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Caligula

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Curious Artila

Curious Artila (3/17)

  1. Well, I didn't know that Jeff was going to do Crusader Kings 3 I really wonder how many gamers like romances, and even more crucially how many RPG players like them. I've never been truly convinced by the BG / KOTOR / Mass Effect ones, for instance. I haven't yet played Witcher 3, so maybe my views will change, but I think one of the key issues is that RPG romance is just that, romance, not really love story with its depth, complexity and passion, but at best (and rarely if ever, actually) the very beginning of something that might become vageuly more solid and serious in the future, long after the game's over. Not that it's impossible to do it well in video games, it happens a few times, but so far I've seen it in 2 games - where actually it was mixed with sadness if not a sense of tragic -, namely in To the Moon and Max Payne 2. Besides, I'm not sure Jeff likes to implement that kind of things, if it's his cup of tea, not sure either if he can do it really well (haven't played Avadon yet, though).
  2. There are at least a couple of people, and most probably more, who tell you that they spotted Darkside goons going farther beyond this place, taking the river North. Besides, since you know they went through the Northern isles and then disappeared, it's only logical to try the only path open to you. But the clues are there, if you do all the area's quests and talk to everyone up there.
  3. Congrats for this! That's a lot of work and of time. I hope one day to have played all Jeff's games; will take some time, since I don't want to spend the next couple of years only playing Geneforge and Avadon and will still mostly play other games... So, I take it you didn't play Blades of Exile and it's hundreds of scenarios That would've taken even longer. When BOE was still recent and the community was pumping scenarios like there's no tomorrow back in 1998/9, I was trying to play all scenarios as they were released, but that soon turned out to be way more than I could play. As a result, I mostly played the very first released and then smaller ones, so I went through a lot of mediocre ones and sadly didn't even have time to play some of the greatest ones (there's a couple of Alcritas I only read about without actually playing, or at least finishing them, to my great shame).
  4. Exile 1 Demo back in 1995. Had to wait for a long time until poor student without credit card - me got money and credit card to buy it. Not sure exactly how it happened, it's so old now - either I sent $$ in cash by mail to Jeff at some point, or that was my very first credit card online-purchase. Took me so long that I probably bought the whole trilogy at once - in which case I got the codes by e-mail. Later, bought BOE and still have the CD.
  5. Coming a bit late here. Back when Exile series was released, there was another shareware series of RPGs that was ok, Realmz - not as good, imho, but still decent for the time. It was a series of quite long scenarios (long compared to Blades scenario for instance, but nowhere near as long as Exile/Avernum full games of course). Though it was Mac-only then, I've seen a Windows freeware version a few years ago. Of course, it's really a late-1990s game, so it's just like playing original Exile after playing the latest Avernum - not for everyone's tastes, considering the dated graphics and overall design. Apart from Baldur's Gate already mentioned, I'd say the next game that gave me some feelings quite similar to Exile - big open world where you can quest where you want, and with some areas where you'll get bashed by high-level mobs, plenty of quests, plenty of side-quests, you don't get much indications or pointers on your map where to go to do the quests, game that don't take you by the hand as you're a useless newbie, game that'll take you tens of hours to visit - was Morrowind. Of course, gameplay is a bit different, but the overall feel was, for me, not too far off. More recent Elder Scrolls might apply as well, though to a lesser extent. WItcher 3 might possibly have a few similar aspects, to a lesser extent as well. And if I mostly think of big open world to discover with quests everywhere and a huge level of freedom as to what you do, where you quest, and the like, there was the WOW of old, before the original zones were entirely remade in the Cataclysm expansion - LOTRO would qualify as well. Though I begin to deal with more and more different kinds of games here.
