Dear members of the Circle of Eight community forums, I would like to address this letter to all of you, for today is a really special day for all of us. Today is the date when I, on behalf of everyone who worked with me in a team to create the game editing utilities, release the first non-beta versions of both of my big projects, ToEE World Builder, and ToEE Front-end Pro, projects that aim to create a unified editing and playback environment for Temple of Elemental Evil that would finally allow to modify the game in a much more professional way. No more beta versions, no more release candidates - here they are, both finished to the point when they are finally usable and when they are ready to do what they are supposed to do. Of course, there is still much room for improvement - adding support for more file formats and types, adding more properties to object editor, ensuring better compatibility with original game files, adding a visual map editor, and much much more that I can think of, but finally we have a modding tool that allows us to create standalone modules, and we have a tool that allows us to switch between the created modules easily. ToEE modding was always a dream for me, something that was impossible but something that I desired very much. When I came to the Circle of Eight (about a year ago) such important things as spawning objects, modifying area graphics, creating new maps, and many more were simply impossible, and therefore only limited modding was possible. Still, Circle of Eight did a great job, creating a series of fan-made patches that redefined the game and made it much more enjoyable. I did my best to help the community find ways to add completely new things to the game. First, I found a way to spawn objects on game maps using the console introduced in ToEE version 2.0 (I'd like to thank Troika for it, since it's still widely used to find out coordinates and do much more). Then, I made a game modification called the Spawner Mod that allowed to automatically create scripts for object spawning. The idea didn't work very well since the program turned out to be complicated and buggy. Then I decided to create yet another version of the Spawner Mod and integrate it into a newly started project I called ToEE Mod Studio. However, ToEE Mod Studio failed again, due to both lack of time on my side (to properly develop and test everything) and lack of constructive feedback on the side of the product testers. Afterwards, I was compelled to leave the Circle of Eight due to my private life issues and could not get back to modding for almost eight months. Yet I got back. The release of Livonya's Mod inspired me to continue working on a game editor. And so, together with Dulcaoin, we started a completely new project called ToEE World Builder. The program was written entirely from scratch and was based on very deep and thorough analysis of the game engine that allowed us (Dulcaoin and I) to make certain very important conclusions about the intrinsics of various file formats (especially MOB and SEC that allowed object spawning and manipulation of tile blocking information) that were completely unknown before. This, in its turn, allowed us to create decent routines to load and save back MOB and SEC files, which became the core of the ToEE World Builder. The ToEE World Builder had a lot more testers than my previous project (the Mod Studio), so it was initially a much more "polished" tool. ToEE World Builder turned out to be a much more successful tool and rather quickly, after only three months of research of development, went to the public beta stage. Thanks to the constructive feedback of Shiningted and Allyx, some crucial bugs were found and fixed within the first three updates to Public Beta 1. Afterwards, I made some more modifications and updates which increased the stability and reliability of the tool, and Public Beta 2 was released shortly. After only a couple more beta builds ToEE World Builder has got the "Version 1.0 Release" label, marking it as a first non-beta version of the product. Of course, it may have bugs (and I'm sure that something will pop-up), but at least it's stable and reliable, and nothing extremely serious should hinder the development of new mods. Moreover, I plan to continue the support and development of this tool, so more updates are to come. Also I kept developing the ToEE Front-end, a small, yet important utility that allowed people to launch the game with different options and fixes. It has grown to be a unified front-end that allows to launch standalone modules developed with ToEE World Builder or other modding tools on a single ToEE installation, switching between them with just one click. I would like to thank everyone who helped me with the project: Joshua Delahunty (Dulcaoin, who helped me all along with engine research -- it's awesome to work with you, Josh!); Steve Moret from Troika (who helped me out a lot by answering my questions -- your help was invaluable, Steve!); Allyx, Morpheus, and Shiningted from Circle of Eight (who beta-tested the ToEE World Builder when it was in public beta stage); Livonya (who wrote a mod that actually inspired me to create the World Builder tool); Silvanor (my friend who provided two extra PCs to test ToEEWB on, and also helped me a bit with engine research); and also everyone else whom I possibly forgot (sorry). I would like to say thanks to Troika for the greatest D&D game ever made, and I would like to thank Atari for not interfering with the ToEE modding scene and for not closing us down (there are so many third party projects that get closed - for example, World of Warcraft server emulators... I'm happy we are not among those guys). And last but not least, I would like to thank the whole Circle of Eight community for being friendly and supportive. You're the best, guys! I really don't know how long I could stay with you. Maybe I'll be compelled to leave the Circle of Eight for a long time again quite soon (in a couple of months), since I'm getting a new job (a teacher of English in the University) that is very demanding and requires a lot of responsibility. But even if that is going to be the case, I promise to return and to keep going with the tool development whenever I have some spare time to do so. A note about possibility of open-source release of ToEE World Builder: originally it was planned that ToEE World Builder should be released as an open-source utility, just as ToEE Mod Studio was. However, this project is a lot more complicated, and a lot more people were involved in its development, so it's not only my decision anymore. Some people who assisted in the development of ToEE World Builder have expressed their wish not to disclose the ToEEWB source code. I can't go against our agreement, and thus I can't release the source code for the ToEE World Builder. I'm sorry about that, but there is little that I can do about it at the moment. I hope you will understand this. Thanks to all of you again! Regards, - Agetian (tool developer, modder, moderator of Circle of Eight)
No, thank you Agetian, you've opened up a whole world of posabilities for d&d freaks (MYSELF INCLUDED) to re-create our favourite modules in the best d&d simulator available. I only hope that we - as a community, can repay you for all the excelent work you've put in, by using this tool to create excelent modules that you'll all enjoy playing for years to come.
Thank you Agetian for the incredible work you've done here. I spent a lot of time modding BG1&2, to the point where I felt like an expert on it. I created mods for Icewind Dale 2, Morrowind and Civilization as well. I loved the ToEE engine, but because there was nothing like the tools I used for the IE games or the incredible tool-set that shipped with Morrowind, I could never do anything with it except a micro-strtegy guide. I felt like this game was doomed to vanish. You may just have extended ToEE's life span for many years. So, thanks.
Thank you so much for all the hard work. You have made things so much easier for aspiring modders like myself.
As someone who attempted to do things the hard way - based, I might add, on earlier posts from Agetian, Dulcaion et al - I can't praise ToEEWB highly enough. It has quite simply exceeded a simple .mob and .sec maker, such as folks like myself were desperate for, and is a fabulous tool.
