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Will Ferazels Wand ever be made open, or semi-open source? Then programmers could add support for new bosses, new items, and real support for new worlds. Of course, you wouldnt do this now, but what about in several years when there arent many sales?
------------------ "Give me a large enough hard drive, a fast enough modem, and I can download the web!"
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Originally posted by aschaaf_86: **Will Ferazels Wand ever be made open, or semi-open source? Then programmers could add support for new bosses, new items, and real support for new worlds. Of course, you wouldnt do this now, but what about in several years when there arent many sales?
**
For now just be glad that they made Mascot public.
------------------ Remember, this conversation never took place.
By that same idea, they should have released the source to Maelstrom in 1999. Sure, lots of stuff could be added to it, but that last extra dollar counts more than innovation of old products.
------------------ MAGNETIC POEM #14.4 (1/3/00) love is the searching below one's tiny expecations
Just imagine what the One Big World project would be like with new bosses, enemies, objects...
The game will not be going open source anytime in the near future. There will be a 1.0.4 update in a few weeks, probably. If there are any bugs that are driving you crazy, be sure to post them prominently on the webboard. I'll also consider minor feature additions that might help you with your world development efforts. The time I have to work on the update is pretty limited, so the key word here is minor feature additions. E.g., if there's some quirk that you think would be really easy to fix and constantly causes a hassle, I may be able to do something about that. (I'm already going to add an "Open Custom World" menu option so that you don't have to mess around with renaming & replacing the world data file.)
-Ben
------------------ Ben Spees / Coding Boffin / Ambrosia Software, Inc.
Originally posted by Ben Spees: **The game will not be going open source anytime in the near future. **
OK. What about MASCOT being semi open source? By that, I mean the code would only be given to Ferazel geeks who wanted to help on it, and there would be only one official, authorized, Ambrosia-approved edition. Can you imagine having a dialog like (url="http://"http://www.frontiernet.net/~pschaaf/editInfo.jpg")this(/url) in MASCOT?
------------------ "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." -- George W. Bush
Originally posted by aschaaf_86: **Can you imagine having a dialog like this in MASCOT? **
That sure is a funny looking treasure chest
------------------ -- Jeff "This is a teaching hospital, you're here to learn. We'd call it a learning hospital, but that would scare the patients."
Hmm. Open-sourcing MASCOT just might be possible - if I got it right, neither Mr. Spees or Ambrosia are going to update it or support it, so they just might let someone else do it.
As for aschaaf's picture, I suppose that the point was not the goblin (which in my opinion wouldn't be very fitting as a treasure chest) but some userfriendly additions, such as the ability to choose the item required for opening and the item inside from a list, rather than having to type in some obscure ID numbers. And personally, I do think that they would make editing easier.
Of course, Mr. Spees owns the code, and especially since he apparently likes reusing code (MASCOT Editor is based on Harry the Handsome Executive's editor, right?), he might want to keep it to himself for future use. Besides, since MASCOT is somewhat rough and otherwise unfinished, MASCOT might not be exactly the greatest piece of coding he has done in his life. I suppose that it might not only be difficult to edit, but that it would also rather embarassing for a great programmer if people started writing posts like "Uh... jes' what the heck is up with this so-called piece of code? I can't make it out! This has to be the most radically confusing and obfuscated program I've ever seen in my whole life!" to the Ferazel Hacking web board.
------------------ "I don't say yes or no, more like the other way around" Ankh Starrunner, The Diamond Blaster
Originally posted by Merciless: **That sure is a funny looking treasure chest:D **
Well, that was just a quick test.
If the code is released, I don't promise to make it much better with things like the ability to test conversations in MASCOT. However, I would definatly add Cmd-. and enter support to every dialog, and make them "movable modal" dialogs instead of "modal".
Also, the MASCOT Reference guide could be bundled, and maybe there could be in-application help for each item. ------------------ "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream." -- George W. Bush
(This message has been edited by aschaaf_86 (edited 01-08-2001).)
Originally posted by aschaaf_86: However, I would definatly add Cmd-. and enter support to every dialog, and make them "movable modal" dialogs instead of "modal".
Heh, that would be as hard as adding the lines SetDialogDefaultItem( x, y ) and ...oh crap, I forgot the other one. Has the word Cancel in it That would add the cmd-., esc, enter, return stuff automatically (assuming you're bring it to CarbonLib :))
And as for the treasure chest thing, I thought it was funny so I mentioned it. Heh, you should stick something like that in the OBW project.
Originally posted by Merciless: **Heh, that would be as hard as adding the lines SetDialogDefaultItem( x, y ) and ...oh crap, I forgot the other one. **
SetDialogDefaultCancelItem(x,y), I think.
Originally posted by Merciless: **Heh, that would be as hard as adding the lines SetDialogDefaultItem( x, y ) and ...oh crap, I forgot the other one. Has the word Cancel in it:) That would add the cmd-., esc, enter, return stuff automatically (assuming you're bring it to CarbonLib :))
And as for the treasure chest thing, I thought it was funny so I mentioned it. Heh, you should stick something like that in the OBW project. **
That'd be very fun, but there's no support for new objects.
------------------ I would have to ask the questioner. I haven't had a chance to ask the questioners the question they've been questioning. -- George W. Bush
Originally posted by Ben Spees: **The time I have to work on the update is pretty limited, so the key word here is minor feature additions. E.g., if there's some quirk that you think would be really easy to fix and constantly causes a hassle, I may be able to do something about that. **
Well I don't know how hard this would be, but it would certainly save us a lot of memory on OBW. Could you add quicktime MIDI support so instead of AIFF files we could put MIDIs in the Music folder?