Kelandon

Given that it won't be me doing this but rather some helpful PC user, I don't know why I'm even asking, but how do you "link" the files to the .exe? Oh, okay, this is why I'm asking: the issue is the effort required to switch between scenarios with one set of custom sounds and scenarios with another set. If it requires something complicated in each individual sound file, then this method is questionable. If it's easy, then this sounds good.

Quote: You won't have to take the original ones out, just add your own new ones to the already existing number of files. Now it's my turn: read what I wrote, ef. Every time you play a scenario with custom sounds, you will have to take out the old custom sounds. (Because the new ones and the old ones would be numbered the same...) Basically, what concerns me is the concept of having to do more than simply move a folder into the Blades of Avernum Scenarios folder. But I'm just going to see what Jeff says. EDIT: Gah, or are you saying that one could just put the .wav files into the scenario's folder and they would work? Please, just write out your method of adding custom sounds to a BoA scenario for a PC, and you'll save both of us a lot of confusion. From your statement "I did it," I gather that you have a method for this specifically, not for adding custom sounds just to, say, Geneforge, which was what it sounded like in the other thread.

I'm reading through this (for the third time now) and not seeing any resolution to the original issues. Adding custom sounds for a Mac: just add them to the .cmg file that has the custom graphics in it. Sure. That's easy. Adding custom sounds for a PC: ... Oh, okay. I think I get it now. No one ever spelled it out, though. Does it work like this: depending on whether Jeff sticks with the Geneforge system of storing sounds or the Avernum Trilogy system for Win-BoA, one can add sounds by sticking in either extra .wav files into a folder called "100" or extra folders with the .wav files inside into that folder? It seems like this would almost be modifying core data files (because these are going right next to the regular data files, not beside your scenario data), and for every scenario with different custom sounds, you would have to take them out and put in the new ones. Which means that we can probably do this in two or three years, when Spiderweb doesn't care about BoA anymore, but we can't do it now. EDIT: On top of which, I'm not entirely sure how I'd do this. SW ports the graphics over to PC format for us Mac users, and vice-versa. I don't have a PC, nor do I have any way of making .wav files that I know of. I could do the Mac equivalent with ResEdit really easily. EDIT 2: After some thought, I decided I'd just e-mail Jeff and see if he would ban a scenario with custom sounds. If not, then I'll just do it. If so... we'll see.

My bad, I thought he did it by hacking the data files. Then I wish that this was supported, which I know it is not. And since PC users constitute roughly 50-60% of the Spiderweb-user population, a scenario feature that doesn't work for PCs is useless. I suppose I could just *do* it and figure out how to get it to work for PCs later, but the concept frightens me. I stand by my request, inasmuch as this method doesn't necessarily work.

Not exactly a call, but I'd like custom sounds without having to hack apart the BoA data files. I was looking through E3's sounds with ResEdit, and there's some good stuf in there that we can't use, because we can't add sounds.

The call char_on_spot sounds like it does something quite like this. I haven't tried it to know all the ins and outs of it, though.

A call that would display a missile animation. Something along the lines of void put_missile_animation(short source_x,short source_y,short dest_x,short dest_y) in the same general feeling as put_straight_zap.

The first contest was a long time ago ( Results ). The only contest that I know of for BoE right now is the Don't Fix the Shark Contest. (Check with Olympia for Blades contest information.) While technically there is no law that you have to play-test your own scenario, it would be a mercy on your beta-testers if you did, and that requires a full version.

