Kelandon

I s'pose Jeff could just make the additional joining NPCs numbered above the numbers that are available now (so the third one would be 120), but there's no way in hell he will do this. I also think there are other things that are more desirable (although I admit that I kind of wish that we had the ability to add genuine PCs as was done in A1-3).

Every error or omission that I find, I make note of. I post significant ones here, and once I have enough to make a reasonable list, I e-mail him, too.

Coming from an RPG, though, "you" is acceptable. I've read entire role-playing books (Choose Your Own Adventure style, but not as pathetically bad) written in the second person. And some of it looks like in-game text directly, and some of it is not. I'd rather it be one or the other. (Correct me if I'm mistaken and it's all original, though; I haven't gone back to verify whether it is or not.) EDIT: Yes, um, the actual question. I like it. Keep going.

What you *did*? Have you released a scenario yet? Seriously, though, this is a good idea. I'm not sure that it will exactly do what I want, but it's worth a shot.

The call begin_talk_mode does seem to function differently from within town scripts and within creature scripts. From what I can tell, Eldiran is correct for circumstances when begin_talk_mode is called from town scripts -- but NOT from creature scripts. And WHY is this not covered in the docs?

A call that would place a text bubble at the top middle of the screen, like the effect in the intro movie to A3.

Sent. Oh, I just realized: I meant to write out a help file to go along with it for ease of tinkering, but I hadn't done this yet. 500 works fine, but 501 doesn't. And since I was trying to make the party level 35-40 (approximately), it was clear that 35000 wouldn't work at all. I used a While controller to do this, but I couldn't figure out for a bit why giving 1000 xp 35 times did nothing. By the way, I meant if other scenario designers wanted it for inclusion (with presumable customization) with their scenarios. It will be available as part of the download of my scenario when my scenario is finished.

Well, I had issues, because move_to_new_town doesn't work off of a dialogue node either. I can only get it to work when the state is called by something the party steps on. So I'm trying to force the party to be standing in one particular location when they have this conversation. I do this by calling begin_talk_mode as soon as they walk into the room. (I might possibly add relocate_char calls in the START_STATE in an if controller depending on an SDF that would be set in a dialogue node in that conversation, too.) Then I surround that spot where I've forced the party to stand with specials depending on the same SDF as before that would call move_to_new_town, and in the INIT_STATE of that new town have my cut scene. It's a weak solution, because I might be teleporting the party a little ways after the conversation, but at this point I'm not sure what else to do. Actually, come to think of it, because the conversation that they have is rather short, I could run the whole thing using dialog boxes, but that would be kind of ridiculous. Well, we'll see. Does anyone know of a way to take away the choice to end the conversation in the lower right-hand corner of the dialogue screen? I could've sworn I saw this done in the A1-3, so it would only be just if we could do it in BoA, but I can't find a call for it anywhere. For your inn, you could just stick them next to a bed and force them (through block_entry calls, again controlled by an if) to step onto that bed on the next turn. Then have the bed call the state that would move them to the cut-scene town.

I think what I'm going to do is end the cut scene with the party in a room that looks identical to the room that they started in, and surround the party with move_to_new_town calls. Then, once the party moves, they go back to the original town. I have a slightly more complicated problem, because I want to have a cross-town cut scene take place immediately following a dialogue option. (This gets messy pretty quickly, as you might imagine.) I'm not sure how I'm going to resolve this yet, but with maybe another hour or two of testing I should have it.

Do the docs say somewhere that you can't use move_to_new_town in START_STATE or INIT_STATE? I can't find it anywhere. And if they don't, they should... EDIT: By the way, the set_state_continue trick doesn't work. I tried it (because I am trying to do the same thing). The workaround that I've settled on is pretty much what spyderbytes outlined.

The docs say the call award_party_xp can give up to 1000 xp at once. I can't get the call to give more than 500, however. It will display the message that the experience was given, but the characters' experience in their Infos will not rise, and they will not gain levels. Under 500 works fine, and over 1000 works the way you would expect (it displays that it gave 0), but between 500 and 1000 functions in this strange way. I think the related call award_char_xp has the same problem. I noticed this only because I was making a High Level Party Maker for my scenario, Tarl Kudrick-style. (If anyone wants it, by the way, give me your e-mail and I'll send it to you.)

