Kelandon

It's still kind of going, if anyone is thinking about joining. EDIT: And it's basically over now. Well, sort of undead.

I just updated my links list for BoA. If anyone has anything to add or fix, let me know.

Well, if you messed with the scripts, yes, but there's nothing that players can do that I'm aware of that will have this effect.

Exodus pushes the edges of the BoA engine, and BoA is very ragged at the edges. But the automap thing is new to me. I've never heard of that happening and don't have any idea how it could.

I believe Colorado is Mountain time, so it's 2 p.m. in Colorado at 4 p.m. EST. And it's an AIM chat. You invite yourself to join the chatroom "blades" (or ask a Spiderwebber to invite you, if that's too technically challenging).

I was assuming from the title that you were experimenting with playing Exodus while drunk, but I shall try not to be too disappointed that I am mistaken. Ignore the "skill too high" thing. That just happens in high-level parties. It has no in-game effect (except that your stat sheet will now swear that your maximum health is zero).

The Crystal Wand in Exodus is stronger in base damage (though it lacks the extra bonuses that Adlerauge gives). I designed the items in Exodus to be a step above the items in Canopy. I figured that it's a higher level scenario, so parties might be coming out of Canopy into Exodus, and it would be lame not to get any new gear. So for every item in Canopy, there should be an item in Exodus that's stronger, unless I missed something.

Further discussion should be directed, uh, here , I think.

Quote: Originally written by Azuma: Uhm..lock? Sorry, wasn't paying attention until just now. Yeah. To the original poster: Not really. Starman: Try not to be so disparaging. It's irritating. Iffy: Uh, not sure what to say here. In general to all: Be nice, use good sense, and when you don't have anything worth saying, shut the heck up.

Jeff\'s statement on the matter. And for Avernum 2. And 3. Lost Bahssikava is a big difference between Exile 1 and Avernum 1. The Golem Factory is a big difference in E3/A3.

BoE is now open-source. I think CM was just saying that the people who were working on it don't appear to be working on it anymore. EDIT: Thuryl is a minute faster than I.

Quote: Originally written by Slartucker forever ago: One last note. Spelling is especially important when you refer to an NPC you didn't create. If you want someone to talk about Rentar-Ihrno, for example, look up the spelling of her name, don't guess (Rintarino? Rent-Arono?). If you're not careful, she might just throw some quickfire at you. Ah, good old "Notes on Dialogue."

Quote: Originally written by Genevieve: I thought they would reappear when I got to R-I (don't know how to spell the crazy lady's name!) Quote: Originally written by deltaflyer: Rentar-Ihrno Hey, I'm a grammar nazi. Quote: Originally written by Tyranicus: That was not a grammatical error, or any kind of error at all. Since when are abbreviations not grammatically correct? I think the intention was to specify the correct spelling in light of the original poster's statement, not to correct the original poster's grammar (which, as you say, would be nonsensical). R-I is fortunately unambiguous, though, so the actual spelling doesn't really matter. I'm not sure why Rentar-Ihrno would be difficult to spell, though, if one at least read the name aloud once phonetically. Then again, I've had the same thought about the word "vahnatai," and we know the tendencies there.

Well, you could give options about the degree of specificity of the help ("Select one of the following: 1 — A hint 2 — Specific instructions about completing the quest 3 — Cancel").

I get the same error.

It's not that I hated Rentar IC. I disliked Rentar OOC, because I was bored with Rentar IC. (Verdict still out on Dorikas. Give me 'til winter break, when I can actually play A5.)

Um, you can't use BoA to create A4 stuff. Those are two separate programs. Really, really separate programs.

Quote: Originally written by Ephesos: Quote: Originally written by Armed_Defender: What call could I use in a terrain script instead of move_to_new_town? To the best of our collective knowledge, there is no workaround for this problem. You can do all sorts of ugly things like setting flags and moving the party (Exodus does this sometimes, and Bahs did, too), but they're ugly.

Why wouldn't you just reverse the order of the subtraction? That's the same as multiplying by -1. Also, you'll want parentheses like so: my_loc_x() and my_loc_y(). (In addition to the fact that it won't work for the reason named above.)

