SkeleTony

This sounds like a problem with Windows 98. I have a whole list of games that run fine in bopth Win 95 and win XP but run exactly as you describe Blades running under Win 98. WIn 98 was, simply put, the worst version of Windows ever released. Yes, you should turn off firewalls and all other programs(which you do not absolutely need to be running) running both when installing Blades and playing Blades. It is my experience that this will solve such problems %90 of the time. Also, make sure the game is running in 256 colors(not 16 bit or 24 or 32) even though it doesn't sound like a problem with your display/graphics settings.

Quote: Originally written by Toasted Marshmallows: I think it is better that he did not create a world construction kit. To put it mildly, Runesword II is garbage compared to Blades of Avernum. The Runesword world is nowhere as good as Blades of Avernum. Putting some limits on the game makes it more focused... I do not want a million classes and races. That would be stupid. Your player characters may not be dwarves, elves, faeries and other such nonsense, but you can certainly have a scenario built in a tolkienesque world. The characters can travel to any world imaginable through the various portals in Avernum. There is no reason you cannot design power armor, etc... You would just call it "Golem armor", or guns-- wand of steel bolts. I agree with you almost %100. RS II is, for the most part, crap but this is due more to the dumbed down mechanics(character creation, spell-casting etc.) than the world/setting. My point is that, with enough work, it is possible to change anything and everything in RS II and allow for one to put their own creative stamp on everything from the settings to the systems used. Edit: If your problems with RSII WERE simply that you disliked the setting, that is the whole point of having a "world construction" feature. Say that BoA scenarios always included a file with the extention '.wrl'(i.e. Tolkien.wrl' or 'Avernum.wrl'. THis would be the "world file". Whenever a party was created or a scenario designed, the engine would first ask for what "world file" these were being created for. These "world files" would be selected/loaded BEFORE parties & saved games were loaded everytime BoA was started up and these world files would(probably) be selected before loading a scenario to edit in the editor. So then people like yourself, who only want to play in Avernum, using only the three races and standard Avernum character creation can do so. Someone who wants to create an orc shaman singleton and adventure in "SkeleTonyworld" would load up 'SkeleTony.wrl' and create that PC/party. My only point of contention is with your assertion that having more races and such as options would somehow be "stupid". If Jeff had simply allowed for seperate "world files" ala RuneSword III(and to a lesser extent RS II) then this would not affect parties generated for the official Avernum world-setting. It would just allow for the hypothetical Tolkien copycat to design a middle-earth-esque world in which players would generate characters that were elves, orcs, dwarves and what have you. Not saying I would prefer such a world or not, just that having the option would be nice. I think "lizardmen" and "Cat-people"(regardless of what names you give them, re: "Sliths" and "Nephils") are the most annoyingly generic conventions of CRPGs aside from dwarves and elves but that is just me. Edit: In response to Thuryl- Good points. I hadn't even thought of the 'Mac compatible' situation. I like your ideas on ways to go about "special spells".

