Blades of Avernum Improvements
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Agent
Member # 27
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written Wednesday, September 19 2007 16:29
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quote:That's because designers only make up a tiny percentage of the people who buy the game. That might change if the editor and community were more easily accessable. -------------------- Enraged Slith's Blades of Avernum Website Look out, there's a three-headed monkey behind you! Posts: 1233 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Wednesday, September 19 2007 20:23
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...see, that's a problem that'll be either supremely difficult or impossible to fix. -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 3442
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written Thursday, September 20 2007 03:06
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Yeah, I'm still designing, and I think we can safely assume TM isn't gonna give up any time soon. We also have several graphic artists (Ephesos included) who are making cool little things to shove into our scenarios. So what gives? I think it's the time old "it's too hard to design for BoA" thing. Which is a fair argument. Sorta. I'm tempted to make a scenario that is a guide to making scenarios, just to show that it isn't that difficult. As TM said "this ****, taken as a hobby, is fairly easy." Then we need to lean on Jeff to promote the scenarios that we already have. Or even better, the BoA community. People aren't going to be buying/playing BoA if they don't know where to get scenarios from. Or even if there are scenarios to get. And once we have a healthy amount of people playing the things, new designers should hopefully come forward. Edit: Damn autocensor. I thought America was land of the free? And that word isn't even offensive. Gah. [ Thursday, September 20, 2007 03:08: Message edited by: Nikki xx ] Posts: 2864 | Registered: Monday, September 8 2003 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Tuesday, October 9 2007 18:55
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quote:Um... is there any point in having both active and passive abilities? I guess it would be nice to at least have the option though... quote:Yes! That would be great! quote:I don't mind the outdoor walls, however I would like the ability to change their appearance if I feel like it. Actually, it is possible to do this on a Mac by including resources of IDs 614 and 616 in your cmg file. The replacement wallsheet can even have doors in it! Unfortunately this technique does not work on Windows - I really think it should. quote:By Magic Shops you mean random item shops? (I often call them Junk shops; Magic shops is really a misnomer.) It's possible to do this in Avernum, but the one obstacle is the inability to remove an item from a shop. quote:This would not be a matter of altering the monsters so much as simply creating new items. quote:Well... I have a scenario that I began in BoE and then tried to port (a lot of work since I had highly customized items and monsters). However, it's currently on hold until I actually buy the game (which will be soon, I hope). So, I guess I'm not exactly active at the moment... There are two minor things I wish BoA had... I find 2 wall types rather restrictive at times - 3 per town would be nicer. Also, I really liked the pushable stone block from Avernum 2. I guess there's no chance of getting these though. :( Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 02:27
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If you finished the BoE scenario you could send it to me at ishadnha(at)bigpond.com. There may be something that I can do. I am currently trying to port Shadow of the Stranger, it is a hassle when I can't contact the author. What do all those scenario nodes mean department? See my August post in the Lyceum about porting Exile scenarios. Three types of walls, a few authors use custom terrain as a third set of walls: Amnesia, Foul Hordes, Mad Ambition, Shades of Gray. It seems that the equivalent of type 8 can be made viable with this addition: te_icon_offset_y = -10; That still leaves types 7 and 9 as being currently impossible to create in a third set of walls. Pushable stone blocks, Kelandon's scenario Exodus had this in town 48. There was a script "rockpusher.txt" that made this work quite well. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 02:28
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If you finished the BoE scenario you could send it to me at ishadnha(at)bigpond.com. There may be something that I can do. I am currently trying to port Shadow of the Stranger, it is a hassle when I can't contact the author. What do all those scenario nodes mean department? See my August post in the Lyceum about porting Exile scenarios. Three types of walls, a few authors use custom terrain as a third set of walls: Amnesia, Foul Hordes, Mad Ambition, Shades of Gray. It seems that the equivalent of type 8 can be made viable with this addition: te_icon_offset_y = -10; That still leaves types 7 and 9 as being currently impossible to create in a third set of walls. Pushable stone blocks, Kelandon's scenario Exodus had this in town 48. There was a script "rockpusher.txt" that made this work quite well. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 12:18
