Slawbug

Andrew Hunter has also been doing art for Spiderweb since the early days of Exile, FWIW.

As Jeff has commented before, there are elements of the Geneforge engine that lend themselves less readily to scenario design than Avernum's. The big one is that it's much less generalizable. BoE and BoA have the potential to fit practically any world you can imagine, and can fit most generic fantasy worlds without significant added effort. Geneforge really only fits the Geneforge world. This would severely limit the number of scenarios likely to emerge from Blades of Geneforge, and would even more severely limit the number of people who would even be interested in using the scenario editor. Also: One of the easiest and most popular ways to customize BoE and BoA scenarios is with custom graphics. Geneforge engine graphics require more frames, and altogether a lot more work to get a set of sprites that actually looks reasonable. The poor showing of BoA is the nail in the coffin, but I wouldn't expect to see BoG even if BoA had seen Avernum 4 level sales.

There will not be Blades of Geneforge. There will never be Blades of Geneforge. There are numerous reasons for this, which involve not only the performance of BoA but also the fact that Jeff has said it doesn't make sense, for numerous tactical reasons related to scenario design. And he's right. There will never be Blades of Geneforge. Do I need to put it in the forum header?

No, war tralls aren't even good as meat shields.

Clearly you should spend more time playing Exile 1 and 2. Also, let's remember that Avernum 5 is being written by Jeff... not Drakefyre.

The brokenness reportedly applies to actually factoring in the strength bonus to damage, not to displaying the strength bonus. All versions display it.

What is this, the Anama Sutra?

I did write a detailed piece on G3, it just never went up as its own site and wasn't linked to much. It also was less interesting because it was so one-sided: Broken Vlish: a too long analysis

In one of those games -- either G2 or G3, I forget -- Glaahks didn't actually cause stunning. They caused slowing instead, just like Vlish. This wasn't easy to tell since all strong attacks tended to cause minor stunning in those games.

Quote: Originally written by Suspicious Vlish: But I thought that if the Ur-Glaahk stunning power was so powerful (as Jeff's ingame description says) Aha, here's your problem. There have been errors in the ingame descriptions of creations and creation stats all the way back to G1 that have never been fixed, with new ones introduced as well.

You don't need a large investment to cast good spells at all, outside of Battle Magic. It is comparably large compared to the investment needed in shaping, though, since that is practically nothing.

I believe the Dragons were always an exception, as were Micah and Erika.

You do realize also that stunning is completely different in G4, and that it's quite difficult to use it effectively as a tactic in itself?

The second test is in the mines at the far north, north of Formello.

Why in the world would the creation stats table ever lead you to investing in those creations anyway?

Actually, I want to second that, though I wouldn't call it crude humor. There were a lot of GREAT sets of dialogue with different livestock, cats, and so on, throughout Exile and also, I think, Nethergate. I miss those details.

Sweet on all accounts. Especially the part about having fun while writing the dialogue. That's a good sign if anything is! Grats on the progress.

The majority, but not all of them. Khyryk certainly has some quality time with him, and doesn't say anything about him looking foreign, despite spouting off about Monarch for some time.

'Myself or other'? If you're going to create polls, please first ask yourself - What's the point of this poll? - Will it make sense to other people?

Actually, the vowel in the second syllable is pretty different, despite both being written with the same letter. But yeah, they are similar names.

Why is it that Geneforge absolutely breeds mispelled names? I've never seen "Garzahd" slaughtered in as many different ways as "Barzahl". It's "Hoge" and "Litalia" and "Khyryk" and "Akhari Blaze" to say nothing of the numerous drakons with less pronouncable names.

Just a note -- I don't think anyone ever tested Luck-based damage resistance in G1, and since it displays the same way as it does in later games when it doesn't actually exist, I'm pretty suspicious of it.

E3 doesn't have a specific previous party, but it does mention that you are not the first party of adventurers sent to the surface.

Quote: Originally written by Spokesmage of the Dead: Nalyd doesn't mean an army of undead servants. Just a nice skeleton following him around. And he isn't quite a newb anymore. He's. . . older. . . or something. Newb is as newb does, Nalyd.

There are a few other adventurer parties. In E/A1 there is the party that tried to raid the Pit of the Drake. There is also Gooley and Yong-Mi (though they are just a duo) and Yong-Mi also appears as an adventurer in E/A2. E/A3 had, of course, the previous Surface Explorers. There are handfuls of individual adventurers all over the place, just few whole parties working together.