Quote: Originally written by Solomon Strokes: I took away Cloud of Blades for a very good reason- it does damage depending on the creature's HP total. So a boss like Shroud would take tremendous amounts of HP damage from the spell, making it unbalanced. I'm quite sure that taking the spell away was a wise choice on my behalf for the tactics of the scenario. Again, this was a minor quibble and I am probably in the minority in being bothered by such artifice. As for thinking of a better way, that would be beyond my capabilities ATM but note Thuryl's inspired thinking below. Quote: I want tactical situations that aren't hingent on Divine Aid, War Blessing, Fireblast, etc. This is the BEST way for me to create more interesting situations for the party that I can see- if you can make combat more interesting without resorting to something similar, you are a better man than I am. No I am NOT a better man adn even if I one day find the time to make a concentrate effort at learning AvernumScript adn designing the types of tactical challenges I prefer, it will not make me a better designer than you. It will just mean that I have different preferences. Quote: Then tell me how to do it by any other means. Again, I do not do this because I cannot. You could not call the wands you invented "wands"?!? You were forced to refer to them as "new spells"? I KNOW that is not right! The engine does not allow you to create new spells but DOES allow for new items. That is my point. If you really desire to create your own worlds with your own races, spells etc. then use a construction kit that allows such(The open Source "Runesword II" for example even though that would require a lot of work) but if you want to create scenarios in BoA, which absolutely does NOT provide ANY means for such alterations, don't create a new item, which reads as an item(not a spell), behaves as an item(and not a spell), and does not show up in the spell menu. Just create the item and call it what it is. The effect is the same and you don't have the weirdness of refering to "items" as "spells"(or Nephilim as "elves" or a 'special item' as a 'new mage skill' or whatever). Quote: But if you want elves, who's there to stop you? Teh game engine for one. No matter what you try to do with BoA, no matter HOW gifted a designer you are, you have no way of removing or adding new races in BoA adn never will have. You can include a read me file that tries to convince players to pretend their Sliths are Dwarves and use a custom graphic that looks like Gimli but everytime you examine that PC in game it will stil be a slith or a nephil. It will have no "dwarvish" abilities or physical traits. It will read "Nephilim" or "Slithzerikai" or "Human" under "race" and when you take the PC into other scenarios it will be a slith or nephil, not a dwarf or elf. Quote: Seems to me as if you think that scenarios become better when they adhere to the Avernum engine and plot- which I, of course, think is utter bollocks. [qb] No. I would strongly prefer that Jeff had created a true RPG construction kit that allowed for "world files" and such and his excuse that this would be impossible for a small company is b*llsh*t. Adam West has been doing it(now working on RS III) for years. My point is that you can either accept this and have fun creating scenarios within such restrictions(What I have chosen) or you can try and deny the restrictions exist and pretend you Nephilim are elves and your wands are new spells(which may or may not work for you but the rest of us still see the wands as wands because of the engine restrictions). Quote: [qb] As a designer, I'm offended; as a player, I feel mocked. "Clearly, the amount of suffering you have suffered under while fighting monotonous Vogel combat isn't enough; so designers, please do make combat less interesting for the sake of gaming clichés." Now that is just silly . You are saying that designers either do the things you have done the way you have done them or else make cliche' and unintersting combat?!? I think there are other options. Quote: So yeah- things are becoming less connected to Jeff's "pristine vision of BoA." So what? BoA, despite what you may think, is NOT A BoA FANFICTION. Same team bro'. Let go of the ball. I am not one of those Avernum/Exile purists. I could give a rat's ass about continuity or setting scenarios within the established settings or history of Avernum. Oh...and I DETEST "fanfiction"(including "play-by-post" crap). Quote: Even the designers that work in its universe will agree that your proposal is outrageous, and this has been reflected in BoX designing since 1997. Not my proposal. You misunderstood me guy and I don't care what those guys might think. All of the half-finished scenarios I did for BoE were set in non-Exile settings and featured monsters(and terrain) that did not exist in the Exile universe.

Well, I didn't quite get as much BoA playing done as I wanted to. Some friends needed some t-shirt designs and flier art done for their band and I had to work on that stuff a bit. I got to the final boss in Canopy, General Shroud, and beat his first two incarnations before losing interest and getting out of that scenario. I think I am going to star all over (again) with a completely different party and scenario continuity(this last party was Cave of No Return => Perfect Forest => A Small Rebellion => ZKR = DWtD => Canopy, without doing every sidequest I could find so by the time I got around to Canopy I was probably level 30-31 or so). Some things I DEFINATELY disliked about Canopy had little to do with linearity. The removal of Cloud of Blades struck me as artificial. I do not even use the spell much normally but it seems to me that if a particular spell would have unbalanced your combats then there are other ways to deal with this as a designer(don't get me wrong. Canopy is easily better than anything I could have done.) but this is probably a minor quibble. I was much more put off by the attempt at inserting new "spells" via wands like Natureshand and so on. I think we all would like to see Jeff take a different stance on allowing designers to create new spells but this is not the way to do it IMO. I realize most disagree with me on this but I can't stand it. Just create new items and give your baddies susceptibilities to those items, ala LoTR(which is basically what TM was doing with that Ubermensch - or whatever his name was - guy anyway) but don't try and pass the wands off as 'new spells' that take up an inventory slot and read as "wand" and don't show up in my list of spells when I go to cast. Reminds of when certain BoE - kiddies try to create new PC races by suggesting we use a custom graphic and pretend our Nephils are "elves" or somesuch nonsense. Get over it. The Avernum universe does not have other spells or races or skills beyond what is allowed in BoA and calling a wand you have created a "new spell" in your readme file does not make it so. THat's the sort of "r0L3Pl4y1nG" crap that can ruin a scenario for me. Dammit...this belongs over as CSR I guess, Sorry. Still Canopy was, overall a good scenario(not better than Jeff's scenarios IMO but good).

