Kelandon

Spam is bad, yo.

But so I am.

That has been said not just once, but in fact twice in this thread already, Brenitt-Ihrno.

EDIT: Also, I'm pretty sure your signature is in violation of the CoC.

The only illegal drug in the Avernum Trilogy is skribbane, and it only exists in A3 in the Empire. You can steal... er. Dexter in Almaria in A1 will give you a few evil quests. There's another one in A2 in (I think) Almaria, but my Classic mode is broken right now, so I can't open A2 and check.

Well, certain dialogue options won't be available to you. I don't know offhand which ones, but there are various walkthroughs that will tell you what Reputation you need to get certain missions. That's about the only reason that it matters.

EDIT: Also, if you would tone down your posting rate (ie not posting several new topics in a single forum within a few minutes of each other), that would be much appreciated. If you don't, bad things will happen to your account.

Whew, a newbie responding to a newbie.

GF1 is pretty good. Going all the way into the island was a fun experience. I think it's worth it to buy the whole game. Finding out what the Geneforge is, actually meeting certain interesting people... yeah, it was exciting, I think. Geneforge 2 was better in terms of gameplay, but I think GF1 had a better plot.

By the way, since Spiderweb has only three employees, they all post under the name Spidweb (member #1). They pretty much don't read these boards at all. So anyone you see here has no financial connection to the company.

I don't think there's anything wrong with cracking the games if you've already bought them and somehow gotten them unregistered. I'm also pretty sure that discussing such a topic is not a bannable offense, although it's fairly borderline. (Giving the locations of such cracks is, though.)

However, it's highly unnecessary, because if you just e-mail Spiderweb, they'll send you new keys relatively quickly. I got mine within a few hours.

Hey, I like this. Nice job!

Er, this page may be of some use. Also possibly the Designer\'s Forum .

From the docs:

"The custom graphics are arranged on the custom sheet in rows, 10 to each row. Each row is considered to have 10 'slots.' The first ten slots are in the top row, the next 10 slots are in the next row, and so on. The upper left graphic is considered slot 0. The top row contains slots 0 to 9 (numbered left to right), the second row contains slots 11 to 20, and so on."

Also:

"Terrain (not animated) — Place the 28 x 36 custom terrain graphic in one of the custom sheet's slots. To give a terrain type this graphic, add 1000 to the number of the slot the graphic is in, and put that number in the Terrain Picture field on the editing terrain window."

Well, you also need to change a terrain to have your custom graphic. Go to Edit Terrain Types and click on one that you want to replace with your custom terrain. For the field Terrain Picture, enter your custom graphic slot.

Specifically, "From left to right, set the buttons in the special to 5,4,3,2,0,2."

Don't turn a topic into a poll if it doesn't have to be one. Click on "New Topic," not on "New Poll," if you just have a question about the games.

Patrick knows the last part. You have to get Erika to tell you to ask him, which you may already have done.

As always, my information on A1 comes from Avernum Annotated Maps .

It's very similar to BoA's scripting language, which you can find out about by downloading the editor from the Scenario Workshop .

If nothing else, expect to be held accountable for what you say here. Also, unless you have done something substantive for the community (and a promise does not count), expect not to be considered an authority on anything.

Also there's a time delay of about three or four days before any sort of change takes effect. Unless you make a clear rhetorical distinction between a previous stance and your current one — one that doesn't just say, "Get off my back!" and actually says, "Look, I've changed my mind!" — then no one will pay attention.

I'm answering a rhetorical question, I know, but I think it may be instructive. I'm a self-admitted newbie, but I've learned the rules here very consciously.

EDIT: In other news, does a moderator feel like locking this topic? If this were General, Imban would've killed this thing a long time ago. Its very existence is the cause of the tension to which it responds.

You can't use a crystal soul.

Use a soul crystal by casting Capture Soul or Simulacrum. For information about that, post a specific question and to which game you are referring (A2 or A3).

Every Avernum game has a place where you can buy revival from the dead (and it appears in the hints to start out the game), but it varies from game to game. Which one are you playing?

EDIT: Generally, a good bet is to go to the Tower of Magi. They can help you there (except possibly in A3, not sure).

Arenax, our discussions on AIM and your posts here do not match up. No one — except apparently m's avatar over PM — has suggested a tool that would simplify scripting to the point that it would no longer have the power of writing raw script. You're arguing against people when you don't actually disagree with them.

Also, no one has suggested making such a tool mandatory for making a scenario; if someone makes it and you don't like it, don't use it.

To make a simple analogy: you write code, not assembly language. Code covers up how the computer actually thinks. Would you say that people should learn assembly language and never C? Furthermore, would you say that people should learn machine language and write code in hexadecimal rather than learning C? After all, C hardly resembles machine language, but the computer works in the machine language and C just covers it up.

