Kelandon

Originally Posted By: Nikki. Originally Posted By: Darkus Man, you guys have no idea what I would've done to have a Spidweb experience on my iPhone. yeah, the newsletter says that Avernum 1 will be coming to the iphone. wont be getting it for mine You know, I might get it for mine. I liked Monkey Island on my phone. Good for long airplane rides.

Originally Posted By: Niemand Separate discussion of why I hate floating palettes: As the section title says I very much dislike this technique in UI design. Basically it strikes me as a lazy way out for the designer, who doesn't have to bother figuring out how to fit both the data/document and the tools/options on the screen at the same time, and instead pushes the problem off onto me, the user. You could have a default (fixed) spot for them that could be broken off at the user's discretion. I've seen a lot of programs that have resizable, movable, whatever whatever options for their windows and then just have a reset button to put everything back to a default position that is sensible for most purposes, and I kind of like this. I can customize what I want, but if I screw something up or it gets weird, I can put it back quickly and easily into a sensible position. I don't really care if the palettes float or not. I just don't want to have to cycle through things to get from terrains back to floors and then over to creatures and then back to floors and then to terrains and then back to floors. I'd rather just click on one thing, place that, click on another thing, place that, and so on, instead of having to cycle.

Basically, I have always (since BoA was released) had three major dreams for the BoA Editor: * Palettes for floors, terrains, creatures, and items, which are movable and resizable windows (with resizable icons) that can all be open at once (though only one is active at a time, like any other palette), instead of the fixed-to-the-right-side-of-the-editor system clunky system that we have now * Resizable windows for town/outdoor editing, several of which can be open at once and which contain standard cut/copy/past features, with at least one preset: realistic size (what you actually see in-game) * An in-editor script editor: you place a special rectangle and it pulls up the state in the town script that the special rectangle calls, so that you can code it directly without having to switch to a different application, and you can do everything that you can do in AScript (color-coding, run Alint) in it As far as I can tell, we're talking about the first one, and, as far as I know, the reason that none of them have ever been done is that each one would require a complete rebuild of the editor.

I'd very much like to make the editor bigger (like, a lot bigger) on the screen, because my screen is far, far bigger than the editor was designed for, and finding stuff is annoying. So I'm in favor of this.

Originally Posted By: Lilith Originally Posted By: Metatron I know that there are many people around here who dabble in computer science, including the Jeff. I have been imposed with a directive by my professor: talk about Alan Turing while he is gone. well that might take a while, since alan turing isn't coming back any time soon That was how I first read the sentence, too. I didn't actually know how Turing died until SoT mentioned it and I looked it up. Man, the bad old days were bad. And they weren't that long ago.

I'm all in favor of changing things as needed, but it's loss of functionality that I find particularly noticeable, such as the loss of multiple entry points for regions, or the loss of keyboard movement (I'm still living in the first Avernum Trilogy, I guess). In any case, positive comments. The overall look-and-feel is consistently nice, as people have been saying. The graphics are indeed consistent throughout, and I like the general appearance. The land is complex — very complex — and it's taking me a while to sort it all out. I guess that's because I'm still in the early stages (I think), and once I get through more of it, it will become clearer. Redbeard is an interesting character, though rather inscrutable. He seems central to all of this, so it would be nice to be able to interact with him more — but I guess keeping him at a distance preserves his, uh, gravitas or something. I did the same thing with Legare in Bahssikava and Exodus (Legare only appeared in cutscenes). And the "You're going to get a chance to betray/kill Redbeard later in the game" is pretty heavy-handed from the very beginning. I guess what points you lose for subtlety, you gain back for clarity on that one. The idea of the skill system is neat. I feel as though it isn't being utilized to its full potential here, but I guess that's for Avadon 2. At any rate, the idea of pumping some of these skills all the way up to 7+ is rather mind-boggling (but awesome). In the meantime, it simplifies the tactical decisions. Speaking of simplified tactical decisions, combats play really, really differently from combats in other Spidweb games. I haven't been up to speed on some of the most recent ones, but combat here is slowed down like A1-A2 combat (which I like a lot), while working sort of strangely (my spellcasters don't cast many spells and have just about as much hp as my fighter). This is taking some getting used to; still, I'm playing on hard, and only one combat has given me significant pause as yet (and I'm through the first significant quest, involving the dragon). In general, the beginning seems engaging, fun, and different. Not sure where I rank it in Spidweb games overall. My mind is not blown, the way that it was for the beginning of A2, which was one of the greatest sections I've ever seen in any game I've ever played, but I'm not actively irritated by most of it, which was how I felt about A4. Maybe right around how I felt about GF1: it's new and strange and takes some getting used to, but I'm interested enough to take the time to get used to it.