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Quote: Yes...WE have and it never gets old (unlike linear, being led by the nose through someone's creative vision type scenarios). If you're talking about TM's work here, do keep in mind that the first advice most players will give you regarding a TM scenario is to ignore the plot. Actually, I was NOT talking about TM's work. I am the last person to critique someone's work on how nifty the plot is(I don't personally care about plot beyond it being at least somewhat cosistent). I was speaking generally about adventure/scenario designers who sometimes fall into the 'console trap' of emulating Final Fantasy type games(I see some of this in TM's stuff but so far I have not been too put off by him) where the PCs are lead from point 'A' to cutscene 'A' to point 'B' to cutscene 'B', etc. and the player cannot deviate from this path by ANY means. Quote: He's popular as a designer mainly because he has a knack for presenting interesting tactical challenges. It seems to me that the main difference between his scenarios and the kind of is that TM's scenarios present a mostly linear series of self-contained tactical challenges, whereas you seem to prefer to be able to view the scenario as a whole as a single, all-encompassing tactical challenge. Actually, I prefer a series of tactical challenges of varying difficulties. I just don't want to be FORCED to go from *this* fight to *that* puzzle then to *the next* fight etc. If my first level party stumbles into the dragon cave and gets toasted, I can figure out for myself when I want to try that again and how I will go about beating it. Quote: Well, my point was that "conventional" BoE combat (i.e. lots of monsters with few fancy tricks) rarely provides a challenge. Standards of "conventional" BoA combat and corresponding strategies are likewise beginning to form. And whatever you may think of TM's plots (and frankly, as far as I'm concerned, the less one thinks about them the better), it's innovators like TM who are able to look past those standards and provide new and interesting challenges. No argument there. Don't get me wrong...even if I play, for example, a scenario by TM in the future that is entirely linear(and way longer than EM) does not mean I am going to trash it at CSR or something(in fact I doubt my own reviews would be below the average). If one looks for what is good about a scenario, one will find it. I would reserve outright bad reviews for outright bad scenarios(regardless of linearity). If a scenario is designed for pregens or somesuch, I simply won't play(or review) it due to my personal tastes being what they are. I have never played many BoE scenarios such as Nebulous Times Hence, Emulations, Election and one or two of Alcitris' because of this very reason but not because I thought they were objectively "bad". Quote: But the thing is, the people in this community who innovate the most also tend to be the ones who have grand artistic visions to take us through. Fairly often, the two are inseparable; a particular combat works and makes sense because of the way the plot's progressed. (Besides, plot generally makes combat feel more unique and important; as one community member once said when betatesting my scenario, "I like to kill people with personalities".) Maybe right. It's kind of a weird thing because BoA's combat is actually, from a tactical perspective, in many ways inferior to BoE. It's little things like taking dual-weilding(two weapon) combat out and replacing Fireball with "Fireblast". Robs the game of a whole lot of tactical considerations. Anyways, it's early still and I should be through Canopy and Bhassikava(I know I spelled that wrong) within a few days and might even trek over to CSR adn give my thoughts on what I have played thus far. Time will tell exactly how intertwined egotis...er, 'Creative vision' is with tactically satisfying scenario design.

