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Ess-Eschas

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Posts posted by Ess-Eschas

  1. Slarti makes some very good suggestions here, Grzegorz, and I would thoroughly suggest experimenting with them. He’s good at dealing with issues, and he really knows what he’s talking about!

     

    I would also strongly suggest that you submit a report to Spiderweb’s support address too, as I suggested in my first message. If it’s a problem on the engine side, it can only really be fixed if it’s reported. The testing team does what it can to fix all problems before release, but there will always be a few odd things that we simply can’t catch. With the much wider pool of users that start playing when a game is released, rare bugs that appear only in certain situations – and didn't manifest for the testing team – will inevitably appear.

     

    That’s why we keep a good lookout on emerging bugs at the moment of release. The developer is – right now – working hard on various issues, and you have a very real opportunity to get your issue looked at as well. The best way you can do that is to report it, in as much detail as you can, to the support address. This will ensure that the developer sees your problem, and he will then do what he can to fix it. And the earlier you do that, the better, because that makes it more likely that the issue can be looked at properly, and make it into any future versions!

     

    Just as a reminder, here’s the address!

     

    support@spiderwebsoftware.com

  2. Hello Grzegorz,

     

    I’m sorry to hear you’re having graphics and sound problems with Infestation!

     

    So far as I’m aware, this problem hasn’t been reported before. This means it’s a new issue for us, so I don’t immediately have a fix for you. There are a number of possible causes: perhaps a conflict with another program running on your system, or something special with your particular setup, or something odd happening with the Steam overlay.

     

    What I’d like to suggest at this stage is that you contact Spiderweb’s support directly. Since the game has just been released, the developer is still very actively keeping tabs on what’s going on, and will be fixing issues when they come in. If you report your problems to him, he may be able to come up with a fix for you directly! You’ll be helping get the game working properly on your system, and helping out any other players who might be experiencing the same problem as you. It’s a win-win! If a fix is found, it may be bundled into an update, v1.0.1, that will appear at some point soon after this first release.

     

    You can contact Spiderweb support at the email address below:

     

    support@spiderwebsoftware.com

     

    Explain your problems clearly, and give as much information as you can: what you wrote in this thread should be good enough. With luck, the developer may be able to help you, and help you experience Drypeak in all it’s glory!

  3. 8 hours ago, andrewhl said:

    Fingers crossed! 😄

     

    Good news! I’ve worked with your save file, and got your boat back for you! It shows up on my end just fine now. It’s possible there might still be problems on your end when you load up the game, but I’ve done my best to make sure the adjusted file avoids any potential triggers. So I think you should be fine!

     

    You can download your adjusted file from here:

     

    https://we.tl/t-t94vsRTniS

     

    You’ll find yourself back in the Ruined Town, and with any luck right next to your boat. If there are any problems, do let me know! If the boat still doesn’t show up for you, I can try a variation on this idea that should encourage the game to keep the boat a little more strongly.

     

    But if it does all work, enjoy Chapter 2! It’s one of the best portions of all the Avernum games, I think. Say hi to Iglit for me!

  4. 13 hours ago, andrewhl said:

    Hi. I'm having the same problem as others mentioned. The boat is nowhere to be seen. I'm using an M2 Max Macbook Pro. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated.

     

    Hello andrewhl,

     

    I’m sorry to hear you’re having problems with this mysterious disappearing boat! Thankfully, I think I might be able to help you progress. We’ve come up with a solution on here which has worked a few times previously, and should hopefully also work in your case.

     

    To do this though, I will need to manually process one of your save files. If you’re happy for me to do this, the first thing you need to do is to locate your saved games folder. If you’re using Steam, this could potentially be in a different place, but here’s the advice from Spiderweb’s support pages:

     

    “If you did not buy Avernum 2 from the Mac App Store, your games are stored in the Application Support folder, which can be difficult to find. To open it, press Command-Shift-G to Go To Folder, enter "~/Library/Application Support/Spiderweb Software", and press return. Your saved games are in the folder "Avernum 2 Saved Games." Open that folder and your saved games will be inside, in folders named 'Save0', 'Save1', etc.”

     

    Just pick the folder corresponding to the saved game you want me to fix. To be on the safe side, it’s probably best if your party is saved somewhere outside of the Ruined Town. This is to make sure the scripts load correctly when I try to fix your save. Saving your party in Formello itself should be just fine.

     

    Once you’ve tracked down your save file, upload the folder to an online file-sharing service – I use WeTransfer! – and I’ll see if I can get your boat back for you. I can’t promise that I can fix your boat, but I’ll do my best!

  5. 20 hours ago, Thaluikhain said:

    Huh...that pic of you isn't exactly weedy, but compared to the rest of the sliths you seem rather under-muscled.

     

    Hey, I’ve been living among the humans for a while now. I don’t have as many opportunities to bulk up as some of my fellow sliths!

     

    But you’re quite right to spot that difference. The reason for that is that I am based on the sliths from the later installments of the Averum series. My feeling is that these later sliths – as presented both in-game, and in the games’ artwork – a little taller and slimmer in general than their Exile counterparts. So in a direct comparison, they’ll look slightly less muscled than the Shirley sliths. And so will I!

     

    20 hours ago, Thaluikhain said:

    What program did you use for these, and how much work did you do yourself to tidy them up?

     

    So, this will require a little explanation. The generator I used is ‘Eris’, a Telegram-based generator that specialises in furry art, mostly of a more risqué nature. It was recommended to me by the partner of a friend of mine, who is a furry himself, and uses it as part of his fiction-writing.

     

    At first glance, that might sound like an odd generator to use for this! However, my thinking was that a generator trained on furry art would actually be quite a good match for what I was trying to do. It’s been trained primarily on *characters*, on a whole host of non-human characters of all shapes and sizes. And that will include very many examples of lizardfolk in a broad sense, from Argonians to Draconians, from the Sakkra to Skink Priests. Given the interests of the community that art is drawn from, there should be many examples where lizardfolk are drawn with attention to detail, with care and accuracy. Also, while much of the art in the generator’s training set is more adult, it seems that there’s enough safe art in the set for it to produce safe pieces reliably.

     

    So, if I wanted to generate images of a particular type of lizardfolk in a RPG-like context, I had a hunch this generator might just work out well. And indeed it did!

     

    The amount of tidying needed varied quite a bit between these sliths. The generator was much more comfortable with certain designs, and less sure with others. Pretty much every one of these sliths needed small amounts of tidying. The most common change was to remove navels and nipples, which the generator would almost always produce. I believe these are not compatible with slith biology, being reptilian rather than mammalian, and art from the Avernum games would seem to bear this out.

