Thralni

I feel your pain I felt much the same when going through WtRM, after seeing Chessrook's vids. Some parts are not just silly, they are outright dumb. I guess this should make you feel good, no? Means you matured That's, at least, how I chose to deal with the swamp that is WtRM... But then I also decided to give it a huge overhaul which is in full swing now. I'll release some more info when doing so becomes relevant. And, perhaps, you wish to do the same to yours?

All you would really need is time, to be fair. Don't worry, I do not plan to ask you coding questions or the like. Rather, I'd approach you with questions about how you felt about the design of such and such, what was the highlight here, what was your main frustration there... So it'd be really geared towards your experience as a player, rather than the role of a beta tester. And I'll download the version in the database and give it a spin. It appears it has errors in it that the Mac version doesn't have so I need to figure out why that's happening. Kelandon: your comment on the unhandled exceptions is extremely useful, thanks! At least I can have a starting point to figure out why Chessrook bumped into that in WtRM. ALso, sent you a PM.

Wow, none of those bugs were ever reported to me. I have not tested the Windows version personally, since when I made this scenario I didn't have access to a Windows computer, so all I can say is that they do not appear in the Mac version, to my knowledge. All in all, for a while I've had a feeling that you are somehow playing an outdated version... Would you be willing to zip up the version you have and send it over? I'd like to compare it with the Mac version I have. Anyhway, the vids form a nice log for me to go in and fix things, so thanks for that. I have embarked on an overhaul of the scenario that will see things fixed, plot points expanded, and hopefully it will be less 'railroady' afterwards. So far I have completely redesigned Voughton (It didn't really look like a capital city, now it does. Much more so) and have tinkered with dialog in several places. I will further change the ending, enhance the visual design, add more direction in key places and at key times, and enhance the exposition of the history of the province. Some new characters and missions will also be included to deepen the narrative and give more perspective. I'm not sure when you will be returning to finish it up, but I might be able to bring out the updated version before then. In that event, it might be worthwhile playing it from the start, given the modifications I'm putting in (sadly you won't be able to use your old save games with the new version). Two things: 1) Would you be interested in participating in the overhaul in an advisory role, or no? If yes, I might call upon you here and there to check something out, or for brief consultation regarding dialog or text. 2) More generally, in the future, as you come across bugs, it may be worth noting them ASAP to the designer. Meaning, not when you post the video, but in real time, so to speak. As Kelandon mentioned sometime earlier, we can't help if you don't tell us in time, especially if you work of a backlog of vids. It's not just in your interest, but also in that of the designer, I believe, whose work you are broadcasting. I'm not sure how many designers are still active for comment and help, but it may be worth a shot

Yeah... I indeed didn't imagine somebody would throw out something that would be needed for a special ability. I guess it's a lesson for me: place mortar and pestle in multiple locations. Also, it was interesting to see that normally you look immediately at everything that is given to you, except for the moment that you needed it the most, i.e. the note in the third power source. I assume you used the character editor or something like that to give yourself the mortar and pestle...?

I have to put one comment out there, because you seem to be repeatedly stung by this in multiple scenarios: if there is a carpet, or stone path or something like that, that stands out from the rest of the floor (purple carpet vs. white marble floor, or stone path vs. drab red/brown floor etc) 99% change that the tiles that stand out will lead you to a door. It's a pretty common design, not just in BoA scenarios, but games in general, that provide a visual cue for the player on where they can or cannot go. Of course it doesn't always work like that, but most of the time it does. I realize this comment is to late for your trek through those power plants, but maybe it'll be useful at some other point in the future.

The irony here is that I did the same thing. I first checked the walk through and didn't see that quest either. I think what happened is that I included this quest in the v2 overhaul of this scenario and forgot to include it in the walk through, which was already written at the time. I'll change all of this in the v3 overhaul I'm no planning, because the added annoyance is that the liaison quest can't be completed until the end of the scenario. Which is, of course, a little daft. anyway, you can complete the scenario now.