A1 explains this pretty well if you read a little between the lines. Micah was a rebel leader on the surface, a well-known one, so when he arrived in Avernum, he started leading the forces of the humans against Grah-Hoth. The archmages (Erika et al) showed up not long after this and helped him defeat Grah-Hoth. With his resounding victory, Micah became king of Avernum.

I wish you better luck than most LotR designers have. I think one was finished once, and it was terrible, or something like that. The Louvre probably already has some of the graphics that you want. I seem to recall one called "Balrog," anyway. And with icon shifts (cr_icon_adjust), you can make anything look like almost anything. Really. I made a bright pink slith chief. So I'm sure you could make elves out of something.

The code looks good... did you go to "Town Details" in the Town menu and set the script file to be the text file that you want it to be?

Take out a student loan. By the way, it's Jeff, not John.

Quote: given in terms of Avernum's currently accepted version of history There is none. There is one for Exile, but *glances at the mighty draconic beast that admins these boards* it is not entirely consistent with the Avernum games. Precedent has yet to be set about what we do with these differences between Avernum and Exile. Quote: Empire eradication of all non-humans (what I will consider to be the "founding" of the Empire) and the discovery of Avernum? So far as I can tell, the eradication was never quite complete. Even in A Small Rebellion in Blades of Avernum, Administrator Forbes in Willow, in response to the question "Are there any Nephilim left?", says, "Don't worry. Most of the Nephilim in Valorim were killed long ago. Good riddance, I say!" (talk node 11). But he says "most." Maybe someone else has a better answer as to when Valorim was considered "settled," though. The First Expedition (discovery of Avernum) was roughly fifty years before A1, according to a message at the entrance to the Ancient Crypt. Quote: The Empire War (last people sent to Avernum) and A3? I believe the figure is eleven years between A2 and A3. Quote: Also, would anyone think it safe to assume that after the problems of A3 are cleared up that the Empire would be more lenient (i.e. not instantly kill) non-humans? A little, sure. But prejudice is still rampant (see above quote). We see a nephil in a town on the surface in ASR. The party in A3 that wanders around on the surface could consist of nephils and sliths, too. So yeah, they've eased up on the instant death, but they're still pretty harsh.

But I don't know if we ever get over the "Wow I can paint cool towns and put in cool people who say cool things and put in fun nasty monsters and awesome traps and run cool animations and..." If we did, then I think designing would stop being as much fun.

Empress Prazac\'s Reign Languages of the World Slith Homeland Note how no one wants to talk with me about this for very long. I still say I'm right, though. EDIT: And while I'm at it, the Encyclopaedia Emariana , which is sometimes a bit more frustrating than helpful given how incomplete it is. And how it doesn't cite sources.

It feels like a game to me too. I got bored halfway through Za-Khazi Run, and I started making my own scenario. I haven't gone back to finish ZKR yet, and it's been at least a couple of weeks. That might say more about ZKR than the Editor, though. EDIT: In the meantime I played RoR, though, so I haven't given up on playing scenarios entirely.

In the scenario I'm making right now, I have a variation off of Brett Bixler's idea: Bob has called you to him, and you start just before you're supposed to meet him. You go to where he's supposed to be, and he's not there. A substitute Bob tells you what to do, with the authority of the real Bob behind him. This substitute Bob acts in place of the real Bob for much of the scenario, while the real Bob hangs just out of reach. This is also kind of similar to ASR's series of Boblings acting in the name of the real Bob. The end result, as in ASR, is that meeting the real Bob is far more dramatic than it would be otherwise. I do this because my Bob is a fairly intense figure. If you do this, it's important not to let the player down once you've built up a mighty Bob reputation. Once the player finally meets him, he has to be just as dynamic and interesting as his reputation would make him out to be.

I like this idea. I will do it. It could create some fun results. I know the perfect place for him, too. I don't think he'll give any quests, though. I found his quests pretty lame. He'll just talk a bit.

Quote: At any rate, I gather he was searching for something with a void return value, rather than a short. Yes. It should say "void," not "short."

