<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"> <title>HeroScribe</title></head> <body> <h1 align="center">HeroScribe 1.0a3</h1> <h5 align="center">HeroScribe is © 2003-2004 Flavio Chierichetti and Valerio Chierichetti<br> HeroScribe is free software, distributed under the terms of the GNU GPL 2<br> HeroQuest and its icons are © of Milton Bradley Co.</h5> <h2>1. What is it?</h2> <p>HeroScribe lets you produce high quality HeroQuest maps (with European or US layout). It reads an XML description of the quest and transforms it into an <acronym title="Encapsulated PostScript">EPS</acronym> or a <acronym title="Portable Network Graphics">PNG</acronym> file.<br> If <a href="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/gnu/index.htm">ghostscript</a> is installed, HeroScribe can use it to produce <acronym title="Portable Document Format">PDF</acronym> files.</p> <p>EPS files can be opened by almost any CG application (I recommend ghostscript: a free as in freedom application) or directly sent to a postscript printer.</p> <p>HeroScribe is free as in freedom. You are welcome to use it under the terms of the <a href="License.txt">GPL 2</a>. You should read the GPL 2 as it's the only actual binding document here; anyway, if you - just like us 8^) - hate legalese, we'll tell you in an informal way that you can do almost anything you want with this program and its source code, but the code (wheter modified or not) can be redistributed only under the GPL, mentioning us as the original coders.</p> <p>HeroScribe uses <a href="Objects.html">icons</a> from the HeroQuest game system: those icons are copyright of Milton Bradley Co. .<br> HeroQuest is discontinued by MB: this program was written with the intent of helping the HeroQuest community creating new quests and, by doing so, extending the life of the game.</p> <h2>2. How to produce maps</h2> <p>Start the program - this can be done in a number of ways:</p><ul> <li>click on the HeroScribe icon in the start menu; <li>click on the HeroScribe.jar icon in the HeroScribe directory; <li>execute <i>java -jar HeroScribe.jar</i> from the command line. </ul> <p>You'll see some command buttons, a menu bar and a hints bar.</p> <p>The <i>Add object</i> command is self-explanatory. You select an object and add it to the map 8^)</p> <p>The <i>Select/Remove object</i> command is used to select the objects on a board square and to remove, to rotate or to change the zorder of those objects.<br> The zorder defines the "depth" of the objects. A low zorder object is drawn before a high zorder one. So the former could be covered by the latter, but not the other way around.<br> So if you want to draw an orc near a door and you want to prevent the door from covering part of the orc, you have to set the orc zorder to a value higher than the door one.<br> From versione 1.0a2, HeroScribe sports a default zorder system designed to keep the number of zorder changes low - meaning: you can safely ignore the existance of zorder 8^).</p> <p>The <i>Dark/Bridge</i> command is used to make the board squares dark or white and to add bridges between boards (in multiple boards maps).<br> Left-clicking a board square makes it dark; right-clicking (or ctrl-clicking) a square clears it.<br> To put a bridge on an infra-board square (a square between two boards), left-click that square. To remove a bridge, right-click (or ctrl-click) it.</p> <p>The <i>File</i> menu does everything you expect it to. Particularly:</p><ul> <li>the <i>New</i> submenu produces a new map (a single or multiple boards one); <li>the <i>Export</i> submenu exports the board in a high-quality EPS or PDF vector file or a low quality PNG raster file; <li>the <i>Preferences</i> submenu is used to set the Ghostscript executable file (which is <i>gswin32c.exe</i> under windows, and <i>gs</i> under un*x). </ul> <p>EPS files can be read by almost any CG application (try <a href="http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/doc/gnu/index.htm">GNU Ghostscript</a>, if you're lost).</p> <p>The <i>Region</i> menu sets the board region (european or american).</p> <h2>3. Python version</h2> <p>Before version 1.0, HeroScribe was a python program; there were many differences, the most important being the lack of a GUI.<br> We have not received any feedback from users of the python version: we therefore concluded that there are no such users and used all our time on the java version stopping the development of the python one.</p> <p>We can of course reconsider if a consistent number of python users will ask us so.</p> <h2>4. Thanks</h2> <p>We'd really like to mention Dirk Rombauts for providing us most of the original icons' scans: thank you man.</p> <p>Thanks to Luis "Wolf" Bermudez for drawing the Dwarf icon: a true piece of art!</p> <p>And thanks to the GNU, python (used for many devel scripts), ghostscript, NSIS - and surely a whole lot more - crews for providing us the free (as in freedom) software needed and used in this project.</p> <h2>5. What's New</h2> <ul> <li>Version 1.0pre1 (2004/12/25)<ul> <li>Fixed some problems with JRE 1.5, that can now be used to run HeroScribe. <li>Maps can now have multiple boards (like MB's Advanced Quest ©). <li>If ghostscript is installed quests can be exported in PDF format. <!--<li>Changed some EPS code to make the PDFs (as converted by ghostscript) work with some commercial CG application.--> <li>The xml schemas have been updated. </ul> <li>Version 1.0a2 (2004/09/12)<ul> <li>Any object can now have a default zorder: rooms are - by default - placed under everything, doors just above the rooms and marks over everything. <li>Quests can now be exported in png format (but the quality is much lower than eps). </ul> <li>Version 1.0a1 (2004/09/10)<ul> <li>There's a GUI! It's written in swing, so it'll look native on MacOS X, windows and GTK 1. <li>Three new icons. In the last version, we said we'd got them all: we know better now 8^) <li>The application has been rewritten in java. <li>The xml schemas have been updated. <li>Various fixes. </ul> <li>Version 0.46b (2004/08/15)<ul> <li>Quite a lot icons have been added:<ul> <li>As far as we know, every "official" HQ icon is in HeroScribe now. <li>An unofficial Dwarf icon (designed by Luis Bermudez) has been included so that all the heroes can be represented. <li>Every object has now both european and american icons: this means that every quest can be rendered in any layout. </ul> <li>The letter icons have been "standardized":<ul> <li>there are letters from "A" to "M" and <li>we kept only one kind of american letters (there were too many kinds in the various expansions: that was confusing). </ul> <li>Icons have been tailored to better please the eye. <li>The biggest icons have been modified to lower the disk consumption. <li>The layout given in the quest file can be overridden by using the "--force-region" option ("HeroScribe.py --help" for more information). <li>"List.html" has been ravamped. <li>Doors on the border of the boardset are now well-aligned. <li>There have been some small changes in the quest dtd and xsd files. The new version number for the schemas is 1.1 . <li>Some object names have been changed (we tried to smooth things up after all the changes): please have a look at "List.html" and adjust your quest files. <li>Various fixes. </ul> <li>Version 0.44 (2003/12/25) - 0.43b - 0.43a - 0.42b - 0.42a<ul> <li>No changelist available: sorry! </ul> </ul> <h2>6. Contact</h2> <p>We'd be glad to hear from you; send us bug reports, so we can try to squash the bugs and make HeroScribe better. Suggestions and constructive criticism are always welcome too.</p> <p>Web Page: <a href="http://lightless.org/heroscribe">http://lightless.org/heroscribe</a></p> <p>E-Mail: <a href="mailto:hqcadarn@yahoo.it">hqcadarn@yahoo.it</a></p> </body> </html>