So I ran through WtRM, and came upon the same issue you describe, where you can't tell Ruth what happened. It appears this is not a bug, just a terrible design decision At the back-end, I found that the empire liaison being kidnapped is apparently more important than telling her you were kidnapped by a mage. And so, when you ask her about the kidnapping, a new cave is explorable. Just west of the crystal mine you came out of after crashing the boat. Go there, find the liaison, go back to Ruth, tell her you found him, and then you can 'report back' about Thralni. *cough* I can see WHY I did this. The idea was that Ruth is so upset that she runs to you with the bad news, and you,a s the player, can only do but calm her down etc etc. Mechanically, however, this makes no sense and is very confusing to the player. I will definitely overhaul this part... As for the problem with the eastern half of the Senarti capital, I'll wait to see the video. I have never seen that one before...

Nice vid as usual. The mayor not telling you where to go is... Well it appears that Ruth is supposed to tell you where to go, but due to something unforeseen, you don't see the correct text. It should be fixed now, though I'm unsure why this happens. Pretty sure it used to work... Back to the issue you had. So how did you get around the problem, and when you say you can't talk to her, does that mean she doesn't talk at all, or you don't get presented with the right dialog options? So far I can enter the eastern half of the senarti capital just fine, I'm not sure why you can't. So how about I send you that town's script, and you can try getting into that part of town again? That's assuming you have a save game that gets you to some point prior getting into the western half of the senarti capital... Or you can try to move your party there manually, which is what I assume you did in the first place to get around the eastern half of town issue?

Well that is something I've never heard of before... You can't go into the east half of Voughton? Or is this the Senarti capital you are talking about? What exactly are you trying to do, and what error do you see? You mean a scripting error or does the game actually crash? And when you get the error, are you coming from the outdoor map into the town, or are you in town when the error comes up? Perhaps I can take a look at the vid, actually...? ill look at both Voughton and th senarti capital to see if I can find anything striking... it sounds like this issue could be easily rectified if I can find which is the offending script. Leaving town and re-entering should be enough to reset it and continue without issue. UPDATE: So I didn't find anything particularly strange in either town scripts. So I tried to enter the towns in the game, and found that when I enter the eastern half of the senate capital, there is an error about a special item number being out of range. Is that what you see as well, Chessrook? That said, this doesn't break the game, nor do I end up in the outdoors, nor does the game crash... EDIT: So I've ben tinkering with wtrm, and so far it's all good. I changed a couple of things that didn't make much sense, and clarified some other things to make it easier to understand where the player should go. Additionally, I added some other little things to make things more challenging (the ceremony in Tel Dakrach now requires you to fight demons to prove your worth, for instance). That said, a number of errors you encountered, Chessrook, I'm not seeing (such as the cat that you can ask for food in Voughton), so I'm not sure why you have those issues.

Dang it. Given the bizar errors you have sometimes encountered, I have feared for a while that perhaps you got your hands on an outdated version, for some of the errors seem so clumsy that they must have been encountered by a tester at some point. Could you tell me at what point the error message shows, and what the error message says? Then I can investigate further. I need to know whether these errors occur in the version I have on my computer, whether these are mac or windows specific, or global. Even though I don't believe many people still play these scenarios, it'd be good to have them working... id be curious to know also how you managed to progress? For all I know that error breaks the whole thing... EDIT: From memory I remembered the error appears after you escape the castle, take the boat in the Senate town, and follow the river. The error itself is in the scenario script itself, and so a quick check showed a semicolon was missing in state 13 in the version I downloaded from the scenario library on this forum. It appears the version in my archive has the same error... I have no idea how this error got in there, as I'm sure it was fixed. I do apologize very much for this. I'm not sure how this error came back, for it was fixed a long time ago. I would send you the corrected script and ask you to reload from an older saved game, but since this error is in the scenario script, I think the whole scenario would have to be reloaded from the start... but maybe somebody can correct me on that? The error was not in any of the START or START_SCEN status, rather a custom state 13. I can't blame you if you just give up on this and move on to something else, do I can probably assure you that, siren you have done all the exploration already, you could just cut to the chase, do the main plot (Senarti fort, Tel Dakrach, Thralni's castle, underground tunnels, Creation halls, fleeing away, get to the boat...) and you should be back where you were in perhaps 1-2 hours of play...

