Icshi

I too encountered this "bug" when I finished the demo, but assumed it was designed that way. After all, it's rather difficulty to play in a big black void with a few objects hovering around, so it made the rest of the game unplayable for me anyway.

Geneforge 4 will be told from the point of view of a front-line fyora.

It'll be a very short game, lasting about ten minutes, and you won't be able to move yourself around since you'll be controlled by the Shaper who created you.

Geneforge 5 will pick up the story where 4 left off. You get to be a Thahd this time.

Sorry about the confusion.

I re-read Frank Herbert's science fiction novel Whipping Star last week. It features an alien called a Caleban who has great difficulty communicating using language because its perspective on reality is far different than ours, and has trouble with verb tenses since it sees every point in time simultaneously.

I meant no offense by my jest — it's just that "verb lie at present continuous" sounds exactly like the way the Caleban talked when trying to explain things.

Oh, and it had two names: Fanny Mae, and Thyone. Fanny Mae was a sort of nickname, while Thyone was the name of the star in the Pleiades that was the physical manifestation of the Caleban in our "plane" of reality.

Seeing how badly Geneforge 3 cheapened its predecessors by rehashing everything, I think a Nethergate 2 would be a disaster.

I read the other thread about improving Nethergate to run in OS X and so on, and hope that's the extent of Jeff's future Nethergaterian ambitions.

The whole episode with the Dark Wyrms in A3 gave me nightmares. Whenever playing A3 now, that place still seriously freaks me out.

That's where holding down TAB comes in handy: it shows you the names of everything around you. Probably the nicest thing about this feature it that you don't have to look individually at every object/creature.

Me too, Arsenic.

And before opening doors or talking to characters.

Talking about elevation: I think Jeff should incorprate a shifting-view feature similar to that in Stronghold; i.e., the graphics are the same, only the arrangment of them on the screen changes in relation to each other.

Granted, there were some graphics in Stronghold that did look different from different angles, but the majority of them were exactly the same despite the angle. Hence, no huge number of alternate graphics for any item, person, or terrain.

Whoo-hoo! Huzzah! Yippee-skippee!

< Icshi then disappears for the next month >

EDIT; Duh, never mind. < Smacks self upside head >

I never cared much for the Geneforge editors, since you have to tinker with the source files.

One of the funnest times I had was playing through Nethergate with an all-woman party whom I'd cranked up to godlike powers using the character editor. Kinda kinky, but quite a lot of fun.

I also did Avernum 3 with a single super-powerful Nephil swordsman/archer/priest/mage who could hack or burn anything in its path. I made it thorugh the entire game in a matter of days. Very invigorating, and relieves a lot of stress.

When Geneforge 3 came out, it was the same situation: somebody reported on the file being available for download from the FTP site before the official announcement.

I'd rather have waited for an official announcement, quite frankly. Makes it a more of a grand occasion rather than an "underhanded" one.

I think I'll follow *i's adivce and download it when it's really done.

I think it's a bit premature to heft out the karmacinerator guns. He's only made 4 posts for crying out loud, and apart from the confusssing "SSS" busssinessssss he seems an alright guy.

This kind of behavior is, sadly, nothing out of the ordinary. Certain individuals, whose names I need not mention , became emotionally unstable during the week before the release of Geneforge 3 and exhibited very similar violent tendencies towards themselves (and reality in general).

We — uh, I mean, they — also became extremely silly.

This condition is termed anticipatory withdrawl, and is defined as being suddenly addicted to and then deprived of a substance which has yet to be introduced to the nervous system.

EDIT: I'm not typing very well today. I wonder why…

I like the graphics in Avernum 3 best, but prefer the dialogue system of Nethergate.

Geneforge... meh. The world was flat, the terrain graphics were clustered in blocks that looked worse than terrain in the Avernum games, and the super-glossy character graphics jarred somehow with the game world. They looked too good compared with the terrain.

It's Scottish.

Well, um, considering that you'll undoubtedly download and buy the Windows version, I suggest just waiting a few months. That would be simplest option, though it may not be the most immediately gratifying one.

I've never had stuff on the ground disappear. Whenever there are a maximum number of items on the ground in that zone, the system refuses to accept another dropped item. In other words, I drag the item to the ground area and try to release it, but it "sticks to my hand" and I can only put it back in my inventory.

EDIT: But yes, I did notice a difference in Geneforge 3. Thankfully, the ability to put items in cabinets and so on — which was so handy in Nethergate — made a reappearance in G3. I hope Avernum 4 has the same feature.

I had emailed Jeff a couple of weeks ago asking about registering Lost Souls, and I also asked about Avernum 4. He said he was hoping to have it out by December 10th.

Oh, of course! I'd forgotten about Nagas...

It's been a while since I played any Avernum games. Hopefully that situation will be rectified soon with the release of Avernum 4.

EDIT: I now have the word Xel'Naga drifting through my mind. Now then, what's that from?

EDIT #2: Icshi, you idiot! They're the race from Starcraft that created the Protoss and Zerg. As in the phrase "destroy the Protoss encampment and infest the Xel'Naga temple."

EDIT #3: Thanks, Thuryl. You posted while I was smacking myself upside the head and writing EDIT #2.

I'm always surprised at the variety of subject matters covered by Wikipedia.

Naga, are you a Ssslith by any chance?

And yes, I prefer the A1 and A2 ogres.

Exactly.

Yes, but their reproduction is exponential. It's one new forum today… before you know it, though, there will be millions of them.

I always find these kinds of debates amusing, trying to infratextually reconcile the game's interface with the game world.

It's like those people who try to explain, within the story, why the first Doctor looks so different in The Five Doctors than he did in The Dalek Invasion of Earth.