Micawber

Yep, Jeff point-blank denied it in this thread . Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: "GF does use a hex grid, underneath the continuously animated movement: you can only stop at places on the invisible hex grid." Not sure where you got this. Geneforge uses good old x-y coordinates on a square grid, like every other tile-based game ever. - Jeff Vogel

If you are where I think you are, don't try and sanctify that second altar yet but go away, have a rest and get some more experience. The second altar has a particularly nasty monster guarding it...

I believe the reason why there are no children is because they were evacuated to the safe continent when the war began. More prosaically, if Jeff included children, the psychotic players would just go around killing them, which is probably not something to be encouraged...

Not entirely sure what you are asking, really. I believe Andras was the default PC name in GF2, though. If your question is of the "what happened to my character from an earlier game", this has been discussed before at great length, and no agreed conclusion has been reached.

OK then, putting aside for a moment the utility or otherwise of magical efficiency etc, is it just the unlock costs you object to, or are you saying as well the skill costs, once available, are themselves too high? In the former case one could throw away the unlock criteria and make the skills available maybe on a party level basis. A single training point would be convenient - a good choice would be Vidrain, since one tends to visit him fairly often anyway.

Yes to 5, 8, 9 and 10, qualified yes to 2 (something good could be done for battle creations, but probably not the example you gave) and no to all the others. I am pleasantly surprised by the breadth of your ideas, anyway, and they don't suck so much as usual for a newbie. Edit: Silly me, having now read the other thread I now know what is going on. Never mind.

All true. However the skill costs are hard-coded and I can't change them. Whereas I can change how many skill points I get. And by making the kills harder, the game stays balanced.

Quote: Originally written by Ephesos: Yeah, some of them aren't really train-able, at least not in a normal game without cheating. I've been pondering what one could do about this. It seems to me there are two sides to this problem: (i) there are not enough skill points in the game to make all the special skills trainable; and (ii) the party runs out of sources of experience at the end of the game. Clearly solving (ii) would help to solve (i), but I would prefer a solution that made special skills available earlier in the game, not just at the very end. So I think it would be preferable to devise a means of increasing the number of skill points available in the middle of the game, so that special skills could be trained earlier. One, achievable, method would be to increase creatures' base levels (excluding PCs). This has two effects: they become harder to kill; and the party gets more experience for killing them. The first effect is needed to balance against the advantage gained from making special skills more accessible. The second effect gives the desired extra skill points. The downside of this approach is it diminishes the advantages of lock-picking and quest completion. I was thinking of adding 8 levels to every creature. In theory this would raise the PCs' maximum achievable level by 8 also, giving them each 40 extra skill points by the end of the game; which would go a long way to purchasing some special skills. To prevent the early game from becoming impossible, the effect would be tapered in at floor(50% x current level) for low-level creatures. Examples: Code: Current AdjustedCreature Level Level Change=======================================Goblin 2 3 +1Nephil 5 7 +2Ghoul 8 12 +4Chitrach 10 15 +5Slith 12 18 +6Golem 24 32 +8Cave Giant 30 38 +8Black Shade 40 48 +8 Here is a graph of the adjustment to be applied: This sort of adjustment is mechanically do-able, simply by 'gawk'ing the script av4itemschars.txt like this . The question is, will it have the desired consequences? Testing the theory by playing the game from start to finish could take days...

Exactly. And it doesn't just mean 2 points of damage, but 2 dice of damage. Schrodinger\'s post here explains a bit more about how damage is calculated.

I really think the lifecrafter is the most powerful class. The key I think is to have a high number of creations (obviously with a variety of damage types). My army of creations was able to finish most fights within 2 rounds and the fragility of the lifecrafter simply never became a problem (most enemies will attack the foe who last attacked them; the key to keeping your lifecrafter alive is never attack anything personally). The lifecrafter doesn't need many spells other than curing, healing and mass energize. Edit: to clarify, my central view is that in Geneforge engine, action points are vastly more powerful than anything else. The bigger your party the more powerful you will be. A lifecrafter with a host of wingbolts, cryodrayks and ur-glaahks is more powerful than a singleton infiltrator or servile, however good their magical skills.

