Version 0.7.2 of the editor has been released, btw, and is available from the usual place:

http://apocalyptech.com/eschalon/

The single change in this release is a fix for this issue:

Book I maps store a "Map ID" which needs to be the same name as the filename, otherwise the state of the map won't get saved properly (and in fact could possibly overwrite the state of whatever map you had started with). When creating new maps in Book I, be sure to go into the global "Map Properties" dialog and update the Map ID accordingly.

I had toyed with the idea of just setting that value automatically, but I figure that could lead to unintended consequences too, if people are saving maps as backups or something; I dunno. Perhaps I'll end up doing that in a future version anyway. Regardless, for now just set the value and you should be fine.

Don't know, guess the answer doesn't matter now that the editor has been updated. Just tested it, and it no longer resets content on new maps. Thank you xolotl.

Another day, another update. I've just pushed out 0.7.3, available as usual from here: http://apocalyptech.com/eschalon/

This release clears up a few things which I probably should have done in 0.7.2 (instead of just rushing that one out so quickly with the editable Map ID). A couple of the notable changes:

• The program will be more proactive about making sure that the Map ID field matches the filename. It'll prompt you to change it on a "Save As," if it doesn't match, and display a red warning in the GUI whenever it doesn't match.
• Map editor now has a "New" menu item under File which will create a blank map for you.
• The app will now prompt you first if you want to create a new map, and then go into the Load menu if you hit Cancel or escape, rather than going straight into the Load menu.
• Deciphered an extra four bytes out of the Book 1 map file, including the flag which determines if the map is Outside or a Dungeon.

So yeah, have at it, if you want.

... aaand there's yet another new version, at http://apocalyptech.com/eschalon/

Changes in 0.7.4 relevant to Book 1 (all in the map editor component) -

• Added a "Fill" function to make fresh maps a little easier to deal with
• Fixed an exception which could get triggered while drawing near the bottom of the map

So, a few useful bits in there. I swear I'll try to take it easy on the release schedule for a bit. :)

Oh, and it should be noted, perhaps, that the character editor component remains basically unchanged since 0.7.0, so if you're just editing characters, not much has been updated.

I'm guessing this will be of interest to some folks, so as a heads-up, I've put out a sort-of reference to scripting out on my page, which details all the scripting commands that I'm currently aware of. I'm sure there are mistakes and whatnot, and I'd guess that it's probably incomplete, but it should help regardless. Be sure to let me know if I have anything wrong, or anything missing.

Book 1 Scripting Reference
Book 2 Scripting Reference

Enjoy!

Original:
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New:
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Here are some screenshots of what I'm working on. I want to extend Eschalon: Book I by a handful of hours with new locations, starting from the beginning of the game. I should be done by December.

Anyone else working on something?

Oh, sweet. Really looking forward to this. :)

I finally got around to messing with the editor in a non-trivial way today, and so I thought I'd share my first original content: the Monsterator. Ever wondered who would win in a fight: a taurax or a barrea mercenary? How about a dozen of each? Or throw some hive queens in there!



To use it, unzip monsterator.zip and place its contents in any save game slot. The entrance is in the second floor of the lighthouse, which is an empty map, so installing my version shouldn't disrupt existing games. Of course, your mileage may vary, so back up any saves you care about first!

A potato that heals you 50 health in exchange for 200 gold pieces? Interesting.

Yeah, I put a couple of ideas for custom items in there as well. The healing potato was inspired by coin-op magic items in a buddy's D&D game. The other is a ruby that damages you but gives you ogre strength.

Oh, and I suppose I should have said - the lighthouse level 2 map doesn't look any different, but observant characters may discover otherwise.

Hi,

I am new to Eschalon and new to the editor.

I am on a Mac running OS X 10.6.4 and Parallels with Windows XP

I installed the editor on the windows machine, I used the .exe file just like it said to on the website and I get this error when I try to run it...

Unable to execute file:
C:\Program Files\Eschalon Utilities\eschalon_b1_char.exe

CreateProcess failed; code 14001.
This application has failed to start because the application configuration is incorrect. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem.


I uninstalled and reinstalled twice. No dice. Am I doing something wrong?

Thanks! I was going to bring my save files over from the mac, edit them on the PC and then drag them back over.

Huh, weird. I'm actually totally unfamiliar with Parallels; is that some kind of VM type thing? Are you actually running Windows in a separate process, or is it some kind of emulation layer like Cider?

