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Punctuation rains from the heavens

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Everything posted by Punctuation rains from the heavens

  1. This in no way requires there to be two different rolls. It could easily be set up so that a different message is displayed depending on what the roll result is. Say there's a base hit chance of 80%, a to-hit bonus of +10% and an evasion score of 20%. You might get: 1-70: hit 71-90: dodge 91-00: miss As I've said before, I'm happy to acknowledge that the issue is ambiguous. My problem is with stating that it is two rolls with the same definitiveness that we talk about other game mechanics that we do have a pretty conclusive understanding of. We've had issues with urban legends about game mechanics before: remember the "invisible -36% Torment armor penalty" that turns out to never have existed, but that we all thought was a thing for years, in part because it was presented so confidently? That led to a lot of counterproductive advice being given out.
  2. Hit chance and evasion are almost certainly ONE CHECK. It has been one check in every other Spiderweb game ever released. Base hit chance + all hit bonuses - all evasion bonuses. Clearly, dodging happens more often in this game, and that has led some people to conclude that there are two different checks. But other changes could lead to the same behavior. And while Jeff hasn't addressed this directly, other things he's written strongly imply that it's just one check. On Steam he wrote, answering a player who wanted to "lower enemies evasion": "Most enemies should have a pretty low evasion, and there are a lot of items that increase hit chance." That's far more conclusive than anything anyone has said to support this "two checks" hypothesis. Please stop presenting it as fact. It's not.
  3. Yup. That's a thing, and is one of the biggest reasons singletons were so popular in those days.
  4. Are you in a fort? You can only change your skill setup (which includes using new skill pts from levelling up) when in a fort.
  5. Congrats on getting it this far! What does the mod do?
  6. Thanks for the attempt to "both sides" this but you're comparing apples and oranges. You are demanding a very specific interpretation, with no evidence. I'm saying that interpretation doesn't fit, because it's very specific and there's no evidence. This is not a situation where we throw up our hands and say "who knows, it's 50/50 who's right." Basically all of that is inaccurate. And I'm now done arguing about it.
  7. I strongly disagree about the intentionality here. I don't really want to argue it ad nauseam. You're imagining a way it could have happened, acknowledging that there is no evidence for it happening that way, and basically just declaring that you think it's most likely because... I have no idea why. I also don't know why you're analyzing the dialogue data in terms of the BoE interface given that the high likelihood that the data was compiled either (a) directly with ResEdit or another resource editor, or (b) in a word processor. The Goosnargh reference is really interesting. I've been trying and trying to connect Sastor to anything relevant, but haven't managed to.
  8. They key thing linking Waldby and Goosenargh is that the "fish" response is in exactly the same place in their dialogue data -- at the end. It just looks like it defaulted there for whatever reason (quite plausible as a copy-paste accident, especially with the likelihood that an interface like ResEdit was used to compile some of this text; and I think the chance that Jeff kept 150 different text files for all the town dialogue, given that the engine did not use that structure, is close to zero), and Waldby didn't end up with quite enough sets of dialogue to overwrite it. The coding is similar, but Goosenargh has a hardcoded reaction for that keyword (i.e., you get different responses depending on a flag) while Waldby does not. There's zero evidence of intent here. It's not a joke, not a reference. And as you point out, functionality already existed to get a new set of items with a keypress. So I have a hard time seeing this as an intentional easter egg, rather than basically just a typo. It's certainly plausible that passing on 'skulls' was intended to offer a reward. That would only strengthen the case that it is not intended for 'fish' to have that effect. Since what 'fish' triggers is clearly not an easter egg when it is triggered in the remakes. Furthermore, the "second shop" in both remakes is not accessed by the word 'fish' or anything related in any way to fish. This is to be contrasted with all the actual easter eggs, references, and in-jokes, that were overwhelmingly left in the remakes; see also easter eggs whose form changed but whose trigger remained the same.
  9. Does fish actually bring up a second shop, or is it just another way to access the first? In the data it's coded with the same shop number. (It looks like it ended up there as an artifact leftover from, apparently, Goosenargh's dialogue data. On that basis I'd lean towards saying it's an unintended option rather than an easter egg.)
  10. The really confusing thing about this one is that Exile II didn't have save slots. It just had save files...
  11. I've added some new Exile II hidden text that Ess-Eschas found (as well as some others that I apparently found years ago and then forgot about). Anyone have other easter eggs that should go on the list? I'm sure I've heard others that aren't here...
  12. Would it be a terrible pun to suggest that the wandering slimes encounter split into two identical encounters? Yes? Would it be a terrible pun to suggest that the wandering slimes encounter split into two identical encounters? Yes?
  13. I think it's possible that what someone was experiencing, was the engine taking turns for enemies who are on other parts of the level and not visible on-screen. This is often quite noticeable at the start of a dungeon.
  14. D&D was one of the big influences on early CRPGs. Ultima and Wizardry were most frequently cited as influences, by Jeff, in the Exile days. I'm going to disagree with the "it works" part. I mean, yes, to a certain degree there are obvious correlations: if you're attacking in melee, you're going to be positioned to take hits in melee, so boosting offense and defense together makes sense. But Exile's mechanics are not flat at all; the optimal way to do things often flies in the face of traditional archetypes. Early Strength is useful for magic-users (for the free HP at level-up) and some spell levels at character creation is nice for anyone (free SP). It's generally more productive to have warriors learn some Arcane Lore than having just mages specialize in it. etc.
  15. Dyne's Paliside has a passive ability called "Shield Ally", doesn't it? +2 to Shield Ally. That kinda seems like it could explain this +10% to physical evasion that only shows up for the non-prince PCs when they are near him.
  16. This is sort of the opposite of what Spiderweb does, though. Jeff says pretty frequently that he thinks his writing is his best asset as a game-maker. He may be underselling some of his other talents, for sure... but it's hard to see this as a game he would want to make. Also, Dark Souls as an example is kind of telling... that's not exactly a turn-based RPG. I think you just want a different genre.
  17. Are any of your characters wearing the Ruby Pendant or Dyne's Palisade?
  18. a few things are clear here: 1) Tower of Might doesn't apply unless the character who has it is on the map. Even for them. This is why the Vol PC gets +15/+15 in battle compared to in a fort. 2) Something is causing physical evasion to go up an extra +10, for everyone who's not the royal PC, when the party is clustered. #2 seems more likely to be a separate effect, than a bug in Tower of Might, given that it doesn't affect the royal PC, and also doesn't affect the Vol PC when they are the only one in range for Tower of Might. I suggest that in fact this +10 is also being applied to the royal PC -- but it's being generated by the royal PC, so there's no scenario in which we see it not being applied. If proximity to the royal PC is responsible, that explains why this +10 looks like it's coming and going with Tower of Might. But it's not.
  19. OK, so to translate for the new folks here: This is something people think would be cool, but no one is actually working on it. For context, OBoE has been in development for 12 years now.
  20. ADoS, is that "goal" something CM is actually working on, or is it just an idea that got discussed at some point? I'd hate for anyone to get their hopes up.
  21. Those particular iMacs shipped with the GeForce card -- I'm not sure they had the old Intel integrated graphics card that so many of us have such ugly memories of. I don't think it's a given that this is a GPU issue.
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