Originally Posted By: Spidweb Don't get me wrong. It is programmable. It's just trickier and weirder. Huh. I'm surprised that it's complicated enough to be, in practice, prohibitive, but I suppose that makes sense. Oh well. I'm making do with the mouse, and it's okay. The general concerns about size are certainly ones that I share. I'm working on a 28" monitor that is set to 1920 x 1200 (so the monitor itself is big, and everything is incredibly gigantic on it, because 1920 x 1200 is more normally on a 24" monitor or even smaller). I'm used to sitting a good 5-6 feet back from the screen. I can't do that with Avadon. If I actually wanted to see what items were based on what they look like on the floor — which I could do easily in Avernum and to some extent in Geneforge — I have to get even closer than I'm sitting now. And the weirdness of the area map is, well, weird. You can only enter an area from one spot, right? This seems like a step down from prior games' ability to enter from four different sides. I have a few positive thoughts that I'll share later on, but these are just in agreement with some of the above.

Originally Posted By: Jeff on his blog The biggest complaint is that the game has no keyboard movement. Our other big series, Avernum, takes place on a fairly simple grid, so keyboard movement is easy to implement. Avadon takes place in a larger world with no simple grid for the characters to stand on, and keyboard movement just doesn't work as well as the mouse, especially for distances that aren't very short. But some people really want keyboard movement, and I can hardly tell them they are wrong. I just have to take the criticism and hope that the game is good enough. I'm not sure that I totally get this. There's a grid in Avadon, right? I can see it in combat. Keyboard movement would work absolutely fine if there were an option to keep the screen centered on the lead character, to make the other characters automatically follow the lead character (in some way or other — the manner hardly matters), and to repeat a held key (so holding down "east" makes you continue to walk east until you release the key). Is there something I'm missing, here?

Count another one here who would really like to be able to use the keyboard to move around. Is there some way to keep the screen centered on the character or at least have it move automatically in some way? I'm finding it really annoying to move the screen myself. Liking virtually everything substantive about it so far, but I'm not very far.

Originally Posted By: Niemand Just to note: It looks like there's a parenthesis missing in Kel's replacement code: "if (char_ok(i)" should be "if (char_ok(i))". Thanks. Fixed above, so that if anyone else encounters this, it'll be correct in the original post. I would be grateful if anyone could actually verify that this fix works, by the way. I'm not sure that this is actually the problem; I just think that it is.

Totally didn't notice this. I did figure out what the problem was. Have to run off right now but will come back later today and update. And by later today, I mean in a few minutes. If I remember correctly, the problem was the following code in t44Tower.txt: Code: i = 10; while (i < 120) { erase_char(i); i = i + 1; } This comes right after the following code, which is more easily identifiable: Code: message_dialog("Seizing hold of you and Pithoss, the Goddess unleashes a bolt of magical energy shooting straight up into the sky. Then, in familiar fashion, you lift off the ground and begin to travel through the air, returning again to camp.","You travel the entire distance in silent contemplation, not even looking down well enough to see more than blank cave floor."); set_flag(44,7,1); i = 21; while (i < 31) { j = 17; while (j < 21) { set_floor(i,j,255); set_terrain(i,j,0); j = j + 1; } i = i + 1; } Anyway, if you change the problem area to the following, it should work: Code: i = 10; while (i < 120) { if (char_ok(i)) erase_char(i); i = i + 1; } I don't think I have a convenient save file with which to verify that this works, but I think that the problem was that erasing characters that didn't exist to begin with was crashing Windows sometimes (it's the irregularity of it that's annoying).

Old-school Nethergate (click on special words — which are in a different color, as I recall — to ask about them) seemed like a good change that probably wouldn't be too hard to implement. Wonder if it would affect The Election or other such dialogue-based scenarios, though.

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES The real web issue is when you meet enemies who throw webs nearly every turn, but who can't damage you. The game can easily get stuck in an infinite loop, then. This could be solved by having some sort of "end turn" thing if you're unable to move (I'm thinking of what Civilization does). Don't change actual game mechanics unless absolutely necessary; change interface first.

Nobody's Heroes does a little bit of, uh, crossover.

As I said in the other thread, this is pretty clearly how the game is supposed to work, so it shouldn't be changed.

Unless something is obviously a bug, I don't see why you would want to change it. Infinite bless stacking is not obviously a bug. In fact, it's rather obviously how the game is supposed to work. So why would you want to change it in the first place?

You'll soon find out — so I imagine that there's no problem telling you this now — that the registration process in Avadon is streamlined a little as compared to previous games, which led to a discussion about exactly what the rules should say about registration stuff. Hence the clarification.

Galactic Core was RW's last game? Clearly the fluffy turtles ate him whole for that one.

