Made more progress on the editor. The walkthrough window now has basic functionality. There are only a few commands working, mainly the directional commands and the goto command. It’s all in black-and-white, but it is enough to let you walk through the rooms and get a feel for what mobs and objects are where.

Pretty basic, but it will evolve with time.

You can get the latest version HERE (or via the link on the sidebar).

We had permission to use zones from these authors for Basternae 2. Even so, I want to be sure we have permission to use them with Basternae 3. If you know any of these folks, please pass the word that I’d like to get permission to use their zones in Basternae 3 (and/or all future incarnations of whatever Basternae 3 ends up evolving into).

Based on the severely-outdated zone list I have from Basternae 2, here’s a list of the folks I’d like to get zone permission from:

Akyura
Alachest
Baghtru
Beretorn
Clavados
Cy
Denel
Dregeath
Drevarr
Drokal
Dryn
Drzx
Dubar
Gharl
Gnosha
Ilshad
Iris
Kolut
Khiba
Kuldrim
Lortar
Losh
Malthrix
Parkan
Pesto
Phreak
Raliq
Sarlac
Scipio
Sjad
Ski
Sniktiorg
Talos
Threnody
Thugan
Timken
Trask
Trika
Xueqin
Zaeru
Zileas

We could probably just use the zones since we were given permission once, but I’d really prefer to run it by the authors first. My email address is xangis [at the mail provider] yahoo (dot) com. Any assistance in contacting these folks would be appreciated. Thank you.

I did a little more work on the editor today.  Now that I’m able to convert zones created with DurisEdit, I decided to use the Basternae Editor tinker around a bit with the Minotaur Stronghold zone that I created and converted.  What did I work on?  The map view.

I changed it so that it generates room arrangements more accurately and also shows room interconnections.  It has only been tested with and I only expect it to work with zones that have rooms that are all interconnected (reachable).  I’m sure it will need some work to behave right with non-contiguous zones.  Even so, I have it working with the Minotaur Stronghold, Kobold Village, and Thri-Kreen Hometown, and clicking on the box for a room will take you to the edit window for that room.  Kinda neat if you ask me.

You can get the latest version HERE (or via the link on the sidebar).

I’ve been wanting to add support to the zone converter for using DurisEdit to create Basternae 3 zones for a while now.  While it is nearly identical to the DikuEdit 3.10 that we’ve used for ages, there are a few subtle differences — their format allows multiclassing and has a few different classes available and a few different settings that we don’t use, like size.

I built a small 40-room zone using DurisEdit to test against.  I had to make a few changes and had to improvise a bit with class translation, but I’m able to import Duris zones now.  The process is identical to the import of Basternae 1 zones.

Since they don’t have settings for each type of elementalist, I’ve defaulted mobs classed “Conjurer” to “Fire Elementalist”.  If the class should be something different, it will just have to be changed after conversion.  There will also probably need to be some extra affect flag translation and/or a few minor tweaks here and there, but the hard part — reading the files correctly — is covered.

This means we now support:

– Envy zones (You can create them using mzfe2-32 among other things).  This is the least full-featured format.
– Basternae 1 Zones (.obj, .mob, .wld, etc.)
– Basternae 2 Zones (.are)
– Duris Zones (.obj, .mob, .wld, etc.)
– Basternae 3 Zones (.are.xml)

Given the choice between DE 3.10 and DurisEdit, you should choose DE 3.10 because it most closely matches our zone format.

The ideal editor would be the current zone editor, version 0.42, but that may still need some work.

In addition to fixing a few bugs with immortal commands, I connected two more zones to the MUD, giving us a whopping total of 3 connected right now:  The Kobold Village, The Thri-Kreen hometown, and the Gypsy Encampment.

Two zone editor updates in 24 hours — I’m on a roll here.

Here’s what’s changed in version 0.42:

— Select list dropdown now updates its text on navigate (< and >) for all object types.
— Fixed a save-on-navigate issue that caused some information loss.
— Set edit windows to have controls disabled when no items exist for editing.  This will prevent editing empty objects (which there would be no way to save).
— Can now delete items of all types, not just mobs.
— “Known Issues” has been added to the help menu.  It will show what I know is broken.
— Use flags and wear flags on objects can now be edited via the flag editor window.

You can get it here.

I admit it.  The last release of the zone editor (0.40) was pretty much unusable.  This one (0.41) should be quite a bit better.

Things fixed/improved in this version:

— Will now rebuild item select drop down list on create new items for all types.
— Resets, shops, and quests now save current item on navigate forward/backward.
— Current edit window contents were not saved when clicking “new” for all types.  They are now.
— Rooms and objects would not autonumber.  They do now.
— Update status bar on add new items for all types.
— Fixed crash on clicking greyed out ‘edit special’ buttons.

Ignore the little brown boxes that show up on the map window.  I started working on map generation from the room list, but it’s nowhere near done yet and will look completely wrong for now.

You can get it here. Feel free to report any bugs/glitches/inconveniences. One known issue is that the “delete” buttons aren’t functional yet (if you create a room, shop, or obj you’re stuck with it for now :P)

For a couple months back in 2003 I had a full-time job doing nothing but building InstallShield installers.  It was a pretty arduous process even for simple applications.

I wanted to build an installer for the Basternae Editor, which is a very simple program in that it doesn’t need any registry entries, license keys, services, or database objects.  It’s just data files and an executable.

This means that I really didn’t want to fire up my ancient (2003) copy of InstallShield to build an installer.  Instead I decided to give InnoSetup another chance.  I had tried it back when it was “brand spankin’ new” and didn’t really care for it, but that was a very very long time ago (before 2003).

I downloaded Inno Setup 5 and within minutes I was building an installer for the Basternae Editor.  I just ran through the wizard, added my files and executables, and fired it up.

Well, things were a little off on the first try — I wanted to run my app from the /bin directory and not the root program install directory.  Easy enough, the paths were right in front of me and I changed “{app}” to “{app}\bin” where it needed to be changed.

Next I found that it wasn’t using the executable’s directory as the working directory.  Yet again this was easy — I just added WorkingDir: “{app}\bin” to the icon setting and I’m good to go.  Total time spent building the installer, including Google searches and test install/uninstalls was about half an hour.  Nice.

The true test is whether it’s easy to maintain an install script.  I made a new build of the Basternae Editor today and wanted to update the installer.  The editor had no functional changes, just icons added to the menu so it’s a little clearer what button does what.

So I fire up InnoSetup, change the version at the top of the script from 0.39 to 0.40, hit “compile” and let it do its magic.  Seconds later I have a working install.  The best part is that this install cleanly installs over the top of an existing install, updates the listing in add/remove programs, and is COMPLETELY HASSLE FREE, a concept that was pretty alien to me given my InstallShield and WISE Installer experience.

So, here’s the new build of the Basternae Editor:  http://www.basternae.org/Basternae3EditorSetup_v0.40.exe