I promise my quick reply doesn't mean I have nothing to do all day... but sometimes when you do your research in lab, you have a little downtime Well that makes sense. Thanks for sharing, I'll keep that in mind as I watch the following vids. The thing you are alluding to... I'm a little nervous, but I think I know what it is. I remember there being a problem at some point (a point that would indeed be after about 6 episodes from what was posted by you today) where there was an error in the scenario script. It basically killed the whole thing and inhibited any further progress. That said, I also remember fixing it, and this was confirmed by several beta testers... So is this it, or is it something less... problematic?

Ah, I see... And here I thought this was like a 'conversation': Chessrook shows what he did and I can comment and help as he goes. I guess that kind of defeats the purpose of my comments... It does, however, explain how come these videos appear so regularly. Oh well. The videos still offer an interesting perspective to me, as a designer.

So I watched the video but I'm not sure what you refer to? It seems you figured out what to do more quickly than the beta testers I had years ago One thing I would do when I do polish this up, is add more messages at certain times to clarify what you're supposed to do. There are some instances where I should have given more direction, rather than allowing you to aimlessly walk around. Though I quite liked the interim opinion of the scenario. For a first try, I'll happily take "not bad"

This continues being fun to watch. Just one comment: There definitely is an identifier: it's the priest in pleasantville's temple. However, she fled due to the attacks. Now, I have to say it's sloppy of me at best to not give more identification opportunities in other cities. That said, I also didn't expect you to be quite so... slow... at going through the story. Typically in my own play-throughs and those of my beta testers, the Thralni attack on the fort happened further into the story. Having watched several of these videos, I'm considering polishing this scenario. There are quite a few things that do not make that much sense, and some rather blatant errors that ought to be fixed. Let's see.

The problem is not so much in finding your way, it's more about checking whether the party has done certain things and how this reflects in the dialog options. Fort Filbert is a stark example, as I had wanted you to go straight to the commander of the fort, but obviously few players actually go do that. They talk to other people first and so the dialog doesn't make much sense anymore.

Nice vids, as usual. I'll just throw a quick comment (or two, or three) out there: 1) In the little hideout to the south of the Senarti fort, the commander tells you when you go to the fort, you should turn right rather then head straight in. He actually does mean inside the fort, so you do have to cross the bridge, fight the guards, and enter the fort form the visible entrance. Just sayin', since it seemed like you understood otherwise. Once inside, you go right instead of towards the gate. 2) I chuckled a little when you said you'd explore east first, since "the fort is probably part of the end game". Rest assured Chessrook, this is not HIM. This is a fairly long and big scenario, and the fort is just the start of it 3) I was kind of disappointed that you were smart enough to use far sight at that mountain For me, it is interesting to see how as an inexperienced designer in this scenario, I assumed the player would just do what I told them to do. You, however (meaning Chessrook) are the living example of how utterly naive that thought was, and it's a good learning experience. That said, that is also the reason I made things less open in HIM and HIM2.

Another update. It does seem to work fine. The problem with the graphics is local, on the level of the scenarios themselves. So far, every scenario I have downloaded from the BoA scenario database has given me errors trying to open the .cmg file. The .cmg files I have on my computer from my own scenarios still work fine, however. These were, however, never zipped. Given that .cmg files are ancient, I'm guessing they are not used anymore by modern Macs, so that extracting them from their zip archives may cause unforeseen problems. I doubt the problem is with the actual zip files. Not quite sure how to circumvent these problems... Maybe a version of Stuffit Expander that manages to work on these new Macs still...? Update: Wow, SE still exists and is updated to work on modern Macs... Update2: Expanding WtRM archive with Stuffit Expander worked! The .cmg file of WtRM loads fine now. It seems SE has retained the ability to expand .cmg files, whereas the other extraction program I commonly use (Keka) has not.