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quote:If you mean I could send it to you for porting, I started porting it before it was finished. In any case, I have already mostly completed the port and continued to develop it a little. Thanks anyway. quote:Have you used the BoA Editor's feature to import a BoE scenario? It converts the nodes for you. quote:The problem with this is that the game's automatic wall adjustment won't happen (which you may have said?). quote:I should look into this... ... Um... the double-post was an accident, right? Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 16:14
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Yes the double post was an accident. Obviously I am porting via the official Scenario Editor. I need to understand the scenario nodes because the porting process has quite a few flaws, errors and idiosyncracies. Really you need an editor that you have compiled yourself. The corner walls are more drawn by the program itself from what I can see. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 17:24
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quote:Huh? As in download the source code and compile it? quote:Which is why simply using 10 or whatever slots to create a permanent walltype is not as good as allowing three basic walltypes. Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 5576
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 18:48
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quote:Yes, these are calculated by the game at run time, and are used both for movement and visual blockage. However, particularly for outdoor walls, what's behind them is usually Solid Stone floor, which will serve the same purpose. Also, if you want to make a third wallset, just copy the code in corescendata that creates the built-in wallsets. -------------------- Überraschung des Dosenöffners! "On guard, you musty sofa!" Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 18:51
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But this still won't activate the game's automatic corners, will it? :( Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 18:57
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Nope. But with careful wall-building, you really shouldn't ever need the automatic corners. -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 21:46
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Indeed, take a look at Mad Ambition by TM. I tried it myself in TNS, and it worked quite allright. The only thing I'd beg for, is more slots for custom terrain. I find it a problem that I can only have the amount of terrain BoA has at the moment. When one wants a lot of variants of a specific thing (like boxes, closets, whatever), these take up quite some space that you might want to use for something else. To have it all, more terrain slots would be good. -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 4153
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 21:54
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Heh. Agreed. I'm starting to overwrite things that I'm not entirely sure the game is okay with. :P -------------------- TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached." Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice. Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, October 10 2007 22:08
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The link is: http://p079.ezboard.com/Porting-Exile-Scenarios-Techniques/fthelyceumfrm19.showMessage?topicID=130.topic I will have to revise that article now that I have the source code to study, but it is still quite sound. Really, it would be handy to be able to recompile the editor because the porting process has all sorts of known flaws. Download the source code and look at the file Bl A Fileio.c I could not fix all the errors by hex - editing but I was able to fix a lot. Case 184, generic lever, line 3,552 has a missing “+10” in the set_state_continue. So what I did was to create a traceable error message: “reset_dialog_preset_options(X);”, here the 2 is replaced by the X. Alint will pick this up for sure. Another trick was to create a special copy of the BoE scenario file. In it all the town placed special nodes had their x and y coordinates switched, so when the porting happened the two errors cancelled out. (Also, line 2040 shows that the game will view terrain types 5 through 35 and 122 through 169 as being walls, which could be a real problem in a heavily customized scenario.) In your special copy you would translate custom walls, like the wooden walls of Wormwood to others, like standard adobe walls. Two big ones: In the Windows scenarios, the town special encounters have their coordinates wrongly rotated. A lot of the messages are not included in the porting of special nodes, they can be recovered from Scentext.txt though. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 02:11
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The editor's porting is really just a rough translation of the town/outdoors data. It would be nice to have a more advance algorithm to import BoE scenarios - keeping in mind that a few things are no longer possible. If you're talking about modifying the BoA editor, I believe this page has the latest version. Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 02:30
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That BoA editor is only for Mac, though, and I thought that Ishad has Windows, right? -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 02:43
