Micawber

I think that would spoil the seamless no-distinction-between-towns-and-outdoors vibe of the game.

My choices: 1. Lifecrafter / Shocktrooper; because shaping is the most powerful skill. Geneforge is really very easy played as a shaper. Shocktrooper is much the same but with slightly different tactics. 2. Infiltrator; magic is bloody useful, the only thing that holds it back is constantly running out of spell energy. Unless you cheat and give yourself more essence pods... 3. Servile / Warrior; four games later, melee is still rubbish.

The entire point of the unbound is that they can't be controlled. That's their raison d'être. Code: text1 = "You stare at the bound creation. It stares off intospace, frozen. The energy field surrounding the creature holds,controlled by the control panel behind you to the east. You examineit at your leisure."; text2 = "It is a drakon, but unlike any you have ever seen. Itglows. Powerful heat radiates from it, enough that it would probablyburn you if you touched it. Whoever created it filled it with allthe pure, uncontrolled power they could."; text3 = "And, as with all Shaping, there was a trade-off. Inreturn for power, they gave up sanity. They have followed the samepath as Shaper Monarch, but with far greater resources and skill."; text4 = "This drakon is unbound, free of all the controls normallyput on creations. It is a pure weapon, designed to unleashuncontrolled havoc wherever it is placed.";

Piperbot is Aran's familiar

The game has been beaten as a singleton. [ Link .] I can't be bothered to read it all again, but I would imagine he got round the pylons by staying one step out of their range - you can hit them but they can't hit you. This is one reason why the pylons in A4 are simply pointless.

I'm voting for the Sucia naming theme, although I also like the barred subdomain (Sucia being a barred island, they go well together). The actual name - again I agree with whoever said Encyclopedia Sucia sounds a bit too similar to EE. I'd prefer something like The Sucia Isle Archives or The Sucia Isle Scrolls. EDIT: I've just thought of a killer reason why barred.ermarian.net is better than terrestia.ermarian.net. It's much easier to type.

On Windows, control-click should work as well as right-click.

Right-click on the button you wish to re-assign. This brings up the casting window and you can pick your new choice.

Yes.

Bother those edit and reply buttons, being right next to each other.

I am running Vista as we speak (32 bit). All spiderweb games work. That's all. For the avoidance of doubt, this includes Exile 1, Exile 2, Exile 3, Blades of Exile, Nethergate, Avernum 1, Avernum 2, Avernum 3, Blades of Avernum, Avernum 4, Geneforge 1, Geneforge 2, Geneforge 3, Geneforge 4 and Nethergate: Resurrection. The only remotely tricky thing is the installation; a prompt appears after the first attempt at installation asking if you would like to re-install using compatability mode. I recommend you accept the prompt for trouble-free gaming.

For me, possibly the biggest change between A1 and A2/3 was the range of the dumbfounding effect. In A1 mung demons could dumbfound your characters through walls and at any distance, so long as a member of the party was in sight. In A2/3 the dumbfounding effect had a sensible range and could be blocked by walls. This meant that I was able to go back to my long-standing tactic of hiding my spellcasters in the next room while my fighters did all the killing

I meant, on these boards, not in general. On these boards mac users outnumber windows users by about 2-1 (according to the polls). Edit: and unfortunately Win2000 is neither earlier than nor later than WinMe. They're simply different.

I doubt anyone here knows (there's not many Windows users, and unlikely to still be using WinME). So it seems it would be quickest just to download the demo and try to install. If you get past the first zone, then you'll probably be fine for the rest of it. Alternatively you could try e-mailing and asking Jeff Vogel at spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com, although it's possible he'll just give the same advice of try and see. If you do try it, let us know whether it works.

Quote: Originally written by Kelandon: it occurs to me that you probably want to play Avernum 1 first if you're ever going to play it at all, because most of the fun is in exploring this brand-new cave world, and if it isn't new (because you played A2 or A4), it's probably going to be somewhat less enthralling. (It's a pretty darn awesome game under ideal conditions.) I absolutely agree, and I'm sure that explains why E1/A1 is my least favorite of the games, having played them originally in the order E2-E3-E1.

Crones. It's a miracle to me you can spell anything well enough to invoke the auto-censor

Me too. A little earlier than 1994, however.

If you included the word "void", you probably did it wrong. message_dialog("Why not peek at an existing scenario's scripts and copy paste what you need, changing where appropriate?","");

You forgot to remove the 1. It should be get_crime_level()

... and remove the word "short", in case Nikki didn't make that clear.

Quote: Even if you made the spells only castable when a hostile monster was in sight, players could game the system by summoning a weak monster and attacking it to make it hostile. Gosh that's devious. OK, I'm convinced. Increase base APs to 10, remove haste. And also introduce greater engine differences for the difficulty levels - such as spells affecting more targets at easier levels.

Can't disagree with your statement of the problem. But my solution would be somewhat different. As I see it, haste is the single most effective way to make the game easier, and by removing it altogether you will cripple the less able players. In order to rebalance you'd have to make combat much, much easier, and the beta testers might as well just go home. Instead, tweak the way that game difficulty works. Maybe war blessing, haste, and other buffs should only affect a single PC on hard/torment but affect all PCs on easy/normal. And they should be only castable during combat. That would have significantly enlarge the gap between normal and torment.

"Only the correct word may pass." - the sign is a riddle.

Quote: Originally written by RiotGearEpsilon [great PDN, btw]: I am going to propose removing Haste, or at least dramatically lessening it's power. Agreed haste is a very powerful boost for experienced players, but I wouldn't support any move to remove it altogether. You have to remember the casual players. Quote: Originally written by Jeff: Balancing a game really is a no-win situation. You're trying to please two audiences: gamers and casuals, each of whom has a very different idea of fun. Back when I was playing Exile 2/Exile 3 for the first time, I was a casual player. I would never have survived the higher level fights without mass haste. It tilted the balance on the fun/challenge scale, making the long fights less of a grind. To remove haste altogether would be extremely hard on the casual players. For experts, you always have the choice of self-inflicted challenges; like Thuryl's creation-free/canister-free/magic-free servile in GF4. Edit: Of course, this is rather inconsistent with my earlier post, but meh.

Quote: are there any others?? Yes