Eigenvalue

First of all, I apologize if I am posting the following question to the wrong forum. However, since it seems to be ultimately related to the game, I do not feel completely unjustified posting it here. So: Several times per day every day (and maybe even more often), while browsing the vast infinity of the internet, I am drawn to my currently most favourite and my most beloved web page (Geneforge 4 forum) hoping for an announcement of when the game is actually coming out. Except for the standard unchanging message that the game is coming (at least to Mac users) by the end of the year. I am also hoping to see some announcement of the form: "coming in at least 1 month", or "coming in 2-4 weeks", or "coming in 1-2 weeks", or "coming tomorrow", or (my favourite!) "Just came out, you dummy!" (Hmm... it seems that I missed a case here). However, all I see (and, perhaps, not only I, but a ton of other excited forum members) are the short messages from the beta testers, which summarized can be stated as follows: "We have to tell you this: This is the best game ever! However we cannot tell you more! But, wait, here is something really cool which I did when beta testing the game. No, can't say more". So, I am pleading, for the tranquility of my soul and the piece of my mind, someone give me some kind of a realistic estimate of when to expect the moment to take out my credit card. Or, better yet, I might propose this as a poll: who expects the game when?

Ok, I was playing Nethergate demo and it runs fine on my computer. However, unlike Geneforge or Avernum series, it seems that the final product is a CD and not just a code (which one can input in the title screen). Do I understand this correctly? In other words, supposing that I do not want to wait for the shipping and that my CD drive is broken, there is nothing much I can do?

I have got two questions about the upcoming game: 1. How does the experience system work? I.e. do you get less points if you fight with more creations, so that for fastest leveling up one should play the guardian type? Related to that, is the experience shared equally between the members of the group, or does the creature making the final kill get all? 2. A silly but a nice feature of Geneforge 3 was to lock the player in a remote closet somewhere and to have a fyora gathering all the items around without the crime being seen. Is the new system of picking up items different from the old one?

To continue the list: 6. Killing that dude who used to be a bandit, but now seems to lead a pieceful life. 7. Telling a mage in Dharnia? who likes to cut all living things where the friendly spiders are. 8. Killing either commander Drew or Queen Annatolia. Well, queen Annatolia has joined with Darkside Loyalists, but still... (well, if you tell her you killed Imriel the quest for commander Drew does go away)

To continue the list: 6. Killing that dude who used to be a bandit, but now seems to lead a pieceful life. 7. Telling a mage in Dharnia? who likes to cut all living things where the friendly spiders are. 8. Killing either commander Drew or Queen Annatolia. Well, queen Annatolia has joined with Darkside Loyalists, but still... (well, if you tell her you killed Imriel the quest for commander Drew does go away)

I have the following major complaints about dialogues in A4. You come to a new city, you talk to everyone, find tons of useful information about the area, then explore the area, do some quests, wander around the map, come back to the same city, and with minor exceptions, the people are still telling you the same outdating old boring useless information. I would like a dialogue option to say: "yeah, been there, done that" on my part so that after I describe my adventures to a nice lady-shopkeeper, she will stop repeating me that she overheard that... Or there is a guy-shopkeeper-do-not-remember-where who has a replica of Demonslayer blade on his wall. After you have the real one, you should be able to gloat to his face: "Look at this!" and he should sigh: "Oh, wow, cool, man, yeah, super..." I also understand that you do not want to be thrown too much of useless information too early in the game, but there are lots of people who have extensively traveled and they should be able to tell you not just about the neighboring cities, but about every city and village on the map... Say the commander of the fort you start with can already reminiscence about how he was once in the castle and saw the king, that sort of stuff.

Hi, sorry if the answers to some of these questions have already appeared in the forum, so please reference me to the right topic if needed. First of all, what do you think is better: the main fighter with the sword or the main fighter with the spear? I believe that some enemies take more damage from the sword, while some enemies take more damage from the spear, but still... Of course, using spears means no shields, so less protection and less additional bonuses coming from shields... My second question, I did not have an archer in my party when I played the game first time, how much damage can an archer really do? That is, does it even remotely compare to a mage with, say, the kill spell? A similar question is for throwing weapons. How much should my main fighters invest in bows to make significant damage in the long-range combat. I mean, if my fighter can do, say, 20 bow damage, while a mage can do 100, there does not seem to be any point training bow skills. This definitely appeared, is there any point training tools skills? Nature lore? Arcane lore? I.e. is the benefit coming from finding rare items worth more than the points spent on developing nature lore skills? If I play the game the second time, I want to make the strongest possible party of 4, throwing out all the unnecessary. One fighter does not seem to be enough, is it possible to make the second fighter half mage? Or there was something that mages and priests cannot wear some armor to cast some spells? What was that? I think that for most damage I would like to have two mages, but then priest spells are also great. So maybe: a pure fighter + fighter/priest + 2 mages, or a pure fighter + fighter/mage + mage + priest, or 2 fighters + mage + mage/priest, where say by mage/priest I mean a character developing both mage and priest skills. What do you think?

