Spidweb

"Jeff has said that if support for Classic mode is ever completely dropped from newer Macs, he'll do what's necessary to update all his older games so they still run." I did? I know I said this about the newer games (Avernum, Geneforge), but I don't remember making such a grim blanket promise about everything I ever did. I won't be Carbonizing the Exile games. Sometimes, the old games just have to drift off into the past. (And the Exile games are over 8 years old now. OMG!) Reworking that ancient code would be a real pain. My time is much better spent working on new games. And if you are angry about this, I suggest blaming Apple. I didn't ask them to completely redo their OS architecture for the THIRD time since I started this business. - Jeff Vogel

(I'm feeling lazy, so I'm just going to post the press release and go out to lunch. :-) ) For Immediate Release Contact: Jeff Vogel (206) 789-4438 Spiderweb Software, the maker of fine fantasy role-playing adventures for the Macintosh, has just released the v1.0.1 upgrade for Avernum 4. This update features bug fixes and a variety of improved graphics. Upgrading is recommended. Avernum 4 is an enormous fantasy role-playing adventure. Wander the strange, subterranean world of Avernum, full of multitudes of characters, hundreds of side quests, and traps, tricks, and treasure in every corner. Experience the life of an adventurer: the fame, the wealth, the hapless townsfolk begging you for help at every turn! This epic tale is guaranteed to give you weeks of entertainment, with an impossibly huge world that dares you to uncover all of its secrets. Previous experience with the Avernum games is in no way necessary to enjoy Avernum 4. The full demo can be downloaded at http://www.avernum.com/avernum4/index.html There won't be a patch to update v1.0 to v1.0.1, as the changes were too extensive. - Jeff Vogel

"It's not about the Minotaurs at Spiderweb Software. It's about the giant spiders. Too bad there haven't been any in the Geneforge series. At least, not yet." In my very very early conceptions of Geneforge, the serviles were actually going to be whole huge tribes of Exile-style spiders. This idea was eventually discarded, as it was mind-bogglingly terrible. - Jeff Vogel

I've been spending a lot of time of late, when not debugging Avernum 4 for Windows, sketching out the plot and world for Geneforge 4 and designing some interface stuff. Here's a little advance info, for general interest. All of this is subject to change. Of course. I want the Mac version to be out this year. It will, like Avernum 4, run at 1024 x 768 resolution. The days of our 800 x 600 games are gone forever. I am focusing heavily on improved animations and spell effects. There will be a greater variety of effects, and they will be prettier. Since the end of Geneforge 3, the rebellion against the Shapers has begun. You will play rebels, not Shapers, though you will develop shaping abilities early in the game. Without shaping, it's not Geneforge. At this point, your character can be a human or a servile. There will be three character classes that take the role of Shaper/Agent/Guardian. I really like how that set works. The skill list will stay the same, most likely, as I think it works very well. There will probably be 3 new creations and 8 new spells. There will be three overall factions/sets of endings, but one of them is more hidden than the others. A number of characters from Geneforge 3 will return. I want the game to have many more scripted events and big battles. It's a war, and I want you to be mixed up in it. I've never been entirely happy with how mines and traps work, so I'm tinkering with that. I want to find a way for Tool Use heavy zones to be a more fun experience. I want to rework stealth so it's clearer what's going on and when a creature can see you. I want to implement weather. It won't affect play so much, but it'll be pretty. - Jeff Vogel

"Now that PPP data is at our fingertips, we could divide up all the threads and try to establish once and for all which FAQ is the most frequently asked." That's a good one. And I think you're right. I have long ago lost count of how many people have requested an online/multiplayer version of my games. My answer: I'm not really interested in doing it. It would be an ENORMOUS undertaking. And I don't have the technical skill, coding-wise. And to answer the first question, barring flu, hospital visit, premature birth of my daughter, or untimely death, Avernum 4 for Windows should be out at the very beginning of March. - Jeff Vogel

"I think it made sense that Rhentar Ihrno's last fight wasn't as hard as it could be, because according to the plot she's weak and using the last of her resources." Difficulty is highly subjective and varies greatly from player to player. I promise you that a number of my testers, accomplished Avernum-players all, found the climactic fight to be a genuine challenge. But I am sure many of the more experienced people will find it to be easy. Remember, if I make a fight difficult for everyone, even the hardcore, then a lot of players will find it insurmountable. I got a lot of complaints from my friends (and wife) about the difficulty of the later parts of Geneforge 3. So if you, like many, found that game to be too easy, this should give you some sympathy for my situation. - Jeff Vogel

