Spidweb

DEAD_STATE Not Always Called What a character's character id is -1 (which happens, among other times, when a creature is in an outdoor combat or made by a splitting monster), its DEAD_STATE is not called when it died. DEAD_STATE is called normally for normal creatures. This will definitely be fixed when the Blades scenario format is upgraded in May or June. When this happens, other suggested changes will be made (including, for example, addition of a get_energy call).

Will try to put out 1.0.1 of the editor soon. I will fix broken outdoor section importing, add some minor fixes, and give improved documentation. Windows editor is ported. Windows game porting is well along. Hopefully, the Windows version will be out in 2-3 months.

Actually, I will add this. "If I were you, I would make strides to alienate your designer community a LOT less -- there's a HUGE amount of discontent with your attitude among the best designers and they do NOT grow on trees." Hrmm. Looking back at my posts, it strikes me that my disagreements are very mild and I was very complimentary of Drakefyre's post ("excellent article" were the words I used). I do not see what I have said in this thread to justify anger, alienation, or any reaction more strong than "Hmm. I disagree with his opinion. Oh well." Don't be so mad at me all the time. I'm just a guy sitting in his basement. You'd like me if you met me.

"Further evidence that Jeff Vogel doesn't have any idea what the Blades audience is." The Blades audience is people who sent me a credit card number. Look. The only really good way to write a really good scenario is to write what you want to play. If you are only comfortable writing plot-heavy stuff, rock on. The only point I am making (and I feel it is a very mild point and I'm on pretty safe ground making it) is that a large portion of your potential Blades-playing audience mainly gets off on hitting things. Trust me. I read their fan mail. That's all I have to way on the age-old Plot Versus Carnage rpg debate. Back to porting. - Jeff

"The purpose of Blades is to tell a story FIRST and make a fun game to play SECOND" Heh. This quote is going up on my wall. The idea that anyone writing a game would purposefully put fun second is, I admit, alien to me. You will have to remember that any advice I give is tinted by the community I write for. Consider Geneforge. That game has as elaborate and detailed a plot as anything I have ever done. But a huge portion of the player base is mainly excited by the ability to have a bunch of pet dinosaurs and burn everything to the ground. That is why I was very careful to make sure that the plot does not get overmuch in the way of the people who have no interest in it. It's been quite a success. Or, to put it another way, a considerably part of my income comes from parents on behalf of their eight year olds. Sometimes, I get ideas for really plot heavy, intricate story games. I tend to discard them, as writing too many games like that would cause me to end up losing my house. And, while ratings of scenarios are interesting, it is important to remember what any statistician can tell you: self-selecting samples are invalid. The people most likely to enjoy carnage-rich scenarios are arguably the people least likely to get into message board discussions about them. But one person's opinion (mine or yours) won't make any difference. Just write what you want to play, and then hope that the audience is there. - Jeff

Another excellent article. When I am stuck designing an area or making the plot of a game, I always find ideas by returning to basics. "Who is here? What do they want? How are they going about getting it? Where do they live? What do they do from day to day?" In answering these questions, I always get ideas. I would only warn people not to let the tail wag the dog. Most people play Blades to beat up monsters and get phat lewtz. You need to come up with a reason why the Evil Monsters are in such and such an area, but don't feel the need to come up with something completely rational and bulletproof. My all purpose excuse is the "Area on the edge of the Empire." It is better to have lots of fun and action in an irrational setting than a scrupulously designed and plotted storyline that is on the dull side. Heck, the Roman Empire controlled more of the civilized world more totally than practically any empire ever, and there were still plenty of wild areas far from the core that needed the occasional pacifying. But Drakefyre is still 100% right here. Plotting and asying "Why?" are a marvelous tool and an opportunity. Thinking along the lines above will make designing a good scenario much easier. - Jeff

There is no call to actually instantly boot the party out of a town. The best you can do is teleport them to a location at which they are then forced to walk out. - Jeff

I think I can answer this one. Some graphics programs (AppleWorks/ClarisWorks, for example) can set the PICT's bounding rectangle in a weird way when the graphic is copied out of the application. This can cause this behavior. To fix it, in your graphics program, shift the icon so it is at the far upper left corner before you copy-paste it into the resource file. (In other words, move it to it's as far up and left as it can go without shifting off the edge.) - Jeff

I suggest going beck to section 1.1, rereading it, and going through all the steps in it. Scenario design is not easy, not at all. It's a complicated system. But it is possible, with not much work, to make simple scenarios. Go back to the step by step guide in 1.1 and work through it. Make simple scenarios and play through them yourself for fun for a little while. Only then, when you're comfortable with the basics, move to the scary stuff beyond.

Look at the script t9griffon.txt in Diplomacy of the Dead. I think this is along the lines of what you're looking for. The main risk is that the party will do so much damage in a round that the monster will die before it gets a chance to become friendly. If you really, really want this creature to live, you might want to have scripts watch for the creature being killed and respawn it if it dies before it has a chance to become friendly.

