Fort

I always thought about that path after gaining the Royal Token and seeing Micah. After all, once in his chambers, I started to wonder where the other doors would lead, and whether they were locked.

But I always assumed that there was a special enounter near the door next to the royal guard to prevent the player from entering that area without the Royal Token.

Too bad there is not much to gain from seeing the king this early. I guess it saves you from the necessity of going to Formello, though.

Did the thought of satisfying both goals ever occur to him? He could have made the game drop the item under the character when the item is clicked outside of the selectable regions. Removing the ability to place the items around the characters also removes a few options from the game!

Well, I am confused. The reason is the lack of reason in any of the previous proceedings.

I personally think this was all a planned attempt by Magi to add some commotion to the boards, which have slowed down a bit in the past months. Good show, I would have to say.

There are 2 likely reasons for this.

(1) You do not have enough mechanics skill, or the proper special item to unlock the cabinet. In this case, unless something is wrong with your game, a little message should pop up in the text window telling you how many living tools will be needed.

(2) The cabinet is not unlocked and simply does not have anything in it.

Also check to make sure you are actually clicking on the cabinet and not some space next to it. I do not think you actually did this, though.

He probably spends too much time closely examining burning fires or charcoals, since his dialogue face is so black in Exile 3. Or perhaps his potions explode into his face too much.

If the call worked any other way, I guess it would yield strange generic monsters with "?" graphics. But they would have the appropriate number of limbs and shading according to species, of course.

In case you are wondering, you never really have to refer to the town number of the items you place. Species is checked only in the calls that specifically say "species." A placed monster's ID is only useful with NPCs that join the party. No, there are no calls that check for specific item types on a given location (the items can only be referred to by their special class in this case).

The type is not the species, but the number that represents exactly what creature the party will encounter. For example, by default, creature type 1 is "Merchant" and type 3 is "Beggar."

I do not think Jeff officiated a formal terminology for distinguishing the many similar terms used when referring to data in the game, but it all usually make sense. A simple test should answer questions like these. Remember that for monsters, you sometimes have to supply their ID, creature type, creature number of the town, or their species, so try to keep everything clear in your mind.

If your still art graphics program is completely compatible with .GIF, then the graphics saved in that format should be lossless. Unless you are using more than 256 colors in a single small Avernum sprite .

I do not think this will make very much sense, but you could give the characters an ability that gives them an item that targets. The item would have 1 charge and would disappear after 1 use, and the party would not be able to have more than 1 at any time. This is an ugly workaround, but it will make whatever you are planning possible. And the item's custom script should check for the party having more than 1 of itself as well, since the player can drop items on the ground, and escape item checks...

Athron is a female dragon in Avernum, but I remember at least several instances where she is referred to as a "he." Since I have never played Exile, I cannot confirm Athron's original gender, but I suspect the gender-switching is one of those amusing artifacts from conversion.

As for X, everyone refers to him as, well, "him." The dialogue picture looks masculine, too. But when gender is unspecified, the masculine form is the default. Since he does not really talk about himself much (except to boast), I do not think we can ever really find out.

E-mail me the script if you want. net4less@sbcglobal.net

It may take a day for me to check my E-mail because it is simply a hassle these days, though. No viruses, please. But please, give me all the details about what you want the script to do, and maybe even an implementation of it. I bet you just moved a brace somewhere where it shouldn't be.

In case you don't know, the manual has numerous bookmarks with pretty good titles when read in Abode Acrobat.

Instructions for making shops, though, is clumped in with "Making Dialogue" under a section called "Making Shops."

void add_item_to_shop(short which_shop,short which_item,short how_many)

is the call that stocks up shops, like Kel said. You can only add items to the shop at the moment.

In order to start shop mode, you need to use

void begin_shop_mode(char shop_name,char shop_desc,short which_shop,short price_adjust,short

sell_adjustment)

shop_name is the name of the shop.

shop_desc is a short description of the shop.

which_shop is the shop number that coincides with the shop numbers that you used in add_item_to_shop().

price_adjust can be from 0 to 6; the higher the more expensive the shop.

sell_adjust can be from -1 to 6; if -1, the shop doesn't buy items from you; the higher the number, the lower the selling price.

Unless you have shops that change stock dynamically, you should stock the shops in the START_SCEN_STATE of your scenario script. But you can use it anywhere.

