Fixes/Changes for Patch 1.01

[SuicideBunny]

about the spellbook, repeated it, so it wasn't my failing brain.
here's what i did both times:
bought invisibility and some other 10 mana el spells (different ones both times, only invisibility was the same), used it to steal around town, then i bought some divination spells and when i learned those, every elemental spell below lock melt gets deleted from the spell list.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Oh, SuicideBunny....that was the key. I could count how many spells past Lock Melt were getting clipped and I found the problem. Thank you.

Who wants the bad news now?....

Fixing this will break existing saved games.



Man, this is not my day.

[SuicideBunny]

Fixing this will break existing saved games.

[vadermode]Nooooooooooooooooooooooooo![/vadermode]

good thing actually. i need to get some work done and get away from that evil game for a while. nice total recall twist you-know-where, btw.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Ok...I fixed it so you can use your old saved games! Whew!

But, there is one bad truth remaining: all along I said those spells were there but just not showing...well, they aren't there. There are 39 spells in the game, only the first 35 were getting saved properly, meaning all the top-level Elemental spells weren't saved if you learned any of them. This only slipped through beta testing because those spells are saved to your quick slots separately (if you've set them).

My advice to everyone: don't learn any top-level Elemental spells until the patch is released, probably tomorrow.

If anyone wants to test the 1.01 patch for me now, please send me an email at info@basiliskgames.com

Thanks.

[Melvil]

Good show sir, i'll only have to repuchase invis and disable trap spells, portal seems to save to the list just fine

[BasiliskWrangler]

Fixes for 1.01 keep piling in there...

I am not focusing on requests right now...just want to get the game solid first before any new stuff gets added.

[PhilosophiX]

Get some sleep man, if you die of exhaustion were all screwed...

[chamr]

First and foremost, your game rocks, and rocks hard. I haven't been this taken with a game in quite a while. Can't.... stop... playing.... The brainpower and love that's gone into this game are evident. I'm almost 12 hours in and still finding new game mechanics and game engine cheap thrills. Sweetness. You should be damn proud of what you've created. Thanks!

Now, on to the bugs. Lighting and visibility modifiers seem bugged. Two examples:

1) When I've got a torch going and a bow in the other hand, then fire the bow, which causes the torch to go out, monsters don't seem to suffer the "darkness" penalty when attacking. It also seems to (maybe) hose my cats eyes spell from avoiding the penalty myself.

2) When I've dumped some demon oil on the ground at night, setting off a beautiful inferno, it does not seem to change any visibility modifiers. We're all still penalized as if it were completely dark.

[JOG]

Also, try using SHGetFolderPath to find the My Documents directory rather than hard-coding "My Documents."

He does this already - my virtual "My Documents" folder (named "Eigene Dateien" on my german Win XP) actually links to the folder "E:\Savegames" and this is where I now have the Eschalon Savegames subfolder.

I guess the problem is with properly storing/translating the long-folder-names returned by SHGetFolderPath when they are made for non-ISO_8859-1 charsets (cyrillic, hebrew, greek, chinese etc.) maybe using just the short (8.3) folder names would work?

[Liandri]

Ok, i was able to bypass savegames folder bug by changing the path in memory - i changed string \Eschalon Book I Saved Games\ to \..\Eschalon Book I Saved Games\
So the target folder will be C:\Documents and Settings\User\Eschalon Book I Saved Games\
This allowed me to see game launcher screen. But then - no matter which graphic settings i choose(i tried changing even refresh rate), game just displays a black 800x600 screen for 0.5-1 second, then immediately closes without any reports.
My system: Athlon XP 3200+ / 1 GB RAM / Radeon 9600 / DX 9.0c / WinXPSP2 Rus

I hope it will be fixed soon...

Also, i wanted to suggest an easy work-around for fixing Saved Games bug. You may just add the possibility for the game to set Saved Games folder inside the main game directoty: \saves\ for example.
It may be even better to make it user-controlled, for example via command line parameters, something like:
"..\Eschalon Book I.exe" -localsaves
And no need to change system folders paths...

Thanks for the game! I hope someday i will be able to play it

[BasiliskWrangler]

Thank Liandri. I will have this corrected soon. I wanted to get patch 1.01 out quickly and this issue will take a bit more time, so it will go into the next patch.

[JOG]

FIXED: Skill point exploit in Character Editor.

Now it's an anti-exploit

Select class Fighter ==> 20 skillpoints, "Sword = 1"
Buy 1 point of Sword ==> 19 skillpoints, "Sword = 2"
Select class Ranger ==> 16 skillpoints, "Sword = 1", "Bow" = 1

Should be 17 skillpoints or "Sword" should stay at 2

[DGM]

When will there be a patched demo?

[BasiliskWrangler]

Unsure. Probably after 1.02.

[JOG]

You may just add the possibility for the game to set Saved Games folder inside the main game directoty: \saves\ for example.

Hear, hear!

Separating savegames from the game itself is a silly custom. Yes, XP and Vista, Linux and MacOS all are multi-user OS's but should I ever come home and see that stranger who according to Bill Gates is also supposed to use my computer, he's in for a lot more trouble than just me overwriting his savegames.

Also, what if Mr. Stranger would prefer a different patch-state than myself, or even doesn't own a license to use an expansion I installed? What if Mr. Stranger is actually a kid and shouldn't be allowed to have access to M-Rated games? Shouldn't the game itself be user-specific and the savegames be part of that user-specific install?

A savegame belongs to the games install folder. And even if you insist on multi-user capabilities, they belong to the user-specific application-data folders along with ini settings and the like. Games are no applications to edit savegames, and savegames are not comparable to a word document or an excel spreadsheet.

I know we can't change the idiotic policy, but it won't hurt when developers (not just independent ones) would show a bit of civil disobedience and allow their more self-responsible users to put the savegames where they prefer them to be.