Without having actually having checked back to this thread, I did exactly what Slarty suggested. I bought the GOG.com version. That version worked instantly but claimed to be 'unregistered', even though GOG.com claims to sell games without DRM. After some fussing about I managed to get it working and it is registered. So, indirectly, thanks for the suggestion Slarty! (Is that still how you are referred to, by the way?) I entered WtRM, to have a look at some of the things Chessrook44 mentioned in one of his video, but was immediately greeted by an error that some custom graphics that I had put into the scenario couldn't be loaded... I guess I'm not out of the woods yet, but getting closer at least!

Emailed Spiderweb and it seems like the game is not really supposed to work anymore in 10.12. Not sure why it works for some of you, but I guess enjoy it while it lasts...

Another nice vid, thanks! I'm surprised by the amount of grammatical errors and typos in there... True, it was my first scenario, it was too big for me to handle it, and you're playing the Windows version, which I never tested myself. It's possible that during some updates I forgot to update the Windows version since I don't remember seeing that many errors when I tested the Mac versions. Anyway, fun to see all of this again. It's been a while! I gather I was 16 when I made that scenario. Interesting to see the sense of humor I had at that time... And glad, I guess, that it changed since then!

Okay thanks Kel, I'll send an email.

Watched the video, and once again a lot of fun! Very interesting to analyze how you make your decisions, especially toward the end when things got more tense. How, in the cemetery, you essentially ran straight to the crypt in the back and chose to go in was delightful for me to watch, as I had hoped that this would happen. Now, if you were to play this on a Mac, there would have been custom music in the church. You can still download it from my website I think... ...Yup, go here for that: http://thralni.ermarian.net/The_wrath_of_the_purty_potatoe/Blades_of_Avernum_HIM2.html I'm of course sorry you felt cheated by the abrupt ending (and it's something that was frequently mentioned to me by both testers and reviewers after release). You are right of course: there was going to be a third installment. Then, life got the better of me, plus I got a new computer that wasn't compatible with some key software I used to plan the story, and that's how it all sizzled out. Having seen you play through HIM, though, has made me interested again to dust it off and finish the third installment, though possibly I'll be less ambitious - which is part of the reason it got never finished. Simply tried to do too many fancy stuff even though I wasn't up to the task. I was trying to give the player choice, like in Mass Effect, which I think I had probably played around that time, but of course the many story threads ended up dooming the project from the outset... Looking forward to see you play Where the Rivers Meet. A much, much longer scenario - and also the first one I ever made. And yes, this one will have an actual ending EDIT: Managed to find all the files of HIM3, so might potentially restart this. And I do mean restart, sicne it also seems I lost the central doucment detailing the progression of the various story lines... Oh well.

Hey all, Problem with BoA here. I'm on macOS 10.12.5. BoA fails to start properly. Downloaded twice now, opened the dmg and moves BoA's folder to Applications. macOS complains Spiderweb is not an "identified developer", so I go into the System Preferences to allow it to open anyway. The BoA icon appears for perhaps half a second on the dock, doing it's bouncy animation, then disappears and never comes back. On second try, BoA's icon doesn't even appear on the dock anymore - it's like I didn't even try to start it. Any ideas?

Really? I tried to open it but it closed instantly.

Hi Chessrook, I was alerted by Nikki that you are doing this! Pretty amazing project, I gotta say. I have to say I have been really enjoying seeing you play HIM and its sequel, and I would like to commend you for your thorough explorations. By doing that you are definitely getting everything out of the scenarios, and making it a lot easier for yourself;f down the road (finding the stairs in HIM2 before you actually needed them, for example!). I'm looking forward to the next episode! Incidentally, this remind me I never finished HIM3. I actually tried just yesterday, having watched you play HIM, to download and open BoA but it seems it doesn't work anymore on the newest macOS... Oh well. At least I can relive it through your movies