Spidweb

Some of the calls bounds check everything the designer does, and some don't. In general, though, you shouldn't be checking the terrain for non-existant spaces, modifying the inventory for non-existant characters, and so on. - Jeff

I'll see about having thrown missiles process magical ability damage properly in the next update. - Jeff

Well, actually, beta testing for Windows Blades of Avernunm has been going for 2 weeks or so, but we're about to open up our beta tester application form for a clump of new Windows testers. I'd like some experienced editor hands in on it, so if you're interested, watch the form. Bear in mind that beta testers can't be in the scenario design contest. - Jeff

"You are exiting the town and coming back to test, aren't you? I've found you definitely have to do that if you're changing the blocked/not blocked status of terrains/floors. " This could very well be the problem. The game keeps track of what spaces are blocked in an array, and it doesn't constantly recalculate it for obvious performance reasons.

That seems peculiar. Not sure why the extra height would affect it. Try commenting out the lines that add the second icon, and see if it starts to work.

This call is indeed broken. It will be unbroken for the new scenario format.

The .pdf will be updated far less often than the .doc because making .pdf files is a pain in the ass. You can't edit them like you can edit text.

This seems real close to how I wanted the glowing green gates in VoDT to work. Item. Use it. Checks for nearby terrain that crumbles/opens/changes and alters it. May take a little kludging to get it to also affect other terrain types you want to crumble (namely, checking for them one by one). I promised that the editor would be powerful, not elegant.

This is an odd one. I have never had any problem at all with items I placed in a town in the editor not being there. Try loading a save file from before you ever enter the town with the missing items, enter the town, and see if the items are there then. Preset items in a town are only ever placed the very first tiem you enter the town.

Damn it! I know I added this to the Docs, but it's not there now. Must have lost it in a crash. Added this to custom items ... "Some active abilities are spells or require targeting a foe. An item can only have one such ability. If it has more than one, only the last one will take effect."

Keep an eye on http://www.avernum.com/blades/workshop/editortechsupp.html One of the bug report thingies is about this call. - Jeff

I updated the description of this call in the docs: short party_size() - Returns the number of living, present characters in the party.

" Probably a dumb question, but can you then change dialogue nodes with this?" Sort of. Remember, you can set dialogue with the message_dialog call. That's sort of what you'll need to do. - Jeff

Just some notes about what is going in when Windows Blades is out (and a Mac update is released to match it). Please do not start incorporating these new calls yet. Wait until you're developing with the new version of the editor. I'll be adding get_energy and all calls missing from the old version. The game should correctly end a player's turn in combat when he/she uses a custom ability that drains action points. I am adding advanced string building calls. Here is the current text that will go into the docs: String Manipulation Calls These calls are designed to give the scenario designer a lot more control over the text displayed to the player. They’re a little complicated, but much more powerful. Blades of Avernum maintains a string buffer. It is a 255 character long chunk of text in memory. You can clear this buffer, append chunks of text to it, and then dump the buffer into a string variable. For example, here is a bit of code. string sample_string clear_buffer(); // empties out the string buffer. append_string("Hello, "); // puts this text into the buffer append_string("friend."); // adds this text to the end of the buffer get_buffer_text(sample_string); // the buffer is copied into string variable sample_string print_str(sample_string); // prints "Hello, friend." to the text area void append_char_name(short which_char) – Appends the name of the character which_char to the end of the string buffer. void append_number(short num) – Appends the number num to the end of the string buffer. void append_string(string source_string) – Appends the text source_string to the end of the string buffer. If the result would be longer than 255 characters, the text is truncated. void clear_buffer() – Empties the text buffer. Sets it to a blank string. void get_buffer_text(string dest_string) – Dest_string must be a string variable. Copies the text in the buffer into dest_string.

I have no idea what's happening here, but I do know this: when someone searches a container and block_entry is called, that only affects whether the party is able to get the objects in the container. When searching, block_entry does not affect movement at all. If you are using set_terrain on the space, that the original terrain type was a container really shouldn't affect whether the space can be walked into or not. Odd.

Yep. Whenever you use set_total_visibility to make everything visible, always, always, always have a matching call turning total visibility off. - Jeff

Gotcha. Thanks! - Jeff

If you would like your article posted to our website please email it to blades@spiderwebsoftware.com in plain text. I think it might be useful.

Originally, I wanted to have a page on the Avernum site where we would provide tons of new, interesting scripts. I see now that this won't work. We don't feel comfortable doing this unless we can check over and test the scripts, and we won't have time for that. So, instead, we're going to have a page with links to Blades of Avernum sites. Since people are already making sites with scripts, graphics, and so on, we'll link to them. There are a lot of sites we should link to that we don't yet. Feel free to post links here or E-mail them to spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com and we'll put them up. - Jeff

When you remove an item in a pack, all items above it shift down. So if you destroy item 18, say, item 19 shifts down into 18's spot. - Jeff

This call is currently broken. It will be implemented properly when I upgrade the scenario format. - Jeff

The legal range for a memory cell is -32767 to 32768.

Blades of Avernum is designed so any player can take any party into any scenario. The tools given to scenario designers to circumvent this are very limited. There is currently no way to determine the gender of a character. - Jeff

I've been chasing down annoying graphics glitches in Panther. I have a beta v1.0.1 patch available. Before I made it a big public patch, I wanted to see how it interacted with new scenarios. if you'd like to try out the advance v1.0.1, it's in ftp://ftp.spiderwebsoftware.com/temp/ If you try it, I've really appreciate it if you dropped me a line at spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com. Feel free to write even if it works fine. Knowing it works for people is important. Have a nice weekend. We have babysitting and are fleeing to Norwescon, a science fiction convention near Seattle.

Another in a long list of things I should have documented but forgot to. When a monster is killed, any item in its inventory that has a value of less than 100 coins and is not magic has a 40% chance of disappearing instead of dropping on the ground. This was put in to keep the town's item buffer from being swamped by useless items (and keeping the player from having to sort through lots of trash). If you want the party to find an item for sure, make it magic or high value, place it with put_item_on_spot when the creature dies, or place in in the town, not on a character. - Jeff