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New to scenario creating. Any tips?


jerrynsteph4eva

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Hello everyone! So I came here to ask a few questions, being new to creating scenarios in Exile (though I've used many different editors in the past like the Elder Scrolls Construction Kit, Unreal Editor and many more to create custom content).

 

1. I have both Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum up and running on the computer. Which one is recommended, especially for beginners? Or is it more of a personal preference than a suggestion? (For the record, I plan to make a few small scenarios at first to test the water before jumping into larger ones).

 

2. Is there a place I can go for a full fledged tutorial?

 

3. Any tips for a beginner?

 

4. If I should finish a scenario that I feel is worth uploading, is there a universal place I can do so or is it more of a "you're on your own, link to it here" thing?

 

Thanks, I hope I'm not being too noobish here.

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Blades of Exile cannot do as much advanced stuff, but it's got a pretty simple interface for creating scenario logic. Blades of Avernum can do more advanced stuff, but it requires know-how of how to write code (it uses a simple C-like language). I would recommend BoE for getting your toes wet.

 

Both games have tutorials in their help files. For BoA, it's a PDF iirc, and for BoE the help is located here for now. Note however that the documentation can be outdated and even outright wrong in places. There's also a lot of advice in the forums and elsewhere, just browse around! A good third-party guide for BoA is the Cookbook. It may be a good idea to just to look at what designers did in their scenarios as an example.

 

There are two big "archives" of scenarios, TrueSite for BoE (and some BoA, although I believe it's outdated) and Tyran's BoA database. They end up mirroring all scenarios released, so if you don't have a place to upload you could probably just email it to one of them or something.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 8 months later...

My initial suggestion is limit the text. If you wanna write a book, go write a book. Don't make a mission for Blades and try to do both. :) Unless the text is critical to know, leave it out. After the first full page, we're just clicking through the rest anyway (at least until we wipe and can't figure out why and go back to see if there was a heads up...) :)

 

Also, if you're doing a higher level sort of mission, make towns reflect that nature. Been thrown playing high level missions and seeing low-level merchants offering only junk items and equipment. I don't expect top drawer stuff, but crude and bronze weapons and armour don't imo belong in a scenario aimed at 20+ characters. What's the point of bothering to specify that kind of thing when you know your target audience is gonna roll their eyes at it.

 

Lastly, and this one's kind of big, populate the wild areas with wandering monsters. again, keeping in mind your target level groups so they're not always running away. An empty wilderness can completely ruin a scenario by making the player feel isolated and indifferent to the plight of the key figures in it. "Why should I care about these people and their problems? Could hold a kindergarten out here."

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  • 7 months later...

Hello everyone! So I came here to ask a few questions, being new to creating scenarios in Exile (though I've used many different editors in the past like the Elder Scrolls Construction Kit, Unreal Editor and many more to create custom content).

 

1. I have both Blades of Exile and Blades of Avernum up and running on the computer. Which one is recommended, especially for beginners? Or is it more of a personal preference than a suggestion? (For the record, I plan to make a few small scenarios at first to test the water before jumping into larger ones).

 

2. Is there a place I can go for a full fledged tutorial?

 

3. Any tips for a beginner?

 

4. If I should finish a scenario that I feel is worth uploading, is there a universal place I can do so or is it more of a "you're on your own, link to it here" thing?

 

Thanks, I hope I'm not being too noobish here.

 

Don't try to reinvent the wheel. This game's very simplistic and straight-foward. It's a hack and slash character development roleplaying game. It's not Myst in 2D with lots of walking around and admiring the scenery with lots of puzzle-solving in-between. It's about fighting. So don't add reams of text and that novella you've been wanting to write. :) Keep it simple. Some Big Bad Thing threatening your way of life you need to fight your way through lots of little bad things to reach, big fight at the end, reward and all is right with the world. :) Also, don't do all that but forget to populate your wilderness areas with random encounters to level up on or simply have fun. Nothing worse than a big new world to explore completely devoid of all life. To say nothing of how some of the 'Very High' difficulty sceanrios have perplexingly low-level fights (at least early on before I quit in frustration.) If you're making a 'Very High' level scenario I expect to be fighting for my life with 20-something level parties when I get out of bed from then on. Not to be fighting Goblins and Goblin Fighters...;)

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