What he said is that Rentar is still dead. He didn't comment on the suggestion that she might still appear as an undead beastie (and with Garzahd there is a precedent). That's not saying it's going to happen, but it's not impossible.

s/parry/blademaster/g

I can only assume that Jeff bypasses Windows mouse-handling and reads the mouse clicks directly. Or to put it another way, you're stuffed. I suggest you both politely e-mail Jeff (spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com) and ask if he's aware of the problem and whether he can devise a solution. Even so you'll probably have to wait till Avernum 5.

Personally I don't have a problem with Tullegolar's editor; if you're going to cheat you might as well go all the way. Don't try and kid yourself that merely altering one little stat isn't cheating; it is. The access to the editor is the first signpost in the game: in the north-eastern area of the rebel base docks, by the store room. Just click on the signpost and you'll access the editor. I've now updated the download page with fuller instructions. Edit: removed nonsense.

Well I'm not sure if he offers 1000-4000 damage (I rather think not), but Sarasaphilia's editor is now available on this page .

Sarasaphilia, check your e-mails.

Hooray! All of this is really, really good news. (vii) Especially pleases me. I hope it will be possible to join win the game from the Anama point of view. And I missed the boats and boats in A4, glad to see they are coming back. Hooray again

Nor did I?! Sorry Sarasphilia, I haven't received your e-mail. Maybe the spam filter ate it. Can you send it again and I'll keep a look out for it this time!

Actually that wasn't a drakon, it was Tuldaric: Code: text1 = "MAGIC AND THE SERVILES, by Learned Jaffee";text2 = "When the Shapers created us serviles, they were faced witha great quandary. How were they to simultaneously give usintelligence and autonomy and take from us the powers that come tohuman students of the arts of power?";text3 = "Keeping serviles from learning magic was of greatimportance to them, so they attempted to shape us to make us unableto work spells. They were partially successful. Learning magic waspossible for serviles, but generally drove the caster mad.";text4 = "But that is in the past. Thanks to the Shaping techniqueslearned on Sucia Island, the blocks placed on the serviles by theShapers have largely been removed. And that is only one of themarvelous modifications Tuldaric has performed.";text5 = "We Awakened see ourselves as free beings, equal to humans.Thanks to our work here, that claim has much more justification."; Edit: Tully, well done for finally coming up with a poll that Barzahl will win...

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Quote: Originally written by upon mars: Sorry about the imprecison i am talking about A3. Is there a way to make that alien die? so i can finish the game? You're not supposed to kill Rentar, and gain nothing from doing so. If you've set all ten beams already, just go to the control panel. This was a lot more obvious in Exile 3. There was a big inviting white dot (which you knew always signified something) attracting you over there. Whereas in Avernum 3 there's just an indistinct blue blog with white splodges, which could easily be overlooked. Edit: Well I meant blob but I'm going to leave the typo as is for comedy value. Rentar's blog, just imagine it! "Decided to get revenge today (again). Think I'll set loose a plague of monsters. It didn't work last time, but maybe if I use shades..."

Mixture? WTF?! I'd be a gazer, because they have my favourite attack. Many's the time I've wanted to be able to cast a kill spell IRL.

Well I can confirm from that the Exile trilogy runs fine under XP and even Vista (and in both cases I installed from the Exile trilogy CD). So whatever is wrong is specific to your system. I did a google search for "can't find shell.dll" and it's not good news. It sounds like your system might be infected with something. You should probably try running an virus and spyware scan. A workaround according to this site is to go to your C:\Windows\System directory, find shell.dll (if you can't it, it might be invisible so go "tools -> folder options -> view -> hide protected operating system files" and untick). Copy it into C:\Windows\System32. Fingers crossed, that will do the trick.

Yes, I can confirm that patched version available on spidweb.com runs fine under vista. Don't worry, updating to the patch doesn't unregister the game or anything.

I note that the front-runners are also the only women who were without obvious insanity, death or other disqualifying conditions. This suggests that spidwebbers are actually quite practical in their tastes.

Terrestia definitely isn't the only shaper continent. From the Geneforge 3 intro: Sorry Tully, time to redraw the map...