You are starting to sound elitist. "People should SUFFER in order to write scenarios! If they don't understand the Appendices, they are WEAK OF SPIRIT and DON'T DESERVE TO BE DESIGNERS! If I can do it, then SO CAN THEY!"

Arenax, stop arguing against people with whom you don't actually disagree.

You can need the Crystal Key, which you can get from Solberg's Tower.

What I don't understand, Arenax, is against whom or what you're arguing. No one wants dumbed-down tools. The question is how to create tools that have the same power as handling raw script and are easier to handle.

I don't know how you manage to start bickering on every thread that you enter. I think Imban's characterization fits well: "You clearly do not play well with others."

EDIT: For instance, you may notice that no one on this thread has suggested a node-based town script editor. Why you would discuss a town script editor when you haven't finished porting your dialogue script editor or even made your custom objects script editor yet, I don't know.

One thing at a time, dude!

You can get Dispel Barrier in Squiggus. That's in the southeast of Valorim, due north of Storm Port.

All spells are available in the game.

EDIT: Ach, that's level 3. Hold on. You can also get level 3 from Ernest, but let me see where you can get a lower level. I know you can get it because I did.

EDIT 2: I can't find level 1, but you can get level 2 from the spellbook in Sharimik after completing the mayor's quest... you don't need to know it at level 1 to get it at level 2... I don't know what the problem is.

Specifically, after you complete the troglo quest and bring the Troglo King's message back to Mayor Knight, he tells you to read a spellbook. That spellbook is southeast of him behind a door in the library. That spellbook will give you Dispel Barrier at level 2.

I think that last post was the first one that even hinted at a "If you're not going to do it right, don't do it at all" mentality. That's just something you made up, Arenax. Go back and re-read.

Moreover, no one attacked you until you started insulting Djur. Djur may not be a big-name designer, but he's our friend.

Also, I think the "use a decent language" comment was more intended to deal with the "cons" in your original post than it was to attack you. Stareye said much the same thing: there's no hurry. If there's some question about whether you'll make it, we'd rather something than nothing, but if you're going to make it, you might as well make it well.

If it's almost done, then I guess there's no point in talking about it anymore. If you weren't going to listen to us anyway, I'm not sure why you asked our opinion. And don't pretend: you said yourself that the program was already mostly done by the time Djur suggested to use a different language, which was less than four hours after you first posted. If you were too far along in the process to listen to anyone after four hours, you weren't going to listen to anyone at all.

Representing a system in a different way is not dumbing it down. I myself understand dialogue pretty well, but it would be easier if it were represented visually. For two years in high school physics, my teacher forced us to draw diagrams for every physics problem that we got. Was that dumbing down the problem?

It's not removing complexity. All of the components are still there. It's a matter of changing the representation. Simplifying something only becomes a problem when you lose utility, and the program that I'm imagining would not erase any components.

Programs have been made that do individual parts of a custom objects script already, but they aren't very good, not because they dumb down the system — they're actually easier to use than writing raw code — but because they don't have enough features. They can't handle more than one object at a time, and they can each only do one type of object, for instance.

Arenax, I recommend you look at the description that I posted above and tell me exactly what would be missing from such a program. What could one do writing raw code that one could not do with the program that I described above?

Similarly, take a look at an editor for custom objects scripts that has already been made and tell me what one could do writing raw code that one could not do with such a program. This creature editor and its cousins need more features, certainly, but I challenge you to tell me how they are less powerful than scripting directly.

I'm pretty sure the answer is no. Jeff is busy making new games, Geneforge 3 and Avernum 4, so I doubt he's planning to go back and update the old ones.

Besides, A1 and A2 worked better for me in Classic mode than A3 does natively in OS X, so I'm not sure that I would want him to.

Let me put it another way: we're not seeking to simplify the system, but rather to represent it in a different way.

One could represent the "state =" and "nextstate =" as line connecting text boxes. Those text boxes could be the "text1 =" and "text2 =" and so on. I suppose one could have a "personality =" box above the text boxes.

I suppose one could then put an "action =" menu right below the boxes with all of the possible action calls as menu choices. Then underneath that, one could put a "code =" box that could be filled in with optional code. Oh, and above those two, a "condition =" box, which, if not set to 1, would change the color of the connecting lines.

After all of this was filled in, one could press a button that says, "Generate script," and it would create a text file with the appropriate code.

With enough features (being able to import an already-made script, not creating a code line if nothing was in it so that if the "condition =" box had nothing in it then no condition line would show up in that node, etc), this program could replace scripting dialogue by hand.

There's no point in arguing about it, really. I don't have the technical skill to make such a program, so obviously I'm not going to. If Arenax doesn't want to, then he's not going to, either. Someone else may or may not.