"On that note, I wonder if Jeff has ever lost any customers over Nance and Elspeth?" I never got a single negative comment about it. I got numerous positive comments. My games are relentlessly politically correct because, well, I don't know. They just turned out that way. Part of it is my own comfort, and part of it is greed. The wider the variety of player icons, for example, the more players are happy. And happy = $$$. As for Mycroft, artists Phil and Kaja Foglio are good friends of ours. Their firstborn son's name is Mycroft. And yes, he is named after Sherlock Holmes's brother. - Jeff Vogel

Nobody reported this bug. I just noticed it while I was working on the Windows port. "who would like to know if the precise number of sparks before errors is 32767." Yes. - Jeff Vogel

"Many RPGs, Spiderweb's among them, avoid anything more than the most nebulous of backgrounds." Several games I have truly loved (KOTR, Planescape: Torment among them) have featured main characters with a well-defined background. And yet, I am personally irritated by games that tell me who I was. When I play a game with a role-playing element, I like to fill in the details of the past for myself, to give more of a context to the sort of character I have decided to play. This is such a strong preference on my part that I can't imagine myself designing a game that works any other way. In the end, I have two absolute limits on the games I design. One is time. The other is that I can only properly design games of the sort I would want to play. Which is not to say that writing games where the main character has a well-defined past isn't a good idea. I'm sure it is. Just not for me. - Jeff Vogel

"Wow. That seems like an awfully obscure bug." Don't think I wasn't smiling when I typed that out. - Jeff Vogel

We have released a tentative, beta v1.0.1 for Avernum 4 for Macintosh. Avernum 4 v1.0.1 (20.5 MB) can be downloaded at ftp://ftp.spiderwebsoftware.com/mac/Avernum4.demo.v101.bin It fixes a variety of irritating bugs and adds some improved graphics. The full list of problems fixed is on the Avernum 4 support page. Comments or problems are best sent to spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com. If it looks clean enough, I'll make it the default download shortly. - Jeff Vogel

I was out of town, so I was slow getting back about the chitrachs. I like them and hope to use them. - Jeff Vogel

I just fixed several of these, including the infinite Abisynthe problem. The thing about dialogue triggers for fights is something I have been struggling to fix for several games. It's better than it was, but it still requires some work. It'll probably require some actual engine work in the next game. - Jeff Vogel

Known issue, which will be fixed. More information at http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/avernum/avernum4/techsupp.html - Jeff Vogel

"—Alorael, who places Alphonse ahead of Ambrose in his list of favorite talking bricks." I mistyped. Alphonse is indeed a funnier name. If you think you can be critical of my games, you should hear me with my game-designer friends when I really get going. "Yeah, so in my new game, you meet this farmer who says you need to find a rock, and then another rock, and then a third rock, and when you stack them in a bucket the farmer gives you a key you used to get the fourth rock OF POWER, and then you can kill the demon and win. Oh, and there's runes in there too." - Jeff Vogel

"I respectfully call this a strawman argument for several reasons:" It wasn't a strawman argument. It was a joke. Thus the smiley. The real argument, such as it was, buried within had already been stated in a previous paragraph. Simply, I am far more interested in what the characters do than how they are told to do it. I have been thinking of someday writing a whole new humorous rpg series. And, when I do, there will be a chain of quests given by Ambrose The Talking Brick. This I promise you. As for interactivity, changing world, and so on, I love this stuff, and put in as much as I can stand. However, for me, the most time-consuming, exhausting part of writing the games is dialogue and prose. Every bit of world-changing is a straight shot of the hardest stuff to do. I WANT to do that stuff. But I can only do so much. Kelandon makes an excellent point about the evolving world of Exile 3. But it mostly evolved in a way that was very easy to code (crumbling buildings) and didn't manifest itself in dialogue very much. I may try doing something like that in the future. It was neat. But I have to have a game where the plot, etc. lends itself well to it. - Jeff Vogel

