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The editor does not have (among other things): A resizable window, nor a resolution conforming one. A large number of hotkeys and shortcuts for somewhat common actions. Scrolling mechanisms for dialog boxes. If a few more fields were added to dialogs such as the outdoor encounter one, there would not be any more room on the screen! Zoom functions. Resizeable outdoors. Copying and pasting of section sof towns. Sampler tool for terrain and floors. An undo function. An easy way to load different sections of the outdoors and towns. (You must reference everything by number or coordinate.) An easy way to scroll diagonally and quickly from the keyboard.

Not quite. In the long winded and mostly redundant debates between Avernum and Exile, area of effect spells, more spells in general, and ambidextrous capability have been mentioned a few times. But I too am frustrated with Avernum's spell target system.

INIT_STATE should work for the cutscene, shouldn't it?

Personally, I think we should all just let him do whatever he wants. If he manages to finish this project before JV releases his next game, I say we give this industrious designer a cookie. Now is probably a good time to let this thread die, but I think it would be nice for you to keep a short web blog for all those interested in keeping up with the development of this shell updated.

There are calls to check for the block status of the space, but what you are proposing is a difficult thing to implement. What would you have this monster *do*? Don't forget that you can give this monster a default script of creating the text bubble over itself. You should also note that all placed creatures start out hostile, so you definitely want to be careful with that.

Patrick was great in his heyday, but was one of the lesser of the great mages. Then he got old and decided to pursue a quiet life of enlightenment through knowledge and historical bookkeeping. Then he lost it and died. I think Grah-Hoth is the best, although he is always defeated. Of course, this is counteracted by the fact that he has his OWN demon realm in which he can't be vanquished.

Protective Circle doesn't harm things the moment it is cast, so that is the best way to go. Quickfire would be a little extreme, but still possible. I doubt the Fire Barrier thing would work because the game calculates from whether a person can see THE ITEM, not you. I'm pretty sure whatever is directly in a barrier is still considered seen.

Open up corescendata.txt in your data folder and search for the appropriate item. Or you could download the editor and open up a new scenario and look at the nice lists present there. There might be an actual compiled list of items somewhere, but it really isn't necessary because these resources are already available in their raw form.

You could've compressed it. Who are you sending this to? People with Macs might have a difficult time looking at your screenshot.

Just think of Prt Scrn as a Copy for the current screen. Remember that moving sprites generally aren't captured.

The idea is fine, not exceptional, but acceptable. Unfortunately, there is no way to add light for the party, nor is there a good way to change the lighting scheme of a town. The bonus to the missile weapons skill is certainly possible. I am 99% sure that the greater portion of what you want cannot be achieved at the moment. But, if Jeff adds the suggested lighting calls (which will probably be unlikely because lighting is natively generated in the scenario editor, not dynamically in the game), a viable solution may appear. Even if this happens, though, you'd have to put the check for the item in the scenario START_STATE, which runs every turn for the duration of the scenario. This can be a performance problem, but the effect is usually negligible to users with modern computers. The item could instead be a VERY strong light source that the player has to 'Use'. It may not be as automatic as the original idea, but it is simpler.

A1: Tower of Magi head priest A2: Tower of Magi, somebody A3: Father Ahonar in Shayder and 1 other guy

It doesn't matter as long as you specify which icon is being used in the custom objects script. Remember to make 10(?) icons per row.

I suppose anybody who wants to have a scenario take place directly in Avernum could use your thing, but the flexibility would be hampered greatly. I for one would just look at a general map of Avernum and add my own twist to it. But again, I'm sure SOMEONE will use a bit of it.

OK then. You are going to try to recreate the setting of Avernum 2, a game with around 50 outdoor sections and more towns that most people can think up names for. The predecessor of this game took Jeff a very long time to make. Some people have tried things similar to this, and have failed. They stop after a few sections and realize the amount of work that would've been required to perform the task wouldn't have been worthwhile because I suspect most people would only use a few percent of the whole project. Good luck, and tell us when you're done with it.

This would be fine for certain encounters; the ones that are more important or the ones that you think should deserve an unusally large amount of attention. But don't put too many of these in or people will be annoyed. If implemented correctly, it will be a nice change from the same kind of outdoor encounters over and over. I think I shall steal your idea now.

Don't include a call like that in your town script, please. I'd also like to hear what event you have planned for in this town.

Stop them from doing whatever is necessary to leave the town. All reduced, there are only 2 ways to leave a town. You can either walk out of it, or use the character editor. Preventing them from walking out is a simple matter. Walls or block_entry() will work. Put something in the START_STATE of the outdoor section that the party would end up in if they left the town through the editor to check to see if the event has occurred in the town. If it hasn't, politely tell them not to use the editor and force them to go back in the town. You can't put them into the town yourself; they have to move their party into the space. But I'm sure, as the designer, you can encourage to do this.

I think you should send all the suggestions to Jeff, but highlight the important ones for him. I have a feeling he's only going to implement the ones that fit his whim, so why not send them all and see which ones he likes? If we are to send the bug reports to him as one big chunk as well, I think we might need to make a short scenario illustrating all the errors. I'm going to need some help with that, considering I don't have the full version of the game (yet).

I don't think that they even use the basicnpc script that you might put into the scenario. They use the default basicnpc in your \data\ folder that is placed into every new scenario upon creation.

It's really rather like writing a book with someone. The biggest thing is making it all FIT, and having each person do their job and share of the work. Discontinuity, unfinished work, miscommunication, and untested gaps because neither knew what the other was doing are major ailments. Eh, but 2 people might be able to pull it off. They just need an instant messenger and very, very similar schedules. Very.

...you should really be careful of Epic fever. I hope you will be up to be up to creating something this massive. Have you noticed how long it takes to walk across 9 outdoor sections and explore 50+ towns? But if it works and the combat isn't just monster fudging, people will play, I suppose.

A character's ID is usually only used internally by the game to determine who is traveling with you, and who has died. In every town, monsters that you place in the editor are given numbers to be referred by, ranging from 6 to somewhere around 80. A guard might have an ID of 12, a creature type of 4, but has a town number of 16.

Due to the differences in compression algorithms (PNGs have basic compression, really, but the multiple filters and number of refinement passes can do wonders), the disadvantage of poor PNG Lib implementation, the possible extra size of 24 - 36 bit palette size, difficulty of pronunciation, and Jeff's insistence on using last generation technology will forever keep this new standard away from his games. I'd like to point out that this topic has practically died for some reason. Does no one have any insight to add? I swear, the moment Jeff comes out with SF3, somebody is going to whine about something that wasn't suggested and not implemented. Zero hour is almost nigh, friends.

Use a linebreak symbol |. Might I suggest that you try to break your script testing into smaller portions so you can isolate the problems more easily? Oh yeah, and the version of BoA for Windows that you probably have gives line numbers in an awkward format. Divide the number your get from the game by 2 and add 1 to get the correct line number. Of course, this only applies if your scripts are saved in Windows newline format, if they are formatted Mac style, the line numbers will be fine.