Bt Builder

[Methuselas]

Dulsi,

That's exactly how I had it set before, but it didn't work. I even had it set to display Lawful, Neutral and Chaotic, together, but it didn't work, as well (it gave me the "NULL blank space", but three times, 1 per Alignment choice). I was trying to figure out how to use the IF conditional, to have different lines for each alignment, but I couldn't figure it out. I even recopied and pasted the original code you made (I wanted capital letters in Alignments, so I used different code), but it still wouldn't display. The xml I posted was my attempt at just making it appear, by pasting it in the Status.xml but it has never shown up in the status screen. Perhaps its a Windows build issue?

[dulsi]

The hinge on my laptop cracked sufficiently that it doesn't hold the screen up very well. I was concerned it may break off completely so I bought a new machine. I only received it Wed but it is mostly setup. I demoed kvm at a linux user group yesterday. Since I had 16GB of memory and 4 cores with hyper threading, I showed off running debian linux, reactos, haiku, and templeos. (I was going to do freedos as well but didn't get a chance to install it before hand.) It ran all 4 vms without any performance issues.

Reactos is an open source windows clone that is trying to be driver and binary compatible. I installed the windows version of btbuilder and it ran fine. Reactos is still very buggy so it took a while to get a working browser to download btbuilder. I tried out alignments displaying on the status screen. It worked for me. Here are the files I used guild.xml and status.xml. (I replaced the file in the regular data folder and ran Builder City not Builder City 2. That simply because I started with the base files and Builder City 2 has a different status.xml file.)

(Haiku is an open source BeOS clone. Templeos is best to be avoided. Here is an article taking a constructive look at it but really I wouldn't use it outside of showing what kvm can do.)

[dulsi]

0.5.4 is up on the web site. It fixes using items in combat. It wasn't checking charges properly. Some images have been added/modified. Added a melee damage bonus spell. You can use it to implement VOPL. You could also implement a spell which decreases someone's damage. To do so you would specify the bonus like 1d6-7. You want to make sure that the highest roll is a negative number this is required for the spell to be considered "bad". If you have no stacking turned on, you can have one "good" and one "bad" active at the same time. (Technically four active as you can have a "good" and "bad" single target spell and a "good" and "bad" party spell.)

[dulsi]

MAST/HYIM. Needs something like a "Skip turn" effect.

I was looking at this. I'm not sure anything needs to be done. Paralysis with a duration of one turn can reproduce MAST I believe. I assume HYIM functions the same way.

[dulsi]

Bt Builder 0.5.5 released. Fixed saving of damage bonus effects. Allow the flags on specials to be set. Added detect special effect. Special flags are defined in xml file. Silence, anti-magic, darkness, anti-teleport, and trap have special effects and must remain in that order as the first entries. Specials with trap flag are only activated once. Afterward the map square is cleared until you leave the level. The detection text for the flags probably need to be modified. I didn't check what everything detects as in the various versions of Bard's Tale.

We have new competition in the Developer's Heaven but the headstart btbuilder has should allow us to stay ahead.

[Methuselas]

Wow. What a nice Birthday Surprise!

Added a melee damage bonus spell. You can use it to implement VOPL. You could also implement a spell which decreases someone's damage. To do so you would specify the bonus like 1d6-7. You want to make sure that the highest roll is a negative number this is required for the spell to be considered "bad". If you have no stacking turned on, you can have one "good" and one "bad" active at the same time. (Technically four active as you can have a "good" and "bad" single target spell and a "good" and "bad" party spell.)

Okay, I'll add this to the manual. In your example, 1d6-7, it would always be a -6 or would it range from -1 to -6? Can we just put in a 0d0-# to have a static negative value or no?

Allow the flags on specials to be set. Added detect special effect. Special flags are defined in xml file. Silence, anti-magic, darkness, anti-teleport, and trap have special effects and must remain in that order as the first entries. Specials with trap flag are only activated once. Afterward the map square is cleared until you leave the level. The detection text for the flags probably need to be modified. I didn't check what everything detects as in the various versions of Bard's Tale.

The detect special effect is for spells, correct and the special flags are defined in the dungeon's xml file, as well? Also, are detection texts found in the dungeon xml files? [edit] - Nevermind, I found the xml file in the Data dir.

As for the detection texts from the original games, off the top of my head.

1. There are stairs near.
2. Something special is near.

There are probably more, perhaps Caars and/or Drifting will have more on that.

I'll download the new version to play around with it, so I can figure out what's going on with Flags. I am assuming that you can create any Special Flag you'd like, correct? So, if I wanted to make one that was a "Healing Flag", I could create a spell that would detect for healing squares, right? (I ask, 'cos I vaguely remember BT3 having spells that would locate magic and healing specials.