I am familiar with the "Bob" term, though I don't use it in my thinking about design. Having one central character who gives orders for a large chunk of the plot happens for several reasons. It's realistic. It's easier on the player. (Lost in the plot? There's always one dude you can talk to to set you straight.) And, perhaps most importantly, it's easier, so I can focus design time on the actual missions as opposed to the mission giver. Because, honestly. All my fondest memories of RPGs are of the dungeons, traps, foes, and so on. Not of the Jedi/General/Porn Star/Alphonse The Talking Brick who told me to go there. As for an rpg with a deep interactive world with non-static characters and so on, that is a really tough nut. I need to be convinced that the payoff is worth the huge amount of work. When I'm planning Geneforge 4, I think my energy will be much better spent planning cool, badass (albeit static) dungeons to go through. By the way, I've been reading D-Day by Stephen Ambrose. At first, I thought it was really exciting, but now I know that it is not. Eisenhower was such a "Bob" character. All he did was sit in the back and give orders. I had no idea that World War II was so uninterestingly plotted. - Jeff Vogel

Any future Avernum graphics will have PC designs. PC graphics, however, take up the most time by FAR. A monster takes a day or two. A PC can take two weeks. They take longer to render, and there are more poses to do. - Jeff Vogel

It is unfortunate that so many people don't like the Geneforge-style graphics (rendered with a program called Poser). I thought I'd say a word about what's happening with that. Graphics and sound have always been our games' great weak point. Graphics are expensive. Hand-drawn graphics are very expensive. So it was the greatest thing ever when we figured out how to use Poser. We are able to make reasonably neat animated figures (Linda does most of this btw) without spending a bajillion dollars. But we are limited by the fact that it takes a lot of time to make them, and by the availability of premade models we can plug into Poser. This is why 3 of the PCs in Avernum 4 look so Geneforgy. We just didn't have time to make new PC models from scratch. As it was, we were rendering stuff right up to the release date. At this point, Poser icons are the best solution we can find to a very real problem. And, to be honest, I really like them. The sliths and nephils in Avernum 4 are, in my opinion, the best those races ever looked. The one thing that still causes me pain, however, is the chitrachs in Avernum 4. Having them look like clawbugs is Weak Sauce. But I wrote them into the game before I realized that I couldn't find a different, decent Poser model for a weird bug. The MOMENT I find one, that clawbug is SO out of there. - Jeff Vogel

"Jeff is highly misanthropic and values his independence." Oh, not "highly". You'd like me if you met me. I greatly appreciate every bit of word of mouth people give me, but I wouldn't go out of my way to do it. I resist the characterization, by the way, that I've gotten so lazy in plotting. Though Geneforge 3 had a lot of the same story structure as 1 and 2, I think there was enough neat stuff in there to let me sleep at night. The character of Litalia and the whole Dhonal's Isle thing in particular. Geneforge 4 will go heavy in the opposite direction from Avernum 4, by the way. Avernum 4 was a simpler combat game because that was what I felt like writing. Now I want to write a cool story with lots of funky scripted events. - Jeff Vogel

There won't ever be an editor for Avernum 4, but I am strongly considering relenting for Avernum 5, should it be written. (And, considering how crazy much Avernum 4 we're selling, Avernum 5 seems a good bet.) - Jeff Vogel

Very interesting stuff. Thanks for posting that report. I am happy that singletons are workable with lots of care and thought. It's one way for the really jaded, super-skilled Avernum players to still find a challenge. - Jeff Vogel

Very interesting stuff. Thanks for posting that report. I am happy that singletons are workable with lots of care and thought. It's one way for the really jaded, super-skilled Avernum players to still find a challenge. - Jeff Vogel

This bug will be fixed in v1.0.1, which will be out sooner or later. I'm not freaking out over it. Though it does give me a giggle that someone would be so desperate to save a lousy 25 bucks that they'd spend the whole game wandering in the dark. - Jeff Vogel

My customer base is about 60/40 Windows/Mac. I write games Mac first because I am far more proficient with Macintoshes than Windows, and the development tools I like most work best on Macs. So my games get done much quicker if I write them on Macs. If I wrote my games on Windows, it'd take longer to get them done, so you'd still end up waiting. THIS IS NOT ME SAYING MAC IS BETTER THAN WINDOWS OR VISE VERSA. Don't start that argument. It's just my personal work thing. - Jeff Vogel