idonotexist42

I always pronounced it Jen-eh-forge, even though Gene-Forge probably makes more sense.

A large part of why rome fell was that it was bankrupted by lots of spending on building projects and "bread and circuses" programs without enough revenue from successful military campaigns to pay for it all. Slaves were part of that yes, but they were only part of a larger issue with cash flow. The fact that towards the end their salaried citizen legions had largely been replaced with germanic mercenaries also played a role; their security was now dependent on buying off the people they were trying to protect themselves from and praying that the goths didn't decide it was better to help the vandals sack rome instead of fighting them off when push came to shove (note goths and vandals are just two examples because I can't remember off the top of my head which tribes sided with who when). A gamble that failed when rome couldn't really pay them, and so their mercenaries had an alarming tendency to turn on them and join the invading armies. After being repeatedly sacked by various tribes (Huns sacked everything in the western empire except Rome itself, the Vandals and Goths both sacked the city of Rome) the empire was totally destitute and at the mercy of the various germanic peoples who'd now settled there and eventually figured "screw it, we'll just declare ourselves kings of wherever we settled" and the empire crumbled into an assortment of successor states. It didn't help that the empire suffered from a lot of internal conflict, what with there being periods of time where as many as nine different individuals declared themselves emperor simultaneously and resulted in a series of civil wars that made the events preceding Julius (and Augustus) Caesar's rise to power roughly 500 years earlier look like sunday afternoon gladiatorial game. Everything that could go wrong did and the empire gradually fell apart piece by piece till there was nothing left and the closest person left to begin an Emperor was the Pope. yay for having an awesome history professor whose main area of expertise was roman history.

Something that's been nagging me for a while: Shaping Skills. Do they only affect the initial level of creations when you shape them, or does having a high shaping skill carry any sort of benefit to the creations that have already been made? I ask this because of gear with bonuses to shaping skills, is there any point wearing it except when shaping, and then you ought to swap it out for another piece to use most of the time, or do they provide any bonus that makes them worth wearing all the time?

Ah, thank you, that clears up my confusion. And yeah, I'll take a look at the BoA documentation and see what I can learn from that. At some point I'm going to go through the scripts and make a note of all the unused values for spells, and for items (if any exist) where one could put new stuff and put the list up here as a resource for anyone who's interested. I thought it was really cool that I could actually make new spells/abilities without having to overwrite anything.

As others have said, In G5, the reason it doesn't kill you is that apparently you got majorly screwed up at some point after initially using a previous geneforge, and so it remade you again and fixed you, kind of like when you do a factory reset on your jailbroken iPod because you screwed with it too much and broke it. Presumably Rawal's Geneforge is a copy of the modern rebel ones, and none of the Geneforges after G1 seem to be quite as powerful as the original. In G1, it was impossible to use the Geneforge a second time because there was nothing more it could do to you; it stated flat out that after it was done you could bathe in the pool and just chill and be fine.

yeah, checking back on the Demonic Rotdhizon from G2, it's got cr_graphic_appearadj = 5; maybe that effect got removed?

another question: when I'm in the items chars/objmisc file, I sometimes see negative values and I have no clue what those mean. Like reapers (G5) it have "ab_status_effect = -1;" and while I've got a list of 1-20, I have no clue what the negative one is. And I see them it other spots where I have no clue what it means like "ab_effect_type = -1;" Actually if anyone knows, a list of what the different effect types (not status effects) and what the "it_variety = y;" values mean, or really anything besides the damage types, status effects, and other pretty straightforward values where I've already found lists for are. I'm having great difficulty figuring out exactly how the coloring (cr_graphic_coloradj) system works, mostly I've done trial and error to find what I think looks good (for example I made charged Vlish purple, and plated bugs sort of grayish) but aside from 1 usually being blue, I can't seem to find anything constant between the graphics for different creations, like number X on say, a Vlish, is different than how the same #X looks on a clawbug, or Glaahk. I guess part of that probably is from them all having a different colored basic graphic, but it'd be nice to have a better understanding of how the system works. I did manage to figure out some of the values for cr_graphic_appearadj, 0 is no effect (makes sense) 1 is transparent (like shades and spectral vlish and such) 2 & 4 are both glowy effects (some charged creations, battle gammas) with 2 seemingly brighter and more pronounced than 4. 3 doesn't seem to do anything, nor do any numbers up from 5-10, nor do negative numbers. I swear there ought to be more though, like the weird pixelated effect some creations had in earlier games.