     

    Hands and feet usually also needed some adjusting, either in small ways, or in larger ones. The generator would usually struggle when a character was holding something – particularly hafts of spears – so those sliths holding weapons tended to require more work. Minor changes included dealing with fingers that weren’t of the right length compared to the rest of the hands, or removing a finger if the generator produced one two many, or to remove a backwards-facing toe placed near the heel. That last one is debatable, but I tend not to think of sliths having feet with that sort of design.

     

    More major changes included actively changing the placement of the hand and fingers when there were major inconsistencies. Sometimes hands would be placed in strange positions or poses, or have real issues with proportions. If the slith was holding a weapon, there would usually be problems, and I’d often have to adapt the hand positions to a more sensible (or even physically possible) pose. One a few occasions, I had to remove extra hands and limbs, when the generator got really confused. Generators can struggle a bit with tails sometimes too, so I did have to remove an extraneous bit of tail for one of these. And, oddly, on one occasion I had to remove an Escher-like inconsistency in the background, where a wall suddenly turned into a corridor!

     

    Of all these sliths, Slith H – the slith holding the ‘red star’ – required the most work. The generator had real problems interpreting what the red star meant, and would tend to fudge something. For instance, it would have the slith awkwardly holding candles, or a big stone bowl of fire, or just default to something like an orb. Such results would have worked, but they weren’t quite what I’d envisioned for this particular slith. The final result is a combination of two different generated outputs, which I’ve meshed together and cleaned up to look, I hope, relatively seamless.

     

    11 hours ago, Dry Peak, Soggy Bottom said:

    This is impressive.  I was surprised at how much each of these images immediately conjured up for me the corersponding original pixel sprite, despite not having looked at them in a look time.  Honestly pretty cool.

     

    Also, I appreciate the quantity of references to Shirley as original artist.  Ha.                                                                                                                                          

     

    Thanks! I really appreciate that! When making things like this, I think it’s hard to really gauge how effective they are yourself. Because I’ve worked on these pieces, it’s hard to separate myself from that process, and see them with fresh eyes. I *know* which slith is based on which sprite, after all. But if these pieces immediately conjure up the sprite-art for you – particularly if you’ve not looked at the originals for a while – then that’s a real success for this project. Thanks for saying so!

     

    And of course I made sure to reference Shirley! I love her art. And I suspect, without her great work, I might not be on these forums today!

     

    6 hours ago, Edgwyn said:

    I found it interesting that the Freeforms had substantially more scales/rougher skin than the non-freeforms

     

    I think that might be due to the process I used. The non-freeforms were based on Shirley’s sprites which, because they’re pixel art, involve large chunks of uniform colours. I think this tended to discourage fine details in the scales. My feeling is that large regions of uniformity imply lack of detail and structure to the generator, so it tried to keep these regions relatively plain. The freeform sliths don’t have this restriction, so they have much more detail in the scale-work as a result. They also have more colour variation overall, which I think heightens that detail a little as well.

  6. Let me begin with a caveat. AI-generated art is a controversial topic at the moment, based on understandable concerns about the use and misuse of the technology. This topic features AI-generated art that I have produced and modified. I want to stress that this is for my own interest in the state of the technology, and as a way of learning what current generators are and are not currently capable of producing. I have made these images for my own curiosity, and have made no profit from them. And, as I am doing here, I make a point of flagging up that they are generated, to make sure no-one is confused by what I am doing with these pieces.

     

    I am also an artist myself. Most of these images have been modified by me, in big or small ways, to correct or adapt oddities and misinterpretations introduced by the AI generator. This art does not and will not replace my traditional art. This is simply an area I am looking into briefly at the moment, for my own curiosity!

     

    Recently, I’ve been working on a project related to Exile’s slitherikai. AI generators are at the stage where pre-existing images can be used as a basis for producing new images, which opens up some interesting possibilities. I was curious to see whether an AI generator could process small pieces of pixel art, and convert them into larger, more modern pieces of digital art. In other words, making a ‘realistic’ analogue of pixel art!

     

    There are a number of inherent problems with this, of course. Pixel art is fundamentally designed to convey a lot of information in a very small space. Like a caricature, some features may be exaggerated, or not presented at scale, since that may make things look clearer on a smaller scale. When ‘scaled up’, these features could become odd, or grotesque. I wanted to see if a generator could get around this problem.

     

    So I tried an experiment. I generated a series of digital images based on the slith sprites from Exile I and Exile II. I included all of the original slith sprites made by Shirley, in versions 1.x, including both PC and NPC sprites. The result are sliths with the same proportions as the Shirley sprites, but in a modern, ‘realistic’ style. I think the results are quite interesting, and I wanted to share them here!

     

    I have made some slight allowances for more recent depictions of sliths. I have allowed sliths to have a variety of head embellishments, including frills, hard crests, and even crests of hair or fur. Shirley’s art does not include these. I have given the option to the generator to include jewellery not explicitly included in the spritework. And I have added loincloths to all these characters, in the spirit of the depiction of sliths in the Avernum games. It’s interesting to note that Shirley’s sliths are all mostly naked – the clothing needs of reptiles are markedly different from those of mammals!

     

    Note also that these images are not perfect. I’ve cleaned up some oddities, but it’s possible I’ve missed one or two along the way. AI art seem to do well at tricking the eye into missing obvious errors!

     

    All that being said, let me show you the results! To avoid cluttering up this post too much, I’ll place most of the images in spoiler tags. Click on these one by one if you’d like to see more. See if you can figure out which slith corresponds to which original sprite!

     

    Slith A :

     

    JUWhKCU.png

     

    Slith B :

     

    Spoiler

    82EMjVv.png

     

    Slith C :

     

    Spoiler

    SlHpXrF.png

     

    Slith D :

     

    Spoiler

    UhJ8jG3.png

     

    Slith E :

     

    Spoiler

    dftmynE.png

     

    Slith F :

     

    Spoiler

    Y8abTdT.png

     

    Slith G :

     

    Spoiler

    aTqPvF6.png

     

    Slith H :

     

    Spoiler

    hsoV0mI.png

     

    Slith I – Note that this image includes a trident, rather than the sliths’ characteristic two-tined spear. I let this slide because, strictly speaking, the Blades of Exile art includes a sprite for a slith trident. But if I was generating this again, I would probably try to encourage the production of a more traditional, two-tined spear!

     

    Spoiler

    zLTTVab.png

     

    Here are a few examples of Shirley sliths against some suitable backgrounds:

     

    Slith Background A :

     

    p2eodS2.png

     

    Slith Background B :

     

    Spoiler

    238Uozb.png

     

    Slith Background C :

     

    Spoiler

    90vNw1v.png

     

    Slith Background D :

     

    Spoiler

    UBwOxM9.png

     

    For fun, here are some sliths *not* based on Shirley’s sliths, but made only using text describing them. These are more ‘freeform’ sliths.

