Fort

I'm not sure if this would be a *call*, but there should be a way to disable the 'Done' button that is at the bottom right corner of the dialogue screen when you are talking to creatures. That way you could force the player to go through the dialogue thread to the end. And this (could be under time or lighting): void set_daylight(short how_much_light - I assume that the engine has 'levels' of daylight as the day progresses to determine how much to darken terrain and such. This call sets the amount of daylight to how_much_light. short get_daylight() - Gets the current level or amount of daylight. void stop_daylight_progress(short stop) - This call starts or stops the progression of daylight throughout the scenario. If stop is 1, then the daylight will stay the exact same as it is when this call is used. Daylight will change if stop is 0.

No, that isn't possible in the way that you are thinking of it. Avernum is a 2D game with visual depth. Any tile can have 1 floor and 1 terrain. You can make the bridge rise up a little from the water floor.

Uh, does this call work? It always seems to return 0, regardless of what has happened to the town.

Invisibles were only bad in A1.

Mung Demons and Gazers for their dumbfounding (that can go through walls in A1). Dark Wyrms for their crazy breath and attack. Doomguards for their splitting and dangerous claws. Aranea for their toughness against low level parties, then Elder ones for slightly higher ones. And of course, guards.

64 million with 2 flags??? More like around 65000. But 3 flags gives you around 16 million (the average amount of colors a modern monitor can display), and that divided by 5000 yields about 3300 days, I think.

The outdoors are very rigid compared to Towns, I'm afraid. What you are proposing seems like a good idea, but there is probably some error in your implementation. You should also realize the problem this would cause with monsters scripts before you get too wrapped up in this.

T'is all about the \r\n, friends.

The single quote on that line would cause an error if it was in your script. BoA line numbers only work correctly in the older versions with Macs. I believe Avernum counts a \r (a line delimiter in Macs) as a line, but in Windows the line separator is \r\n, so it counts that twice. Divide your line number by 2 and that should be around the line you should be looking at.

I absolutely loved A1, but you should beware that it is not the most polished of Jeff's games. It lacks some of the cool things that occur in the other ones (like beams, moving walls, missing a few spells, Vahnatai presence are just spoilers and teasers, the no right-click for look, you don't autopickup for selected character when you click on an item, damage cap is much lower than the other games, etc.). From the start, I never liked A2 so I didn't register it. A3 was huge and full of [fun] stuff to do (like in Exile 3), and it implements a ton of different things into the Avernum engine, so it would be the best value from A1-3. But BoA will probably have a big list of good scenarios pretty soon. If you are waiting for a price cut, don't hold your breath. Exile I is still going for $25. But they have occasional -$3 sales.

Almost every culture has had stories of creatures that drink blood to survive. Many of them describe those creatures as undead. I assume that if they existed, there would be as much variety between vampires as there is among the people who think of them.

Vampires aren't affected by sunlight in Avernum as far as I can tell. They do drink blood and are the second most active undead reanimators, next to Liches. I guess they like more undead friends to be with them. There are always sarcophagi around them; I guess they sleep in there so they don't die from lack of blood.

Don't forget that Sss-Thsss in A1 was not the original. There were many, many Sss-Thss's throughout Avernum history, but only 1 was slain by the ones who killed Grah-Hoth and made it to the surface through the Final Gauntlet.

Grrr... I just explained that in my first post. You know that most of the time a locked door will stay locked when you leave the town and come back? But sometimes it stays unlocked? The reason why it stays unlocked is usually because of an SDF that was set [to a number greater than 0] the first time you unlocked the door. The coordinates of the SDF to be set to 1 is stored in the door's memory cells 2 and 3. If cell 2 = 5 and cell 3 = 0, then your code that you provided would cause your door to unlock upon contact with the party. This is because SDF{5,0} was set to 1 in your code, which, to the door script, means that the door has been unlocked. It is very preferable to set this value in the editor, just like where you set up cell 0 for its lock difficulty. Set the door's memory cell 2 to 5 and cell 3 to 0 and then test it again. If it doesn't work, come back and tell me it didn't work.

Look at the door script yourself. Most importantly, memory cell 0 is ONLY checked in INIT_STATE to initialize the locking difficulty and to set i_am_locked to TRUE. But the SDF is checked every time you walk into a door that isn't open. Cell 0 is only good for initialization.

Errhmm, this is a complex problem, since the door script is the most common, and most complex, default terrain script. The script doesn't check for memory cell 0 to check to see if it is locked. You must unlock it with an SDF, or give that particular door a special script for this to work. EDIT: You could use either the 2 flags you just set or a different one. There are thousands to choose from. The effect from the flag will be immediate and the door will unlock when you step into it. In case you don't know, Terrain memory cells 2 and 3 are the SDF coordinates in the door script. If sdf(cell 2, cell 3) = 0, door is untouched, if greater than 0, than it is unlocked. Period.

Be sure to include all the mumbo-jumbo about the big door that separates the Slith homeland (which is presumably even further down in the ground than Avernum) and how the Darklings were forced up never to return. Sliths participated in the reconstruction of New Formello and are only friendly to Avernites. They are extremely rare on the surface and the only reason why they aren't as openly persecuted as Nephils is because not that many centralized Imperials know about them. Sliths are religious, love statues, cave homes, need constant heat, and give birth to little lizards, not lizard man children. Do not forget about their tails.

He's right. Don't dredge up dead topics for no reason, though.

It's all about overwriting the default ones, but you would have to remember to change them back when you are through with the scenario.

I feel as if the best way to do it is to have the change terrain calls also do a quick check to see if they emit light. If they do, then the game will recalculate on next turn or when there is a terrain redraw.

PC resistances can't go above a certain point, but something like 25% resistance does make you take 75 damage from a 100 point fireblast. Either that, or something similar to the Exile system where each point of damage had a chance to be negated by the resistance. Very confusing system, but I'm beginning to think that is the way it is with Avernum as well.

If what you say is true, Kernel, then the lighting points ARE NOT calculated when the town is entered like Jeff says in the manual, but rather in a matrix inside the town itself. This doesn't bode well for the future of this call because then it would require an engine change. Personally, I don't understand how calculating which terrain spots give off light every time there is a force_instant_terrain_redraw() could be a performance problem.

I'm pretty sure that a large portion of the game was written in C.

I don't think so. But you don't need to at all. The necessity for water could be a scenario wide dilemna for the player. But I am reminded of how Jeff made those poisonous mushroom patches in Avernum 2, so I don't know.

Modern computers will reach the breaking point of an endless loop in a split second anyway, and there is always a little, noticeable delay when you enter new outdoor sections anyway.