First, check the description at the top of the script. Frequently, there is a value you can give to a memory cell to make the monster immobile. For example, in the guard.txt script, setting memory cell 0 to 1 or 2 gives various flavors of immobility. Second, the set_mobility call can stop any monster in its tracks permanently. Third, you can make any monster never move by never giving it any calls that might make it move. This includes do_attack, by the way. If you want the monster to use regular attacks, you'll need to use set_mobility.

Yes. Humans are species 0.

In Mac BoA v1.0, all missiles have a chance of appearing on the floor. There's a 50% of a missile that misses landing. A missile fired by a PC that hits has a 60% chance of appearing on the floor. A missile fired by an NPC that hits has a 10% chance. In all later versions of BoA, only non-magical missiles will appear on the floor. They will only appear in the case of a miss, 50% of the time.

Just to play it safe, it is generally best to, after making a change, load a save file outside the town and enter the town. If the ONLY thing you change is a town script, reloading a save file will reload all the scripts in the town. If you chance a scenario script (or scenario data script), loading a save file in that scenario will cause those changes to be loaded.

On one hand, Exile 3 has almost 100 outdoor sections, so it's certainly doable. On the other hand, when I was done, I said "Never again." - Jeff

I read the script. That's pretty damn cool. - Jeff

"Would there be any way to tie one monster's effectiveness to another monster? Say you've got this huge, beefed-up magical bodyguard critter that protects a physically frail spellcaster. Would there be any way to suddenly cripple such bodyguard creature(s) if the spellcaster is killed before they are? (the spellcaster is the source of their power- would be explained in plot/dialogue)" Absolutely. For an example of this, look at the room with the 10 golems in it in Khoth's fortress in Za-Khazi run. The demon golem heals itself constantly until all of its golems are dead.

Excellent article. A few suggestions I would add. Even the strongest creature is weak if it's by itself. The best way to spice up an encounter or make it more challenging is to add friends. If a creature isn't doing enough damage to affect players, increase the strength or melee weapons skill. The damage from innate attacks (like clawing and biting) is increased by melee weapons skill. Finally, an advanced trick. You can give a creature special abilities or defenses by giving it an item. If you don't want the get that item, you can erase it by using the destroy_char_item call in the DEAD_STATE state. (Note there is a bug with this call. You can't use ME for which_char. Get the creature's number using my_number.)

Sometimes I look at how I did something, shake my head sadly, and say "What was I thinking?" This is one of those cases. Having floor with a powerful effect have almost no chance of inflicting it? What? In all versions of BoA after Mac v1.0, swamp and disease terrain will have a straight up 50% chance of inflicting their effect. The strength of the ability is the number of levels of poison/disease that are given.

This modification is unlikely. However, you can achieve the same effect by giving the creature high resistance to everything but cold. Then adjust the monster's hit points as desired.

Floors have these four properties: fl_is_water, fl_is_floor, fl_is_ground and fl_is_rough. Am I right in assuming that a floor can only have one of these? None of them stack, right? A floor can have any or all of these properties. Also, what do the docs mean when they say "other terrain types will conform to it when painting terrain in the editor" about the fl_is_water, fl_is_floor and fl_is_rough properties? I don't understand that sentance... If you draw some water in the editor, the editor will automatically adjust it so the shore lines up. That's what is meant by conforming. And last (hopefully), can floors combine animation and shimmering? Try it. It should work.

There are many things I wanted to do, but I couldn't, becaused the engine was built a certain way and it would have taken a bit of work. This is number one on the list. :-( There are ways around this. 1. Make the creature with spawn_creature. 2. Make the creature type you are making with place_monster have a default script made by you, and make that default script do what you want it to do.

"In other words, if my_current_message <> 0, I can be sure this is the second time this script has been called this turn (unless the script is on a 8-turn cycle)." Not necessarily. There are a number of things that can cause a script to be called in a turn. A ritual of sanctification, or someone walking on it, or its blocking someone's movement can cause it to be called. Also, in a combat turn, scripts are called every time someone moves (so if someone moves 5 spaces, the terrain scripts are called 5 times). Your scripts need to be robust enough to work properly no matter how many times in a turn they are called. "So, I can only count on variables staying the same in a single state (and any other states I call in that state)?" A variable in a script is only visible in that script, but anywhere in that script. (So it can be accessed in multiple states.) When the script is unloaded (for example, a town script when you leave that town), that variable's value is forgotten. Any value you want the game to remember should be stored in a Stuff Done Flag.

Stuffit Expander for Windows is a teeny program. You only need to download the editor, not the whole demo. And both documentation formats are easily Windows readable. Of course, some intrepid user could take the documentation out and make it available as a single download, I suppose.

"Not distributing the editor with the demo version would be a foolish thing to do anyway." Heh. You don't get to pay our bandwidth fees.