mikeprichard

Right. Although it's a bit of a tangent to the earlier posts, I'm simply pointing out that "always" (as is the case in Spidweb games and the DnD tropes) assigning an arbitrary max hit chance cap never makes sense, as your post also shows above. Such a system results in the entirely possible and real case where our dude is just standing around next to the zombie, with all other enemies gone, and still has a significant flatly assigned chance of not hitting it. It's just nonsense. I do understand the reasoning - it makes coding hit chances a lot simpler to make them one-size-fits-all - but while it's a practical solution, it's not a realistic one.

This, as well as the ability to freely respec (reassign skills) for your characters whenever in your fort, are the most welcome improvements to previous Spidweb titles for me as well. Back in the old Geneforge/Avernum days, I couldn't help but spam the "g" key to scour every square inch of ground for any piece of junk I could hock at a merchant, made even worse in games that didn't yet have a junk bag, and even worse(r) in games where each merchant had limited gold for barter. Ay yi yi, that was tedious. Great to see this kind of "streamlining"!

Yikes - hopefully this will be addressed as appropriate in the upcoming patch.

Some info here - http://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com/topic/24983-scooping-items/

Interesting - I wonder if this is an intentional choice on Jeff's part, or if he's planning to nerf this to ensure no two augments of the same type (regardless of magnitude) can be applied to the same item with the next patch. I have no problem with it staying as is, assuming the situation here is unchanged from the beta; allowing two augments of the same type on one item is an example of broader customization options, which are always a plus (now that he's stolen our pants).

I agree the to-hit RNG (and most RNGs) implemented with an artificial cap (be it 90%, 95%, or whatever%) is a somewhat nonsense holdover trope/game mechanics crutch from the decades-old DnD 20-sided dice roll routine. A highly skilled warrior standing next to a slow-moving zombie (to take an admittedly more extreme example that nevertheless tests the case) shouldn't "always" have a 5%, 10%, or whatever% chance to miss the zombie. Such a situation quite obviously doesn't make sense, even in the context of a fantasy setting. I've always found this a tough gameplay choice to accept. Ideally, there should be even up to a 100% chance to hit in some situations, while on the other extreme depending on the e.g. battlefield conditions/player skill and equipment/enemy skill and equipment, a significantly lower hit chance "cap" may even make sense. It's just simpler on the developer to code in a flat hit chance cap to apply across the board, but defending that cap as somehow realistic in every situation is - to put it mildly - always going to be a stretch.

Oh, so in the manual's example, you'd actually take 11 damage total - i.e. 8 damage (which the 60% chest armor reduction - i.e. 12 points out of 20 total - doesn't apply to at all), plus 3 damage (3 out of those 12)? As I often do, I feel I'm making this way more complicated than it needs to be.

OK, thanks for the input, folks. Seems like some questions remain. At least that paragraph on page 24 of the manual could probably stand to be rewritten, I think? In that example, the chest piece alone is somehow reducing 20 incoming total damage down to only 3 ("you will take 3 points of damage"), with no reference to separate calculations for a helm or shield being factored in. I doubt that's a priority for Jeff, however.

If someone who understands the new Queen's Wish armor mechanics could please clearly explain the below three points, or send me to a forum post that already does so, I'd be obliged. Cheers! 1) The manual notes on page 24: "For example, iron chainmail blocks 60% of damage. It can block up to 9 points of physical damage and 4 points of magical damage. If you take 20 points of physical damage, 60% of that is 12 points, so the armor will block 9 of that, you will take 3 points of damage." This is a bit confusing to me, as it seems in this example - where the piece is said to "block" 60% of the 20 points - it should actually reduce the 20 by 12 to 8, of which all 8 (given the 9 max remaining damage absorption capacity) should be nullified. Instead, the manual's example above suggests that in fact only 40% of the 20 incoming total is being blocked, leaving 12 points of the 20 to be further reduced by 9 to 3. I know I'm missing something blindingly obvious here, but I just don't get it. 2) Does the percentage value (60% above) always refer to reducing both physical and magical damage, regardless of whether the equipment is an armor/robe, helm/cowl, or shield/orb? I understand the other values (9 and 4 for iron chainmail) separately refer to physical and magical damage respectively, but the percentage seems to be universal. 3) Finally, how exactly do the corresponding percentage/flat damage reductions related to chest (armor/robe), head (helmet/cowl) and shield (shield/orb) defensive pieces interact with each other to produce the character's overall damage reduction?

I just received my requested GOG game and hint book keys as a Kickstarter backer via email from Spiderweb, and as I also mentioned in my email reply, I wanted to thank Jeff & co. for being so quick in providing these keys to their loyal supporters. I'm really looking forward to starting my (DRM-free and GOG-approved) adventure in this new series!

