Blades of Exile Source Code
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| Author | Topic: Blades of Exile Source Code |
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Board Administrator
Member # 1
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written Tuesday, April 24 2007 21:51
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We have decided to release the source code of Blades of Exile under the Common Public License. (The same license the Blades of Avernum editor is under.) It should be available in the next few weeks. I am really hoping people are able to whip it into something usable and create a way for games to run all of the old, cool Blades of Exile scenarios. This will take a bit of work. The code is old and will take some polishing, especially on the Mac side (since it needs to be both Carbonized and Universalized). Should the code be improved, we would happily take it and host it so others can improve on the work. It will be available pretty soon. In the meantime, here are some questions and answers from the readme file ... Q: What am I allowed to do with this code? A: Just about anything you want. Read the Common Public License. (If you can't wait to read it, download the Blades of Avernum editor.) Q: I have questions about the code. Can you help me? A: Probably not. We're very busy, and we really don't have much time to talk people through programming issues. You should check the Blades of Exile section of our forums or the Blades of Exile Scenario Workshop on our website. If people put together web pages on this stuff, we'll link to them. Q: I found a problem or missing piece of data. Or I made a web page about Blades of Exile. Or I've improved the code and I have a new, better version available for download. Do you want to know about it? A: Yes!!! Tell us at spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com. If a community comes up around this source code, we'll help people find you. Q: Does this mean that you will be releasing the source code for other old games? A: Not likely. For most of our games, when they get very old, we'll just rewrite and rerelease them. We're only doing this with Blades of Exile (and probably someday Blades of Avernum) because so many people have made scenarios for it. Q: Why did it take so long to do this? A: Partially because we were distracted by the thousands of things we have to do all the time. And partially because, up until very recently, we didn't know where the Windows Blades of Exile code was. (Please rest assured that this is very embarrassing to me.) A decent copy of it only turned up when we were searching through old computers for files for Nethergate: Resurrection. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 00:30
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And it's not even April 1! Wow, wait till everyone sees this. I can't believe nobody posted here yet. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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...b10010b...
Member # 869
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 00:45
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^________________^ That is all. -------------------- The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure! Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 00:49
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Wonder how Djur's going to react. I assume it would partly depend on how much of Pygmalion is implemented by now. Unraveling someone's source without support is not very enjoyable, but it may beat re-inventing the wheel. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 6785
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 05:38
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How many members are going to go into shock because they believed that this would never happen? Now they start asking for something else that Jeff said he would never do like Exile 4. Posts: 4643 | Registered: Friday, February 10 2006 08:00 |
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Warrior
Member # 6096
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 05:45
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That's good news. I hope there is someone with the skills, free time and motivation to make at least the carbonized version. I don't need other improvements if they take too much time and effort, I just want to be able to play it. [ Wednesday, April 25, 2007 05:47: Message edited by: *Milu* ] Posts: 77 | Registered: Sunday, July 10 2005 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 6489
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 05:47
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I won't start celebrating until someone actually carbonizes it. Universalized would be even better, but I'll take what I can get at this point. -------------------- "You're drinking liquor because you're thirsty? How nasty is your freaking water?" —Lazarus Spiderweb Chat Room Avernum RP • Summaries • OoC • Roster Shadow Vale - My site, home of the Spiderweb Chat Database, BoA Scenario Database, & the A1 Quest List, among other things. Posts: 1556 | Registered: Sunday, November 20 2005 08:00 |
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Master
Member # 5977
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 06:17
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Halleluja I presume, but since I design for BoA already, I probably won't do anything for BoE. Still, good move Jeff! You probably made quite a bit of this community very happy. -------------------- 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 # 2984
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 11:34
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Can someone more familiar with Mac applications (or Mac&PC architecture in general) tell me what Carbonizing and Universalizing means, and what (if anything) it means for the Windows version? From Jeff's post, I understand that there are two versions of the code, one for Windows and one for Mac. Will any changes be implemented in both separately, or will one of the two be fixed and ported anew? -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Board Administrator
Member # 1
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 11:50
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Carbonizing is not that difficult, as long as you stick with the existing code base, don't do anything wild and crazy like porting it to Cocoa, and you live with the risk of using the quickdraw deprecated functions. Switching it to Universal mainly involves adjusting the byte order for short ints read from or written to the hard drive. There are a few other tweaks. If someone with actual programming skill takes the lead in adapting the games, I can provide some one-on-one advice for how to go about it. At least XCode is decent and free. This helps a lot. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 6489
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 12:37
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quote:It has absolutely nothing to do with the Windows version. Carbonization is the process of updating a classic Mac application (OS 9 or earlier) to work in the newer, Unix-based OS X. Universalization refers to editing a PPC OS X application so that it will run natively on an Intel Mac. Now, Intel Mac have an emulation API for PPC OS X applications known as Rosetta, which works fairly well for most applications. Pre-OS X applications will not runon an Intel MAc, so carbonization is absolutely necessary to ensure the future of BoE. Universalization would be nice, since it will use significantly fewer resources to run, but not absolutely necessary. [ Wednesday, April 25, 2007 12:38: Message edited by: Tyranicus ] -------------------- "You're drinking liquor because you're thirsty? How nasty is your freaking water?" —Lazarus Spiderweb Chat Room Avernum RP • Summaries • OoC • Roster Shadow Vale - My site, home of the Spiderweb Chat Database, BoA Scenario Database, & the A1 Quest List, among other things. Posts: 1556 | Registered: Sunday, November 20 2005 08:00 |
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Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 17:10