Yeah, that it'd be freeform for yours is what I expected, reminds me of the RP section on the WoW forums (where I have many fond memories) I just brought up the table-top thing because you reminded me of it. I was always bothered by some of the limitations that were obviously just due to technical constraints too, which is a large part of why I want to make a table-top version; it gives you the structure and gameplay of a conventional game without being shackled to it by technical limitations and inflexible hardcoded rules, sort of the best of both worlds where you only lose out on graphics and having to take the time to do math yourself. I particularly want to add a LOT of depth to the shaping/creation system for the PCs, since that's the main thing that sets Geneforge apart but as cool as it was, the gameplay implementation was pretty limited compared to the lore implied was possible. It'll be what keeps my tabletop version from simply being reskinned D&D with slightly different math. Also I want to do more to differentiate the classes besides different health/essence pools and which skills are cheaper to buy.

Now I'm going to have to re-read the Dragonbone Chair. If I can find it in my basement.

I always wanted a blades of Geneforge, but yeah, it'll probably never happen. I never felt the story of Avernum was quite as compelling; the world itself was richly detailed and it was a great setting but it didn't engage me as much as Geneforge, which stood out from the typical RPG story lines and got me really invested. I would have loved to be able to act upon all my "what if"s about Geneforge, not so much with Avernum. As far as typical "swords and sorcery" type fantasy goes, the Avernum world is pretty well constructed and had a unique flavor but Geneforge's fantasy/sci-fi hybrid moral dilemma awesomeness really stands alone.

I'm guessing that in a prequel there'd be factions within the Shapers, probably the most basic division would be between the Traditionalists/Purists that balked at what was going on and wanted to shut it down and the researches who wanted to plow ahead, consequences be damned (For Science!!). Maybe a radical group similar to the Barzites that wants to use their newfound power to stage a coup. Being an apprentice would probably be a good starting point, and some kind of rank system before the faction divides become more significant later in the game would probably work well. As for gaining power, the same way we always have: trainers, and of course, the CANISTERS. This was where they were invented after all, and I suspect that they were making a LOT of them. Shapers getting cracked out from canister abuse probably played a large role in prompting the shutdown. this also occurs before Drayks were barred, and so having some of them around would be interesting. And I'd love to know more about the natives who left all those mysterious ruins everywhere. the biggest issue, gameplay wise for a Suica Island Origin/Prequel would be the absence of the 4th&5th Tier creations we got so used to from G2 on. Maybe more upgraded variants than just the single one? deeper customization using the gene technology?

I can see why they balked at the canisters and the Geneforge, especially since the side effects of the Canisters are so readily apparent, but I think they made a mistake by suppressing the "tiny scrolls", more scientific method of shaping in general, which when used with appropriate restraint, be a much less messy method than their traditional Trial and Error "zap things with magic and hope it does what you want" method, that would advance their abilities tremendously. Refusing to adopt this technique while the rebels did is how the rebels initially gained such an advantage in terms of powerful creations (Drakons, Gazers/Eyebeast, Rots) and made their insurrection possible in the first place. The "we thought we could go back at some point/too proud" angle seems legit, totally in line with the Cannon lore. I do suspect however that there had to have been some kind of major that prompted such a hasty and absolute shutdown. Yeah, they would balk at the canisters and Geneforge on principle to a certain extent but something must have gone horribly wrong to provoke such an extreme reaction. My guess is that whoever first used the Geneforge got a major case of "canister madness" and went on a rampage or something along those lines.