Just for the primary source confirmation of *i's remarks: Things That Don\'t Work . Note also in the Designer's Forum how two other articles that are not up yet (soon, TM?) are entitled "Even More Bugs" and "Still More Things That Don't Work." Abandonment Also: Mail Fraud I don't want to dredge up old issues, though. (And I say that having just done so. I am a moron, I know.) While it is probably important to remember that Jeff left BoE behind even while it still had significant bugs, it is also important to note that he is doing his best not to make the same mistakes over again. He made the BoA editor open source, for example, so that the programmers among us can fix bugs that we come across, which I think is a tremendous show of good faith. Also, these boards exist now, which to the newbies: they didn't before. There were discussion groups on AOL for the Exile games, and starting in '97 Aceron ran boards on Malkeera, and not long after that the Lyceum started up, but these official SW boards didn't come into being until March '01. Now we have an official place to congregate and get help. SW will probably drop the scenario contests after the first one, but that's okay: Olympia will carry on, the way it always has. Other than the occasionally condescending tone that Jeff can take with us, I have no problems with what's going on right now. Jeff even has an update in the works that will add some features that we're asking for. Like *i says, though, I'm going to wait and see what happens.

As a related point, think about the number of people in the party. Many scenarios just make the party consist of one mind, one identity, one person. ("Your friend, who you've known since the two of your grew up together in [X] says [Y].") This is one way to do it. Another idea is to use the fact that the party consists of 4 people (unless you're Drakefyre ). Either have the player choose one character to identify with, or allow the different members of the party to have different opinions, or work with this detail of the system in other ways. The BoA engine makes neat things possible that weren't possible in the BoE engine (text bubbles over specific party members, etc).