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Neat! BoA has had some good results from this sort of stuff, so I bet BoE will have something good happen. -------------------- Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens. Smoo: Get ready to face the walls! Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr. Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00 |
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Babelicious
Member # 39
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 17:25
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Jeff: What are the conditions going to be for the BoE data files? Specifically, will people be able to redistribute the art and sounds which come with Blades? I am currently considering implementing an EXS translator for Pygmalion, a retro-style game engine inspired in part by Blades. Whether this would be worthwhile would be heavily influenced by whether the graphics and sounds would be available. Thanks for releasing this code. It's a great service to your community. Aran: This doesn't particularly affect Pygmalion, because Pygmalion has greater scope and much more features than BoE. It's primarily interesting to me as documentation for the EXS format. -------------------- Pygmalion | Desperance | Djur Posts: 1074 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Board Administrator
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 17:56
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"What are the conditions going to be for the BoE data files? Specifically, will people be able to redistribute the art and sounds which come with Blades?" Yes. And, on top of that, you'll be able to distribute all of my scenarios (Small Rebellion, etc). Go nuts. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com Posts: 960 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00 |
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Babelicious
Member # 39
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written Wednesday, April 25 2007 18:11
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Thanks, Jeff. Can't wait until the source is available. -------------------- Pygmalion | Desperance | Djur Posts: 1074 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Thursday, April 26 2007 02:04
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And I can't wait to see what you make of it. That is very, very good news. Celebrations all around. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Lifecrafter
Member # 1768
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written Thursday, April 26 2007 10:59
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*wild screaming* This is what I was waiting for. -------------------- "Oh, North Wind, why frighten others? In Nature's family all are brothers. Puff and blow and wheeze and hiss; You can't frighten Shingebiss. Bring your frost and ice and snow; I'm still free to come and go. You can never frighten me, One who never fears is FREE!" -Shingebiss, the mighty duck Posts: 830 | Registered: Tuesday, August 20 2002 07:00 |
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E Equals MC What!!!!
Member # 5491
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written Thursday, April 26 2007 17:37
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YES. -------------------- SupaNik: Aran, you're not big enough to threaten Ash. Dammit, even JV had to think twice. Posts: 1861 | Registered: Friday, February 11 2005 08:00 |
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Babelicious
Member # 39
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written Thursday, April 26 2007 17:42
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You know, Ash, your scenarios, along with some of TM's, pretty much serve as a test suite for BoE feature compatibility. -------------------- Pygmalion | Desperance | Djur Posts: 1074 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00 |
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Apprentice
Member # 8530
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written Friday, April 27 2007 04:45
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What language is it written in? Posts: 20 | Registered: Wednesday, April 18 2007 07:00 |
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Law Bringer
Member # 2984
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written Friday, April 27 2007 04:50
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C++, if memory serves, and compiled with CodeWarrior. -------------------- Encyclopaedia Ermariana • Forum Archives • Forum Statistics • RSS [Topic / Forum] My Blog • Polaris • I eat novels for breakfast. Polaris is dead, long live Polaris. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair. Posts: 8752 | Registered: Wednesday, May 14 2003 07:00 |
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Guardian
Member # 2080
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written Friday, April 27 2007 08:12
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I don't know crap about C++, but between me and TGO(assuming he doesn't end up in space with his buick or get thrown in jail... again...), we could possibly do something spiffy cool with this, even though, historically, neither of us have ever done anything that even vaguely resembles useful or cool, let alone a combination of the two. So the real question is: Does anyone know where I can get a good(and/or free) compiler for OS 9? And, more importantly, for that matter PC? EDIT: Cause if there's anything that my programming experience with BASIC and JAVA has taught me is that you can code anything if you have enough of the right well-commented out examples to steal from. [ Friday, April 27, 2007 08:30: Message edited by: Gaara of the Funk ] -------------------- "I don't understand a word you just said. Try speaking American. It's the only language I understand." Posts: 1918 | Registered: Sunday, October 13 2002 07:00 |
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Triad Mage
Member # 7
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written Friday, April 27 2007 09:58
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I think it might be C, not C++. -------------------- "At times discretion should be thrown aside, and with the foolish we should play the fool." - Menander ==== Drakefyre's Demesne - Happy Happy Joy Joy Encyclopedia Ermariana - Trapped in the Closet ==== You can take my Mac when you pry my cold, dead fingers off the mouse! Posts: 9436 | Registered: Wednesday, September 19 2001 07:00 |
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Shaper
Member # 73
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written Friday, April 27 2007 10:49
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That thing somewhere on the Spidweb site that talks about starting and running a shareware company says he uses C++. I read that years ago when I wanted to be a game developer. EDIT: Also, one of the first things I want done is to have that irritating thing that changes Windows's color scheme to grey removed. I like my Windows to have a nice blue color scheme and the system lags horribly as it changes every time I switch windows. [ Friday, April 27, 2007 10:52: Message edited by: The Almighty Do-er of Stuff ] -------------------- My Myspace, with some of my audial and visual art The Lyceum - The Headquarters of the Blades designing community The Louvre - The Blades of Avernum graphics database Alexandria - The Blades of Exile Scenario database BoE Webring - Self explanatory Polaris - Free porn here Odd Todd - Fun for the unemployed (and everyone else too) They Might Be Giants - Four websites for one of the greatest bands in existance -------------------- 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 Posts: 2957 | Registered: Thursday, October 4 2001 07:00 |
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Infiltrator
Member # 148
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written Friday, April 27 2007 16:26
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Hopefully it is C++ rather than C. It is much easier to deal with than C. One question. We will still have to deal with resource forks won't we? Do Universal applications support resource forks or do we need to port them to another format? -------------------- My ego is bigger than yours. Posts: 480 | Registered: Thursday, October 11 2001 07:00 |
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