BAE

[Berendol]

May I have your attention please...

I have released the first beta of BAE today. It only includes the monster viewer. It's ready for 3rd party testing and I ask anyone with the time to test it out on your r_info.txt and monster.txt files, which can be found in the MAngband source tarball under lib/game, or in any single-player Angband variant's lib/edit folder.

You WILL need Microsoft's .net framework which is approximately 20mb. Modem users >28.8 can expect this to take around 1 hour, 40 minutes unless they're playing Mangband. And I know some of you play for way more than that on modems On the plus side, it lets me make BAE much smaller and faster.

Some people have reported trouble with http://www.windowsupdate.com so Maegdae, would you post the location of that .net package you found please?

[Maegdae]

     Heres a direct-download for the English version of the .net framework.  Copy/Paste into your browser.

You need one of these:
Microsoft Windows® 98
Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 (SP 6a required)
Microsoft Windows Millennium Edition (Windows Me)
Microsoft Windows 2000 (SP2 Recommended)
Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition

http://download.microsoft.com/download/ ... redist.exe

The official download instructions:
Click the download of your choice and save the .exe file to your computer.
Double-click the .exe file.
Follow the instructions.
Save the extracted files to your hard disk.
Double-click dotnetfx.exe.
Follow the instructions to set up.

      If you want to read the summaries/download a different language version go to

http://msdn.microsoft.com/downloads/def ... itedoc.xml

 Be warned! According Microsoft, the .net framework requires Internet Explorer 5.01 or newer.  (you can still use Netscape/etc, just have IE installed).  If you don't know whether IE is new enough, click Help, then About Internet Explorer.  If the version starts with a number higher than 5.01, then you don't need to update IE.
Otherwise, you can get it here     http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ie/default.asp


   

[Berendol]

It's ready!
[glow=yellow,6,300] ;D[/glow]

Beta 1 is available for download NOW at:
http://www.rit.edu/~djl5698/angband/bae.htm

Go check it out. There's plenty of screenshots too.

[Big_Juan_Teh_Furby]

Hey Berendol, any updates on BAE?  It looks pretty cool, but it only does monsters.

Can you code it so that when you try to load <whatever> (items, arts, etc), it'll look for the specific file, as AMPFI does?  I didn't know that, as an example, r.txt was the file for monsters.

Also, I've shamelessly stolen your signature from here to add to my own personal emails, 'cos, well, it's quite funny to the people who I'd be emailing.

[Berendol]

Actually, I have been working on a new program in VB6 for viewing/creating ego-items. It loads the ego info file in about 0.1 seconds - a new speed record, especially compared to AMPFI. And it lets you create new ego-items, for which it generates strings that you can copy-and-paste into the e_info.txt.

BAE is almost ready for beta 2. It's still monsters-only. The main reason I've not made much progress on BAE is the amount of demand. Nobody wants to download an un-uninstallable 20MB runtime just to use a <500k companion program to a game that fits on a floppy. (There aren't a whole lot of programs that use .NET as of yet so BAE's about the only reason anyone here wants to get the runtime. Not really worth it for most people.)

So the question everyone asks me... Will I put item support in BAE? I plan to do that, yes. I don't know when, but I will do it. I really like the interface. Trouble is I need to learn some more VB.NET so I can program it to dynamically modify the interface to match the currently loaded filetype. It's possible, but I haven't figured out how yet. I will eventually have a nice new storewiz, that is correct for all item types and bonuses. And artifact support, and ego-item support. And definitely an improved file-reading mechanism, because the one I have right now is SLOW. (Compare the loading time with AMPFI's already slow loader.) Someday in the future I'd like to have it output an optimized (hole-less) ASCII template file too, but that unfortunately requires code changes to the MAngband server. Also I want vault reading capabilities That'll be about the easiest addition ever.

But I'm pressed for time... I'll update the software when I get time!

[Big_Juan_Teh_Furby]

No problem.

One thing I really like in BAE is how you can change
the exp you get for killing something based on level...is that/will that be possible in AMPFI?

Also, (and I think you've said this in your post, but I want to clarify), will we be able to see the value of, say, witan boots of speed +8?  In AMPFI it's practically impossible to determine ego items like that, from what I can tell.

[Berendol]

Player-level based information in AMPFI? That's definitely possible. You just have to use the Angband-style recall to do it. Change the view to the recall mode, and enter your level in the text box.

Here's how to get the price for Witan Boots of Speed [8,+5] +8. Load AMPFI. Load base-items. Load ego-items. Select View-Items. Sort by TVal/SVal/Name (Ctrl+F6). Select "Pair of Witan Boots". Enter the StoreWiz (F12). Select "of Speed" from the Add Ego list. Check "Override Ego PVal" and enter 8 in the PVal field. Your price is $345,300.

[Berendol]

BAE beta 2 is finally ready for download. I've got 5 new screenshots, and a mostly-complete list of what's new. The known problems section has been updated for this version. And, it's only a 37KB download - a change of merely 3KB from beta 1.

Here's the official BAE website: http://www.rit.edu/~djl5698/angband/bae.htm

The Graphical Dungeon Map is now updated for MAngband 0.7.2 - here is the URL: http://www.rit.edu/~djl5698/angband/gmap.htm