     

    Freeform Slith A :

     

    qavJ2ZZ.png

     

    Freeform Slith B :

     

    Spoiler

    9XEaGU7.png

     

    Freeform Slith C :

     

    Spoiler

    178MFis.png

     

    And to finish this off, here’s an AI generator’s interpretation of me! It looks like I’m experimenting with some human clothing in this one, haha.

     

    z91wIcX.png

  7. 5 hours ago, cst1992 said:

    Do you want me to test the scenario of equipping/unequipping in the middle of combat?

     

    There’s no need to test it! I just made the suggestion in case you wanted to switch between melee and missiles. If you’d prefer to use melee only, then that’s just fine!

  8. I’m glad that worked for you!

     

    With the way Exile is designed, I’m afraid you can only have one weapon poisoned at a time. So yes, you will need to choose between poisoned melee, or poisoned missiles.

     

    That being said, there might be a way around the problem – with the caveat that I’ve not tested this myself recently, so it might not work. The poisoned-weapon status applies only to the character, not to their particular weapons. So, in principle, the topmost equipped weapon will *always* be the poisoned one, regardless of when and how the poison was applied.

     

    Let's say you start with only your missile weapon equipped, and apply the poison. Your missiles are poisoned, great! Now equip your melee weapon. So long as the poisoned-weapon status still holds, now your *melee* weapon should be poisoned (but not your missiles).

     

    In other words, I *think* you should be able to switch between which weapons are poisoned in the middle of a combat, simply by switching out which weapons are equipped. Give it a try and see! I know it’s a bit annoying, but I think that’s the only way this could be done in the engine.

     

    And remember, all that matters is that the chosen weapon is the first *equipped* weapon. So you don't need to go juggling items around in your inventory if you want a particular weapon to be poisoned. Just make sure there are no more equipped weapons above it! Non-equipped weapons are fine!

  9. With apologies for posting in this thread, Slarty/Depth Delection.

     

    I think I know what’s happening here, cst1992. At least, I hope so. As I understand it, the poisoned-weapon status only applies to the *first* weapon a character has equipped in their inventory list, not to any others. Since melee weapons are usually placed above missile weapons in that list, that means the melee weapon will have priority. If both are equipped, the melee weapon will be poisoned, but the missile weapon won’t be.

     

    In order for your missile weapons to be poisoned, you need to *unequip your melee weapon*. That will ensure that your missile weapon is the first equipped weapon listed in your character’s inventory, so the poison will apply to it.

     

    That makes your testing a little annoying, I’m afraid. But hopefully a single test should be enough. Try doing this, and targeting a monster with your arrows. The monster should – I hope – get poisoned now!

  10. Merry Christmas to everyone on the Spiderweb boards!

     

    We have a lovely little community on here, and that’s down to all of you! Even in an age when active forums are so rare, on the Spiderweb boards we can still find informative discussion on game mechanics, helpful people answering user questions and solving problems, and fascinating speculation about the lore and wider worlds of these games. That’s down to the wonderful people who visit this place, both those of you who’ve only been here for a few weeks, or just passed through, and those of you who’ve been around since the days of typing text queries to speak to NPCs! Spiderweb has some good years in it yet, and so do these forums!

     

    And so I wish all of you, and your friends and families too, warm and festive greetings for the season! And here’s to another year of great discussion. I’m sure there’ll be a lot of interesting things popping up with Spiderweb’s next big release, which is only a few short months away now!

     

    Merry Christmas all!

  11. Hello Lorn,

     

    I can help you out with one of your requests, but I’m afraid the other is rather more difficult. The way spiderweb constructs its games means that certain aspects of them are nicely set up for modding, but some types of behaviour are really very difficult to alter!

     

    Thankfully, changing the sarcophagi can be done relatively simply. Below is a link to a little mod that changes their behaviour; the sarcophagi should now always give the player exactly one point in the statistics they’re linked to the first time they’re used. That’s regardless of whether you’ve trained in that statistic or not. Note that the sarcophagi’s other behaviour is unchanged, so you will only ever be able to gain one point from each of them, and no more.

     

    For practical purposes, I’ve put an upper limit on this behaviour. You won’t be able to get this point if the value in the skill is exceptionally high – but since the limit is much higher than anything achievable honestly in the game, I’m hoping that shouldn’t cause any problems!

     

    Here’s the link:

     

    https://we.tl/t-JqVCHUVirG

     

    To install this mod, navigate to Geneforge’s ‘Resources’ folder. This is found in different places depending on your system, and where you’re running the game from. On a Mac, run using a standalone application, it’s found inside the application, under Contents/Resources. If you’re having trouble finding this folder, you might be able to get there by searching for the file ‘z16sarco.txt’.

     

    Make a copy of the game's version of 'z16sarco.txt', and keep it in a safe place. You’ll want a copy of it in case anything goes wrong, so you can restore the game to original state! Now, place the altered ‘z16sarco.txt’ from the download above into the Resources folder. The game is now modded. If you’re working from a saved game inside the Tombs, I’d suggest leaving the area and then returning, just to make sure the new scripts are loaded correctly.

     

    As for changing experience, I’m afraid that’s much more difficult. I believe experience gains are hard-coded into the engine, so making any alterations there would be extremely difficult.

     

    It might be possible to come up with a crude workaround just using scripts but, from what I’ve seen, that would also be difficult, and probably time-consuming. The experience scaling system used in Geneforge would, I think, make it very hard to write a script that would give you *exactly* the experience you wanted at any point. You could very easily end up overshooting, possibly by quite a lot, and that could damage your gameplay experience in other ways.

     

    However, for what it’s worth, I think you might be looking at Geneforge’s experience model from a slightly odd angle. Things might not be quite as bad as you think they are! The way Geneforge handles experience means that, generally speaking, you get more experience for dealing with monsters more powerful than you, and less for those less powerful than you. Broadly, the experience system balances out the gains and losses regardless of what routes you take. So, you might be getting less experience now from certain fights, but that’s because you’ve gotten quite a lot more from others already.

     

    This is all just to say that it might seem as if you’re working to a loss now, but you probably aren’t! If you’d taken other routes and used other choices, you’d probably still be roughly about the same place experience-wise now! So you’re not being punished for your choices, really. You’ve just taken one particular path from a bunch of possible ones available to you, the majority of which should be roughly equivalent. The testing team tried to make sure of that, at least!

