Nasarius

Originally Posted By: Sterno I wouldn't ignore Impulse as a possible delivery platform, either. I find it difficult to take Impulse seriously, because it's the exact same business model as Steam, just with slightly laxer standards on what they'll include. And the owner of Stardock is...controversial. If Jeff can get Avadon on Steam, there's really no compelling reason to put it on Impulse as well. Mostly-open platforms like Apple's app stores are a different matter. That's really what we need in the indie gaming world.

Originally Posted By: The Mystic I actually hate touchscreens. With a passion. You breathe too hard anywhere near one of those (insert your choice of expletives here) pieces of (add another expletive or three for good measure), and it crashes from too many "buttons" being pressed, or deletes whatever you're working on, or causes any extension of Murphy's Law that can be applied to a computing device. Anyone who's actually used an iPod touch or an iPhone or a Nexus One will find these comments utterly incoherent. Multitouch is really, really neat. Interacting with a map with pinch zooming is simply a better experience than even the full mouse and keyboard. It's particularly appropriate for Google Earth. Apple has made all the touch interactions ridiculously smooth, and reports indicate the iPad is even faster.

At creation, I tend to assign all my characters exactly two main responsibilities from the list of: fighter, archer, mage, priest, lockpicker. Pair off those roles however you like, and you should end up with a reasonably effective party. Two Mage/Priests at the back is a favorite of mine. Specialize each one only slightly, and unless you're casting high-level spells, you don't have to worry about which is which. Very handy if one gets disabled.

Well at the moment, *neither* project has anything in the SVN repo. If someone wants to actually get the ball rolling, I'll gladly contribute to any effort porting the BoE code to real object-oriented C++.

Doh. You know, I didn't even realize that traits were available in Avernum 4. Yet another reason that I miss the old interface.

Quote: Originally written by Bestrafer_fin: I'm hopeful now! If I go away for 10 years, I have Avernum 10 and Geneforge 10 to play? Nah, we'll be on the fourth remake of the Exile series

The skill descriptions contain this information. As far as I know, Arcane Lore, Nature Lore, and First Aid are the only skills that should be spread across your party.

I still don't understand why Jeff doesn't just use cross-platform libraries like SDL. He's not doing anything very complex with graphics or sound. It would reduce porting time to a week or two at the most. He writes everything for Mac and Windows, so you think he would plan ahead and code with cross-platform compatibility in mind.

Looks like Buffalo

Quote: Originally written by Dahak: I do not understand that bug. I mean, I have no trouble reading outdoor signs. I'm running the latest BoA version on OS 10.2.8 Is it Windows only? Quite possibly. I don't know if it affects everyone using the Windows version, though. I know I haven't been able to read outdoor signs with the latest version on Win2k or WinXP (two completely different computers).

Why don't you compare yours to the default items? Commenting something out doesn't necessarily mean that variable is set to 0. Code: begindefineitem 49; it_name = "Short Sword"; it_full_name = "Cursed Short Sword"; it_variety = 1; it_damage_per_level = 4; it_bonus = -3; it_floor_which_sheet = 1004; it_floor_which_icon = 9; it_inventory_icon = 8; it_value = 10; it_weight = 80; it_magic = 0; it_cursed = 1;

Outdoors signs don't work.

You can do it, though I'd recommend against it. For Linux newbies, try Mandrake or SuSE . If you want to go the hardcore way and be able to do anything you want with your system, go with Gentoo . But if you really want to install Knoppix, just open a console and run: knx-hdinstall http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&q=knoppix+hard+disk+install

Quote: Originally written by Imban: I've reloaded as many as 45+ times on a single fight in order to win a battle of attrition. *shrugs* Okay, "2 or 3" was a bit low. Ten is okay on occasion. 45+ means it's just too difficult and you probably won by a lucky streak. By the way, you're probably not using that term correctly in this case

Quote: Originally written by Arancaytar: Insane characters can work wonders as comic relief even in serious scenarios (I wonder, can sudden 'bouts' of humor damage an otherwise serious scenario?) Of course not, if it's well done. Shakespeare almost always had a character or two for comic relief in his tragedies. (I was going to say 'always', but then I remembered Othello, which IIRC doesn't have any comic relief). He did it well; it can also be done very badly. See C-3PO in Star Wars Ep. 2 for example

Quote: Originally written by The Creator: I think I'll just add "You are free to break any and all of these rules once you understand why they exist." Well said

I agree; if you have to reload more than 2 or 3 times to kill it with an appropriate-level party, it's too hard.

Quote: Originally written by The Creator: It... sorta does. But really, the insanity aspect wasn't the good bit. Yeah, I really should have included an example. I'll fix that. EDIT: Possibly I should amend that to "Insanity is bad except in comedies"? I think you're over-generalizing a bit too much. Demons/demon possession *can* be done right - I can't recall any games, but Barbara Hambly's "Dragonsbane" series does it well. As for insanity...again, it can be done right, but it should never be used as a cheap substitute for a real motive.

Quote: Originally written by Morgan: Jeff - I'm not sure I quite understand you - I'm doing all this within the bounds of a town. It works perfectly (I get the message fine), until I reload the save game. As I said, print out the coordinates you're checking before you check them. This will allow you to figure out when and why it crashes.

Quote: Originally written by Morgan: Unfortunately, your solution produces the same results. Strange. Try printing out the x and y coordinates you're checking first (or maybe use a message box). Then you should be able to pinpoint which coordinate is making it crash. Good luck, N.

Quote: Originally written by Morgan: I'm pretty sure it does that. Let me check. Yeah, it does. For the less technologically savvy of us, what does this type of error mean? Is it a specific fault of BoA's engine, or a scripting limitation? Basically, a town in Avernum is a big grid, with the upper-left corner being (0, 0). As you move to the right, x increases. As you move down, y increases. Therefore, there are only positive numbers in the grid. You're trying to ask Avernum about a spot that's off the grid. It would be nice if the Avernum engine handled this cleanly, but apparently it doesn't. You'll very likely get the same error if you check too far in any direction. Is there any simple way to get the size of the town? If not, that could be a problem.

By the way, here's the way to (probably) fix it. This is in pseudocode since I don't know Avernumscript: Code: y = char_loc_y(0) - 5;if (y < 0){ // do nothing...}else if(char_ok((char_on_spot(char_loc_x(0)), y)) == 1){ message_dialog("Is this working?", "");}break;

Looks like it's probably an "array index out of bounds" type of error. Have you tried walking to the north edge of the town and seeing if it crashes there?

Quote: Originally written by spyderbytes: EDIT: About the special ability bug... kinda makes it pointless for a designer to go to the trouble to designate something property. I rather hope that hole gets plugged... Not pointless at all. If a player wants to cheat, he'll cheat, and there's very little you can do to stop him. It's not like this is ruining the game for people who want to play it the "right" way.

Quote: Originally written by spyderbytes: Considering that he's also making extensions to Avernumscript, not to mention bug fixes, and that he said recently Windows beta has been going on for a couple of weeks now, doesn't seem like it's taking him all that long at all. One thing I can pretty well guarantee: he's not taking longer than he needs, just to put off the sheer agony of getting paid by the Windows players. I suppose. I'm just saying, do it in Java (a vastly underrated language), for example, and it'll run on anything with no extra porting work required.