  6. Just went through my BOE scenarios folder, and indeed, a handful of them have various titles, or 2-parts titles. In this case, it's burano.exs, the original folder was a Burano.zip, but when loading the scenario, the selection screen shows "Ogres and Goblins". And it's filed under "Ogres and Goblins (Burano)" on TrueSite4Blades, so the one who archived it there was aware of the tricky name. Then of course, there are a few of them who are merely a .exs file. Like "demon.exs", which is very helpful, years later
  7. Bummer, seems I spoke too fast. I have Burano - named "Ogres and Goblins" when you actually go to Scenario selection screen. According to read me, it was done by a 12-years old - not too surprising for the 2nd or 3rd wave of BOE scenarios, the first wave being done by a bit older players who usually were fans of the series since Exile 1 -, so it won't be some awesome Alcritas-like groundbreaking scenario, but still good to have for completion. I can e-mail it to you if you want. That said, I can't find the other ones listed previously. Some names sound familiar, but it's alas possible I actually just spotted them after my active BOE playing ra, so when after I stopped systematically downloading all scenarios because I knew I wasn't going to play them. Sorry about that Looks like I also only kept the BMP files for pictures - probably because they could be easily converted into other formats. If it's of any interest, I can list all the ones I have, though. On the other hand, I had few you listed on the 1st post, but looks like you already got them all EDIT: https://truesite4blades.com/Home/TrueSite4Blades/ogresandgoblins.html Burano is actually already in the TrueSite4Blades archives, fully zipped and probably as playable as my own archive. I think that if I have some time next weekend, I'll just go through all the ones I have and check if there's anyone that isn't downloadable from TrueSite.
  8. Good timing. I've been thinking for the last 3 months of making a thread in the BOE sub-forum - but I guess having it here in General is better, more exposure - if people were looking for some old scenarios, considering I had downloaded (and archived since then) pretty much all scenarios released before 2001. That's probably 170 scenarios - of which I didn't even manage to play a third back in the days But since I'm a Master Procrastinator and I wasn't sure if there were still people interested in BOE even here around, I didn't bother to post it. As for your specific requests, I'm pretty sure I had Prazac's Quest and The Duel at some point, and some others sound loosely familiar (Excalibur, Hidden Valley). Well, I'll look at it this evening when I'm back home. I might as well post the whole list of scenarios I have, just to be sure. That said, even if I checked if I could open genuine old BOE scenarios with OpenBOE, I can't guarantee all will work. Guess I'll check if I'm ever asked about specific ones. Other possible issue is that, if .exs works on both Macs and PCs, I'm not sure about the pics file - I think I only have one kind, I probably didn't bother to save the Mac files when I shifted to PC eons ago... (on the other hand, the text files like Read-me and Author's Walkthrough should be there).
  9. Finally finding the exit to the surface in Exile 1 - which I deliberately kept as the last quest / winning goal, since it seemed to me to be a more fitting end than killing Hawthorne. I had played the demo, then waited quite some time until I could get the money and a check to send to Spiderweb back then. So I had already spent several months in the caves. Heck, it was the first game I actually dreamed about (and it has only happen to a handful of them). So, it was quite a momentous, glorious and emotional moment. Of course, plenty of other moments were good, but that's definitely my most awesome memory.
  10. Indeed. Even if the incompetence of the Empire is a bit hard to believe considering it managed to conquer the world and wipe out entire sentient species, the strangest part is that there are still undead lords, rakshaza and even drake lords in Valorim. This might be the Empire lying all along about having cleaned the whole surface, but considering its tendencies, I don't see how that's possible. Well, Isle of Maddok might have happened after Hawthorne's death, or even right after Gardzahd's death, in which case the weakness of younr Prazac's reign would explain how some kind of lich could set up shop, but demons, drake lords, gazers and rakshazas who were not put there by the Vahnatai are trickier to explain. Even if they're understandable on a strictly "gameplay" point of view - you got to have toughest areas and you can't rely only on plagues, that would become boring after a while. You have this in some games, not always in RPGs. Spec Ops: the Line would be a clear example, as well as the early parts of Deus Ex, for instance. If he'd like to, Jeff could make some side-quests or some specific faction along these lines; not sure if he'd want to make it a key point of a whole game, though.
  11. The Empire managed to wipe out pretty much all non-humans from the surface in Exile/Avernum. The surprising part is that it seemed to have grown utterly incompetent pretty fast, and the same Empire who wiped out dragons and nephilim as well as expelled plenty of powerful troublemakers to the underworld a generation ago (therefore, an Empire that is bastly more powerful and efficient than Rome ever was, for instance) is troubled by slimes and roaches... Granted, the clever trick was to place the biggest threat next to the border between Valorim and the rest of the empire, so that the whole continent was cut off, and then you can send lesser plagues - less energy and time-consuming to create and monitor - on the less developed and defended provinces, but still, considering how tough city guards are even in Kriszan, that requires a solid amount of suspension of disbelief...