     

    So I wouldn’t worry too much. I suspect you’re probably in a better position experience-wise than you think!

  12. Hello all!

     

    While searching for something else, I came across an interesting article Jeff Vogel wrote about Exile I. It was distributed with a special release of Exile 1.1.3, which was included on the companion CD to the 1995 book ‘Tricks of the Mac Game Programming Gurus’, published by Hayden Books. I don’t think this article has been made available online before. Since the article is contained in a old type of package that is not easily read these days – good old DocMaker! – I thought I’d post it on here for posterity.

     

    While many of the specific details no longer apply, I think a number of the general points are still quite pertinent today. And they offer an interesting insight into Jeff’s design practices, both in what he did back then, and what he’s carried with him throughout his career. Check out points 6 and 7 in particular!

     

    So, without further ado, here’s Jeff’s article, dated 7th June 1995!

     

    ~

     

    Exile - Hints for Programmers   
    by Jeff Vogel

     

     

    Section 1: Introduction

     

     

         This document contains information about Exile which may be useful to aspiring game programmers: descriptions, examples, and such. It also contains advice from me, a Successful Shareware Game Programmer (TM). I've never been one to avoid soapboxing about game programming, and I think some of the things I've learned may be useful to you. If not, well, I tried. And, you can tell me where I went wrong using any of the E-mail addresses given in the game. I love talking to programmers, players, or anyone who spends time writing me.

     

         The next section contains a tour of the resources in Exile, using ResEdit. I point out a lot of cute tricks you can use, and several mistakes you can avoid.

        Before I start the ResEdit tour of Exile, however, there are a few common misconceptions people have about game programming. I want to dispel them, in order to talk you, yes you, into trying to write games. This platform needs all the good work it can get:

     

    Wrong Thing 1:   It takes lots of experience to write a good game.  Exile was my second Mac program. The world editor for Exile was my first. I'm now making my living off of it. Believe me, you don't need a world of experience to make games. Speaking of which...

     

    Wrong Things 2:  You need a lot of in-depth hacker knowledge to write a good game.  This is true if you're trying to write yet another Doom clone, or something like Apeiron, with very intricately done animation. For the vast majority of games, however, straight toolbox calls will do. Nothing fancy. Again, you can do it.

     

    Wrong Thing 3:  It will be a lot of fun.  This is half true. There will be a lot of fun involved. However, if you're going to do something real, something people will really want to play and pay for, it's gonna' hurt. It will take a lot of work, and a lot of playtesting. Hundreds of hours of your life. Exile took 1000 hours, so far, and I got off very easy.
          However, I don't regret a minute of it.

     

    Wrong Thing 4:  I need really fancy graphics and sounds!  No. Look at Exile. The graphics are good, but nothing to bounce up and down screaming about. The most important thing, really the only important thing is...

     

    The Play's The Thing.

     

         Make a good game, a fun game, a game your heart is in, a game YOU would want to play, and you can make money. Nothing, not good sounds, not good graphics, not excellent distribution, not a nice review in MacUser, nothing will make up for a lousy game. I promise.

     

         Now then. About Exile. Trot out a copy of ResEdit, every programmer's friend and right arm. Open up Exile with it. In the next section, I'll discuss some of the clever tricks that you can use, and several mistakes you should avoid...

     

     

    Section 2: Everyone Loves ResEdit!

     

     

         Why? Because we can root around in other people's work and steal their ideas! Don't be ashamed. I do it. You'll do it. And they'll do it to you. Everything in a resource is fair game. If it's a secret, put it in your code or in an encrypted 'TEXT' file. Everyone does that too.

     

    'PICT' -
          The first stop in the tour of the resources of Exile is the 'PICT' resources. Exile is very unusual in the respect that ALL its graphics are kept in PICT resources. Most programmers don't do that - they store them in files or custom resources instead. I did it this way because it's very easy.
         Note how every terrain type, monster, what have you has its own PICT resource. This was my biggest mistake. I did it this way because when making dialogs, it was much easier to include a monster as a PICT in the dialog. The other alternative was having the program draw it in itself. I was too lazy to do this.
         It was a mistake. Why? Look at the info on each terrain PICT. You'll see each take 2.5 - 3 K. Each is 28x36 bytes. That's only 1008 bytes of picture info. Where'd the extra 1.5-2K come from? Well, every PICT resource also has a color table and lots of other data with it! Thus, EVERY pict has 1.5-2 K of overhead data.
         This doesn't sound like much, but when you have over 200 PICTS, as I do, it adds up FAST. It's a shareware program - people download it. Adding 300K of unnecessary data to a shareware program is a SERIOUS mistake.

     

         You'll also note many of the PICTs have black backgrounds. When using CopyBits transparently (something you'll want to do a lot), black was the color I masked out. This was a mistake - since the default color for the background is white, whenever I wanted to draw something transparently, I had to change the background to black by hand. Tiny mistake, but irritating.

     

    'STR#' -
         Now for something I did right - string lists. These are very useful, esp. if you, like me, are writing a game with lots of text. They're easy to make and use. They're stored in memory very efficiently. I love them.
         The dialogue for all the towns is in here. Take a look for a while. After a bit, you'll be able to figure out the format for storing the data.
         You will also be able to read a bunch of dialogue and pick up solutions to the puzzles in the game. It's worth noting that I could easily encrypted this data to prevent this. However, why bother? I mean, if someone is stuck and wants a hint, what business do I have keeping him or her stuck at that point?
         My job is to help people have fun. If, to keep having fun, they need to peek at the answers, I have no interest in stopping them. I also give hints to anyone who asks. It makes people happy. It's good business.

     

    'DITL' -
          Ahh, dialogs, the boon and bane of the Mac game programmer. The modal dialog is the easiest, quickest way to create all sorts of stuff in your game. They also get on user's nerves if you use them too much. I use them a lot. People gripe at me for it all the time. Be careful.
         Looking around a bit, you will see the single most useful trick for getting a dialog to look professional - the Cover The Whole Thing With a PICT trick. Create a PICT resource looking like what you want the window to look like, and slap the sucker down on the dialog at the start. Eats up memory like hell, but users demand that the dialogs look spiffy, so we have little choice.
         By the way, the buttons in Exile are not standard Mac buttons - they're programmed by hand. I get griped at about this occasionally - I should have made them customized buttons using toolbox routines. Most people, however, don't care.

     

         A side note - the Human Interface Guidelines are just that - Guidelines. However, you ignore them at your peril. There are some people who will not pay you if you violate the HIG too often. You will violate them, I promise, but choose carefully when and how you do it.

