Kelandon

I think relocate_character will do what you want.

This guy will always be Mr. Sax to me, because of the fun I can have with that name. Mr ooo ooo rub my saxy body, while your sliths may not be bossed around by the gay Exiles (of which there are a few, Elspeth and Nance being the two that come to mind), I rather think that the rest might have a chance. And I don't know where you got the gay Character Editor, but the regular one will do just fine, too. I am, of course, assuming that you meant the word "gay" literally. If you meant it as a pejorative, then you are a prejudiced fool, and you are part of a mindset that has tortured millions of human beings needlessly over the course of history, which of course would be something I would never believe of someone as soft-spoken, kind, and gentle as yourself. Therefore, I must assume that you meant the word literally.

If I'm not mistaken, *i isn't afraid to talk about his scenarios before they are released (judging from the 1239572394 "Gallows Update" topics over in the ancient threads of the Lyceum). Therefore I shall not fear either.

Meh, I'll release Irregularities to the public, then. If these error messages are going to stay the same, beginning scenario designers should at least know circumstances under which the error messages can be rather screwy. I have a far better explanation of this in the demo scenario that I sent in to Spiderweb than in the previous post. And again, it is a matter of interpretation. These error messages feel buggish, but they are not actually incorrect. I recognize that it would take a great deal of effort to correct them, but I do feel quite strongly that they (and other peculiarities like them) should be documented somewhere. If you know what to look for, they're not harmful; they're only bad if you're new to this. But again, I think I'll just release Irregularities and possibly write an article on it. EDIT: It does seem like you could check for line breaks in the middle of strings and expressions, but meh. I imagine it would take some serious programming in order to make it useful rather than limiting.

Er, if you're waiting for Jeff, you may be waiting for some time. If you actually want him to take a look at it, the way to get him to do that is to compress the entire folder and e-mail it to him, but I wouldn't try that too often. I have no idea what the problem is. Is the folder located inside the BoA Scenarios folder? Um... I don't know what else could be going wrong.

Just a guess, but are you attacking them with missile weapons? There was a bug in v1.0 that may be still there whose result was that if you attack guards with missile weapons, they don't become hostile. However, if you attempt to charm them, they do become hostile -- and if you fail to charm them, they attack you immediately, whereas if you succeed, they will attack you as soon as the charm wears off. EDIT: Hmm, really? I will have to do some experiments with guards, then. But I'm pretty sure that charming doesn't actually reverse one's behavior; it just counts as an attack.

My understanding was that the reason that Jeff didn't make sequels to Nethergate is that it didn't sell very well. I think I heard that from someone who was just speculating, though....

I don't know if this goes without saying, but you can also use the calls clear_strings and add_string and remove_string to deal with dialogue that depends on SDFs. But yeah, take spyderbytes's advice and keep it to relatively short segments. Try not to have more than two or three text strings in consecutive dialog nodes, as a rule of thumb.

I think the bad header error means that your script doesn't begin with begintalkscript, which every dialogue script needs. Erm, you place boats using a call, if that's what you're asking. I forget the call name, but the Appendices will have it. The image itself is, well, in the graphics somewhere. Using ResEdit on a Mac or... something to open .bmp files, I think, on a PC, you can look through the graphics to find it, but I can't imagine why you'd want to.

If that was a genuine question, Khoth is the person who made the BetterEditor, member #67. If you manage to make a 3D editor (or even just a Preview command), I think virtually all designers will be deeply in debt to you for all eternity.

Mr dont tuch me i am 2 saxy makes such well-reasoned points. And now, reading over Eldibs post, I see that he is correct. Well, if your point wasn't mobility, it should've been . Let's say the Exiles/Avernites get three adventuring parties. One is controlled by Thuryl, one by the Creator, and one by Imban. Within days, the armies of all the other races put together would be dead and dying. Their last words? "We've never SEEN such tactics!!"

I just sent an e-mail with a scenario attached that demonstrates some instances when BoA will give a line number that is not the source of the problem or will give a kind of bogus error. In summary: 1. When an expression is missing one of its end parentheses, the line number given for the error is the line after the expression. If lines 16 and 17 of your code are Code: if (get_flag(0,0) == 0print_str("blah"); then BoA will give an error for line number 17, not 16 where the problem is. 2. If a string is missing end quotes, then the line number will be correct, but the error will say something completely bizarre. If this is your code, starting on line 16 again: Code: add_dialog_str(0,"This is a dialog string,0);dummy = run_dialog(1);set_flag(0,0,1);i = 0;while (i < 5){i = i + 1; }message_dialog("Error",""); then BoA will say something to the effect that you have an improper command Error in line 16. Line 16 doesn't contain the word Error. The problem is that line 16 is missing its end quotes. 3. If a state is not properly break-ed, then the script will keep running and start over at the beginning of the script. If the final lines of your script are: Code: beginstate 20;print_str("20"); without a break after that, you get something along the lines of an improper command in line 0 or line 1 -- I think I've seen it vary. Those lines are not the problem; the problem is a missing break. All of these errors are easy to recognize once you know what you're looking for, but they were mind-boggling the first time through.