interesting, I'd like to take part. Timeline-wise, when does this take place relative to the Games? I was thinking of doing something similar with a "G6" idea I had. Also I'm working on making a tabletop RPG based off Geneforge; I couldn't sell it obviously (idk if I'd even be allowed to distribute it for free, I'm not too up on IP laws) but it'd be cool just to do with some friends. Mechanic-wise I'm trying to use the math from the games where feasible and then lifting stuff from D&D to fill in the cracks, and coming up with the mechanics for shaping from scratch (it's a lot more involved than in the games in terms of what you can do) I really like the freedom that tabletop RPGs give you.

There are a bunch of threads on modding and I've read them all. They were quite helpful. I've done a bunch of stuff to G4 (though not as extensive as with G3) , all went smoothly, then did most of the same stuff to G5. Still haven't gotten the AOE spells to work. You can give creations that only had melee attacks ranged ones and it doesn't screw anything up. At some point I'll have to go through the painstaking process of combing through the scripts and making note of any unused values where I could put new stuff. It's not so bad for the spells (at least not in GF1-3), but 4 and 5 added a bunch of new stuff and it's not all in order so it complicates things. Items have the same issue plus there's a ton more of them. The G5 engine looks like it has the potential to do some really cool stuff graphically. I don't dare screw with the Zones at this point, just the file with the items and creatures, and the one with the spells. oh, you know how you couldn't put enhancements on shields for some reason? I fixed that (well I'm sure it was intentional when the game was made but I found it frustrating) It's just one line of code you can copy and paste into the basic template for each item type and boom. All your slots are fair game.

My other Idea is a prequel set on Suica island during the time back when the original geneforge was created. clearly something must have gone terribly wrong for them to shut it all down like that, I always wondered what exactly it was.

so my idea is roughly as follows: 5-15 years after GF5 there's an uneasy truce holding out between the Shapers and Rebels, the land is slowly healing from the wounds of the war. There remains, however, internal strife within the Rebels and Shapers between the moderate, centrist factions who engineered the truce and are getting very close to working out a final diplomatic 2-state solution that would truly end the war and the hardline radicals (Alwanites&Drakons). the PC is a part of an envoy sent to the summit where the final deal will be brokered (I had an idea that you could pick between starting as a shaper or rebel) On the way you're attacked, and when you finally arrive at the location for the summit, it gets bombed. No one is quite sure who is behind it at first, but the way it plays out is that the radicals on both sides, unwilling to settle for peace instead of absolute victory both stage a coup. There's now an open civil war between the human/servile rebels and Drakons, and between the progressive and hardline shapers. Since the moderates on both sides are working together this effectively becomes a 3 way war between the Alliance, the Alwanites, and the Drakons. Early in the game before everything totally goes to hell the PC is sent to investigate who was behind the attacks and why. Both attacks will have been made to look as though it was the opposite side who was responsible but are actually false-flag attacks by the radicals in your own faction. when you figure this out, it's your first "faction choice" you can opt to go along with the Alwanites/Drakons and help their radical goals, or remain loyal to the moderates. Eventually you can join the Alwanites or Drakons if you want even if you started as a rebel or shaper (respectively), much like how you have the same freedom in the rest of the series when choosing sides. I keep using the term "Alwanites" in this scenario, Alwan is dead but there's a faction within the shapers dedicated to his hardline views agitating for war instead of compromise and they launch a coup against the more moderate elements of the council. I thought about maybe there being another unaligned faction out for its own gain fighting everyone, pillaging and profiting from the chaos, like neo-Barzites or something but I feel like that's probably too similar to the Shaper Monarch in G4.

