Mea Tulpa

I never really saw E2 as an attempt followed by a surrender. To me at least it seems clear that E2 was always planned as it was. Really, what was Prossis-Bok going to say, "okay, we know Exile didn't do it, but we're only dissolving the barriers in the Eastern Gallery"? The game flows fine. The islands of G3 were the first real implementation of forced chapters, though I would trace the idea back to E3, with its provinces each with its own unique enemy type and major quest. Regardless, G1 and G2 did not have anything remotely resembling chapters, unless you count the demo area as a chapter.

Some of Avernum's closest cousins are game-novel pairs, though. The Pool of Radiance series (and I think the Dark Queen of Krynn series as well, and maybe a few others) were novels and games. IIRC some of the novels predated the corresponding games, while some of the games predated the corresponding novels. The novels actually sold quite well. The games weren't any more novelish than Avernum, really; the novels just included characters and details not in the games, and left out other game elements.

Originally Posted By: Feo Takahari While I can play both earlier and later Avernum games, I've certainly been rendered incapable of liking most RPGs not by Spiderweb. ''Two Worlds'', ''Mass Effect'', and other hybrids are good, and the ''Final Fantasy'' series can get me to hang on to the end based on storyline... If you like FF storylines and Spiderweb style mechanics, it sounds like you really need to download an SNES emulator. There's a huge trove of SNES RPGs that lie between those two poles.

No. In most games at least, not sure they all worked this way, Sluggish permanently reduced AP while Fast on Feet only provided a chance of it increasing, so the net effect is negative.

Cursed items were an import from Wizardry, I'd imagine -- the other major influence Jeff has cited, besides Ultima -- in which they made somewhat more sense, due to longer and more dangerous dungeon treks, vastly more expensive or risky identification, and more limited inventory slots.

It is probably possible to do this by changing one of the values in the weapon definition. I'm not sure about that, though.

The key point to remember is that the special skills do not unlock based on your actual score in Spellcraft (or whatever). They unlocked based on HOW MANY POINTS YOU HAVE BOUGHT in Spellcraft (or whatever). Bonuses from items, races, and advantages do not contribute, and neither do the initial 2 points you get in each basic stat. This topic has been discussed a million times before, and the answer is always the same. No, you have not discovered some special new bug; you are either overlooking something or you are using a list of special skill prerequisites that is erroneous.

You need to find a trainer in a town. Talk to the trainer, and you can get the option to buy training. (You really do need to talk to people in Exile.) Most of the towns in the starting area should have trainers. Silvar definitely does, in the upper right hand corner IIRC.

Originally Posted By: Thuryl Or to add OS X compatibility for people who can't use Classic and don't want to use emulators. Because this has worked so well for BoE. Not to bash on the OBoE people -- I think what they're doing is awesome. But it's been two years now and I have yet to see any mostly stable, public OBoE release that people can download-decompress-and-run as could be done with BoE back in the day (and as can still be done with BoE if you have Basilisk ][ set up already).

Other than not having to register, what would be the point of open-sourcing it?

The trilogy has been available as a bundle for over a decade. The price of the bundle has been lowered at least once in that time. Blades of Exile, meanwhile, has been released in open source.

20 days has definitely been done with no editor use. I think that was Drakey's record, which I misremembered at some point as one week (that may be what you are thinking of, Alo).

The custom save dialog is extremely irritating. Personally, I don't understand how it's a good thing to force people to hit "delete" individually for every letter they want to delete, particularly when you CAN'T start out with a blank, ever.

The 4 AP system was added into Exile 1 pretty shortly after its original release, and long before Exile 2. Play Exile 1 with 1 AP, and you begin to realize just how much it owes to Ultima III...

I doubt Jeff would give permission. If you really want to play the Exile games (like me) there are much easier ways to accomplish that, than remaking them in BoE.

Also because the BoE source code, as released, would not compile for most people (or possibly all people, I can't remember). Even now finding a stable release of OBoE is not easy if you aren't already part of the Blades community.

The gazer has weak physical resist, it's true, but the War Trall's attack is stultifyingly low damage in G4 against any enemy. Just make wingbolts.

War Tralls are pretty bad in G4. Just make Wingbolts.

...except for a few ways in which s/he doesn't. The PC from G3 fits the facts about equally well.

Vent, I know this thread is still active, but you are replying to posts people made five MONTHS ago! In the end, everybody has different opinions on what they like and don't like about the user interface, so it's a bit strange to say your opinion should matter more than somebody else's. Given the number of times you are calling everything about the game "ugly", it seems that you may not be the target audience for the games, anyway...

If it's anything like every single other Spiderweb game from Exile to Geneforge, casting repeated blesses will increase the effect strength if you are casting at low skill, but there is a fairly low ceiling on the effect strength, beyond which only duration is increased when you layer the effect.

It should go in the Geneforge Resources page, not Strategy Central. As I said before, BloodMoon, SC is for strategy.

I empathize with your minitel frustration. Good riddance!

First Aid is quite astoundingly good in A4. It's more balanced in A5 and therefore less worthwhile.

From what I've seen Jeff say, people tend to exaggerate the "bombiness" of BoA. BoA bombed in the sense that it sold worse than A3, but took much longer to develop. I don't think the issue is that *nobody* bought it. That said, repackaging BoA (at the same price) with hand-picked scenarios and calling it BoA Gold sounds like a great way to advertise it and get some more revenue out of it. That almost sounds worth emailing Jeff about.