Hint Oracle Broken

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun May 16, 2004 3:19 am

The Hint Oracle is now broken, using CSBWIN v96Plus20. On trying to read a save game, it generates an error stating: "Cannot read savefile. Perhaps not utilized". I assume this is to do with the larger number of levels...?

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sun May 16, 2004 7:20 am

You are undoubtedly right. Yuk.

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:23 pm

Here is what I did.

I started with CSB from the 9.6 release. I used the
latest CSBwin to enter the prison and select a character.

I saved the game as CSBGAME.DAT.

I ran the Utility and created a New Adventure in CSBGAME2.DAT.

I ran the Hint Oracle on CSBGAME2.DAT. It worked.

I edited CSBGAME2.DAT and maximized it to 64 levels.

I ran the Hint Oracle on CSBGAME2.DAT. It worked.

So I am unable to reproduce your problem. However.......
If you try to run the Hint Oracle on a DM game or on a
CSB dungeon file (rather than a file created by the Utility)
then you will, indeed, get the diagnostic that you saw.
That makes sense because there was no Hint Oracle for DM
and there is no Hint Oracle for the CSB Prison.

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:31 pm

Ah, I forgot to mention that I'm using a custom hints file. It's probably something I've done wrong in that! Sorry -- I will investigate and report back.

Hmm.. having re-read your post, are you saying that you can't use a custom hints file for a dungeon created from scratch in CSBuild?

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:42 pm

Yes. That is what I am saying. But for anyone putting
together the effort to make a custom Hint File I will make
it work. I will add an option to CSBuild to make a dungeon
'Hintable'.

Post by **Gambit37** » Sun May 16, 2004 6:44 pm

Ooh, that would be great! I'm intending to provide a hints file for a new scenario I'm working on. Is it difficult for you to implement?

Post by **Paul Stevens** » Sun May 16, 2004 11:10 pm

Difficult? Never tried it. But I think not. There are a
couple of flags in the headers that say the dungeon was
created with the Utility. I don't think it will break anything
else by pretending that CSBuild is the Utility.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Mon May 17, 2004 1:28 am

What if we provide a way to get help from within the
game itself? Without exiting and using the Help Oracle?
The help file could be straight text and therefore easy
to edit. Itr might be accessible from the menu, a spell,
or any pushbutton, keyhole, etc.

Post by **Gambit37** » Mon May 17, 2004 1:32 am

Too easy. The whole point of the Oracle was not to make it so easy to access that you could simply get help whenever you felt like it. Plus it kind of detracts from the mystique of the game if you simply pull up a help file.

Still, FTL didn't anticipate CSBWin which takes a lot of the pain away of using the hint oracle -- remember all that swapping of disks, rebooting, etc? Great fun!