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Oh, of course; the latest for Windows should be here. It could still be useful to download the source from the other page to see what has been done, and maybe bring the two versions in line with each other. Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 5576
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 04:14
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If somebody wants to update the Windows Editor to include the changes that i made to the Mac version, I'd be happy to help out, like with explaining where and how i made my changes. I'm afraid that I'm just too short of time to do the Windows version myself. -------------------- Überraschung des Dosenöffners! "On guard, you musty sofa!" Posts: 627 | Registered: Monday, March 7 2005 08:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 10:55
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I have some more suggestions for the BoA editor, especially the toolbar area. Firstly, there are two basic kinds of toolbar buttons: those that affect what happens when clicking on the terrain area and those that alter the view. (A few buttons fit in neither category.) Since there are four different views at this point (2D closeup, Automap Preview, 3D, and 3D Preview), it would be nice to have a separate button to switch to each of these views. That is, a total of 4 buttons. Then there is the button that controls what you see in the terrain palette area (above the toolbar). There are three settings for this. Once again, it would be nice to have separate buttons for each. Also, it would be nice if the monsters and items could be selected in this manner rather than from the menus. This may be a little harder, but not too much, hopefully. The copy/paste terrain buttons could be replaced with a select terrain button, and then you use the Edit menu to copy or paste. A button to uniformly raise the elevation in a given rectangle would be much more useful than the existing set height in rectangle. It would also have to be able to take negative values to lower the elevation. Khoth's version (available here) of the editor has two good ideas: place wall rectangle and draw walls freeform. I don't think it implements the latter very well. But it's a good idea. It also has a "Sticky Rectangles" option. I'd sort of like to have the Set Town Boundaries command on the toolbar. Another idea is an Edit Area Description command which would allow you to click inside an area description to set it. I'm not sure if this is possible in the scenario format, but it would be great if you could place quickfire and pushable mirrors in the scenario editor. Allow the use of the brush and spray tools when painting height. Show the boats and horses on the map in preview mode. I like to use the 5 key on the numpad to place objects in the center of the visible area, but currently I have to switch to 2D mode for it to work. I'd like to be able to do it in preview mode, too. Lastly, in the Change Terrain randomly, I would like to be able to replace a specific combination of floor and terrain with another specific combination of floor and terrain. (This in addition to the current functionality.) Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 11:23
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quote:Meh, I think that as it is now it's good enough. All the buttons you need are there, and the buttons that are not relevant for a certain view simply appear when they are relevant (mainly talking about the 2D overview and the 3D ingame preview now). quote:Again, i think it's fine as it is. I don't see a reason to clutter everything up with buttons that aren't that necessary. Just one button to cycle through everything doesn't slow things down that much that I'd say that it should have more buttons. quote:Something like that is already there: with the little hand icon you can select a terrain, and with command-C or command-V (Windows: ctrl-c and ctrl-v), you cna copy and paste. quote:Hmmm. Well, I'm honestly not quite sure about what you mean or if they are really necessary. For instance, I think that only things that we use a lot should be on the toolbar, and I think I only used the "set town boundaries" option once... quote:While quickfire and such would be great, the puhable mirrors, boats and horses are things that you have to enter manually in the scenario's script, and I'm not sure if the editor can handle that very well... I was wondering.. do you use Windows or Mac? Because if you use Windows, I understand that you might not know of certain functions that niemand put in the latest build of the editor. I do think we ought to only place buttons on that toolbar that are actually necessary: features we use a lot and therefor really need. Stuff like town boundaries, I think, aren't used too much, so why give them a place on the toolbar? We shouldn't clutter that toolbar with irrelevant stuff. Sure, when you do need it, it might be a bit irritating to get all the way to that menu with your mouse, click, and click again in the menu, but still... -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 10488
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 12:18