     

    'snd ' -
         Not much to say here. EVERYONE stores their sounds this way. It's the only good way, really. Spend a little bit selecting info on the sounds. Notice some are purgeable, and some aren't. The little sounds that are used all the time aren't purgeable. I load them in at the beginning, lock them down, and keep them in memory for the whole time Exile is running. The rest, I load when I play them - these MUST be purgeable, so they can be ditched when the game gets short on memory.

     

    'BNDL' -
         Ahhhh ... where would we be without customized icons? Learn how to do this. It's a necessity. And remember - when you make the change, you need to rebuild the desktop to see it. Restart, and while the Mac is rebooting, hold down the Command and Option keys.

     

         It's also worth it to take a look at the specials.dat file. When you have lots of resources, storing them in a different file is a very good idea. This file contains nothing but several hundred dialogs. I give special encounter info using dialogs. It's easy. It works. Your mileage may vary. They do take a long time to make, by the way.

     


    Section 3: Miscellaneous Tips

     

     

         Some much to say, so much to learn. The path to doing this stuff full-time is long and icky. However, there are several tricks and guidelines that can make your life easier...

     

    1. Write clean code!  Remember all that boring stuff they told you in computer class about writing elegant, easy to read code? They weren't joking. They were right.
         Why? Well, Exile is over 20000 lines of code. Your Big New Game will be too. Every line you write you will have to return to at some point, probably months later. When you do, you will need to figure out what the heck you wrote. If the code is a spaghetti-like mess, you may spend an hour. This is very bad. And, speaking of which...  (this one's gonna' hurt)

     

    2. Comment your code!  Yeah, I know, I know. You'd rather die. But trust me on this one. If one minute of commenting a routine spares you ten minutes of figuring out what the heck you did six months later, you got a good deal.
        Your most valuable commodity will not be RAM. It will not be cool extensions, or programming manuals, or amazing applications. Your most valuable commodity will be time. Commenting code saves you time. It doesn't take huge gobs of anal-retentive comments, explaining every line in grotesque detail -  quick notes saying what each 20 lines of code do should suffice. It's one of the best habits you can cultivate.

     

    3. Don't be a system hog!  Keep your game as small as possible - if it's shareware, people are going to be downloading it. The bigger it is, the less chance they'll grab it. 1.5 MB compressed is a good upper limit.
         A shareware game probably shouldn't use more than 2 MB of RAM. If Marathon can run decently with 3 MB of RAM, your game can too.
         A surprising number of users play games while doing their work. Your game should be able to coexist with other programs. If it can't, it will cost you money.

     

    4. Get DocMaker!  This document was written with it! So are many shareware program's docs, and most online magazines. It's a beautiful shareware program that makes documents that run on anyone's machine.
         By the way, Get More Info is an incredibly useful extension. It lets you change any document's owner and type.

     

    5. Buy lots of programming manuals!  Time is your most valuable commodity. If a $30 book saves you 3 hours of programming time, you got a great deal. This book is a good start, but won't tell you how to do everything. The Inside Macintosh CD-ROM is great! Inside Mac - Macintosh Toolbox Essentials, in paper form, is essential. Any book by Dan Parks Sydow should be on your shelf as well.

     

    6. Vogel's First Rule of Programming - There Is No Such Thing As A "Small" Change.  Every change you make to your game will have two bugs in it. The first will be obvious and stupid, and you'll be relieved to find it and feel like you did your debugging. The second bug will be subtle and nasty and make your life a living hell, usually two months later. Or after you released your game. This has happened to me more times than I care to think about.
         There is no such thing as a "small" change. Speaking of which...

     

    7. Test Your Game!  Shareware has gotten a reputation as being very buggy. This perception is, generally, justified. Most shareware developers seem to treat beta-testing as an irritation, not an absolute necessity. This attitude is appalling.
         If we shareware developers are ever going to be treated with professionalism and respect, the very, absolute least we need to do is write stuff that works.

     

    8. Do it!  I mean it. Grit your teeth. Set aside a lot of time. And go for it! Write the game you want to play, and odds are, others will too! I won't kid ya', it'll be a lot of work, and suck sometimes. But it's worth it, a thousand times worth it.

     

    By the way, it's SpidWeb@aol.com[*]. If you read this, please drop me a note. I want to hear from you!

     

    - Jeff Vogel
    Keeper of Exile
    Spiderweb Software

     

    ~

     

    [*] Ess's note: This address is no longer functioning. Check Spiderweb's current Contact page for up-to-date information!

  13. Thanks ka1yhi!

     

    I appreciate your frustration, Mah Al Ibara, but I assure you there’s nothing nefarious going on here. People are more than welcome to post hints and solutions for solving the gem puzzles! Just note that ka1yhi didn’t actually ask for that! Their post only asked for hints, which is what has been discussed in this thread!

     

    So, if there’s a particular gem puzzle that you’ve having difficulty with, and would like to know the solution for, do by all means ask! Or if you’d like some aid immediately, remember that there are plenty of complete video walkthroughs available on YouTube which include all the gem puzzles. If you’d like to know right away, you can take a look through there to find the solutions you seek! I can provide you with links if necessary!

  14. Hello Aventari!

     

    First off, let me say that your thoughts and opinions, and your presence on these boards, is valued! You’ve said some interesting things so far, and asked some interesting questions. I do hope you’ll stick with us on here, and share some more of your thoughts with us. It’s always good to see new people on here who enjoy Spiderweb’s games!

     

    For my money, I think there’s no harm in speculating about something that may or may not be true. Regardless of the validity of the data you presented, it got you thinking about the scenario in which the later Avernum games might have performed less well than the earlier ones. Again, regardless of whether that’s true or not, why not speculate about what could have caused something like that? That seems like an interesting thought-experiment to me!

     

    Regarding the specific questions you raised, I’m afraid it’s unlikely you’ll get an answer from the developer of these games in this thread. Spiderweb is essentially run by two people, and they both visit these forums very rarely. We have a community on here who are quite happy to help out with questions in their stead, of course, and to engage in interesting discussions! But if you want an official response from Spiderweb itself, I’m afraid it’s unlikely you’ll get one on here.

     

    The best way to ask Spiderweb something is to do so directly. They’re nice and friendly! In this case, you’d be best using the general contact address, which I put below. However, I should caution you that Spiderweb may not give you the information you seek. Sales information can be a powerful beast, and is often kept quite private. They may not want to go into specifics. But you can still ask! Here’s the address:

     

    spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com

     

    As for my own thoughts, I think googoogjoob has already made some good comments. Comparing Exile 3 to Avernum 3 is a tricky thing to do. Exile 3 was released decades ago, in a time that was very different to the one we live in now. What might have held true in the 1990s might not do so these days.