Also phone or snail mail. Ordering

If I may be so bold... I edited your comments so that they were in more idiomatic English. You could post this as an article and e-mail it to Jeff, if you like. I tried to be as faithful to your meaning as I could, but if you don't like anything, it is yours and you can change it however you like. I kept the European-style punctuation, because we have enough British people on these boards that I think it's fine. Oh, and one other thing: I think that with the new calls that Jeff is providing for the next version of BoA, we can check the names of the PCs, so this won't be as big a deal as it is now. My edit: It is true that using pre-made party offers plenty of possibilities for scenarios. But for a game like BoA that allows sophisticated character developement, many players won't like that very much. (I could develop the reasons, but that's another subject). If your scenario is good, they'll play it anyway, but if you put in the effort to use only a "roughly pre-made party", they could be very thankful. A roughly pre-made party is a party with rough specifications, instead of a fully built party. For a pre-made party to be useful, you don't need to know all the attributes and the exact strengths of all the PCs in the party, so this roughly pre-made party could be a powerful tool anyway for your scenario. A roughly pre-made party could work as follows: 1 - You describe the rough main characteristics of each PC and give them names. You could be very vague like "Halagic, the best fighter of the party" or a bit more precise like "A powerful woman wizard named Karadia", "Azlit, a non-human shaman that likes to use his weapons" or even "Fendoren, a thief with a Tool Use skill of at least 20 required". 2 - You provide three very different examples of parties that adequately fit the description in order to function in the scenario. 3 - You provide a readme that explains that the player could use PCs that roughly fit the description but it's important to change their name for playing the scenario. The newbies will become fascinated with having to choose among the three different parties and will play your scenario at least three times in order to try them all. Veterans will read carefully the specs and the readme, will check the different examples and will get from their parties a set that roughly fits your description. For example, the "Fighter" doesn't need to be a fighter: he could be a barbarian, a thief with fighting tendencies, or even a shaman with sword skills. It doesn't matter; he will play the role of a strong fighter and all those rough choices will function well in the scenario. Some of the strong reasons to not use a fully pre-made party for a scenario: - If you provide a high level enough scenario, a player could greatly dislike not being able to use some of the parties he had already raised to this level. - If you provide a level 1 party, a player could dislike not being able to use your scenario in order to raise a party to a level required for another scenario. - You greatly decrease the replay value of your scenario.

Articled edited, taking into consideration the above comments.

Quote: Suggestion: The most part is about fights. Maybe you could add something about the levels of spells you can buy in the scen (not the rewards). Quote: 2 - You quote plenty problems about the usage of a high level party but few solutions appart to provide a pre-made party. So I take it that neither of you would object to this article being even longer? Well, I'll look into these two additions tomorrow. And by the way, Vent, just for future reference: I think you mean "apart from," rather than "appart to," which as far as I know is not English.

Quote: About the PARTY part, I understand the problem but I don't like the advice. What don't you like? I say you can include a HLPM or a pre-made party....

