Welcome

[heisenberg]

Welcome everyone who decided to give a chance to my little play aid.

Since there are two active playing aids going on I decided to give this project the name Yet Another Gamebook Project. As you'll hopefully see in the program itself, it has an even simpler name: Gamebooks. The name is simple and generic for a good reason. Seventh Sense is a really good program with great graphics – actually, it's much better than what I can provide to you. And when Magnamund Commander also entered the scene, I stopped for a moment and asked myself: what could I give you that neither of those offers right now?

When I started writing this program, one main goal was to create a generic framework onto which I can build different types of gamebook rulesets. And I'm happy to announce that this mission of mine was successful: aside from the first six Lone Wolf books, I can also present you the four The World of Lone Wolf books. And this also explains the choice of the name: when I later will add the Freeway Warrior and Combat Heroes to my repertoire (the single player version of Black Baron and White Warlord are already finished, but I'm having trouble with the multiplayer part of them), I shouldn't use a name that would strictly link it to Lone Wolf's and Grey Star's world.

Of course this program is still in beta stage. I tested it as much as I could, but it's inevitable that something just slipped my mind. Should you find any problem with it, please report it on the forum.

There is a help section with some basic information about the program's working and the rules for both the LW and GS books. Please read it first, it might answer some of your questions.


In order to run the program, you need Microsoft's .NET framework 2.0 installed on your computer, which can be downloaded from www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=0856eacb-4362-4b0d-8edd-aab15c5e04f5&displaylang=en
After it's successfully installed, you can download the "installer": www.projectaon.org/staff/tamas/binaries/PAUpdater.exe
Actually it's a simple program to keep your files up-to-date. Just put it into the directory where you want the program downloaded, start it, select the series you're interested in and download the files. It will also get the Gamebook.exe and everything else it needs to work. YAGaP then can be started with the Gamebooks.exe file.
Uninstalling it is just as easy: delete the whole directory. It doesn't put anything anywhere else.
If you're using firewall: both the PAUpdater and Gamebooks will try to access the internet on startup to check for newer versions of the file. Please let them do this
It is reported that PAUpdater might give you a hard time running. Unfortunately I don't yet know the cause behind this. Should that happen, I created a zipped version of the package until I can figure out exactly what's the problem. You can download the package from www.projectaon.org/staff/tamas/binaries/YAGaP.zip -- hopefully this will behave better...

I tested the program under Win98SE, XP, Vista and Win7, and you *shouldn't* have a problem with those. It *might* work under linux if you use some kind of virtual computer/op system, but I never tried that. What I know is it won't work with Mono.

I wish you happy adventuring on Magnamund – for now.

Heisenberg

[pi4t]

How do you run the program???

[heisenberg]

You can either grab the the PAUpdater and run it to download the most recent version of the program and the books (select the either the Lone Wolf, World of Lone Wolf or both then click on the Start button; this is the preferred method as any subsequent run of the program can detect if newer version of the already downloaded files were uploaded to the PA server), or download the YAGaP.zip package, which currently contains the same files the updater would have downloaded, and unpack it. In both cases you'll end up with a second executable called Gamebooks.exe. That's the one that'll start the actual program.

[pi4t]

Where can I find gamebooks.exe?

[heisenberg]

If you downloaded it with the PAUpdater, then it will be put into the same directory as the updater itself, or into the working directory if, for some reason, you modified that.

It can also be found in the YAGaP.zip, with all of its dependencies - just unpack it into the desired directory.

[pi4t]

How about making an ability to change the rules? If possible, how about being able to write your own adventures? (Don't know anything about how to make computer programmes, so if I'm suggesting impossible things, please say

[heisenberg]

Changing the rules? Well, with one word: no.

With more than one word: it's possible, but it's not simple, nor easy. Depends on what you mean by changing the rules. Some of it should be fairly easy, others may prove more difficult.

If you mean changing rules like in SS, that you can turn some optional stuff on or off, I'm really not supporting the idea. Since my primary purpose is to implement the books covered under the PA license, which means the four combat heroes and the four freeway warriors, and finally the remaining lone wolves, I'm not planning on changing either ruleset from the originals for these books. However I'm willing to release their source codes to (and only to) those who would like to make modifications so they could alter it to their own taste. This, naturally, requires some knowledge in the VB.NET programming language.

As for the books, the question is much easier to answer: you can totally add your own adventures (since that's exactly what I'm doing), and you don't even need (much) prog skills, just to understand the basic concept of how the book descriptor works, and some help from me to put your creations (either the books or the rulesets) beside the other files. This only applies, of course, if you're willing to accept the limitations that the general rulesets force on you. Should you wish for something more unique, like the Cartwheel in FotW, you, again, would find yourself in dire need of more or less programming knowledge; although in this case the task is simpler than to write or even modify a whole ruleset. I can provide the sources of the already completed books too to give you and idea of what to expect.

The book sources can be found here. The .lng.zip ones are the ones containing 99% of the textual and logical data. Those should be your first ones to check out, but never forget that the missing <1% of the logic (for the unique stuffs) resides in the ctr files.

[riverwind]

Hi all, I would love to help translate the books "Seventh Sense" to Spanish.

regards

[alderaine]

Hi
I can't seem to find the option to move posts, but you would be better off posting this on the Seventh Sense board, as I'm not sure if Dave follows this board or not.
The books themselves are not a major problem - they are to a degree available, and have their own site www.projectaon.org/es/ - but there will be elements of the software that would benefit.
Seventh Sense boards are here:
projectaon.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=seventhsense