If there's any doubt, this was a good thing to do. Thanks, Jeff!

Err, I'm not sure that I'm understanding you right, but change_outdoor_location doesn't actually do anything until you leave the town. You won't see any effect from change_outdoor_location until the party walks outside town boundaries.

If you're curious, the issue is that you never actually run the dialog. Right after you finish adding dialog choices but before you start the ifs, you need a line that says: Code: choice = run_dialog(1); Otherwise the variable "choice" isn't set to anything.

Many Mac users use TextEdit to edit text documents. Jeff, at one point you suggested posting a link to the BBEdit site on the SW website somewhere, and I think this is a GREAT idea and should be done ASAP. BoA has certain problems locating the source of an error, but using BBEdit over TextEdit cut my debugging time in half or better. At minimum you should mention somewhere that you use BBEdit and that BBEdit Lite, which is free, is far better than TextEdit for BoA purposes. EDIT: In a day or two, when I have Internet access not in the middle of the night, I will try to send you a few save files with errors that come from semi-bogus line numbers.

Human with a horse comes riding along, happily pillaging and destroying nephils and sliths alike... dragon swoops out of sky and blasts fire... no more human. He's got a point, there. Mobility is an issue. However, dragons could evade far, far better than any other race. Motrax in A1 claims to have taken down an entire army of sliths when he was in his prime, too, so dragons have a fair amount of firepower. In terms of pure firepower, a few crystal souls could probably handle a dragon, but the crystal souls need to be dragged around by vahnatai, whereas dragons can flee on their own. If the dragons could actually band together, and if there were more than just three or four of them, they'd be tough to beat. Um, the Empire slaughtered almost all of the nephilim on the surface, so I think humans vs. nephils is no contest.

Should be if (choice == 1) and if (choice == 2)

If you're counting lines and you're on a Mac, I'm guessing you're using TextEdit. My first recommendation is to stop using that program. I used to use it, and it took me ten times as long to debug. Get BBEdit Lite. There's a link around here somewhere, and you can just do a search on it, too. Jeff uses BBEdit (the real version, not Lite) and the line numbers match with that. They DON'T match with things like Word, and as far as I know, TextEdit doesn't do line counts. To transfer a text document between TextEdit and BBEdit Lite, you may have to open it up in TextEdit, copy it, and then paste it into BBEdit Lite. Anyway, once you've done that, this looks like a problem with a quotation mark being missing somewhere. I'd look at line 41, and if it contains a string, make sure that the quotes that begin and end it are properly placed. If it doesn't contain a string, or if the quotes are correct, check if it contains the word "you." If it does, a string above it probably doesn't have proper end quotes. Check the strings nearby and above. Beyond that, I don't know.

Being able to edit the size and shape of the outdoors after the scenario is first created. That's the first thing that comes to mind.

Since many (if not most, even) scenarios in BoE take place outside the Exile world, I think you're pretty safe making a BoA scenario outside the Avernum world. (EDIT: As Thuryl said, posting just before me.) BoE is a great buy. There are a sizable number of great scenarios. Anything rated 8.0 or better on the Lyceum is pretty darn good, and anything over 9.0 is awesome. And new ones are coming out all the time!

I also meant when the scenario is loaded in BoA, not in the editor. The only string length problem I've had in the editor is the length of script names, which I'm pretty sure is a limit in the app, too. I meant that when I playtest the scenario, the app gives me an error if strings are too long (like text bubble strings, dialog strings, etc). Since these are in the scripts themselves, the editor doesn't check for them at all (nor does it check for the number of boats or horses). The app is the only thing that will give an error related to them.

Read the Tech Support forum. No one can get debug mode to turn on. EDIT: Specifically, http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000505

There are some wonderful calls for checking exactly what the party consists of (like get_level, append_char_name, species_in_party, party_size, etc). You can use these either to enforce your pre-fab party or to make your scenario vary depending on what kind of party is in it. There is a group of Blades players who loathe pre-fab parties, although I don't really understand what the big deal is. One piece of advice for rookies: as you design, read all of the old threads in this forum, especially the articles. Once you're done here, head over to the Lyceum (the link is in the BoA forum's header) and look around there. There's lots of ideas and answered questions lying around.

I'm pretty sure string lenth is, because I've gotten errors on virtually every kind of string for having it be too long. These numbers are pretty well-documented in the editor docs, too.