You know who has a flawed premise? The Trakovites. You can never put the genie back in the bottle; it doesn't matter whether the world would be better off without shaping, you just can't feasibly get rid of it. The Shapers tried to do it on a smaller scale, trying to erase all knowledge of the original Geneforge and the advances in shaping discovered along with it. That worked out real well for them didn't it? Someone is always going to uncover the secrets and they'll come back to bite you in the ass. In order to get rid of shaping, you'd have to get rid of everyone who can or knows how to shape, and destroy every last text on it in the world. And since presumably people will remember that Shaping exists, there's nothing to stop some particularly determined mage from rediscovering the techniques on his own from scratch. It's not logistically feasible and if you could accomplish it, you'd have more blood on your hands than the Shapers or the Rebels. And you'll probably just get killed by the people who shape anyways, like bringing a sword into a fight between two nations wielding nukes. There's a reason their movement never gained any traction.

If you compare the Awakened to the other sects, aside from the pure loyalist shapers, they're still the least reckless about using shaping compared to the Takers and Barzites. The Awakened ending depicts the Barrier of the Wind working essentially perfectly so presumably their Drakons were designed to be more obedient and less intelligent, more like a normal creation than the "Drayks on Steroids" we encounter elsewhere. Compare this to the Barzite's creations that they could barely control (needed the buzzy rod thingy) or the Takers just creating whatever random monsters they felt like and sending them off to wreak havoc, the Awakened still come out as the sane ones. Waging a defensive war to hold onto their own little independent state easily maintains the moral high ground over the Takers plunging the world into chaos and destruction to spite the shapers with no thought to the consequences or the Barzites nearly as bloody path to World Domination, or over the shapers dogmatic genocidal purge. The cannon ending of G2 seems to roughly follow the loyalist one, so the barrier would not have been completed. You can't say "oh the barrier was a bad idea that could never work" when if you successfully finish the game as the Awakened the post-game slideshow talks about it working as intended without any hiccups. It fails in the cannon timeline because the shapers wiped everyone out before they had a chance to finish the Barrier. Even the G1 Awakened ending (which I always thought was odd in that your character doesn't do anything at all to help them and just runs off to have some kingdom for himself in the wilderness) involves the Shapers eventually bargaining and negotiating with the Awakened. I can see that telling you to use the Geneforge may have been a poorly thought out idea, since the awakened didn't' really even know what it did, but there is nothing inherently flawed about their ideological premise. The only reason we don't see them succeed is that they're wiped out by the more bloodthirsty sects before they have a chance to gain momentum because in the cannon timeline our GF2 protagonist sided against them. As usual the balance of fate rests squarely in our hands.

