Classic Blades of Exile

This project hosts the source code to the classic RPG creator Blades of Exile after it was released by Spiderweb Software under GPLv2. It is a svn-git transfer from the Google Code Project; all issues and trunk code has been ported.

The primary purpose of this project is to provide bug fixes to Blades of Exile so that it can compile and run on modern operating systems. The secondary purpose is to generalize and extend its functionality while maintaining backwards compatibility.

If you would like to be added to this project contact Sylae or one of the other people on the owners list. This is an open project, with no strong prerequisites for getting commit access. With that in mind, please be careful of what you check into the repository. Please do not commit any binaries, junk files, or anything that doesn't compile.

Building

There are currently four ways to build Blades of Exile:

• The build.sh shell-script, which builds and runs a Makefile.
• XCode 4 or later
• Microsoft Visual Studio 2013/2017
• scons

The officially supported method is scons. The script is currently a work-in-progress and as such may be a little fragile, but we're working on that. With luck, just running scons will simply do the right thing and build a working executable under build/Blades of Exile. If not, though, you may have to adjust a few things.

You can pass the following parameters to scons:

• OS=windows|darwin - Override platform auto-detection (only partially implemented)
• LIBPATH=pathlist - Specify where to look for non-system dynamic libraries to link against.
• FRAMEWORKPATH=pathlist (Mac only) - Specify where to look for non-system frameworks.
• INCLUDEPATH=pathlist - Specify where to look for non-system header files.

If you can't get that to work, you can copy the required dependencies into deps/lib (for dynamic libraries and frameworks) or deps/include (for headers). That means that deps/include would have two subfolders boost/ and SFML/.

The following dependencies are required:

• SFML - all components except sfml-net.
• Boost - Filesystem, System, and Thread, plus several header-only libraries; if you're picky, you can run scons and see it enumerate exactly which libraries are needed
• ZLib - This is included with the system on the Mac.

If you are using Visual Studio, we recommend installing vcpkg to manage these dependencies. Use the following commands to install the required dependencies: For 32-bit builds:

vcpkg install zlib:x86-windows sfml:x86-windows opengl:x86-windows boost-any:x86-windows boost-dynamic-bitset:x86-windows boost-ptr-container:x86-windows boost-core:x86-windows boost-filesystem:x86-windows boost-system:x86-windows boost-date-time:x86-windows boost-chrono:x86-windows boost-thread:x86-windows

For 64-bit builds (Not supported in Visual Studio projects, yet):

vcpkg install zlib:x64-windows sfml:x64-windows opengl:x64-windows boost-any:x64-windows boost-dynamic-bitset:x64-windows boost-ptr-container:x64-windows boost-core:x64-windows boost-filesystem:x64-windows boost-system:x64-windows boost-date-time:x64-windows boost-chrono:x64-windows boost-thread:x64-windows

If this is the first time installing packages with vcpkg since install you will need to run the integrate command:

vcpkg integrate install

If you're using XCode, you may need to adjust the project file settings to specify the correct place to search. For example, if you installed Boost via Homebrew, you may need to add something like the following to the Project Build Settings, under Linking->Other Linking Flags:

-lboost_filesystem -lboost_system -L/usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.57.0/lib

Again with Homebrew, you may also need to add the following to Apple LLVM Custom Compiler Flags -> Other C++ Flags:

-isystem/usr/local/Cellar/boost/1.57.0/include

Notes and oddities:

• The XCode build uses SFML frameworks, while the scons build on the Mac uses SFML dynamic libraries.
• On Windows, scons assumes that Boost is statically linked and thus does not copy the dlls into the program directory. However, on the Mac, scons links dynamically with Boost.

Helpful Links

• BoE Forum at Spiderweb Software
• Official IRC channel (or join #openboe on irc.freenode.net)
• Original Game Source - Where it all began. Warning: Terrifying code.
• Experimental Builds - will be put up whenever Celtic Minstrel feels like it.
• Blades File Dump - A spot to quickly add project files; mostly contains older binaries from the Google Code page.