Wow, Ess-Eschas, 1,000 points for thorough research! Almost all of those categories of uses are actually captured in the Chicago Manual of Style table I linked earlier, but I can see how "ever-threaten" could possibly be seen as a (admittedly unusual and unique) creative extension of the more generally accepted compound adjective "ever-threatening", which itself however is of a type already covered by the above as well. "Over-prepare" may also equate, but only if changed to active verb form. "Ever-threaten" is therefore still quite odd and unprecedented, but as I also explained to Slarty over a later chat, it's naturally Jeff's option. My primary original concern was that what I assumed was clearly a "typo" (as it has no known equivalent usage elsewhere) at the very beginning of the game would be indicative of many more errors later in the text, but I can see you're not one to miss a detail, and if you've been contributing to the proofreading so far, I'm satisfied the polish of the writing will be up to its usual Spiderweb standard. Thanks again to all for indulging this little discussion!

Hm, that does sound like a pretty major problem.

Thanks, Randomizer. I can only imagine there are tons of things to be worked out whenever a new engine is crafted, but I haven't noticed any obvious pathing problems in the initial let's play videos of the first hour or so, so was curious what this might be referring to. It does seem from reading the forums here that other aspects of the UI (different ways to open doors(?) depending on context, how to use crafting/building menus to delete/replace structures) may need some refinement in later QW1 versions and/or QW2, but that's probably to be expected as well.

Does anyone who's actually been playing the game find any merit/sense in the first GOG review: https://www.gog.com/game/queens_wish_the_conqueror? Specifically, quoting from the review: "The collision detection on the basic movement is a bit lacking, the fact that if you click on interactable objects and the movement towards there seems inconsistent doesn't help."

I guess this was inevitable. I'm still stubborn enough to refuse to give up Windows 7 for a Windows 10 "upgrade", but at least my Win 7 is 64-bit. I hope you can manage to move to a 64-bit system and enjoy more Spidweb goodness.

...OK then! I actually am weird enough (obviously) to be interested in stuff like this, but I'm not surprised I'm the only one.

Nah, I'm just looking for one other instance of the construction "ever-threaten". I haven't seen it yet, but I really would be curious if such exists. If not, this was all I needed to know. FYI, there is a simple way to search the internet for hyphenated text: http://symbolhound.com/?q=ever-threaten. It shows 0 results.

Ha, I could ask whether there's anything that says the spelling of "green" as "xynaljs" is strictly unacceptable. You're not going to find anything that says the latter isn't correct, but you're going to find dictionaries that show the former is. The obvious result is that "xynaljs" isn't considered correct by general English standards. So if there's nothing that says "ever-threaten" is correct by this same rule (my question which is also unanswered, and apparently unanswerable, unlike yours), I can't accept it as such. But I'm not really interested in an endless discussion of the limits of what is creatively acceptable, as those could of course be argued to any far-fetched extent. I think I'll manage to live with Jeff's "poetic" non-standard usage. By the way, there's nothing in those kajillion uses (actually 10 pages, not 5 - http://fliphtml5.com/vvyc/egai/basic/) in the CMOS supporting combining "ever" with a verb in this way either. It is a thrilling read, though! But now I'm curious as to whether "xynaljs" ever appears in the game... 'cuz there ain't nothin' to prove it's wrong. 😉 Just to be clear: as I said above, this is obviously a nitpick. I'm just happy to hear a full proofreading pass has apparently already been done. The quality of Spidweb writing is always far above the usual video game standard, and I don't doubt that's the case here as well.

Again from the perspective of someone who's as yet only watched a few playthrough videos of the first hour or so, these sound reasonable. Not going to play the game anyway until at least after 1.01, so any little QoL adjustment like this will be welcome.

No problem. Here's one of many reliable guides synthesizing the commonly agreed uses of hyphens from APA and Chicago style. The Jeff Vogel usage is not on the list. Of course, he's free to be creative with language standards, in which case I guess my soul just isn't poetic enough to appreciate it. I also suppose since his version can't be supported in the same way as the below, we'll just agree to poetically disagree. https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/punctuation/hyphen_use.html

I've never seen an example of a hyphen used in this way outside of a compound adjective construction (which is not the context here) in standard English - could you please share the specific basis you found for this outside Jeff's other work? I'm interested. Thanks!

Ha, that would be a stretch. There may be more typos in addition to this one as well, so again, hopefully there's time for another full proofreading pass for extra polish.

This is an OCD nitpick, but since there will be a version 1.01 anyway: I haven't played yet, but I immediately noticed a typo simply by watching the introduction on a Youtube playthrough: "ever-threaten to crush you" shouldn't have the hyphen (i.e. the correct text should be "ever threaten to crush you"). Given how quickly the first one appeared, I'm not sure how many more errors like this are found throughout the game, but hopefully another complete proofreading pass has been/will be done before 1.01. No biggie if not, though.

Oh, great! I had written you an email just earlier today at the main spidweb address, but I guess I'll write there too. Thanks a lot for working this out. EDIT: Just saw you already responded to my email, so I'll wait for the keys. Again, appreciate this effort.

Or QW1...