Article: High Level Scenarios In BoA, characters can keep gaining levels until a little past level 100. That means that we, the designers, have the option to make scenarios designed for high levels. This can range from moderately high level scenarios (30-35 or 40-50) to extremely high level scenarios (70-80 or even higher). Certain aspects of scenario design, such as puzzles or dialogue, don't change much as the party gains levels. Other aspects change significantly, and these aspects are the focus of this article. THE PARTY First, consider including a party-maker or a recommended party to use. Making a High Level Party Maker is not hard. I made one in a few hours, and if you want it, e-mail me and I will send it to you. A viable alternative is to supply a party that the player should use. Here you run into your first choice, with its accompanying trade-offs. A pre-made party gives you, the designer, much more control over what kind of skills and therefore what kind of strategies the player has available. However, certain playing styles may conflict with the pre-made party that you've given. Also, some players balk at having to RP a party in whose creation they had no say. You have to decide which is more important, designer control or player freedom, in your scenario. The point is broader than this, too. Players may have developed their parties along completely different lines, and at high levels, this makes a difference. A level 50 party composed of a fighter, an archer, a priest, and a mage will probably be able to use any item that you give it. A level 50 party composed of four priests, one of whom has the Melee Weapons skill at high enough level to fight hand-to-hand, will not be able to use a spear. A level 50 party composed of two fighters, a priest, and a mage will not be able to use a bow. Therefore you have to be careful when you hand the party rewards: if they've been training up Blademaster and Lethal Blow to level 15 and you give them a Fiery Bow of Doom, they'll be annoyed. The same goes if the reward for a tough quest is Arcane Blow at level 3 and the party doesn't have any mages. Supplying a pre-made party is one way to get around this. Another way is to make your rewards multi-faceted. Give Arcane Blow at level 3 and 1000 gold, for example. Or you can even script to check the party's abilities: if the party contains a character whose Mage Spells is greater than or equal to 15, give Arcane Blow at level 3, and if not, give a Glowing Sword of Monstrous Damage. You could run through a series of If calls checking the party's abilities. Another option is to let the party choose its reward, as Morog does in the Za-Khazi Run. Or you could inform the party beforehand what the reward for the quest will be, as the Dispel Barrier quests in A2 and A3 do. Basically, you just have to be aware and then use your best judgment. SHOPS Shops provide an odd dilemma. On the one hand, a level 90 party will hardly care about such trivial items as a Crude Dagger, so it's kind of pointless from a gameplay standpoint for your scenario to include them in shops. On the other hand, if all the shops sell Inferno Broadswords suitable to a level 90 party, your scenario might lose some realism, depending on the setting. You have to strike a balance between the two. On the one hand, a level 50 party really should be able to buy a third level of Healing, but on the other hand, would an itinerant sage on the edge of the Empire really know the spell that well? My recommendation: your high level scenario should take place in a setting suitable to a high level party, and then you can manipulate the plot as necessary to include realistic and gameplay-necessary shops. If you can't justify it, though, don't include it. COMBAT Combat design changes at high levels, too. You can reasonably assume that a level 50 party has some special skills at high levels. The fighters probably have Lethal Blow, and the magic-users probably have Magical Efficiency, so they can kill weaker monsters with one hit and their spells cost significantly less than usual spell points to cast. They probably have Resistance, too, so spells on them won't be as damaging. If you put in regular old monsters and just increase the level, the party will obliterate them without trouble. A level 80 mutant lizard is still a mutant lizard, and a level 70 party should be able to dispatch it with no trouble. A level 40 party might be different, so in moderately high level scenarios, you can just throw in level-modified monsters, but this is not much fun. So what should you do? You have a few options. You can give the monster special abilities in your scenario's custom objects script. If a level 35 party encounters twelve unmodified level 25 drakes, the party can just cast Control Foes and charm half the drakes. Then the combat becomes trivially easy. But if you add the call cr_immunities 3 = 100 to the creature, making all of them immune to mental effects, the whole complexion of the battle changes. Giving the creature immunities can accomplish a lot. Giving the creature an item (say, an Invulnerability Potion, as the Giant Chiefs of A3 had) can change things, too. But if you want even more power, you can script. A level 70-80 scenario will probably scare off newbies, so you can assume that the player is pretty wilely. So go ahead. Stick them inside an erupting volcano and do 150 damage to them every turn while they're fighting a level 100 dragon that's immune to fire, cold, and mental effects and that just quaffed an Invulnerability Elixir. Give the dragon the ability to heal itself by half its health points every three turns. Give it the ability to teleport away from the party when it gets too damaged. Strip away the party's items so that they have to fight with their bare hands. (With high enough Assassination and Lethal Blow, this might not even matter.) Obviously, you should play-test the combat so that you're sure that it is beatable, but it should not be easy. It is important to remember that difficulty does not necessarily equate to amount of fun. Other articles describe how to make combat fun. But the point is that a high level scenario can and should include complicated tactical challenges, because a high level party has a great variety of abilities that it can bring to bear. PLOT And the plot of the scenario should suit the party that is playing it. A level 60 party is incredibly strong; where did they get this kind of power? Have they been adventuring for a long time, and if so, are they well-known? Are they even human, or are they some kind of gods? And in high level scenarios, the question why the party has decided to get involved in this particular mission or region of the world is even more important. A level 90 party could go anywhere it wanted, and it must've chosen this place and this quest. Why? As a related point, the monsters in the scenario are presumably EXTREMELY powerful. How have they not run amok and slaughtered everything in the near vicinity? Also, the party won't be gaining in power over the course of a high level scenario the same way that it would in a low level scenario. The change from level 55 to 60 is less significant than the change from 1 to 6. Thus the scenario must present some other way of being fun: a gripping plot, flashy special effects and cut scenes, or something else cool. High level scenarios have great potential. You can do many more different things with level 50 monsters than with level 3 one. You just have to be careful to keep in mind the experience of playing your scenario as you design it, and the rest will follow. ------------------------------------ I haven't e-mailed this to SW yet. I wanted to get some comments and maybe revise it a bit. So... discuss.