Specifically, go to your scenario folder, then Za-Khazi Run, then open up zakhazi.txt. One of the Key special items should be the one you are looking for.

I find it crazy how he became a moderator for the Trilogy boards when he did. Enough said.

I am sorry for my ignorance, but I can't figure out exactly what these carts look like when in motion. Why doesn't the incrementing 'i' variable throw everything off? Wouldn't the coordinates set at the beginning be changed on the very next turn?

ME always equals -1. You have to use my_number() for the conditionals that try to determine which cart the script is running for.

Multiple comparisons cannot be placed together (a < b < c). This is not a user friendly scripting engine! If this is possible in C, then that is news to me.

After skimming through the heart of the script, I think that it has some unneeded complexity in it. This causes making it work correctly more difficult. This may already be the best way of doing it, but I would have to think more about this in order to give you a definitive answer.

Though spelling and grammar sure would have helped, the idea is somewhat fractured.

Are you saying that you saw a mention of the BoA Editor being able to edit items? As previously stated, you need to script in a custom item. You don't necessarily have to read all of the editor documentation, but pay close attention to the information on formatting your custom objects script.

I suggest learning at least the basics of manually creating custom items before you use the utility.

Welcome, I hope this is not going to be your last post.

Just note that you can't change the beginning introduction splash screens, but in game introductions are fully customizable. I'm sure that this capability will look better when dialog pictures are added.

Yes, because there is no way for the carts to take into consideration that they are not supposed to stray off their tracks. A stop_moving() call should suffice.

No. Only bugs were fixed, though I haven't checked on the status of broken calls. If he did not make all the town hostility calls work, then I will become very pessimistic about SF3.

move_to_new_town() is the call you are looking for, but it might not work because it can only be called from the player stepping on a space. Why don't you just block the real boundaries of the town and place these specials in a convincing place?

After all, the party can't leave to the outdoors when they can't walk out of town.

You have their scripts acting even while the party is at a distance, right?

Unless there is something blocking them from reaching their destination, the move_to_loc_x_y call should cause the affected monster to move there directly, regardless of current distance from the location.

Waypoints would definitely make things easier, but I think you can only have 8 per town.

Our ability to fine tune and work closely with the pathing engine is very limited because of the lack of pathing calls, and the engine cannot calculate complex paths (nor any extra requirements for said paths).

Because of this, making these moving cart creatures will be difficult. Finding a way to call a stop_moving function every time an obstruction is encountered would make things run in a stuttered, yet functioning fashion. But barring these tracks from the player would be the easiest course of action.

If these carts are unnecessary to the scenario, have them just visible to the player to add atmosphere, but make only a few of them. They would be generally inaccessible to the party.

Make sure the room that the zombies are in only have exterior type walls. You might be able to make an easter egg out of it, though. You kill a creature in the right place and a wall explodes!

Unfortunately, you can't place terrain scripts dynamically as far as I know. I haven't tried placing a terrain with an inherent, attached terrain script while the game was running, so I encourage you to try that.

How many monsters will have this self-resurrection ability? If the amount of monsters is less than 15, I think it would still be viable to put the script into the START_STATE of the town.

Generally, script efficiency is not a huge, noticeable problem when it runs in combat mode, or after an important event (at least you have a reason for the slowdown). Therefore, if you can just make the code run after a creature dies, then things would work out. This might have been what you were trying to do with your original idea.

If you activate and deactivate a certain terrain script that performs this resurrection function at the appropriate times, then everything should run pretty efficiently. By deactivate I mean change its script mode to 0 (only run every 8 turns when party is nearby). There could be multiple counters, variables, and SDFs for when, what, and where to resurrect the creatures. Since this might become complex if you have too many creatures, then you could have counterpart creatures with scripts that can keep running after the initial creature has died. Of course, you are using extra creature slots, but there are always limits.

Placing the corpses will be difficult graphically unless you make sure that the creatures won't wander off to other types of floors and terrain.

This is one of the bugs sent to Jeff in a big E-mail. It will be fixed in the next release.

Oh I know that. Your 111 post thread is a huge billboard for it. I'm just stating the things that the Editor lacks. They are obviously not original observations; they usually aren't when someone has already added the features .