I did have a couple of people come to me with errors which turned out to be because they needed either XP Service Pack 3, or a Visual C++ Redistributable installed. (They had previously been on XP SP2.) The error they had was something different from yours, but perhaps it's related and just weird because of that Parallels environment you mentioned. If you're not on SP3 you may want to upgrade to that, or try installing the VC++ Redistributable. There's various versions of it (one from 2008 and another from 2010), and I'm not sure which one would necessarily do the trick. For 32-bit windows, the links would be: 2008 SP1, 2010. I'm sure the 64-bit versions wouldn't be too hard to track down.

Anyway, let me know if that takes care of it, or if there's anything else funky in your environment which might get in the way.

Hey all - I just got a report from someone who got these utilities working on OSX, which may be good news for other Mac folks out there. I've put up a list of instructions at the project webpage. Let me know if that works for you! Also, if anyone feels like figuring out how to package it up into a .dmg or something, that would be pretty great, too.

I think I was too ambitious with the "handful of hours" comment. So far I've only got about twenty minutes of new content. Can't think of anything else to add, at least without distracting the player. Most people should find the storehouse I've added to Aridell useful though.

Think I'll release now. If I can think of anything else to add, I can always update it in the future.

Bought E1 on steam a while ago, just recently started playing.

Got quickly annoyed with it, so decided to hack the savegames to cheat. This is usually a bad sign: once I start hacking a game, it's running low on my playability meter, at which point it's not long left on my HDD. The exception is easily-script-moddable games, like Bethsoft stuff and Furcadia.

So I quickly noticed that there was scripty stuff in the savegames, and maps. I had figured most of the obvious parts of the char file, listed out the values for a lot of the list-values, etc. But this morning I thought "this format's so open, I'm sure someone else must have documented this stuff - I'm reinventing the wheel here". However, when I Googled it, I never expected to find something THIS impressive!

What I did last night is just a tiny subset of what you've found already. I spotted a couple tiny bits where my notes differ from or add to what's on your scripting page for E1, though, since I ran "strings" on the exe file itself. Make sure to include unicode, since the commandlist in there is in 2-byte unicode. Most scripts seem to be ascii though.

So, those differences, I describe below.

activate_qt N - I'm assuming the param is 1 for the first in the list, and so on down?

effect (name) N - Here's a list of effect names I've seen in various contexts. Where I've seen them used with this command, the values are given in braces. No others are tested to work:
- Air Shielded
- Blessed
- Cat's Eyes (2)
- Chameleon
- Charmed
- Elemental Armor
- Enchanted Weapon
- Enkindled Weapon
- Entangled
- Gravedigger's Flame
- Greater Protection (3)
- Haste (I=2, II=4 III=6)
- Invisible (I=2, II=4 III=6)
- Keensight (3)
- Leatherskin (I=2, II=4 III=6)
- Mana Fortified (3)
- Nimbleness (3)
- Off-Balance
- Ogre Strength (3)
- Paralyzed
- Poisoned
- Predator Sight (3)
- Reveal Map
- Scared
- Stoneskin (2)
- Stunned

all_quests - not tested. Debugging command?

areacheck - Your writeup says it's not used in book 1, but I see it used in two places in scripts in the exe. This one I assume is a script that accompanies the endgame text:

updatezones - This command is often included with the "areacheck" command, whatever that does. I'm assuming they both rationalise the map in some way when you teleport, such as this one from a conversation script:

map_port - Contrary to your notes, the only place I've seen a any string parameter that isn't in (braces) is where the string is at the end of a script, so it's terminated by the \r\n string terminator, and hence (I assume) doesn't need the braces to delimit the string. I've seen map_port with both numeric map number params like "map_port 52", and with params in parentheses, like the above "map_port (Darkford)".

book N / learn_book N
I came up with this list, which I suspect is not exhaustive. Note that the parameters for book numbers and the learn_book numbers are NOT the same, though they are both called "booknum" in your writeup. Learn_book numbers are not the skill number either - they're the second number in the list below. Somewhere in the savegame, there'll be a set of fields (maybe a bitfield?) that stores which books have been "learnt", so you can't learn them twice. Not found this, but I suspect the sfx bitfield. 15 books, so 15 or 16 bits or bytes or ints, somewhere.