Oh, after talking with people on the Jasc forums, I found out what's going on with my Mings. On renders I do, that have NO background, the alpha channel information overrides Animation Shop. It can't be avoided, nor turned off, so if I set it to an "opaque" background and pick a color, it still holds the alpha channel info. It works correctly in AS, but the individual mings still hold the alpha channel info, which is what the problem was.

There are various workarounds I could do, two of which are converting the animations to gifs first, then to mings, which would lower the quality of the images to 8bit, I believe, or to just render out all my animations with a background. I'll start updating them, to be used. Do you care if I just continue using a static black background?

Oh, Dulsi, is there any way we can have a "create new map" for the editor? I want to start over completely with all my maps, as I've had various issues with my maps over the years. My BTBuilder folder has been the same one I've used, since I started working on this, back in 2009, just dropping the newer version over it. XD

[Methuselas]

Manual's updated, with the 5.5 stuff. Will posted it later. It's about to go through a re-write, though. I want to remove what little is left of the original manual.


Dulsi,


1dX + # Per level Duration for spells.

[Methuselas]

Dulsi,

I was working on re-writing the manual and when working on the Item Editor section, I noticed that I hadn't put in a Range parameter in the manual, so I loaded up the game to check it, as I thought I had forgotten it.

Turns out, there's no range option for Items, at all so you wouldn't be able to create a Long Bow that has a range of 90' and then a Short Bow that had a range of 60'. Was this intentional? I was hoping that Items had range, but I had never paid attention to it, during my building, as I was using Uber Chars to test dungeons and mostly doing graphic work. I just assumed that range was built into the Items, already.

If you do end up adding a Range value for Items, can you add a TAG value, as well, so we can link crossbows to bolts, slings to stones, etc? Also, a Usable Race parameter would be grand,as well. I've been wanting to make items that only a specific race could use.

[Methuselas]

So, yesterday was my birthday and it was total shit. I finally turned the age of the answer to the universe and everything, but was completely forgotten about. Not my friends, nor my family, save my son wished me a "happy birthday."

So yeah, any of the above or multi attacks for monsters for the next release would be greatly appreciated.

[Methuselas]

Manual's been updated. The only thing that's left from the original BTCS manual are the Action and Conditionals for Specials. I also added a new section called "Tips for creating a better Module." Take a look at it and if you feel there's something I should add to it, let me know, so it can be updated. After I remove the original description for Actions and Conditionals, I'll post one, last revision, before I start working on a proper module in InDesign that can be included with future releases.


Dulsi, I figured out the ming problem (I'll need to start saving out my renders as jpgs instead of pngs, to remove the alpha transparency bug - evidently, it's a "bug.") Do you want me to just update the default Golem (slot 21) animations, or do all of them?

[Methuselas]

Dulsi,

I just realized something and never thought about it, til now. How come we don't have an Immunity: X-tra Damage spell effect?


Now, look, I understand that you could create a continual cure spell that would remove all status effects, each round, but we don't have a spell effect that would prohibit critical hits or item/spell-zot.

[dulsi]

So, yesterday was my birthday and it was total shit. I finally turned the age of the answer to the universe and everything, but was completely forgotten about. Not my friends, nor my family, save my son wished me a "happy birthday."

Sorry about your birthday. My birthday happens to be today.

I will see what I can do to get a new feature in for you. For animations, I'd suggest just doing the base image for now. I know you what all the variant golems but I'm not ready for that.

[Methuselas]

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!! (Sorry, Name Days are very important to me.) As for mine, it's okay now. Kiddo and the Lady remembered, but I was rather miffed my family and friends forgot yet again. LOL! Tell you how bad my friends are, 3 years ago, they threw a "surprise party" for me, but neglected to get me for said party and I got bombarded with a mass of texts from various people, chewing me out for "not showing up." -_-

I'll go ahead and crank out the golem images right now. I have the 640 ones already done. (They were my test engine.) It saddens me, though, that Jasc's Animation Shop has issues with png transparencies. The whole reason I purchased it was ease of creating animations with BT Builder and not having to use Firefox's buggy Ming creator. I don't want to have to load individual images into photoshop to paint bucket out the alpha areas, so I'll just start saving my image sequences as jpgs. The quality loss will be minimal.

I'll post when I have them updated to my shared folder.

[Methuselas]

Golem animations are updated and checked. Please use the individual files and not the zip archives. I need to delete those, to update them.

Happy Birthday, Dulsi! (again.)

[Methuselas]

BTW, thanks for the status and guild.xml files you used, Dulsi. I don't know why mine didn't work, but those worked perfectly, with my modifications.