G1: Shapers are sort of dicks but we don't see enough of them to make firm judgements, Awakened I sympathize with to the point where I have difficulty playing the other sides, Takers are nuts, Trajkov actually turns out to be pretty egalitarian and chill once you help him take over the world. G2: Shapers are still kind of dickish and the way we see the serviles treated makes me uncomfortable. Awakened: see G1, hard not to sympathize with these guys and since they really don't have any morally unpleasant traits to speak of the shapers really look like assholes. Barzites: if they'd stayed Egalitarian I would lean towards them, but by the time you meet them they're essentially just Shapers without any of the self-restraint who are being really sloppy with their research and quest for power; the one thing I do like about them is that out of all the factions they give your character the most respect. You're treated as more than an errand boy, you reap rich rewards and basically become a god. The Takers are just as crazy as ever, unfortunately they're the only ones that survive. G3: Shapers are still being dicks to their creations but we see that their lands are relatively peaceful and prosperous before the rebels start [censored]ing [censored] up. When on Harmony Isle it becomes apparent that the Rebels are actually terrorizing innocent civilians to incite them to revolt agains the shapers I lost all respect for them. Lankan is too dumb to stop his little insurrection even when you point this out to him. I totally sympathize with their plight, but it was the [censored]ing Rebels that created all the monsters, not the shapers and while the shaper in charge couldn't' save them, it was because he genuinely lacked the power. I get to the next Island and it's more of the same. I can get behind creation rights but it becomes painfully clear why the Shapers control their knowledge so tightly and are so secretive. No excuse for mistreating the serviles but they're right to be so cautious and restrained. I played this one as hard to the right, unrepentant shaper as I could. G4: now that the rebellion is in full swing, and your first exposure to them seems mostly sane and sympathetic I'm willing to go along with them for now. I didn't like the shapers in G3, but I sided them because the rebels seemed worse, but Greta is no Litalia and I figure maybe I can help bring about some justice. The rebels are still worryingly careless about their powers however, and I don't agree at all with the "sharing power with outsiders" bit. I was conflicted for much of the game, the Shapers rhetoric about restoring order and the rebels being nuts and preparing something awful was convincing, but the rebels I encountered until the later parts of the game were so sympathetic that I had difficulty betraying them. The bit in the swamp sort of illustrates again why shaping needs to be so tightly controlled. In Burwood I still hadn't seen the rebels do anything too [censored]ed up yet (except the rebellion's origins in G3) Litalia even seems to have regained her sanity. The shapers seem "mean" still. but then we figure out what the Drakons are planning Well, it seems that the shapers were right. This unbound stuff is not cool. I still sympathize with the serviles but the Drakons are morally bankrupt and the other parts of the rebellion are more than happy to go along with them. I played G4 a pure shaper path my first time, and a pure rebel the second. With the shapers, I felt sorta guilty until the last chapter, where I then felt vindicated and morally justified. With the Rebels I felt good most of the way but really felt like I was on the wrong side when it came time to release the unbound. G5: Finally! more than two choices again, no longer am I forced between to choose between peaceful oppression and blood drenched anarchy. Rawal I can only describe with profanity. Astoria I can get on board with, reminds me of the Awakened. Alwan, well I get where he's coming from, and had I met him before Astoria I may well have thrown my lot in with him. Taygen, I'm actually tempted by at this point surprisingly; his solution is very… Final. With the Unbound traipsing about and the Drakons still in charge it seems the rebellion is never going to achieve anything positive and this chaos needs to be stopped somehow. I'll burn in hell before I side with the Drakons (until I do a rebel game just to see how that plays out of curiosity. What's interesting to me is that the Shapers barely change at all throughout the whole series, and our opinion of them is defined by how they compare relative to the other side. When I had a "3rd option" unambiguously good faction like the Awakened or Astoria, I supported them fully without hesitation. When the only choice was between the Shapers and the power mad Drakons, the Shapers won out every time. I actually don't mind the moral conflict created by that 2-sided dichotomy in 3 and 4, because it really makes you think and weigh the pros and cons of each side on your conscience instead of the easy way out offered by the multiple factions in 1-2, and 5. That more ambiguity, those richly painted shades of gray are part of why I love the Geneforge series so much. way more sophisticated and interesting than the usually "kill orcs and such until you've hacked your way to the big dragon/demon and save the princess" type RPGs or the ones where your only choice is between the generic good guys and begin a cartoonish mustache-twirling villain.

Actually, none of the endings to G5 were particularly conclusive, there were more loose ends than I would have liked and it didn't really wrap the story up with as much a sense of finality as I'm hoping. I'd like to see G6 pick up where G5 left off. I'd been thinking about this a lot lately. I have to run out the door at the moment but when I get back home I'll go into more detail about my ideas. I do agree with the OP about the desert thing (or snow, for that matter)

Oh, thought of another good one regarding items: What stats can I give to creations? I know I can give the four basic ones, resistances, and the bonus to attack skills and armor, but what about stuff like hit chance and other miscellaneous stuff like that, particularly in G4&5 where there's new ones like energy conservation and stuff.

