Aran

Experience is awarded whenever a monster is killed. If more than one opponents are killed in a battle, the experience is added each time one dies.

So once the gif patent expires in August, that'll be it, right? No more legal restrictions? Or will they still try to come after you if they can prove you have used gif files before that date?

Forgive me for not being intimate with patent law, but is there still a risk in using something the patent of which has expired? Can the patent be renewed? Also, I am on a PC and have a program named StuffIt that did not cost me anything - I might have given them an email address when I downloaded, but it wasn't one I use. It's the only program that lets me make and unzip .rar files. However, I am not sure if we are talking about the same software or the same version of it. I have never managed to decompress a .sit file with it - although I don't know whether this was because the .sit file was corrupted or the program was incompatible.

I was entering numbers at random Originally, the sample scenario was Bahssikava, attributed to Terror's Martyr and being lambasted with a 1.1 rating from Kelandon. Then, I thought I'd try something a little more... nondescript. After all, it is supposed to be filler. There are a lot of problems still to iron out on that page. For example, the small row of stars (indicating the rating) is quite vague, besides leaving an opaque white rectangle. The scenario icon is forced into 120x120 dimensions, even if that would enlarge, deform or pixellate it. But I'm in no hurry.

I suppose if there is no way to be completely safe, the easiest route could be to ignore it for now? -- Also, when I said "nothing solid in the works" five days ago, I didn't expect that to change so soon. What I have in the works is rudimentary and not even half done, but it is certainly solid (or will be once I'm finished). There's a preview picture in my sig...

So do I, by the way. Although I usually favor png instead of gif because of that patent thing I've heard, but not read a lot about. Also, the website CPeters linked to appears to be a good few years older in terms of updates than the Wikipedia entry on gifs. Therefore, if the Wiki entry says the patent expires soon, I'd be inclined to believe them...

bmp is Windows-only? I remember opening bmp files when working with a mac in school, but we might have been using a special utility or plugin for that. You got the compression formats right though. Also, gif is apparently a proprietary, patented format that png (as an open-source format) is supposed to replace. However, when I looked it up on Wikipedia just now, I read that the gif patent expires on August 11 this year.

I didn't hear about Djur's project; I meant that rather ill-fated "Center".

The image loads fine, but quite slow. I've got a T1 connection with usually between 200 KB - 500 KB per second, and anyone with a slower connection will wait even longer. The picture is about 550 KB, which most sources agree is far too large for an online picture. Out of interest, I tried converting it to a jpeg with Photoshop, and got it down to about 56 KB, or one tenth. My eyes aren't very good, but I don't see a quality decrease at the normal zoom level; the "shrunk" picture is here . -- In other news, I have taken a PHP course this week and will probably re-vamp the PPP archive/Endeavor pages when I get time this weekend. The navigation could be a lot better. Also, I've been thinking about a scenario database that could be updated by the designers themselves, which could make it far easier both for designers to notify the community about new versions and for players to find scenarios without hunting all over the place. Nothing solid in the works though, only brainstorming. After all, the last such project was... underwhelming.

Ouch. That tribute took me a while to figure out. -- Also, I'm interested in seeing your meat-based scenario when it comes out. Are you going to make the player fight a cult of militant vegetarians? A villainous necromancer who has stolen all the meat from a whole Imperial province to make flesh golems? Mmmh...

Right now I'm restricting my game style to use no magic other than healing potions, mostly because the combat seems to have gotten so awfully tedious with the auto-revival. That this would technically enable me to get more powerful spells than I would otherwise (if I were to switch to using magic now) is kind of ironic though...

I ordered, paid for and received BoA within a single half hour, but that was on a Tuesday evening (midday, Jeff's time) and before A4 was out. He's probably a lot more busy now than usually.

Have I just not got the hang of the interface yet, or did the special abilities (including alchemy, divine aid, berserk rage, etc) get axed? Entirely? o_O

Quote: Originally written by The Lurker: You may also want to try one of the best scenarios ever . Or, depending on whether you are turned off by the feeling of having your brain scraped out via your tear channels, you might not.

Unfortunately, I've found that A4 (in Windows) hogs the CPU like crazy - even when its in the task bar. Not 99%, but just as much as it can get with Firefox and Google Desktop running - which is still around 60%-70% on occasion. It doesn't freeze usually, however - only pauses briefly when changing levels, and when autosaving. It does freeze when I've got a lot of things open, but that is to be expected.

Quote: Originally written by Ephesos: Quote: Originally written by Drakefyre: The new combat effects, like being frozen. I was not a fan of freezing... if my mages can cast all kinds of fire, why does it take Divine Restoration to thaw out an adventurer? But the rest of the combat effects (dazing and stunning were particularly good to see... webs were getting old and weren't universal enough). Quote: Originally written by Prometheus: You mean to say that archery WASN'T incredibly powerful since the first Avernum? *cough* Alderague *cough* Adlerauge. In line with the other Canopy names, it's German. Eagle Eye. I like the way combat begins automatically when you see a hostile monster. It reminds me of--- oh wait, no it doesn't remind me of anything.

It's especially annoying when you are trying to navigate through pools of lava or similar things. In A2 (where I had the same problem), the Forid test (the one with the stone block) was hell. I didn't know you could avoid it by using the keyboard, though... I have to try that.

I started playing it this morning. I would be clamoring for a 0 option, but I feel I haven't played enough yet to make such a harsh judgement. So I gave it 1.

23 minutes? I feel your pain.

Quote: Originally written by Feathin Silyar: Quote: Originally written by Nora: What in the world? I was all excited for Avernum 4...and I got Geneforge. Then you downloaded the wrong one. Avernum 4 for windows is in there. http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/sarcasm

And in many of the greatest games ever, the number of distinct game graphics is limited by 256 - the size of the ASCII character set. Seriously, graphics make a game look great, but in quality RPGs - especially RPGs developed on a low budget, without an expensive team of artists to design it - they should take second place after gameplay and plot.

Quote: Originally written by The Kraken: the pass is only needed on the betas. And the full version of Blades.

Uh. Is that link supposed to work? If I remember correctly, you need a username/password combination to log in to SW's ftp site. I haven't tried the one I got when I bought BoE, but reason tells me they've changed it since. Edit: Apparently you can log in anonymously. I would guess you don't get access to the directories to the full versions in that case.

Quote: Originally written by Talonic: Quote: Originally written by Infernal666hate: I didn't know there were such oldbies with single digit post counts. >_> We exist. We're just invisible. I mean, I spend most of my time posting on Ogame forums, not here. Now if you'll kindly excuse me, I'm going to go back to waiting very very impatiently for this game to come out while ignore my Mac zealot friend's taunts. *makes grasping motions with hands* Anyone else find this creepy? o_o Lurkers all around us...

Quote: Originally written by Born Yesterday: There's no way to learn more than a monster's name, appearance, and roughly what percentage of its health it has left but the hard way. The hard way being?