     

    I think the point about discoverability is a particularly pertinent one. As someone who was interested in Mac games when Exile was released, I can say that it was hard to not notice them. The demos were everywhere, and turned up all the time. They’d appear on Shareware CDs, on ftp pages, on online archives, you name it. If someone was using a Mac at the time, and was interested in RPGs, they’d be hard-pressed not to give Exile a try. At least, that was my experience. Did you have a similar experience yourself back then?

     

    But things are different now, in the 2020s. Shareware CDs don’t really exist any more, and neither do ftp sites. There are still online archives, of which Steam is a great example, but they’re so large that even games of good quality are very easily missed.

     

    To put this into perspective, imagine picking one game at random from the Steam library every day. Statistically, how much time would pass before you could be reasonably confident that you’d picked at least one Spiderweb game?

     

    Rough Answer: about 10 years!

     

    In other words, a factor that was really important in the 1990s – how easily a game can be discovered – is very different now. These days, advertising is far, far more important than it used to be. So, from my perspective, I wouldn’t be too surprised if what we see now is a little different from what happened in the 1990s. The games industry is in a very different place!

     

    To round things off, if you’re interested in Jeff’s views on remasters, there are a few posts on his two blogs that touch in these issues. Here are a couple that are relevant to Avernum 3!

     

    http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2017/10/avernum-3-remasters-and-joy-of-owning.html

    http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.com/2018/02/we-released-avernum-3-ruined-world.html

     

    Incidentally, metaforest/slarty, and with the greatest respect:

     

    9 hours ago, metaforest for the pedantries said:

    You made assertions;

     

    On 2/19/2023 at 10:59 AM, Aventari said:

    Do those statistics roughly correlate with how well they have sold overall?

     

    If so, what things may explain the disparity?

     

    Those sound like questions to me, not assertions. Or I am being silly, and misinterpreting something here? It wouldn't be the first time this slith's gotten things wrong! :)

  15. Hello Andins,

     

    Sorry to hear that you’re having problems!

     

    It’s not immediately clear what’s happening to your game. That’s not your fault – you’ve been very clear! It’s just that there are a few different things that might be causing what you’re experiencing. With luck, this will just be a straightforward problem with Steam connecting to your saved games correctly. However, I'm afraid there is a small chance it could be something a little more tricky to fix.

     

    So, to try and narrow down the options, would you mind answering a couple of quick questions for me?

     

    The most helpful thing to know right now would be this. Is the saving problem happening with *all* of your saved games, or only some of them? That is, is the saving problem only affecting the particular save after your party has entered the Test of Speed, or is it affecting everything? Further, can you not load any standard saves at all at any point, or only after loading up a 'problem' saved game? Knowing this will help us figure out whether just the one save is corrupted, or whether the problem is something more general.

     

    Here’s one quick way to test this out if you’re unsure. Try looking at a fresh party! Start a new game from the main menu, walk around for a few moments to make sure the application’s loaded everything it should, and then try to quicksave. Does the game bring up an error message in that situation?

     

    Secondly, have you had a major update to your Mac’s OS recently? I know updates like this aren’t as transparent these days as they used to be, but I’m asking just in case you spotted anything. Sometimes, system updates can mess with file directories, which is why I’m asking!

     

    Finally, have you noticed any problems with other Steam games recently? This will help figure out whether it’s a problem on Steam’s end!

     

    Issues like these can be tricky to solve, so I’m afraid I can’t promise I’ll come up with a fix for you. But I’ll see what I can do!

  16. Ah, I *knew* there was a complete list somewhere! Honestly, I feel a little silly for not thinking to check on Kelandon’s Archive. Many thanks for posting this, Slarty!

     

    If nothing else, I suppose the list in my previous post allows some independent verification of Kelandon’s data, and provides links to some of the original source material. So, in effect, it’s a little like a set of citations made after the fact!

     

    For what it’s worth, Celtic Minstrel, I think it probably would be a good idea to transfer this information onto an active website. While the information is on the Internet Archive, it can only really be found by those who know where to look – although Slarty’s post here will certainly have made it much more visible from now on. Posting the information somewhere new should help record it for posterity, and that’s probably a good thing!

     

    Also, sorry Lilith for misremembering the results of the ‘Don’t Fix the Shark' Contest!

  17. The results for what I believe was the first scenario contest are still online, although they’re a little hidden away. They’re found in the middle of the list of links on the Blades of Exile scenario workshop:

     

    http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/misc/contest_results.html

     

    Is this the contest you meant, or am I misinterpreting you?

     

    It’s quite an interesting list. I was aware of the prize-winners, but the runners-up are worth casting an eye over. I think it’s fair to say that all of them remained well-known scenarios long after this contest ended. For instance, Erika’s Legacy is on there, as is Nephil’s Gambit! And Requelle’s Nightmare is on there too, which I think might have been the first user-made BoE scenario I ever played!

     

    As for the other contests, they’re a bit harder. Here’s a broad summary of the earlier contests, but not every contest has the winners noted:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20021210190854/http://lyceum.desperance.net:80/olympia/olypast.html

     

    I'll list what I have so far below. There is probably more information out there, but this should provide somewhere to start from! The entries without links have been borrowed from the above, and from the following Lyceum post. They're almost certainly incomplete:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20061012063631/http://p080.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=382.topic

     

    Here are the listings, presented in what I believe is the order in which the contests were run:

     

    ~

     

    2nd Scenario Design Contest:

     

    1st: Redemption – Alcritas
    2nd: Of Good and Evil – Alcritas
    3rd: Farmhands Save the Day!! – Measle
    4th: The Election – Nick Jones

     

    ~

     

    Blades of Exile Short Competition:

     

    1st: The Lost Expedition – Brett Bixler

     

    ~

     

    3rd Scenario Design Contest:

     

    1st: Masks – Brett Bixler
    2nd: An Apology – Alcritas

     

    ~

     

    Second Short Competition:

     

    1st: Zankozzie’s Big Mistake – Ryan Phelps

     

    ~

     

    The 4th Scenario Design Contest:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20090806131502/http://geocities.com/blyceum/Olympia/fourthresults.htm

     

    ~

     

    The Scenario Review Contest:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20021210192020/http://lyceum.desperance.net/olympia/reviewcontest.html

     

    ~

     

    The Coding Contest:

     

    http://www.personal.psu.edu/staff/b/x/bxb11/boe/progcontest/Contest.htm

     

    ~

     

    1/10 Contest:

     

    1st: Deadly Goblins – Creator

    2nd: Dirty Gold – Ryan Phelps
    3rd (joint): Demon – Khoth
    3rd (joint): Echoes: Assault – Terror’s Martyr

     

    ~

     

    The 5th Scenario Design Contest (a.k.a. The Omega Contest) had several categories.

