and lagging.

Now I'm porting Character Editor. I was planning to port Scenario Editor first, but it seems that some files are missing (again). I couldn't find "townout.h" and "tfileio.h". :( I hope that Jeff will find these ones too.

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Saturday, June 2 2007 06:01 Profile Homepage #16
You're right, Andrea, Windows versions of scenarios are corrupt. Unfortunately, I was disconnected from the internet so I couldn't read your post and I spend 8 hours looking for errors in code. :( Then I discovered that scenario editor couldn't open these scenarios and realized that something is not right with them. Great thanks anyway - it's nice to know that someone wants to help!

After changing scenarios to the Mac ones I've fixed all code responsible for loading and saving save-games. Now it works correctly. At this time I have to test all the game mechanisms, check for bugs etc. Currently I can compile and run BoE, make nice group of adventurers, load scenario, talk with some NPCs, fight with someone. It all works.

Links: source code, main executable

Now I want to find out why the game runs so slow and I think it's necessary to tidy up the code.

[ Saturday, June 02, 2007 06:03: Message edited by: Ormus ]

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Friday, June 1 2007 06:42 Profile Homepage #13
I don't see how using sizeofs could help. Could you explain it more, please? I've had a lot of problems because of their usage in BoE code, not because of lack of it.

EDIT: I think that what could really help is good documentation of file formats, data structures and algorithms. Porting is always difficult but it could be less time consuming.

[ Friday, June 01, 2007 06:46: Message edited by: Ormus ]

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Friday, June 1 2007 05:56 Profile Homepage #11
Hi guys! I've managed to find source of my problems with loading BoE save-games. It took me a lot of time but I've found it. Compiler used by Jeff didn't align data in structures to memory addresses divided by 2 or 4 because it wasn't important years ago to do it. But my compiler does align data in structures and this changes values of all the sizeof's used to measure length of data blocks to read or write. I suppose that other modern compilers may do that. Unfortunately, I couldn't find how to turn off this thing, so I had to rewrite some portions of FILEIO.CPP in a very ugly way. Now it is loading save-games correctly. Still I haven't rewritten any other input-output functions at this time because there is another problem to deal with - something connected with placing PCs in scenario just after loading it. You can see it on screen capture. My source code is here.

Frozen Feet, you want to compile BoE as 16 or 32-bit application? I suppose that as 16-bit application it should compile without any problems. But if you want to make it 32-bit then you should look at this PDF. It's about porting old Windows apps to 32-bit world and I've found it VERY useful. And there is one thing that isn't mentioned anywhere: on Win32 members of structure named RECT has changed its size.

[ Friday, June 01, 2007 05:58: Message edited by: Ormus ]

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Wednesday, May 30 2007 02:08 Profile Homepage #8
quote:
Originally written by r.Q:

Hi:)
If You want to make code more compatible with Win32, You should rewrite all file I/O functions. You should use CreateFile instead of OpenFile functions, SetFilePointer instead of _llseek, etc.
Thanks for advice! I've just rewritten them! Unfortunately, it didn't help with the "no room for graphics" problem. I don't know how to fix it. I'll try to figure it out today. Are there any other people working on Win32 BoE?

EDIT: I've just realised that savegames aren't loading properly.

[ Wednesday, May 30, 2007 02:12: Message edited by: Ormus ]

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Blades of Exile for Win32
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Saturday, May 26 2007 07:08 Profile Homepage #4
I've tried to port BoE to Win32 API and I encountered some problems I cannot bypass. You can see them HERE. Also see the SOURCE CODE. I've used Dev-cpp IDE which is based on GCC compiler. I'd be happy to get some help from someone experienced in Windows API.

For those who try to solve some basic problems with code published by Jeff while messing with original code:
1) Some Win16 functions and macros are completely removed from Win32 and some are replaced with their extended versions. MoveTo() is to be replaced by MoveToEx(). Members of POINT structure changed their type, so you have to change some things. You can start with MAKEPOINT macro - write your own. Also replace GetWindowWord() with GetWindowLong() and delete MakeProcInstance() as it is obsolote now.
2) You should check whether DeleteDC() and ReleaseDC() are used to destroy right objects. In Jeff's code there are some places where HDCs are deleted by using DeleteObject() which resulted in unexpected behavior of my WinXP. And you have to change fry_dc() function because it calls ReleaseDC and DeleteDC on the same object.
3) You have to add "#include <windows.h>" on the beginning of GAMEDLOG.RC, if you get compilation error

[ Saturday, May 26, 2007 07:16: Message edited by: Ormus ]
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00
Compiling BoE source code for Windows in Blades of Exile
Ormus
Apprentice
Member # 8738
 written Wednesday, May 16 2007 05:35 Profile Homepage #0
Hi all! I've tried to compile BoE Windows code release and a lot of errors showed up. I think that the problem is that some files are missing: "townspec.h", "town.h", "text.h", "specials.h" and maybe others. Jeff, can you check for these files in your archives?
Posts: 14 | Registered: Wednesday, May 16 2007 07:00