Sorry to dissapoint you, but for a variety of reasons, I won't be playing
either H&X or DR anytime in the forseeable future. You'll have to find maps
elsewhere. For DR, I recomend
Salius's maps,
and for H&X the only maps I'm aware of are the maps of Athens that are
available on Simutronics'
H&X site.
You may remember that there used to also be an 'Intermediate' level of map.
Most of the maps were called Intermediate. However, the difference between
the Final and Intermediate levels was really only significant to me. So,
the Intermediate level is gone.
I use a technical drawing program called Visio. It's very different from
products like Corel, which are designed to do art or photographic work.
Visio is used to do flowcharts, organization charts, network diagrams,
floor plans, and so forth. It understands about the different objects in the
drawing. Not just what they look like, but their properties also. For example,
if I move a room from one spot to another, the lines connecting to that
room redraw and reshape themselves so that they stay connected to the room.
Certainly! I made the maps so that others could benefit from them, and the
more widely distributed they are, the better. I do have some restrictions
on how you use them, primarily to insure that people don't download obsolete
versions of the maps. Please read my
usage restrictions
before using the maps on your website.
Sorry, but no. I spent a lot of time and effort making these maps. If you
have any corrections or suggestions, you're welcome to send them to me. If
you want to make your own maps, well, then, make your own maps! :)
Absolutely. No need to ask permission for that. If you want a graphic
button to use a link, you can use this one if you wish. Feel free to reduce
the size and/or color depth as you see fit.
Actually, this isn't a frequently asked question, although I wish it was.
SGE is the Simutronics Game Entrance, and is a nifty little Windows program written
by the same person who wrote the Wizard. SGE lets you get into GemStone
quickly and easily, without having to go through the gemstone.net web site.
The typical procedure for getting into GemStone is something like this:
Start up your web browser
Wait while that over-stuffed hog of a program loads itself
Go to the gemstone.net web site (1 page)
Hit the login button to get the login screen (2 pages)
Enter your user name and password
Wait while your browser opens up the main Gemstone page, consisting
of one frame page, and 10 (ten!!) individual frames, and associated graphics.
(13 pages)
Hit Play, and wait for that page to load (14 pages)
Select your character, and wait for yet another page to load (15 pages!!)
select the play button to start the Wizard launcher
wait while the launcher checks a few things, and then starts the Wizard up
You'll notice that the word "wait" appears an awful lot in the above list.
You're actually loading 15 web pages before you get to start the Wizard up
and play the game.
Contrast that with using SGE to get into Gemstone:
Start up SGE (which can live conveniently in your win95 System Tray, for easy access).
Enter your password (it remembers your user name) and hit return.
Select the game you wish to play, and hit return. SGE remembers the last
game you played, so usually just hitting return is enough.
Select the character you wish to play and hit return. SGE remembers
the last character you played, so usually just hitting return is enough.
SGE then starts the game launcher, which checks a few things and starts
up the Wizard.
It takes about 30 seconds to get into GemStone using SGE, compared to about 5
minutes using the Web. Typically, you start the SGE, enter
your password and hit return 3 times and you're in. There are also times when
the game is up and running just fine, but the web server is down. If you're
using SGE, you can get into Gemstone with no trouble, but getting in via the
Web would be impossible.
SGE is available from Simutronics. Just go to the 'Beta Software' page, which
is one of the buttons on the main Gemstone page, right after you log in.
On the beta page, the first program listed is the SGE. That page calls it the
"16-bit Game Launcher", which leads us to.....
Ignore what their web page says. Yes, this is a 16 bit program, which means
it can run on 16 bit Windows 3.1. It runs just fine on 32-bit
Windows95, however, and there's absolutely no reason not to use it.
Yes, but don't hold your breath. Frankly, maintaining my link page has
become an extremely low priority. This is due in part to being very busy
with everything else, but is also due to the incredible proliferation of
web sites. Every elf and their rolton seems to have one these days. I'm not
saying that's a bad thing, but it does mean that maintaining a list is a much
bigger job than it was even six months ago.
Updating the link page will involve verifying that all the existing links are still
valid, plus dealing with the long list of sites that I have that should be added.
And I mean long. There's a good 50 or so web sites on that list. As that list
grows, it gets more and more unlikely that I'll ever add them.
What probably will happen is that I'll add the very best of those sites.
The ones I personally like to visit often. The ones with special,
unique content. The ones that stand out. Web sites that I find annoying
to view, either because they are hosted on one of
those free web sites that open separate advertisement windows, or won't display
adequately on a small screen, are unlikely to be added. Whether or not you
provide a link to my page doesn't influence my decision either way.
I'm not sure what I'll do with the
existing links. At the very least, I'll probably verify that the links are
still valid.
There are plenty of web site lists. The largist of which is the
'official' list
at Simutronics, and there is also a list on
Yahoo.
Over time, I'm going to be transforming my links page from a semi-comprehensive
list of all sites into a far smaller list of what I consider the best of the
best. Maintaining a comprehensive list is too big a task, and it's a task
being done better by others.
So, if you still think your site is really one of the best of the best,
feel free to drop me an
e-mail
and I'll add you to the list. But don't be surprised if it takes months
to get added, or not added at all.