     

    Best Scenario, Best Large Scenario, Best Small Scenario, and Best Newcomer Scenario:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030516021915/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=327.topic

     

    Best Dialogue/Talking Pics:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030305135310/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=325.topic

     

    Best Utility Scenario:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030305132307/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=324.topic

     

    Best Item Graphic:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030604101805/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=323.topic

     

    Best Edited Terrain:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030604101805/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=323.topic

     

    Best Original Monster Graphic:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030305131234/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=318.topic

     

    Best Original Terrain:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030305131651/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=320.topic

     

    Best Edited Monsters:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030305131254/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=319.topic

     

    Best Movie Scenario:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20030305131612/http://pub26.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=317.topic

     

    ~

     

    The 6th Scenario Design Contest also had several categories.

     

    Best Scenario: [Missing – sorry!]

     

    Best Edited Terrain:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20060825194046/http://p080.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=380.topic

     

    Best Original Monsters: [Missing]

     

    Best Edited Monsters:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20040723005429/http://p080.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=368.topic

     

    Best Contest Dialog/Talking:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20040722195631/http://p080.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=366.topic

     

    Best Original Terrain: [Missing]

     

    Best Large Original Monster:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20040722221207/http://p080.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=358.topic

     

    Best Item Graphic: [Missing]

     

    ~

     

    The Don’t Fix the Shark contest:

     

    I believe TM may have won this, with 'Nebulous Times Hence'. Do you remember, @Kelandon? I think you may have judged this one?

     

    ~

     

    The 7th Scenario Design Contest:

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20060825194504/http://p080.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessage?topicID=473.topic

     

    ~

     

    The Pearl Contest (although I think there may only have been one entry):

     

    https://web.archive.org/web/20060825212317/http://p080.ezboard.com/fthelyceumfrm2.showMessageRange?topicID=476.topic&start=21&stop=40

     

    ~

     

    That's the end of the list so far!

  18. You just missed finding the entrance! The Small Crypt is always revealed, but it’s well hidden. It’s very easy to walk right past it, and not know that it’s there. I know I missed it on my first run through of the game!

     

    The Small Crypt is found in the big block of rock walls you mentioned, so you’re looking in the right place. The trick is that it’s hidden *inside* that block of walls. You’ll need to find a secret passage to reach it. The passage is hidden close to the point on the hint-book’s map indicated by the square. If you look around there, you’ll see there’s a small area with rubble scattered around. So far as I can tell, that rubble is your only significant clue that there’s a dungeon hidden there!

     

    I’m afraid there aren’t any helpful landmarks to describe exactly where that secret passage is. So you’ll need to do a little hunting! If you have trouble finding it, let me know, and I’ll show you a picture of the exact location.

     

    Once you’re inside, be sure to explore thoroughly. There are some interesting things in there, but the Crypt has some tricks up its sleeve. It will try and prevent you exploring carefully!

  19. 9 hours ago, wackypanda said:

    Is there any path to the Lich Key that does not require level 2 Move Mountains?

     

    Yes, there is!

     

    There are two different paths to the Lich Key. One path requires dealing with a medium-level fight, and taking down that Move Mountains rock. The other path requires dealing with a much tougher fight, but doesn’t require knowledge of Move Mountains. In other words, a player going through the game without any restrictions can effectively bypass a difficult fight if they have characters trained in a particular way.

     

    In your case, you don’t have that choice. But you can still get the key. You’ll just have to go down the tougher path!

     

    In Jeff’s defence, this is good game design, and I would expect that of him for this location. Angierach is a trapped location, one which locks the player in when they enter. If there were a fixed skill-barrier to unlocking part of that location, then a player could potentially get trapped in there. After all, if they didn’t have the suitable knowledge to get past the barrier, or hadn’t trained appropriately, there wouldn’t really be much they could do to remedy that situation. They’d be stuck permanently! (There’s always a danger with that with fights, naturally, but at least there you have strategic options. If you fail a simple skill check, there’s not much else you can do!).

     

    Generally speaking, Jeff is experienced enough to avoid pitfalls like these. Indeed, he’s always been good at avoiding this soft of softlock problem, even way back in the Exile days!

     

    In any case, don’t worry about Angierach. At least in principle, you should be able to get through without using any magic!

  20. Hello Beluga25,

     

    You’re not being dumb! It sounds like you’re just slightly misinterpreting the game’s interface. I believe you and Randomizer have been talking slightly at cross-purposes so far, so I’ll see what I can do to set things right!

     

    When you go shopping in Avernum, the shops display icons that indicate the type of item you’re buying. For non-physical things, like spells and skills, the game displays a book icon. That doesn’t mean you’re buying an *actual* book – it’s just an indication that you’re buying knowledge, rather than some physical item.

     

    So those 'books' you’ve been buying are just some form of *knowledge*. That’s all! Your party member will use them automatically, so you don’t need to worry about ‘activating’ these things. That’s happened already!

     

    How can you see those bits of knowledge you’ve brought, and what do they do? Well, to find out, you’ll need to go to the ‘Statistics’ panel of your player. Look at the party roster, on the left-hand side of the screen, and click on the question mark next to the player who bought the skill. That’s probably the topmost player, unless you actively selected someone else.

     

    zdxNC1t.png

     

    In the window that appears, you’ll see a set of squares. These all represent skills. If you hover your mouse over a square, it will display what that skill does. If you hover your mouse over the square showing the sword with round arcs above it, you’ll see that’s the ‘Blademaster’ skill. By buying the ‘Blademaster’ skill from the shop you mentioned, you effectively increase this skill by one – so you’re paying money to increase a skill, rather than spending the skill-points you get when you level up. That’s what those sorts of ‘books’ do!

     

    St7tT6s.png

     

    Note that there’s a second page of these skill squares that refer to further skills. Click on the ‘Magic/Misc’ tab on the window to show these.

     

    But what about that spell you bought? To learn about these, click on ‘See Spells/Abilities’ on the bottom-left of the Statistics panel. This will change the view to show the spells you’ve learned. If there’s a number next to the spell, you know how to cast it. The higher the number, the better you are at casting that spell.

     

    So, what you did by buying that Smite ‘book’ was to increase the number by the Smite spell for the player who bought it. If you check the Spells/Abilities panel for that player, you’ll see that their Smite level is probably 2 (since most players start the game with 1 level of Smite already). So by buying that book, you’ve made that player better at casting Smite!