  12. Maybe Jeff is a stats geek. That's an issue with Blades obviously - some early and first-time scenarios just used the standard size even for a map with a single house. Which is why I only used my homemade stats as a vague and highly inaccurate indication of length of scenarios. (it led me to play mostly short ones because I was overwhelmed by the amount of scenarios released, which caused a slight problem, just like with books and video games, since I ended up eventually having a large amount of *big* scenarios to play, and all the good big ones, and I had the impression I wasn't making any progress in my Blades scenarios backlog) Outdoors zones are probably faster than indoors, but that's countered by the fact that in E / A 1 and 2, there's a lot of back and forth and wandering all across the map to do. Avernum 3 as well, but you get teleportations / recall; A4/5/6 seem to be more linear, so less going back to newbie zones. One could also look at the calendar and see how many in-games days are required in a playthrough. But that wouldn't account for the hard dungeons/fights you have to do ten times over, nor for very chatty townpeople.
  13. Oh, indeed. Exile 3 and Blades of Exile already had the 3 sizes for towns, which was an idea good enough to be reused for Avernum 1/2/3. On the other hand, Exile 1 only had 1 size for outdoors and cities. Since Avernum 4/5/6 represent indoors in the main map, there's no difference anymore.Had to launch Exile 2 to make sure; at least version 2.0 / 1997 had the 3 sizes - I assume Exile 2 vers. 1.0 as well, but not having played it since 1997, I wasn't sure there were 2 or 3 sizes in it.
  14. Just had a look at Harehunter's A4/5/6 maps. Not too close a look not to spoil these games when I'll play them, though. All 3 are 12X14 grids. Some of the main level are empty, and many more on 2nd/lower level - and many are just half-filled if not less. Using equivalent of a full zone for several small bits of tunnels and caves on lower level, this would be a rough estimate: Avernum 4 - 230 zones Avernum 5 - 210 zones Avernum 6 - 250 zones Possibly a bit closer than that, since it was a very crude estimation. Then, of course, not having played the game, but knowing the size of Avernum in 1/2/3, I suppose the zones are a bit smaller in 4/5/6 and/or have less stuff/people/baddies in them - otherwise, it would mean that all 3 games are basically as huge as Avernum 3.
  15. Not sure if necroposting is kindly viewed or not, so forgive me for bringing back this old topic - I was looking for some other information when Search function brought me here, and I thought I could chime in... If anyone is still interested in such a question as "which game is the longest", there's a set of data that can cast some light. Namely, the size of the games. Both Blades would be the biggest/longest if we considered all the scenarios. Blades of Exile being the biggest, considering the hundreds of scenarios it has (I gathered something like 170+ just between 1997 and 2001). If we look at the games Jeff did, here are the amounts of zones for the early games: Avernum 1: 42 outdoors / 77 towns / 119 levels Avernum 2: 50 outdoors / 120 towns / 170 levels Avernum 3: 81 outdoors / 144 towns / 225 levels Exile games were pretty close. Only difference I remember would be +3 Lost Bahssikava and -1 Remote Temple for Exile/Avernum 1 - but my old notes for Exile 1-2 show that they had 6-7 town levels less than the Avernum versions, which is strange (probably old mistakes on my part). New Avernum games should be quite close as well, a bit bigger since they have small levels added to some dungeons/towns. Blades of Exile: 36 outdoors / 65 towns / 101 levels (3 scenarios bundled with BoE, not counting Bandit Buyswork) Blades of Avernum probably is similar for these 3, with a 4th totally new scenario - so I suppose total would be 140 levels. I can't tell how big Geneforge, Avadon or Nethergate are for sure, but the bits of walkthroughs I've seen and others commenting here clearly imply that Nethergate and Avadon are significantly shorter, and Geneforge a bit shorter than Avernum. If we consider that "the longest game" means the one who takes the longer to finish entirely - as in doing all dungeons and exploring the whole map -, there's no doubt Exile 3 / Avernum 3 are the hugest. First E1 playthrough took me at least 60 hours, at least 80h for E2, and E3 more than a hundred, without any doubt; of course, new playthroughs are a bit shorter because I know where to go and what to do quite often.
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