Before we go any further, I've read every thread on scripting that I could find and the questions I'm about to ask weren't covered in those threads. For the most part I've been successful with my modifications and reverse-engineering how the scripts work. I've been playing spiderweb's games since whenever G1 came out, it was one of the first games I remember playing, actually. The questions I have are more about what is and isn't possible than how to code stuff except for a few specific issues. I'm working on G3 at the moment, but starting on G4. I know you can't add new creations, only replace them, but I have discovered that there's room to add new spells, there's unused numbers and I had no issue making a multi-target seater and a cool disruption breath attack with the reaper impact effects. I was wondering if there's room in the scripts to add new items like you can with spells, it's not like how with the spells it tells you which numbers are reserved for what up front and it's easy to check. second- can you make a spell that causes multiple status effects, like say poison and acid at the same time? can you cause something to do two kinds of damage at once? Also, what I'm having trouble with now is making AOE damage spells like Aura of Flames. I tried to make an acid based version to give to the Rothzidon, and an energy based one for shits and giggles. I assigned them each to a wand to test them, and while they aren't totally broken, they only work as single target spells. I tried a couple different things, copy and pasting from aura of flames and just changing damage types and visual effects, and the same method with the acid rain that was already there. After these didn't work I tried using the import function and still didn't work. I don't think its an issue with the wands since they work fine with the regular aura of flames in the wand of inferno. This is really bothering me because it's the only thing I haven't been able to figure out on my own. In terms of modifying creatures, I've had some issues assigning different attacks to them when I change more than one at a time. I had no problem with most of them but a few creation types were begin weird about it. I made a modified roamer and it seemed like I just couldn't change it's ranged attack. I eventually got that to work by changing where I put the line (further down than normal) but then I couldn't get the melee attack to change. I'm almost afraid to try adding a ranged attack to a melee creation (like giving the acid aura to the Rothzidon) for fear that the animations will be broken or something. Also, I don't think I've been able to find a reference as to what the numbers for each status effect are. I've been ok copying and pasting so far but it'd be nice to have a chart to look at like I do for damage types and stats and such. a couple things regarding items: could I give stat bonuses to ranged weapons like Thorn Batons and Javelins or would that break something? and item enhancements, how the hell do they work? I think there's some other stuff I'm forgetting but those are the most pressing questions. If anyone's interested, I can put up my current tweaked files. Some of the items I've changed are a touch OP, but in terms of creations mainly what I've tried to do is make sure all the upgraded versions you get with three points are actual upgrades. After reading a bunch of analysis's that pointed out how a lot of them were just recolors with a higher base lvl I was quite distressed. I think some might be slightly overpowered now but with some minor number tweaking they'd be well balanced. I gave Searing artillas an extra AP and a 3 target searer spell (which I might want to reduce the damage of), and a poison bite. The plated bug got some armor and a poison attack. The Thad shade which was already pretty good I gave the icy touch attack that all the other shades have and gave a nice blue color. The useless exploding roamer I replaced with a "Disruption Roamer" it has a 3 target breath attack that does disruption damage (so it slices through most creation's resistances but is totally useless against quite a few enemy types) that looks like the ice breath but makes the cool reaper explosion when it hits. I may reduce their health to make them more of a glass cannon because they're sort of OP for how low their essence cost is . Also they're teal and they glow. I want to give the rotzidion an AOE acid aura. Balance wise, I think my modded creations might be too good relative to other higher tier creations you can make, but relative to the foes you fight they aren't so powerful that it unbalances the game. My thad shade and first searing artilla are crazy powerful just because I kept them the whole game and they're really high lvl, and in G3 leveling up creations makes a huge difference, but when I initially shaped them they weren't out of balance. Even in the end game they only manage to hold their own and aren't just slaughtering everything. A freshly shaped one definitely wouldn't be able to compete in the end game. the plated bug is still rather weak, and the disruption roamer doesn't do anything to a lot of enemies at all, and the damage isn't super high. My main concern is that they make all the third Tier creations obsolete. 4th tier is still stronger.