Originally Posted By: Tirien This was before my time on the forums, but... ALL HAIL RICHARD WHITE! *cough* Machrone *cough*

Originally Posted By: Sir Motrax of Exile I wonder what all of you people are doing now... I was in high school when I started this business. Now I'm toiling away in grad school. To the newbies - welcome! Don't spend too little time here. Sunlight is overrated. I think of you as having been around forever, but now I notice that you joined only a year before I did. Nine years doesn't seem that much less than eight, nowadays.

Originally Posted By: Enraged Slith You can find the majority of this stuff in the Order Form docs Ah, there it is, in the Manual. Thanks.

Has anyone done any sort of comprehensive survey on what the statuses actually do? (Or is this in the docs somewhere [ha ha]?) Even as a player, I've never been terribly clear on the difference between, say, Asleep and Paralysis, nor have I really known what Enfeebled does that Curse doesn't — or Drunk, for that matter. Frankly, I don't know what Terrified does, either, and I only half-remember Berserk. Anyone know?

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES No offense intended to anyone personally: but the fact that people think that their fancy for "getting a taste of" one thing or another thing should be a serious consideration in how major elements of society are structured, rather than keeping in mind how we can help those in serious need by dealing with poverty, hunger, violence, and so on, is a problem in itself. It seems as though you're saying that people shouldn't be able to learn about a wide range of topics because it's such a great expense and so taxing on our educational system that it's preventing people from dealing with poverty, etc. Maybe you're being so vague that I'm misunderstanding you, but that sounds pretty ridiculous on the face of it.

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity My youngest brother got a degree in mechanical engineering, with a minor in philosophy. Because of the difficulty in finding philosophy courses that would fit his full engineering course schedule, he wound up becoming a minor expert in lesbian ethics. This seemed amusing at the time because he was the epitome of the macho, hard-drinking engineer, to the point of being an army reserve infantry sergeant as his summer job. He can now design you a machine to measure liquor, or lucidly explain several viewpoints about how male-to-female transsexuals who are sexually attracted to women are regarded within lesbian communities. And what he actually does for a living is sell billion-dollar mass transit systems to nation states around the world. Neither of his academic qualifications is terribly relevant to his work, but it's a bit of a toss-up which one is less relevant. My other brother did a double major in math and psychology, and then got a B.Ed. He did a bit of supply high school teaching, but he's been riding herd on large corporate databases for the last ten years or so. I think half his DNA is in Perl by now. I feel I'm a sort of family black sheep for actually working in the same field I studied. But as a student I seriously considered taking a minor or even a second major in English. I wound up in a super-heavy physics concentration that didn't allow enough electives for either, but I was able to work my way up to upper-year English seminars by narrowly specializing in Milton. I can yak on for quite a while about Paradise Lost. And I'm still happy about this. Bottom line: the absurd breadth of North American higher education is maybe the least broken thing about it. I double-majored in Classical Languages (i.e. Latin and Greek) and Astrophysics. I intend to work in neither.

Originally Posted By: Masked Man of Inscrutability Kel, your situation is sort of interesting to me given your experience. What, in particular, was so bothersome that made you want to stop designing scenarios? I ask because I want to understand what aspects of the criticism, from a designer's perspective, went into the destructive category. I mean, it seems like TM just always hated your scenarios no matter what, so I cannot imagine that was it. It's not so much that the criticism wasn't constructive as that that's all there was. No one ever said anything good, or if they did, it was so backhanded and buried in loads and loads of negativity that I got frustrated with it all. It was almost never the case that anyone said anything that actually made sense and that I could do something about. I cite the example of "I didn't expect religious allegory in Exodus" as the most extreme case of criticism that doesn't make sense, but what about all the stuff that was fairly normal? One of the common criticisms was that the outdoors were big and empty. Well, they're big, sure. But that's the idea: it's a big scenario. Are they empty? Well, not completely. I have at least one interesting interaction in every single section, usually two or three. Sometimes you have to travel over a long distance to get from place to place, but that's the idea: you're making a vast trek (an exodus) across hostile/untamed territory. I like how the outdoors are designed. So criticism of the outdoors as "empty" is just as worthless to me as criticism of the religious allegory. And nearly everything fit into that category. It's not so much that anyone was criticizing in bad faith (well, some people were), but that it was so rare for anyone to say anything good about my main scenarios (neglecting the HLPM, LP, and 9Var), and the bad things were so frequently either things that didn't make sense in the first place or that I disagreed with, that it lost its point. Originally Posted By: Masked Man of Inscrutability Also, did the criticism drive you away from scenario design, or just the forums? EDIT: Is it true that Exodus includes a reference to the Cult of Richard White? If so, that's *almost* enough to get me to reinstall BoA. Well, it certainly didn't drive me away from the forums. And I did make Nobody's Heroes later. I just didn't make Homeland, the third scenario in the series. And yeah, if you want to know the final fate of Richard White (who vanished somewhat before Exodus was made), you have to play Exodus.