Quote: Originally written by Ash Lael: I have a certain amount of respect for what DreamGuy, SkeleTony and Toasty are saying. At the same time, I disagree with it utterly. There is a great scope for creativity in design. There is no One Way to make a scenario and there is no One Essential Ingredient. Sometimes you might like to create your own characters and let 'em lose in a scenario, and some will go to great lengths to allow you to play any sort of person you want. Others will give you an interesting character and invite you to step into his shoes for a few hours. You may like one or the other more. I prefer the latter. That said, I do believe that confusion over the relationship between player and party is a common thing, and usually pretty detrimental. I think a designer should make it clear what the party is, in his eyes. Players can then take it or leave it, but it's part of the designer's vision, and should be regarded as such, rather than as a design error. But it comes DAMNED CLOSE to being a "design error" in a roleplaying GAME. We are not talking about a writer's novel or a screenplay. RPGs are interactive affairs by definition. You take away the player's interaction and what you have left is a designer who may or may not be a brilliant storyteller, shoving a chair under the player's ass and having him watch his masterpiece unfold. Some people undoubtedly enjoy this sort of thing. I may not understand why but I do not hold it against them. I just think that I am not alone in wanting the interactive part to remain a standby of RPG/scenario design. The most important player interaction that occurs is in character/party creation, not in deciding whether to taste the chef's cookies or kick his ass(though these choices are a bonus as well)! Quote: I think our new BoA players are used to feeling like they are in control when they play, and the simple fact that they are not irks them. Aren't ALL BoA players relatively "new" since the game has barely existed long enough to see 7 or 8 scenarios released(most of themn very short)? Besides that, it is not about BoA players used to feeling like they are in (complete) control adn being angry that we/they are not. It is about ©RPG veterans, like myself, used to having some interaction with our CRPGs...being able to create our OWN characters according to OUR tastes adn taking them on wonderful adventures designed by others. I played TM's Emerald Mountain AND Stareye's Perfect Forest(in addition to VoTD, ASM, etc.) and thought they were absolutely terrific! Both were pretty linear but EM was so short that it would be foolish to expect anything else and APF at least preserved the illusion of my party's decision-making being of some consequence(at least for most of the scenario I did not feel like I was being artificially bottlenecked). But as much as I liked EM I was turned off a bit that so much work went into the technical aspects(cutscenes) which did little for me, while the 'meat' of the scenario consisted of a single mini-dungeon and a couple other fights(don't want to be too spoily here). Quote: But that's the way it is. Even if you feel like you are, it's an illusion created by the designer. The mindset of a player should be to approach the designer with trust, accept his rules, and allow him to take you into his world. Nah. Got no problem with the designer taking me into his world. What I don't want is for him to handcuff me to a railcar bound for "Big fight with end boss". It is not about "trust" either. I am not seeking therapy when I play someone's scenario. I just want to enjoy a game the same way I enjoy a game of chess(only different). It's me against whatever crafty conundrum the designer has dreamed up and whatever nasty baddies he has stocked his scenarios with.