Quote: Originally written by Iffy couldn't pick a name: I don't know what AIM is. Iffy, if you don't know what something on these boards is, just Google it. Uh, and make sure that it's not an image (which this one isn't.)

Apparently X did it . There's brief discussion of stuff that might be useful in the attempt here . Mention of it here .

It's not complicated at all; it's just a matter of getting it. If you don't get it, it sounds horribly confusing and weird. Once you get it, you'll wonder how you could've ever not understood it in the first place. The principle is the same in BoE and BoA, although the implementation is slightly different. BoA centers on two calls: set_flag() and get_flag(). set_flag() sets a flag to some value. get_flag() checks that value. BoE used If-Then nodes to accomplish the checking. You can imagine flags as being a grid of numbers that is 200 rows by 30 columns. Each number starts at 0 and can be set to some other value by a set_flag() call. Then a get_flag() call checks that value and (generally) tells the script what do in response. Let's take an example. Imagine you have a scenario in which a mayor gives a quest to kill a bandit leader. Once that quest is done, the mayor gives a reward of a magic sword and assigns another quest to kill two ogre mages. When that quest is done, the mayor gives a reward of a magic shield. To simplify things, let's consider just a 5 row by 3 column set of flags, and let's assign values as follows: (0,1) = 1 means the party has been rewarded with the magic sword (0,2) = 1 means the mayor has given the magic shield (1,0) = 1 means the bandit leader has been killed (2,0) = x means x ogre mages have been killed [My flag numbering convention is to use the first coordinate to indicate the town in which the stuff is happening, so this is assuming that town 0 is where the quests are assigned and towns 1 and 2 are where they are carried out.] Here's how the flags start: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Now the party kills the bandit leader. You use set_flag(1,0,1) to set the flag identified as (1,0) to the value 1 to mark that the bandit leader has been killed. Your flags now look like this (remember that the numbering starts with zero, so the upper-left flag is (0,0), and they count down and right in this example): 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 When the party returns to town and talks with the mayor, you use get_flag(1,0) to check that the right flag has been set. Since it has, they get the magic sword reward, but they need to get it only once, so you set (0,1) to 1. Now your flags look like this: 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 If they try to get the sword again, you use get_flag(0,1) to check if they've already gotten it, and you don't give it again. Then they wander off and kill an ogre mage. You set flag (2,0) to 1 to mark that one mage has been killed. 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 If they try to return to town now, you use get_flag(2,0) to check if they've killed both. Since it's smaller than 2, you know that they haven't, and you don't give them their reward. Next, they kill another ogre mage. Now you set flag (2,0) to 2 to mark that they're both dead. 0 1 2 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 They return to town and get their magic shield. Now you set (0,2) to 1 to mark that they've gotten their reward. 0 1 2 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 And of course you can use get_flag(0,2) to check if they've gotten the reward just yet. Once you understand what flags are, I wrote an article that (among other things) explains how "if" conditions in BoA work: Basic Scripting for Complete Beginners . This is how you use flags. It's more complicated to explain than it is to do. I advise taking a look at someone's else's code (many of the towns in Exodus involve fairly simple implementations of flags, for instance) and then trying it yourself.

A4 sold very, very well, but this is not terribly informative in itself. After A1-3 and the huge wait time and anticipation, Jeff could've remade KOWP in the GF engine, burned it to a CD, and called it A4, and it would've sold well. The purpose of the A4 that he actually made was to get the new engine in place and have some good hacking. It accomplished both of those things. The over-arching plot was never the point. But then, the over-arching plot in A3 was kinda stupid, too, and A3 was a great game. I don't think I'll ever have the urge to replay A4, but I did enjoy it as I played it the first time. So even if it fell off the mark of A1-3 a little, it's still well above most of the garbage out there.

As I recall, the general impression after A4 was released was it had pretty good hacking and not much else (except a few nifty things here and there, like the shades). To the best of my knowledge, the general impression of A5 is that it is a more complete game. So finish A4, enjoy the combat, and then head straight on to A5, which you'll probably like better.

The monsters do continue to spawn, but the acid damage remains the same always. It's just that the same amount of damage hurts more when you're low on health already from combat and many rounds of damage.