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Kelandon

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Posts posted by Kelandon

  1. It's not at all clear to me how Fort Cavalier could be close to Dharmon, as ZKR says. Presumably, there's some sort of secret passage in the northwest corner of the Great Cave that is inaccessible in all the games. This passage presumably leads to a cave underneath the main Avernum caves, where ZKR takes place (sort of like how the vahnatai caves in Avernum 2 are deeper than the main cave, and the caves in A3 are much higher than the main cave).

     

    But I think the BoA scenarios are only quasi-canonical anyway. There's a veiled reference to the slith war described in ZKR in Avernum 4, if I remember correctly, but that's about it.

  2. 10 hours ago, Thaeris said:

    I suppose I'd call something "skill-based" when you have direct involvement in the "simulation," if you will (we can call all games some form of abstract simulation, can't we?). Alternately, I'd call something "stat-based" when you have table values or routines determine the outcome of a given instance. I... am not sure I excluded games that involved statistics.

    Because I'm sure there's going to be a further discussion of semantics here, I think what you mean is specifically physical skill, as opposed to strategic skill or something like that. That is, the kind of skill involved in Mario, not the kind of skill involved in Civilization.

  3. I have had less time than I'd like to work on Homeland, but basically I've been debugging the "more elaborately scripted sidequests" that I described above. I had a lot of good ideas when making sidequests in Chapter 2, and, broadly speaking, none of them actually work as coded. They're not even close. So I'm debugging and, in some cases, rewriting them altogether because BoA can't easily do what I intended.

     

    I'm almost done with the side quests and will pick up the main quests again shortly. The third main quest is pretty short, and I'm hoping I can get that done in a day. The fourth (the capital) is longer and will probably take a few weekends.

  4. I remember having a rule of thumb about weight-to-value ratios for items to pick up and sell in the original Nethergate and Avernum Trilogy, because if you wanted to pick up and sell absolutely everything that was sellable, even for 1 coin, you'd make a huge number of trips back and forth to dungeons. If you weren't obsessive about selling absolutely everything and were reasonably disciplined about inventory management, you could avoid a lot of tedium.

  5. 1 hour ago, Warrior Mage said:

    Hello? Can't hear you people.

    Hi Warrior Mage, please don't double-post (that is, post twice in a row in the same topic) unless you have a really good reason to. The fact that nobody has responded in a few hours does not constitute a really good reason. Wait a few days. If nobody responds by then, post "bump" to put the thread back at the top of the list and make sure that people know that you're still in need of a response.

     

    I realize that you may not know this, but your post comes off as sarcastic, which also is not really consistent with the forum guidelines and makes people less likely to want to help you.

  6. 29 minutes ago, "Nothing Left" said:

    My own memory is overwhelmingly of Exile 3 getting heaps of praise from forum members -- which makes sense given how BoE-centric the forum crowd was in the earlier days -- despite the vocalized dislike of its plot.  Avernum 3 got dumped on a lot more.

    Yeah, FWIW, I joined the community after Avernum 3 was released, and I don't remember anyone making distinctions between the two by that point. It's entirely possible that earlier discussions were more positive and it went negative after A3. 

     

    Though given the nature of the criticisms, that would be kind of weird, since they would've applied equally to E3 and A3. I guess it could also be due to a change in forum population, rather than any difference between E3 and A3.

  7. Exile 3 was by far Jeff's biggest early success. It got dumped on by forum members for a long time, though, basically because the premise is not original or interesting (monster plagues?). Almost none of the game is about what the story is ostensibly about (who's responsible?), so it's basically just an excuse to explore and fight monsters.

     

    But it's just about the best possible version of "explore and fight monsters" that you can do. The game is huge, and although I think that the combat mechanics for the only version that I've played—Avernum 3 (original)—were pretty bad by Spiderweb standards, they were still very enjoyable. The writing (not plot, but writing) is engaging throughout. And there's just a ton of cool stuff: well-crafted dungeons, memorable towns, interesting characters, etc.

     

    So yeah, the premise of Avernum 3, and for that matter the execution of the premise, are nowhere near as good as the opening of Avernum 2. I don't remember a moment in Avernum 3 that was like the assault on the Ornotha Ziggurat. But an enormous amount of cool stuff is still a pretty good draw for a game.

  8. The first two (of four) core quests in Chapter two are tested and finishable, with at least reasonably acceptable combat balance.

     

    Some of the more elaborately scripted sidequests are in Chapter 2, and I haven't tested those yet. I think that's up next.

     

    I'm starting to wonder if I need to rebalance the warrior abilities. It seems like there's one that I use constantly, and I haven't really had a need to use the others. This makes me think I need to change some things.

  9. You can change from surface to cave, but other than that, no, not by normal means.

     

    You could conceivably try to create custom terrains that work the same way as walls, but it would be an incredible pain. You could also use the LP approach to changing character graphics (use a custom graphic with the same number as the graphic you're trying to replace), but that only worked on Macs.

  10. Yeah, the party is level 15 (give or take) when they get to a trainer in Chapter 2, and it seems like it doesn't work very well. Or maybe it does — cash is a little tight around that point, so maybe one has to make some strategic choices.

     

    I'll fiddle with it. I think it's okay, but I need to tweak it a bit.

  11. 3 hours ago, Ess-Eschas said:

    In order for your shops to function correctly, you should make sure that shops selling skills are not given any of the following shop numbers:

     

    18
    31 to 63 inclusive
    95 to 127 inclusive

    I'm glad that you figured that out, because there was no way I was ever going to. It works now.

     

    The prices seem absurdly low, but that may just be because they are, not because of a bug. I'll do further checking.

  12. So here's a weird bug. I have a trainer in the scenario who sells skills in an ordinary shop. The skills are added correctly and shop up in the shop, but they don't have prices. I set the price level to 2, so they shouldn't be free, but for some reason they are.

     

    The node is below. I've tried changing the price level, which shows up in the "Prices here are Pretty Average" (or whatever) description but doesn't change the fact that the skills are free. I've tried changing the nextstate, but that doesn't seem to work; no matter what, the next state appears to be the state that the character is coming from. All the other shops in the town work fine.

     

    Anyone have any idea what is going on?

    begintalknode 41;
    	state = 25;
    	nextstate = -1;
    	question = "I would like some training.";
    	text1 = "You finish shopping.";
    	code =
    		begin_shop_mode("Dorethen's Training","Dorethen will train you in a wide variety of combat skills for a fair price.",18,2,-1);
    	break;

     

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