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Quote: I absolutely DETEST linearity, even though I recognise that it is, to a certain degree, unavoidable. I think that anytime a designer imposes severe restrictions on the party ... It's necessary for the designer to give the party some backstory, if only in order to get them into a situation where they'd be able to take part in the events of the scenario in the first place. This can be as simple as "You heard about someone hiring people for a mission and decided to go there and see what it was about", or as complicated as the party being the last survivors of an attack on a fort by enemy forces. Agreed. I think you are misreading me here. I have no problem with such background details as "Your merry band decided to take a break from adventuring. A small vacation in the province of Suchandsuch when something strange happens..." or whatever. What turns ME off, and this is purely a matter of personal taste, is stuff along the lines of "This scenario is not only designed for singletons but SPECIFICALLY for the singleton I have crerated and included in the zip file as a saved game." or Cut scenes that feeature my party in a 10 minute discussion with some Nietzche-clone in which they are trying to convince him that radical skepticism(bordering on solopsism) is the ONLY rational way to view life or somesuch nonsense. Quote: Quote: Computer RPGs, moreso than P&P RPGs, are tactical simulators. The goal is to improve your character(s) by overcoming obstacles. There's a problem with this that BoE players are very familiar with. After 200 different scenarios, ordinary BoE combat just isn't new or interesting any more. Either a designer has to do something very original and clever in combat (in which case he's at risk of being pilloried for it by new or occasional players who claim the designer is cheating), or he has to make the scenario interesting in ways other than through combat (in which case he's at risk of being pilloried by new or occasional players who only play for combat). In a few years we'll be in a similar situation with BoA scenarios. I have been with BoE from the beginning(or damned near. I have been playing Spiderweb games since around Exile II) and have played probably 30 - 50 of the scenarios available. I did not bother with ones so obviously bad(ala "Lost King" scenarios) according to the CSR or scenarios which were designed with pregen's or Singletons in mind(no matter how good they probably were, judging by the reviews(such as "Election") because of my personal tastes. I tend to get bored with any game, no matter how good after playing it for several hours a day for a month or two straight, including BoE but this temporary boredom is not due to the combat being too boring or because I did not play enough linear, story-heavy scenarios. Tom Proudfoot's games(Natuk, PoWS, Nalakh) have combat mechanics that put Spiderweb's games to complete shame(except for the "Spell use drains your muscles" snafu) and I get bored with those just as well. Jagged Alliance 2 the same. Speaking only for myself, I don't think there is much ANY scenario designer could do to keep me interested in BoE, BoA or any other CRPG construction kit or modded game beyond myone or two month threshold. Quote: Quote: Plot CAN be an incidental bonus to a scenario or CRPG, as can well developed NPCs and such but it is not integral to a good scenario no matter what the poetry-reading, new-age spirtualist-intellectuals will try and tell you. I'd argue that no single element is integral to a good scenario. There have been a few highly-regarded BoE scenarios with little or no combat. I was not arguing that there was a single element that was universally integral to some objective standard of "good" scenario design. SOme people like puzzles. I cannot even feign slight interest in them anymore. After 4 Monkey Island games, countless King's Quest, Discworld, Tex Murphy, Maniac Mansion/DoTT, all the Zorks and many other Infocom games, The Ultimas, the Wizardrys, the Might & Magics, and so on over my 20 something year career of playing video/computer games, I simply cannot stomache another puzzle. Some people seem to have a similar distaste for "hack and slash"/combat but not me *shrug*. I am with Vogel in thinking that "Roleplaying is overated." only I also tend to feel that puzzle-solving and 'storytelling' is also overated. I have never finished any of my own BoE scenarios so I cannot really comment on how exhaustive designers' attempts to make combat interesting have been. I know that if Jeff had included some means to directly design the layout of the battlefield(i.e. placing obstructions, placing monsters in specific spots etc.) it would have helped. Quote: Quote: These are GAMES. You take the "GAME" out of "Role Playing Game" and you are left with drama club or improvisational storytelling(which are NOT role playing GAMES). Technically, they're called scenarios. Was talking about CRPGs in general, be it BoE/BoA scenarios, RuneSword "tomes", Exile III, Avernum IV, Wizardry 8 or what have you. Quote: Interactivity and choice are generally good things, but they're not the only way to add interest to a scenario. Agreed. Quote: BoE players have well and truly been there and done that dozens of times before.[/qb] Yes...WE have and it never gets old (unlike linear, being led by the nose through someone's creative vision type scenarios). Quote: The basic engine is so well-understood that most experienced players know exactly what the optimal strategies are for every kind of combat (to the point where some players habitually take level-1 parties into level-20 scenarios). BoA will be in the same situation before long. While I agree with you about the weakness of the BoE engine in this regard(but fail to see how this refutes my points!?), I am not so sure that BoA will become old-hat as quickly. It seems that BoA is capable of about 20 times what BoE was capable of but maybe I am wrong(I have only really been glossing over the Avernumscript stuff).

Quote: Originally written by Kelandon: Let me guess: you're the one going by "Not registered" at the Lyceum. That, I think, explains a lot. I visit the Lyceum regularly to read BoE reviews but I could not tell you what my handle is there(I AM registered threre though as far as I can rememebr).

While the article itself is, like most of what TM writes IMO, a good and interesting read, I find myself agreeing with Toasted Marshmallows. I absolutely DETEST linearity, even though I recognise that it is, to a certain degree, unavoidable. I think that anytime a designer imposes severe restrictions on the party or tries to usurp the party(putting words into their mouths and motivations into their adventuring etc.) this is just plain egotism. Rather than writing a book where he is free and expected to create all the characters, the plot, the dialogue etc. and decide what devices are employed to tell his story, he tries to force his grand creative vision into what SHOULD be an interactive venture. My characters, in ANY decent RPG, should be generated by ME and I should decide if they have some particular motivation or personality quirks or philosophical leanings. Computer RPGs, moreso than P&P RPGs, are tactical simulators. The goal is to improve your character(s) by overcoming obstacles. Plot CAN be an incidental bonus to a scenario or CRPG, as can well developed NPCs and such but it is not integral to a good scenario no matter what the poetry-reading, new-age spirtualist-intellectuals will try and tell you. These are GAMES. You take the "GAME" out of "Role Playing Game" and you are left with drama club or improvisational storytelling(which are NOT role playing GAMES). RPGs are, like it or not, primarily number-crunching, die-rolling, character-building(and character-challenging if you are a scenario designer) affairs. I, and I suspect just about everyone who plays CRPGs, enjoy the thrill of bypassing that "first level dungeon" of goblins and heading right for that orc Chieftain's cave(which I am not supposed to be able to do until AFTER defeating the goblins), figuring out a legal way to beat that dungeon and then reaping the rewards of my unorthodox decision. To play a scenario that forces a player along a narrow path of 1)Defeat lowest level pests 2)Sit through 5 - 10 minute cutscene that demonstrates the designers intricate mastery of the scripting language and little else 3)defeat more dangerous pests 4) More cutscenes(and a plot twist you cannot help but see coming) 5) More pests...and so on until you face(and hopefully defeat) all three phases/versions of the big foozle is not necessarily bad(after all, when RPGs are good they are GREAT and when they are bad...they are (usually) still pretty good!) but I will take a well designed "monster plague" scenarior over that any day. That's the reason I cannot stand "Final Fantasy" and any otehr console styled CRPGs. They feel more like watching a bad movie than enjoying a good game.