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quote:Okay, I can understand you might not want these. I'd say the main change is that I'd like to be able to get from 3D directly to map view, but this won't be such an annoyance now that Niemand has rearranged the toolbar. quote:You misunderstood me - I was referring to Niemand's copy and paste terrain rectangle buttons, while I think you are referring to terrain scripts. I know you can copy and paste "objects" (scripts, items, creatures) with the Edit menu (although I think it didn't work in Isaac's version?). quote:Again, I can see your point about the boundaries button. The two wall commands and the Sticky Rectangles are already implemented in the BetterEditor - I was basically suggesting merging them into Niemand's version. I do think that a Raise/Lower Rectangle Terrain Uniformly is an important thing to have. There have been instances when I wanted to make the terrain lower, but it was already at it's lowest value, so I had to manually raise the elevation of every single terrain square individually, just to make a small area lower. Not fun. :( And as if that wasn't enough, I had to do the exact same thing in any outdoor sections that connected to the one I was working on. :( quote:I understand this. I was wondering, however, if the scenario format would allow the placement of mirrors/quickfire in the actual town data (rather than with the script). As for boats and horses, it would mean searching the scenario script for the relevant commands. quote:I have been using Isaac's version. I do have Niemand's version, but I haven't used it much yet. (Yes, I use MacOS.) quote:Okay, I'll accept this. It makes sense. But not all my suggestions fall into this category, I think. Edit Individual Area Description would be very useful - yes, even if it were a menu item and not a toolbar button. And then there's the suggestions that you didn't comment on. Another suggestion I meant to make is to highlight the active tool on the toolbar. Posts: 334 | Registered: Friday, September 14 2007 07:00 |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 17:31
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The Windows 3D Editor is really quite good but an attempt to compile the source code leads to a full 12 pages of errors and warnings, that is with type set at size 10. Of course there is no compilation with so many errors. Which is a pity because what BoA needs is an editor that anyone can compile if they want. I am sure that would lead to all sorts of beneficial experimentation and improvement. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 22:02
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Celtic Minstrel: - You misunderstood me - I was referring to Niemand's copy and paste terrain rectangle buttons, while I think you are referring to terrain scripts. I know you can copy and paste "objects" (scripts, items, creatures) with the Edit menu (although I think it didn't work in Isaac's version?). Ah, I see what you mean. I must say though, that I don't really see how your improvement can make it better... - Again, I can see your point about the boundaries button. The two wall commands and the Sticky Rectangles are already implemented in the BetterEditor - I was basically suggesting merging them into Niemand's version. I do think that a Raise/Lower Rectangle Terrain Uniformly is an important thing to have. There have been instances when I wanted to make the terrain lower, but it was already at it's lowest value, so I had to manually raise the elevation of every single terrain square individually, just to make a small area lower. Not fun. And as if that wasn't enough, I had to do the exact same thing in any outdoor sections that connected to the one I was working on. I might not understand what you are reffering too, but placing wall rectangles you can already do, no? I took a look and there is an option to place bouding walls (though it doesn't seem to work...). Was that what you meant? The raise/lower terrain uniformly idea might be very usefull. I also used to have the problem of height not continuing onto another outdoor section, which usually irritated me. I don't think, though, that negavtive height values is something the game will understand, but I might be totally wrong about this... - I understand this. I was wondering, however, if the scenario format would allow the placement of mirrors/quickfire in the actual town data (rather than with the script). As for boats and horses, it would mean searching the scenario script for the relevant commands. Quickfire is defined as a field, is what I understand, just like force barriers and such. Therefor I think it should be possible, but the problem with quickfire is that it spreads as far as it can. The town may get slower because of that (I'm not sure about that). If the quickfire is there from the start, the game has to count the whole time that the player's there what the quickfire does... But on the other hand, in "babysitting" the quickfire is also there from the start... About boats and horses: I think it should be possible, but I don't know how difficult it is to let the editor search the scenario script. - Okay, I'll accept this. It makes sense. But not all my suggestions fall into this category, I think. Yes, that's true. And with my remark I only meant the suggestions that fall into that category. -------------------- Play and rate my scenarios: Where the rivers meet View my upcoming scenario: The Nephil Search: Escape. Give us your drek! Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 3442
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written Thursday, October 11 2007 23:47
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There is a tool that lets you set the height of every square within a rectangle, so the argument that you have to adjust each square individually is moot. Posts: 2864 | Registered: Monday, September 8 2003 07:00 |