BainIhrno

Okay, very stupid question: which number calls the sound you would hear with the Forcecage spell? I've tried almost every plausible sound.

Things have been going slowly for me, sorry I haven't sent it out yet. I'll try to get it out by this weekend.

Okay, so it may be a week before I am able to actually send out the initial beta, but I would like to figure out who would be interested in testing the new scenario.

As some of you may know, I have been working on porting the BoE scenario "Of Good and Evil", by Alcritas, to Blades of Avernum. In addition to making it playable for BoA, I did add some new features with the scripting, many of which could not be done in BoE.

Before I go any further, I would like to express thanks to everyone on these forums who answered scripting and other design questions for me, especially Kelandon, Ishad Nha, and Niemand.

Anyway, if you are interested in testing, some things to know:

1. "Of Good and Evil" is rated Mature. I know it was only listed as "PG" in BoE, but I felt that given some of the content in the scenario, especially compared to other BoA scenarios, this scenario should probably fall under "Mature."

2. I will be expecting the beta testers to do a bit of work i.e. I'm going to ask more from testers than just going through the scenario once and pointing out bugs.

3. **IMPORTANT** - there is a point where the scenario will split into two paths, a la "A Small Rebellion", meaning that both sides will need to be looked at. If you have limited time but would still like to test, you may elect to play one side - I would much prefer a thorough job on testing one half than a weak report on both. I'll still need some testers to play both, to make sure that there are little/no inconsistencies between the two halves.

4. In terms of difficulty, the scenario is ranked at 11-15. I did the alpha testing with a party fresh from the HLPM.

If you would like to test, let me know here or by PM:

Name (for credits):

E-Mail:

Previous Beta Experience:

Mac or PC?:

Familiarity with "Of Good and Evil" in Blades of Exile:

Will you have time to test both halves of the scenario? :

Maybe I'll just have the creature fall down in a random direction (i.e. a 1/8th chance of which adjacent square).

I'm having trouble getting a mage fight to work properly.

Creature script:

Technically, everything works, but I'm finding the Slith mage rarely casts the regular spells (he is set to level 27 on Mage Spells. The creature also is set to cr_default_strategy = 1.) The mage either (1) casts the special spell he's been given, or (2) just uses melee attacks, and he uses the Dark Blow special spell more often than I think he should be.

If this is indeed a bug, we may want to document it.

On another note, does anyone know which ingredients are needed to make which potions. I can't find anything in the Character Info or the docs, and I thought it might be helpful to players (and make more sense) if when they find the recipe in a dungeon, for them to be told the needed ingredients.

Possible bug: I found that when making stores that sell skills, they apparently are bugged after a certain shop number. I had shops 32 and 33 sell skills in Mage and Priest spells, and when I went to those shops, the skills were free, whereas shop 2 charged money for the skills.

Maybe you already know this, but I couldn't find the answer to this problem until I figured it out.

Actually, these are skills, not spells -- e.g. 5012 is level in Priest skills.

EDIT: I believe I figured out the problem - for some reason, the skill shops don't work properly in shops past a certain number, not sure which, but changing the shop to shop 2 worked.

Here's my code - I'm pretty sure I've done everything correctly.

in goodevil.txt:

add_item_to_shop(32,5012,20);

add_item_to_shop(32,5026,5);

add_item_to_shop(32,5027,5);

in t5grandtempdlg.txt:

begin_shop_mode("Holy Training","Sarah is willing to improve your understanding of holy magic.",32,5,-1);

I wondered if there was a bug that caused shops that sell only one item to automatically sell the item for free, but that's not the case. I don't know what is going wrong here.

Yeah, the monsters need to move freely around.

New problem: I've put in some shops that sell levels in Mage and Priest spells, but somehow they don't charge any money. I've checked the script, and compared it to the HLPM scripts, but can't find out why this is.

Well, thanks for trying. Looks like I'm going to have to rework this dungeon.

Out of curiosity, would creatures move on lava if I created a script that repeatedly gave them the status "hovering feet"?

I know this sounds dumb, but can a creature script check which way the creature is facing? I had the idea of when you defeat a large dragon, the creature/PC directly behind it would take damage from the dragon's big back falling on them.

Playtested both halves of the scenario now, I'm just making some final touches to the scenario. I'm trying to put a dialog box in that mentions a PC by name, and have tried following scripts from other scenarios.

For example:

That's sorta what I did, I defaulted the creature "Phoenix" to have the "phoenix" script, and set the values directly through there, and it seems to be working.

I modified the script to do what you suggested, and that seems to work. However, the creature still doesn't spawn. Here's my current script (this is in the town code, state 56 is called when the creature is killed before the SDF is set.)

EDIT: I believe I figured out a way to make it work, by using "place_monster" and "set_creature_memory_cell" to the appropriate town nodes, it seems to be working the way it should.

Thanks, I had to tweak with some things to get it to work. New problem: The "spawn creature" call doesn't seem to work - the idea is that there is a creature that is supposed to come back to life if you kill it before a certain SDF is set, but I can't get that to work. Also, can an SFX boom not be called among the death of a creature? I tried putting a fire boom on the space that a creature is killed on, but it doesn't seem to display. (I've killed the creature via debug mode if that matters.)

Okay, I'm having trouble with another town script. This is not in the original BoE scenario, so this was written by hand. However, something doesn't seem to be working.

I'm on another round of testing -- at one point in the scenario, there is an entity who you feed garbage to, funny as that may sound. However, the dialog choice that allows you to feed the garbage when talking to the creature appears only once, and to reset it, you have to end the dialog. How can I make a dialog that allows for repeat selection of the same talking node?

Okay, I'm trying to revamp some of the creatures to make them harder to kill. For example, I've given the Sliths better armor and want to increase their HP - is it better to give the creatures more Endurance skill or more HP bonus? Also, how do I get creatures to drop gold in different amounts? It seems any creature dropping copper leaves 6 coins, silver leaves 15 coins, and gold leaves 40 coins.

I did finish the first round of Alpha testing for Of Good and Evil in BoA. I think I have one half of the scenario almost ready (it's a scenario that splits into two directions), so after I test the other half and both halves again to make sure everything runs smoothly, I'll probably make a beta call.

I've been torn though about how I want to handle the reputation system in the scenario. One option is to create a custom ability to allow the player to know their reputation at any given time. Another option is to not include such an ability, and challenge the player to figure it out for themselves. Finally, I could include the option, but only include a ballpark estimate of the party's reputation.

The effects your reputation has in the scenario (spoilers):

So I'm wondering, since I can't seem to decide, what would players enjoy more in regards to knowing/not knowing their reputation? Thanks.

I think the 'body;' must have been deleted accidentally, but I put it back in and it's working.

Okay, another problem. At another creature script, I get an error message saying: "Error: No body declared", "Error: State not found - 0". I've looked through the scripts extensively, and can't find what I'm doing wrong. Could someone tell me what these messages mean?

EDIT: Nevermind. Figured it out.

Okay, I'm having some more problems.

1. The 'rakshaha' graphic isn't working properly for some reason. It shows up properly in the editor, but not in the game.

2. One of the towns is comprised almost entirely of lava. However, for some reason, even though all the creatures in the town are 100% immune to fire damage and are set to move freely, no one moves in the town. I can't seem to find anything in the docs about this. What should I do here?

Thanks. That did the trick.

I've now reached a town in testing where one of the creatures uses a custom script: for some reason, the game doesn't recognize the 'last_abil_time' call, even though the same call is used in ZKR.

Can anyone help?

The specific line is:

if (tick_difference(last_abil_time,get_current_tick()) > 0)