     

    (Note that if the spell is greyed out then, even though you know it, you can’t yet cast it. You’ll need to either increase your Mage or Priest Spells skill to meet the minimum requirements for casting the spell.)

     

    YjzR6E0.png

     

    To summarise, by buying those ‘books’ at shops, you’re automatically increasing your knowledge. So you don’t need to do anything else. You’ve already improved yourself! If you want to know how much, check on the Statistics and Spells/Abilities page!

     

    Does that help at all?

  21. 1 hour ago, Megan said:

    Popping Queen's Wish open didn't show any issues, but I only ran it for a few minutes, and Avernum 2 took a while for the issues to pop up. If I find any relevant behavior as I play this or other games, I'll probably post it in a new thread.

     

    Many thanks for this! It’s still useful information to know that Queen’s Wish 1 doesn’t break immediately for you, while Avernum 2 is giving you problems at the same time. That might mean the later game is fine, or there could be some sort of time-sensitive behaviour to this problem, as you suggested. In either case, that’s some helpful information to add to the pool!

     

    And great catch spotting that switching in/out of the application can reset the screen! That sounds like something that *just might* be a general fix – and if so, that’s great! However, even if it only works occasionally, or even rarely, it’s still useful to know about. I’ll be sure to recommend this approach to anyone who might experience this problem in the future!

  22. 13 hours ago, Megan said:

    Just tried the save you gave me, and thar be boat! Thank you so much.

     

    Excellent. I’m glad I could help!

     

    13 hours ago, Megan said:

    Looks like the most recent thing I have is Queen's Wish 1. Is that recent enough? Also, I know it's older, but I did just play through Avernum 1, and no screen issues there.

     

    Yes, Queen’s Wish 1 is recent enough to provide useful information!

     

    Queen’s Wish 1 is basically the first instalment in the really modern iteration of Spiderweb’s game engine. As such, it’s a pretty good litmus test for the behaviour of the recent releases. It may not reflect the recent games exactly: the later games have been built on more recent compilers, and I know that the code for the screen-size was adjusted a little for Geneforge Mutagen. However, Queen’s Wish 1 is still close enough to the later games that I’d worry if the screen-size problem was present in it. If it is, I’ll flag it up, just to be on the safe side!

     

    Otherwise, enjoy your time with the vahnatai, and liberating those crystal souls! Avernum 2 is a really great game, and I’m tempted to have another run through it myself some time. Say hi to the folks in Gnass for me!

  23. Alright, here’s a modified version of your save file!

    https://we.tl/t-zNt0dgIIIi

    I invoked resetboats and, at least on my end, the boat is now where it should be. Hopefully it will now load correctly on your copy of the game too!

    If it’s still not loading for you, let me know. There’s a small chance your game may still eat the boat when you enter the Ruined Town from Formello – if that’s the case, I’ll save the game in a slightly different location, which should help.

    If you’ve managed to get your boat back, this *should* be the only gameplay problem you experience with the bug. I’m guessing slightly here, but I think the problem is due to legacy code for the demo partly triggering by mistake. Since this code only really affects this particular boat, you should have plain sailing from this point onwards. No-one else has reported any additional problems, at least so far. However, if you come across any further issues, do let us know! It’s always useful to hear about such things, and we should be able to help!

    Incidentally, it’s always nice to see a party headed by a slith!

    Regarding the screen-size problem, you are indeed sitting on the combination of hardware/OS that seems to be affected. Thanks for providing that information! What’s useful to know here is that the problem is only recent for you – this at least implies that it’s not something particularly fundamental to the hardware/OS combination. I’ll add that data to the pool, and I’ll update this thread if we eventually come up with a solution!

    In the meantime, I hope you come up with a good solution with dock manipulation! I have to do that on a few applications myself, so I know it can be a bit of a pain sometimes.

    By the way, just for my peace of mind, could I ask if you have any of the very recent Spiderweb Steam releases? That is, Geneforge Mutagen, or Queen’s Wish 2? No worries at all if not! But if you do happen to have one of them, would you mind taking a quick look and seeing if the screen-size behaves oddly there too? It would be useful to know if this problem still persists in the current releases – if so, it might be possible to deal with it when Spiderweb develops its next game!

  24. Hello Megan,

     

    Sorry to hear that you’ve been having problems!

     

    The odd issue with the game getting cut-off when playing in full-screen has come up on here a few times before. It seems to be quite a rare problem, and unfortunately that makes it a little tricky to diagnose. I don’t believe the cause of the problem has been tracked down yet and, because of this, I’m afraid there isn’t a convenient fix available at the moment. I’m really sorry about that!

     

    So far, the problem seems to be associated with Mac players specifically, and potentially with particular versions of Mac OS running on particular hardware. If you’ve updated your operating system since the last time you played the game – quite likely in the current computing climate! – or if you’re playing on a new computer, then that might be the cause. Just for the sake of gathering information, if you wouldn't mind, could you let me know what model of computer you’re running this on right now, and what version of Mac OS?

     

    For now – and I’m sorry that this is far from ideal! – I can only really suggest playing with whatever mode feels most comfortable to you. If the window-size the game is selecting for you is too small, there is one thing that might make your life a little easier, however. Macs have a built-in Zoom function for magnifying the screen, although it’s a little hidden away these days. It’s by no means perfect, but it might help magnify a small game window so that it takes up more of your screen.

     

    You can turn on the Zoom function in the System Preferences. Select ‘Keyboard’, and then ‘Accessibility’ from the lefthand menu. You should hopefully then see a ‘Zoom’ option on the righthand panel. If you turn this on, your Mac should display some shortcuts for you which will allow you to Zoom in on a portion of your screen. It might be something to try!

     

    I may be able to help you out with your boat problem, though! If you can give me a copy of one of your saved games, I might be able to use osnola’s trick and restore your boats on my end. To do this, first locate your saved games folder. It’s possible this is in a different place for Steam games, but here’s what Spiderweb’s support pages say:

     

    “If you did not buy Avernum 2 from the Mac App Store, your games are stored in the Application Support folder, which can be difficult to find. To open it, press Command-Shift-G to Go To Folder, enter "~/Library/Application Support/Spiderweb Software", and press return. Your saved games are in the folder "Avernum 2 Saved Games." Open that folder and your saved games will be inside, in folders named 'Save0', 'Save1', etc.”

     

    Just pick the folder that relates to the party you want me to fix! To be on the safe side, it might be a good idea to save the party somewhere that isn’t the Ruined Town. Formello itself would be just fine. Then upload the folder to an online file sharing service – I suggest WeTransfer! – and I’ll take a look at it. I can’t promise that I’ll be able to fix things, but I’ll try!

     

    In any case, sorry not to be of more help!

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