Men are from Slars

Originally Posted By: Evnissyen There's a reason -- don't ask me to pinpoint it exactly -- Then don't argue with its rebuttal. Seriously, if you're not willing to articulate your own reasoning, why should we pay any attention to the conclusions you draw? To translate: You: I believe X. Others: X is wrong, because Y. You: I still believe X, but I can't tell you exactly why.

Summoning is great for singletons. On harder difficulties it is still quite tricky keeping the summons alive, buffed, etc. But they help a lot.

To play devil's advocate for a minute, the biological damage caused by exposure to flame or extreme cold can sometimes be pretty similar. However, unless the resistances are replaced by "Resist Burns," "Resist Shock," "Resist Lacerations," and the like, this is pretty irrelevant.

It has already been suggested (by Clois in G1, among others) that serviles are just shaped humans. Since creations apparently come about by modifying the tiny scrolls of already existing creatures, this seems pretty reasonable.

Elves also tend to be represented as highly intelligent and often magically apt. Elves also usually have lifespans in the hundreds of years. This definitely does not describe nephilim. (And in Tolkien, for that matter, elves are actually large and strong and obnoxiously good at everything.) It's not halberds, it's two-tined spears and javelins. And dwarves typically sing lots of songs and drink lots of drink. More importantly, dwarves tend to have serious trouble with magic, whereas the sliths are represented -- particularly in Exile 1 and 2 -- as being possibly more magically apt than humans. There are some parallels, but I think they basically boil down to "dex-oriented race" and "str-oriented race" -- while nearly everything else is not congruent.

Thanks for correcting me on G2 - I forgot about those! Shows you what I was paying attention to...

Didn't G1 have an one-shot instant-reputation-changing servile like Darian did in G2 and G3? I can't remember if it was Clois or Darian or someone else, though.

Actually, that's not really true. "Crafting" in the sense of handing items to a machine/person/anvil and getting something else in return exists in each game, but it is very limited in the first two -- G1 just has machines that make crystals and wands, and G2 just has people that make stuff like that plus one artifact constructed by Learned Darian. Anvils with their plethora of artifacts and enhancements exist only from G3 onward.

I read Ender's Game when very young. At the time I had never heard "bugger" spoken, and I had never seen "booger" written, so I got the idea that "bugger" meant "booger" and spent the whole book picturing this race of giant boogers.

Originally Posted By: Evnissyen Slarty: Because players can't play fyoras, therefore we don't have to worry about a fyora's natural (or unnatural, for that matter) resistances. (Nor can we even affect our own creations' resistances, or fit them with armor.) A creation's resistances are not relevant to a player's resistances. No, they aren't relevant to a player's resistances -- they are relevant to his attacks! Attacking a fyora with bolt of fire is less effective; attacking a wingbolt with kill, sucks. So players absolutely DO have to worry about a fyora's resistances. Frankly, I think the nerve you hit is your own.

I really don't see how fire and cold are any more "the same type of resistance" than the others are. Heat and cold both cause burns, but so do acid and electricity. Why does separating energy "add to the experience" but separating cold is "obstructive" and "tiresome"? This seems a completely arbitrary conclusion. And I will ask again: Why do you want to allow fyoras to resist fire better than cold, but you don't want to allow fire-based armor to do the same thing?

Less variety of language is not necessarily simpler. And that's really all we're talking about here, particularly given how bad most resistance-granting equipment is, particularly for cold and fire. The mechanics are the same for cold and fire damage as well as for energy damage, poison and acid flavored attacks (rather than the status effects) and in fact, the mechanics are exactly the same for physical attacks, other than the fact that "armor" is not called a resistance on the character sheet. But I suspect you would agree that just having ONE resistance stat for ALL damage, including physical attacks, would be too shallow. So the question is how much diversity is needed. Lumping fire and cold together seems just as arbitrary to me as keeping them separate, or lumping fire/cold/elec together, etc. But is having seven resistances really "obstructive" and "tiresome"? At any rate, I have a hard time seeing why you want to allow fyoras to resist fire better than cold, but you don't want to allow fire-based armor to do the same thing.

A4 and A5 work exactly the same way the Geneforge series does, when it comes to attacking friendly creatures.

I have to imagine that if canister traits were passed on to children, we'd have heard about it at least once by now. Certainly in Drypeak Valley there were canister users who had plenty of time to have kids. The drayk and drakon "reshaping" is always discussed quite distinctly from canister use, so I don't think they can be lumped together. (Particularly since the factions that first had drayks reshaping themselves did not have the technology to create canisters.)

Greta does have additional background in G3.

For the mac version, you need to open the appropriate files with a resource editor, such as ResEdit. You also need to open to replacement graphics (with anything). Locate the PICT resources containing the graphics you need to replace. Copy the replacement picture, select the picture you are replacing, and paste. Repeat for all the pictures and you're done.

G4, On Litalia: "You can see that she has been heavily modified. She has used many canisters. Perhaps the Geneforge as well. She has the vacant stare, the glowing eyes, the waxy skin. But she is also calmer, more serene, than those so heavily remade." She says: "I did many things. Terrible things. We all did... This haste kept us from acting... As justly as we could." "I stopped using the canisters. I did not like the effect they have... Our bodies were not meant to be changed so... I am beginning to sound like a Trakovite, or a similar idiot. No. I simply stopped using the canisters. And I began to rebuild myself... I studied and relearned how to have emotions. And how to be patient. When not giving orders, I practice being a person again." "The Trakovites may be right. They may be wise, and virtuous, and ahead of their time."

Why shouldn't they be? What exactly does it take away that fire and cold are separate resists? And doesn't it make sense that a drayk takes reduced damage from fireballs but a cryodrayk does not? As far as poison and acid, the difference is a bit historical. E1 and E2 only had poison. E3 introduced acid and it was very different at the time: faster-acting and typically doing very high damage. Edit: Sniped. I suppose this makes me the apocalypse.

Originally Posted By: Rowen I would like to see a open area like from A1 or A3 where I could walk to amost anywhere. the only thing that gives you a since of direction was that the mosters will kill you if you go to far out to fast. But it gave me that sort of "open rpg" feel when I played them. Jeff has said that he's not doing that kind of totally open-ended approach anymore, because it's too hard to maintain game balance.

Realistically, how many complete beginners are going to be using OBoE in the near future?

Greta was certainly not a redundant Litalia character. First, because Greta visibly disagrees with a lot of what the Drakons are doing, but goes along with it because she sees no other choice -- resisting the Drakons would be impractical. Second, because Litalia is remarkably different in G4 than she was in G3. She is in fact the only character in the entire series to provide any serious hope of healing the effects of unbridled shaping and canister use; a rather unlikely beacon of hope.

Geneforge 1 has much more vivid descriptions of what exactly the canisters do to you. As I recall, it sounds very much like what you suggest. It does say very clearly that although the effect may be similar to learning a spell by studying it (or a skill by practicing it) that the mechanism by which it happens is different.

Presumably you can just test on a copy of an existing savegame?

The problem is that then there is no way to identify which version has the bug and which doesn't except by opening up the scenario files and looking. If nothing else, I would increment the version number by 0.0.1 in a prominent place (or assign a new 1.0.1 number).

Emphasis on CLEARLY MARKED AS AN EDITED VERSION. That goes for the description, file name, and readme, and it goes double for any site you upload it to.