Fort

You can either use the cheat codes for some basic amenities, or download the scripts/editors with their instructions at the top of this page.

This has nothing to do with letting your enemies live. To strive to become as powerful and lethal as powerful is also to make the game as easy as possible at each necessary point. Choosing not to use the Geneforge does not in any prevent you from killing everything either in these games, and I mean everything.

He is just using the 17th Century English Punctuation System (very poorly).

That is the connection between releasing creations and essence. If essence were, in the context of the Geneforge universe, being constantly used to maintain the very physical form of the creation, then releasing it would be impossible without permanently reducing your essence cap. It just doesn't make sense; that is, unless you shape something out of your own essence and then fortify it with a shaping vat while reabsorbing what it originally drained from you.

Serviles and ornks are generally made to be able to breed. The other creations have it all buried in their DNA somewhere, I imagine.

 

To me, this whole topic deals with a fundamental question about how creations and their shapers are related: why do our creations tie up our maximum essence reserves for as long as they are alive?

It should totally have, in addition to the traditional story paths, a new one: one where you choose to be a humble artisan or farmer while the rebellion occurs.

 

You would have to fulfill monthly orders of Ornks, fill up sacks of grain, make living tools, etc.

Wow, that is incredibly counterintuitive.

No, I think it would be 21 and 22. In a world of w width, the outdoor section (x,y) is represented by the number (x * w + y). At least that is how I remember it.

Perhaps some areas should have wandering rogues that come from mating, rather than always from a spawner. It would be like extermination of rabbits... that breathe fire.

Wow, servile abilities sound like a barrel of fun. In what category are humans inferior to the serviles if I may ask?

I think the whole psychological effect of the health bar is too good to get rid of. Seeing it change does more for your emotions and involvement in the game than a single-faced feeling of mystery ever could when the bar is not there.

Then your quest or mission would have to involve acting as a conscripted commander of the defenses or something to that effect. Sounds like RTS to me.

If the game were restructured to include creating defensive strongholds and your own little guarded safe-havens periodically as a part of strategy, then maybe these immobile creations could have a purpose.

 

For instance, suppose that randomly spawning monsters could appear even without NPC spawners around under the premise that the area is not cleared. Going back to town would be a long, involved, and dangerous process, so you need to create your own points to rest at along the way.

 

Your own spawner, revitalizing vats, etc., would have great use then.

That does sound intriguing, but of course too complicated to be put into the next game. Historically, it can be said that Jeff does not do "revolutionary."

 

If anything, I think that implementing a true way to capture a rogue creation -- which may be an NPC, spawned creation, or one of your own -- for a short while would quickly give rise to being able to release creations. I feel a main, non-destructively unbalanced way to use these rogues would be in a battle where you want to temporarily have many, many creations on your side, with possibly some under your direct control. Those not considered a part of your party, being captured rogues, would easily change sides. I believe this would allow this type of large-scale battle to occur while preserving gameplay balance.

While it sounds potentially useful to create a rogue army, whose members I think by definition are still very hostile to their creator, I doubt it would be worth the essence to shape a creation that would be less effective in combat than an equivalent one you could control.

If you could not gain experience from the creation or reabsorb it for essence, why release it? Sure, you could carry some essence pods/potions/whatever so you could make lots of little rogue creations, but could that really be useful if you had no control whatsoever over it?

Whoops, my mistake. I looked at the massive if-statement version with the set_state_continue calls and got mixed up. Regardless, things might be marginally simpler if only the leader could do the digging.

Making tasteless crap out of other crap is the essence of good comedy.

 

EDIT: In case it was not clear, this is an encouragement to Mag.

If you have a Mac, I suggest getting the 3D editor if you cannot handle the barebones editor Jeff provides.

 

I have not read all of Dikiyoba's story, but from what I have seen, it will involve a lot of side characters, random creatures, and plenty of in-personality dialogue.

Kel's code already seemed like a good enough solution, but I guess I might as well share my thoughts.

 

First of all, why do you need to check the locations of every single PC? Couldn't you just store the leader PC number in a variable and check that? I ask this because, according to the way you set up the code, if any PC is on a no-dig spot, no one else can dig.

 

Secondly, if you mean for this to be a special ability, will it be used more than once? If so, then it practically must be done by checking terrain and floor types, as Salmon pointed out.

I would hate it if it took me forever to train up my super PC only to have him get rheumatoid Averthritis or something.

Maybe I gave the wrong impression in my post, but the point I was trying to make is the very point you made at the end there: the First Expedition could not have been founders of the first Avernite cities not only because they were supposedly dead but also because it was quite a few years before the cities were built. My proposed deviation from canon was to have the cities be built almost immediately so that the timelines could overlap without too much magically protracted longevity for the First Expedition.

Considering that many people and creatures in Avernum do not stay dead for long, I do not see their apparent deaths as problems. Personally, I would like to see some storyline that allows them to play a major part in the founding of the first few Avernite cities. The intervening decades until the Empire started using the caves as a prison could pose a problem, but some canon can be altered, right?

Her script makes her virtually invincible if I remember correctly. In case you were wondering, I believe you gained 0-1 xp from killing the wisps becuase, going from memory again, they are level 1 creatures. Surely the library wisp is fun to hack up for being an annoyance, but the rest I think you can safely leave alone.

 

EDIT: By the way, did you kill the vahnatai in the caves? I don't think there were any scripts preventing that, were there?

I am pretty sure that they gain experience at the same rate as the rest of the PCs. In A1, I remember that some of their initial special skills are higher than the maximum you could ever get for your original PCs.

Allowing characters to control characters other than the PCs would definitely require some effort and coding on Jeff's part, but I would imagine that the mechanics already work favorably towards such a possibility. The Exile engine, for instance, sharply divided monsters and PCs.

 

However, in Avernum, the monsters have the exact same skill set as PCs and can wield or use items in the basically the same way. When your characters are charmed, I believe they act with basicnpc. In Geneforge, he has already managed to create two separate control systems; one for the shaper and one for his creations.

 

Though being able to directly command a group of NPCs would be great, I really only ask that the characters who join the party be controllable. Then maybe they would be useful for once as more than mindless meatshields.