I started this post at about 5:15, so the topic has somewhat outpaced me. Apologies for that. But, here goes: From the scenario criticism thread, Quote: Student of Trinity wrote: The Geneforges and Valley of the Dying Things seem fine to me; I'm still excited just to find a secret door. Jeff's writing games for people who've never played any of his games before, NOT for his hardcore audience. This is not a bad idea to do for shareware, but can be not the greatest thing among the Blades community, where everyone who's played Emulations has also played At the Gallows and Spears and Spy's Quest, for example. And Djur's right: of the respected scenario designers, who also tend to be the leaders of the community as the most known names and the mods of various boards and such, almost none are younger than 20. And absolutely none are younger than 15. Of our best scenario designers (those who've placed top three in more than one design contest, those who have at least one scenario rated above 9 on the Lyceum's CSR), we have a lawyer (Alcritas), a teacher at a university (Brett Bixler), and a physics grad student (*i). I'm not sure how old Drizzt is, or the Creator either, but I'm willing to guess that they're not eight. Okay, I just read Jeff's last post, and this is going to be a MUCH, MUCH longer post than I thought it would be. Sigh. I was going to try to make the point that the audience that loves and eats up Jeff's other games is not the audience that he drew for Blades (both oE and oA). I was further going to try to say that he probably just didn't know what made up a good BoE scenario because he did what he always does with games when he wrote BoE: he finished it and moved on. This has always been a fine method for other games; no reason to keep mucking up E1 or E2 many years later, right? But BoE was fundamentally a different game, and this led to a misunderstanding that has caused many hurt feelings. Well. Jeff. I've been investigating the history of the SW community (yes, the Spiderweb community, and such a thing *does* exist) for a little while now. I admit that I haven't been around all that long, but I've talked to people who have, and I've read almost all of the old discussions in existence, so please, bear with me. Everyone who's reading this, give it a chance. I have realized that while we are a very disparate group (some of my favorite members of the community are from Louisiana, Finland, England, Pennsylvania, Oregon, Canada, and so on), we do share certain things in common. We are a sensitive bunch. Look in the General forum and read the topic entitled Suicide . Then note that near it is another topic with a very similar name. Both have aroused considerable passions. Then look at the third page, at the topic entitled Board Member Info (a Science Experiment) , and look at the discussion we had there. Then look at the next two consecutive topics. Are you starting to realize the depth of passions in this community? We care about things very intensely. On the Lyceum, you can even find community reactions to 9/11 on 9/11: God Help Us . This is a community that has existed in various forms for ten years; ask Thuryl or Alec or others who are still around from the AOL days about what they remember. I have, and it's pretty amazing. People talk about Aceron's Malkeera as if it existed yesterday. People are still in touch with Zaloopa. I talked with Akhronath not long ago about his days running the Arena. What I'm trying to say here that is that there is a Spiderweb community, and we have a history, and we come together on the forums devoted to these games and we talk, we make friends, we hang out. There is more at stake here than just 8-year-olds wanting to kill stuff. What Alcritas, *i, Brett Bixler, TM, Drizzt, the Creator, Shyguy, Ben Frank, Akhronath, Measle, Tarl Kudrick, Ryan Phelps, Andres Gonzales, and many others have done here is turn scenario design into a legitimate art form. That's why your somewhat disingenuous remarks have offended people. You appear to be sticking your tongue out at all of us. Your rather acerbic sense of humor, which is appreciated in many, many contexts, is not ideal here. TM was being completely serious, and he's made enough scenarios and reviewed enough scenarios that he usually gets a fair amount of respect around here. Your response? Quote: Heh. This quote is going up on my wall. The idea that anyone writing a game would purposefully put fun second is, I admit, alien to me. You then go on to make your 8-year-old comment, which seems (at best) to make light of his remarks, or (at worst) to insult the entire community as a whole. I think that was not what you intended, but it is what you said. You go on to further the same mistake by saying, Quote: The only point I am making (and I feel it is a very mild point and I'm on pretty safe ground making it) is that a large portion of your potential Blades-playing audience mainly gets off on hitting things. Trust me. I read their fan mail. Do you know what the people on these boards do when those portions of your audience show up here? Read the Poetry thread, starting with FatBatMonkey's post halfway down. Thus: the people you are addressing on these boards are NOT the same people as wrote to you, "LOL I LUV GENEFORGE!!!! BUT PUT IN MORE BLOWING THIGNS UP." (Thank you to Djur for putting it so eloquently.) You were speaking to the wrong audience here, and some of us took offense at your generalizations. Also, as you have said, "For all I know, my games only ever sell to septugenerian eskimos" (in an interview ). And, as you said, "it is important to remember what any statistician can tell you: self-selecting samples are invalid." Thus, those who write you fan mail are not a perfect sample of those to whom your games sell. You can't have it both ways. The Lyceum's CSR is of at least equal value to the fan mail that you receive. There is a difference, though: those who post on the Lyceum are far more likely to be hardcore fans who will buy every game that you release from now on, the ones who bought BoA on the first day it came out and who will buy Geneforge 3 the first day it comes out. Those who write you fan mail are more likely to grow up and stop buying your games. So it's a far bigger loss if you alienate your hardcore fans such as you find on these boards and on the Lyceum. Take some time to get to know us. You might realize that there are a *lot* of us who are not 8-year-olds who only want to destroy things. But aside from all of this, there's a point that should be more dear to your heart: these boards also influence which products your customers buy, and whether they buy them at all. Don't believe me? Look at the Spiderweb Newbie Looking to Find a Good RPG to Begin With thread. He asked us what was good. We told him... well, would you care to guess? We told him that BoE was the one to get. TM, Thuryl, Boots, Drakefyre, BtI, Alorael, and the Creator all said something along these lines. If anyone said to buy anything else, it was always in the context of that game and BoE. Nethergate and BoE. E2 and BoE. E3 and BoE. And why do we love BoE so much? As the Creator so beautifully put it, Quote: BoA will not be superior to BoE until 60+ great scenarios have been made for it. It costs 30 bucks to register BoE, and there's enough gametime there to last you a few years. Seriously. BoE is loved because of the scenarios that others have made for it. And thus BoE was the only Exile that I bought. And thus BoE will continue to be purchased for years to come. Why? Because of Alcritas. Because of *i. Because of Brett Bixler. Because of TM. And so on. So the designers of the community are an integral part of your money source. Were BoE copies still being bought in 2002, years after the game was released? If they were, it's because of the designers. I'm not sure that you care about us, the community, but I do know that you care about your pocketbook. Thus it might be wise to avoid telling your designers that all people who play Spiderweb games are children who like to bonk things on the head. P.S. I am not saying that you should stop making games with cool combat. That would be ridiculous. I'm saying you should ease off on the condescension just a wee bit.