Quote: I didn't resist to add Your native language is a Romance language, isn't it? I want to say that you sound French, but I'm not sure why I think that. The "didn't resist" thing is a Romance language characteristic, though.

Some odd combination of change_crime_level, get_crime_level, and set_crime_tolerance might be able to accomplish this. Say, set the crime tolerance absurdly high and store in a variable or an SDF what the party's original crime level was. Then, once the invisibility was over, set the crime level back to the pre-invisibility level. (It looks like you would have to do this with a While controller, because there is no set_crime_level, only a change_crime_level, so you have it reduce the crime level by one while the crime level is above the original level.) It would still say that your crime was seen, though. Not sure how to get around that. EDIT: The reason I would set the crime tolerance high for the duration of the invisibility is that I'd worry about the town becoming hostile before the START_STATE was called on the next turn. I'm not sure when that happens during a turn, so it might not be a problem. But there is the issue of overhead, too.

Quote: He's saying Avernumscript is going to be significantly updated for Windows 1.0 and Mac 1.0.1, and the PC betatesters will be the first to see the changes. And, because Thuryl mentioned it, this is the reason that we need to get those bug reports in as quickly as possible. There is a decent chance that he will fix anything that he knows about before the time Win-BoA comes out. After that, judging from the BoE experience, we're on our own. I'm sure other people have said this, but I just figured it deserved mentioning again, just in case any BoA designers had missed it.

Icon adjustment is, btw, really unpredictable. The only way to know what is happening is to make the thing, put it in a scenario's custom object script, go into the editor and place the object, and enter the scenario and see it. For an example, do that with this code: begindefinecreature 247; import = 35; cr_name = "Blue slith warrior"; cr_icon_adjust = 1; begindefinecreature 248; import = 35; cr_name = "Red slith warrior"; cr_icon_adjust = 128; begindefinecreature 249; import = 35; cr_name = "Slith ghost warrior"; cr_icon_adjust = 64; You'll get some idea of the power of icon adjustment. EDIT: I hadn't tried it_ed_icon_adjust or any of its siblings, though, because somehow I neglected to notice that they exist. My suspicion is that this will give some idea of what it looks like, but not always a great one. EDIT 2: Also, Couch, don't triple-post. Edit instead.

While we're waiting for a better answer... You could have the monster set an SDF, and then put in the town's START_STATE that if the monster is dead, use the call to erase the blood. You can save its death coordinates in SDFs too, if necessary.

Couch is saying that he thought that icon adjustment would be relevant to scenario design, and that he's relieved that it's not. I disagree with him, because I want to have cool-looking new graphics and don't have the technical skill to make real custom ones. Icon adjustment is therefore fairly important to me. Still, Couch is right in that it is not particularly necessary to making a scenario.

A3 has a choice to adjust your screen's resolution automatically, which, as far as I can tell, Nethergate doesn't. You can do it manually in your computer's system preferences, though. The way to do that varies depending on your computer's operating sytem. There is a choice in the preferences for Nethergate for the game to take up the whole screen, but I don't think you're talking about the thing that this does.

In the defaults, the left lava (floor 79) has that red dot when you place it. The right one (floor 80) doesn't. The red dot means that it burns. To make a custom floor that does this, use the call fl_special_property(1) in the scenario's custom objects script.

I think the Avernites should wear togas. They're just a sheet, and they eliminate even the inconvenience of needing separate articles for top and bottom. But Jeff did not make the Avernites toga-wearers, so what can we do? (Answer: steal some Nethergate graphics and make a scenario featuring Avernum dwellers modeling a chic new look.)

I also would like to see an article on puzzles. I don't really know how to create them, and yes, eventually I will go back and play BoE and see how the masters have done it, but some general direction in the matter would be greatly appreciated. My favorite article was Bob, too.

IIRC, it is the last creation of Eass. Whatever that may be, it is probably not a secret of the Shaper Council or any kind of Shapers (unless Eass somehow managed to create Shapers). I hope it is friendly spiders. People murdered them in BoA's VoDT, so now it's time for their revenge!