Sagi's suggestions are one way(and for all I know may be the most efficient way to do things) but I have always tended towards a similar party to your own(1 SLith Pole-Tank, 1 ambidextrous 2-sword wielder, 1 "Big axe/Big sword" guy, 1 Nephil archer-thief(who usually also knows mage & priest spells), 1 priest-type(usually slith) adn 1 mage) and I have never had any problems. Been a while since I played through "Valley of the Dying Things" but starting off, just 'stick to the script' so to speak. If what's-his-name offers you a mission to beat up on lowly goblins or bandits or rats or whatever then do that to build experience. Consult the hint book/walkthrough that came with the game(and is accesible from the menu atop your screen via the "Help/help with the demo" section or whatever it's called). What Sag' says about spellcasting is absolutely right also. Haste and Bless are your friends.

BoE DOES have a lot more scenarios(and this may well be the case ALWAYS for a variety of reasons) and it is easer to create custom graphics and scenarios for. Also BoE has a greater selection of tactically more satisfying spells(how can you have a game with no "fireball"??) But that is about the extent of advantages for BoE over BoA. BoA has a full scripting language, better game mechanics in general, can do pretty much anything BoE can do plus 100 times more! If you buy BoE now(to enjoy all of teh quality scneraiors for that game/constuction set), you can still buy BoA later and get the $15 price for being a registered BoE user(and by then there may be a lot more scenarios available for BoA).

I never got too far with programming myself(did a bunch of half-finished and half-assed things with VB and C++ Builder and a few other languages) so what follows are my best guesses and may be completely off the mark. I think that it depends on how much of the game is "hard coded" and how much of it is in data files that any programmer can access. The hard-coded stuff is probably stuff that cannot be mucked with unless the author releases the source code. Some retail games, like Heroes III, have enjoyed(well, suffered is more like it i the case of HoMM III) extensive revisions in teh form of actual fan made expansion packs which add scripting languages ahe other features, simply by modifying the accessible files. Some games, like many first person shooters, have level editors released for them which enable extensive modding without really messing with the engine(probably the case with Diablo II as well). And there are some games, like all of Spiderweb's games that, aside from the capabilites of the offically released scenario editors, you will not be able to alter jack crap! Understandable from Jeff's POV. If I had created Avernum/Exile, I would not want one of those grammatically challenged console kiddies popping off with "lOok!! I mak teh Bath of fire remaek with the Averanl engine!! its 2 awesome!! Plz Dl it and teLl me if ist gooD!"

If you're looking to create your own fantasy world and modules/scenarios within, complete with your own races, skills, magic systems etc., then you might want to download Runesword II which is both freeware and open source. To be honest, even with all of it's capabilities and features, it is probably still nowhere near as good as BoA because of it's "dumbed down" RPG mechanics(which can be changed to your liking but would involve a lot of coding) combined with a very 'world specific magic system. In other words the magic system is unlike how sorcery is generally depicted in fantasy, which is great so long as you are not creating YOUR OWN campaign setting and are happy to just create scenarios within RS' world of "Eternia". But with some hard work you can change about anything in Runesword(and several people in the RS community have already done impressive things such as creating "Superhero" worlds, instead of fantasy, and scenarios within these other world-settings). Many VB programmers are currently working on improving Runesword's engine(both the creator and the game engine itself) through a Sourceforge project because there ARE a lot of annoying bugs in the program(but what can you say...it's FREE!). Apologies if this post is a no-no in the SW forums. I am assuming Jeff would have no problem with such a plug but I have been wrong before...