Book list:
1 The holy Tasslar
2 Of Men And Giants
3 Sealed Note
4 The Alchemist's Cookbook I
5 The Alchemist's Cookbook III (yes, out of order)
6 The Alchemist's Cookbook II
9 Torn Page
10 Journal Entry
13 Secrets of Transference Circuits
14 2nd Sealed note
15 37 The Legendary Swordsman
16 35 Keyholes and Tumblers
17 36 Bones to Splinters
18 32 the Greatest Ranger
19 41 Embrace the Night
20 38 Elements of Magick
21 43 Magicka Divine
22 39 Mapping Your World
23 42 Hidden Dangers and Treasures
24 40 Buying and Selling
25 34 Light Armor Field Guide
26 44 Heavy Armor Field Guide
27 33 It's a Trap!
28 31 The Art of Brewing
29 3rd Sealed note
30 Bloodstained Note
33 30 The Lumberjack
34 Imbuing Your Equipment
35 A History of Thaermore
36 Letter to Penelope
37 Mercenary's Note
38 The Goblins of Thaermore
39 The Orakur Are Watching
40 The Crimson Sky
41 Benny and the Dragon
42 Incriminating Letter
43 A World of Wonder
44 The Jewel of Thaermore
46 Sam's Guide to Demon Oil
48 Portal Instructions

cond_not_quest N - This is from 24.map: "cond_not_quest 25 (-1) ; trigger_talk 77" - I'm thinking that this shows two interesting things. First, like strings, negative numbers need to be quoted/delimited with braces, at least if they aren't the last parameter (which may mean that more commands can have negative numbers than previously thought?). Secondly, some kind of inactive quests (unstarted? killed? both?) seem to have a value of -1, so this handy code tests for that.

npc_disp_change 59 2 - change NPC 59's disposition to 2. I think 2 is attack, but I've only seen it on Lilith's (59) and Grimulk's (87) conversation options, when they go hostile. I've also seen 0 for npc 72, which also seems to be attack? Your text only lists 0 (hostile) and 1 (friendly), so I wonder what 2 is.

poison 200 - poison with this power level. I suspect 200 means "incurable".

npc_die 58 - kill the numbered NPC.

rename_item (SRC NAME) (DEST NAME) - rename an item (or, change all of an item to another type?). Since this is in conversation scripts, it probably works globally, renaming the item type. But it might just work on the PC's inventory. It's only used with unique, quest items, though, with a check to see that the player has them, so can't tell.

screen_fade_in - go from faded to black, to show play screen again. Used when teleporting, etc. No params.

screen_fade_out - fade play screen to black.

special_event 1 - trigger some special event? This may not be a command, as it's not included in the command list. But it looks like it is. May be a script ID or soemthing

strip_items - Remove all the player's items? Does this include script items? If so, are they placed in some chest? Takes no params, so it's not specifying a container. Only happens in conversation, so maybe the talking NPC gets the items? Used in one place:



The following commands most likely are only usable from conversation scripts.

cleric_dehex - cleric remove curse action, from conversation options.

cleric_heal - cleric heal action, from conversation options.

init_trade (NAME) - trade with NPC NAME

rent_room 15 4690 - rent room from innkeeper dialog. I'm guessing price and room location? Values seen:
Porter: 15 4690
Eeru: rent_room 30 8959 (if you are polite)
Eeru: rent_room 50 8959 (if you aren't)

teach_skill (Garrett) 7 - Garrett teaches skill 7. Skill list seems to be the same as everywhere else:
01 Alchemy
02 Divination
03 Elemental
04 Light Armor
05 Heavy Armor
06 Shields
07 Cartography
08 Dodge
09 Hide in shadows
10 Lore
11 Meditation
12 Mercantile
13 Move silently
14 Pick Locks
15 Skullduggery
16 Spot hidden
17 Survival
18 Unarmed Combat
19 Bludgeoning weapons
20 Bow weapons
21 Cleaving weapons
22 Short bladed weapons
23 Swords
24 Thrown weapons


The following commands aren't used anywhere that I can find, but are included in the exe's list of commands. No indication of what params they support. The names are suggestive, but obviously they all need testing.

cond_detected - run following code if the player has been detected by foes?
convert - convert an item to another type, maybe?
curse - maybe works like "disease"?
delay - ?
full_restore - restore full mana? Or mana and health?
remove_barrier - what's a barrier?
spell - maybe works like "disease"?
trap - maybe works like "disease"?

There are two messages that suggest there may be cheat/debugging codes: "You've just learned every spell and became a Master of all Skills!" and "Reset this map?" - since these are right by "Press any key to continue" and "You decide to stand passively for a moment", I suspect they're input related, so probably cheat codes. There may also be some way to turn on "developer mode", since elsewhere there's the message "Developer Mode LOCKED OBJECT UNLOCKED!" - however, just as with the unused commands, there's no saying whether any of that was ever compiled in or made bug-free.

If any of that was useful, I can maybe poke around in the E2 string table, too, if that'd be helpful.

Other notes:

To me, this feels more like:

16 is a rounder number, and (number, string, string), seems more sensible to me.
So that gets rid of two unknowns for you: extstr1 and extstr2.


also:

feels more like:


No idea whether any of these help you decode the structure any, though.