I finally made it to the ruins of Erika's tower. Going to a basement, and stepping on the runes, some windows get opened and some archers start shooting at me. Ok, killing them is not a problem, but how do I get past the closed gate?

Ok, I have cleared up the third island. Right now my PC is sitting in the Keep in the middle of an enormous pile of junk: weapons, armors, blades, charms, rings, crystals, item enhancements - collected from the whole island. But since the pile is so huge, I have no idea what is really in it. So, which magical items could you shape by this time?

In reply to Moc's idea of GF5 series, I propose the new project called "Geneforge Infinity". For a long time in the history of human race, an alien fleet from a galaxy far away for awaiting the final order to colonize the planet and to populate it with toxic-breeding plant forms, very valuable on inter-galactic trading market. When a human starship Voyager from a parallel universe crushes into the planet, the order finally comes. The geophysical cataclysisms due to the crash and to the initial stages of alien colonization produces hordes of mutations, in humans, shapers and dragons alike. And in the midst of all this crisis and chaos, a university student (I recommend myself as a prototype) needs to obtain his diploma and to get a job at the local shoe-polishing company. His dreams starts coming to life when one of seventeen survivors of Voyager offers him his protection and preparation material for the aerodynamics exam in exchange for the dangerous scouting mission deep into the enemy territory.

Speaking of which, is there a maximum weight one can carry, before dying from over-exhertion.

If one could also teach creations to open doors and boxes (one would definitely think that Alwan and Greta could do it, while a vlish could possible open all the boxes and drawers in a room at once)...

I am playing loyalist shaper. Is it normal that I am attacked by serviles in Spharon land? Do I need to fight through them to get to Raoul?

Greeting to everyone. I read the previous discussion with a lot of pleasure and I personally always assumed that the game lacks realism, until I managed to convince myself of precisely the opposite. You see, if two guys fight in the street, then the one who will win the fight is probably the one who is stronger, tougher, faster, street-smarter, luckier, or can just use the surroundings to his advantage (shoot in the back or from behind a corner). If I go out to a street at night, then I will be probably easily defeated by almost every one out there. But if I start going to a gym, take a couple of martial arts classes, learn to shoot a gun, and so on, then I will very quickly advance to the position when I can defeat more of those around me. The more I will advance, the tougher opponents I will be able to defeat (yes, and if I could also SAVE my life in a game file, so that I could restore it when things go wrong). The point is: I would not become 100 times better than I used, but sufficiently so to survive tougher and tougher enemies. Another example: take a bunch of raw guys who went to the army and look at them in just a couple of months after the initial survival course...The point is: it's like in the game. Of course, I do not do all of the above. As you can guess, I am not spending every minute in a gym or learning to shoot a gun, not taking a survivall course, especially when I play GF3. I study, cook, watch TV... - I have lots of more "important" things to achieve than becoming an ultimate fighting machine. If I chose to - maybe, but I don't. My point is: the character in GF3 improves so quickly because this is all he does: training to become meaner and tougher. Unlike Lankan, Diwaniya and the rest, who lead a normal life and have many more pressing political and economical (and social) issues to attend to rather than training to be a Rambo. So while they lead a meaningful life inside a society, our character fights, fights, and fights, and becomes better, better and better. Having said this, I am not surprized why no one pays attention to what level he is, because "level" is not a physical quantity, you cannot look at a person in real life and assign him a level based on your look. Also I am not surprised that the character evolves so fast. Part of the reason is that he spends all the time exercising. But another reason: the character should have a tremendous potential to achieve anything, in this way he is better in the very beginning than all other Shapers. As an example: if I start jumping as far as I can, I will never break the world record even if I train for years, but there are those for whom this is actually possible. So our character is phenomenal in this aspect. Of course, in the Shaper's school no one notices it because every student is already a prodigy, a genius - out of such team it is not clear who is the supergenius. So, this was supposed to convince everyone that our own life is not very different from GF3... Ah, forgot to mention, I interprete distributing the points as the character gains levels in the following way: if the character chooses to do push-ups every spare minute he has - he should get stronger, if he chooses to repeat battle magic spells - he should be better in battle magic, if he chooses to practice oratory skills - he should become a better leader, and so on... P.S. An unrelated question (I am sure that it was discussed already, but...): are Shapers really people with certain inborn (and perfected in years) magical abilities. Or are they a completely different race ?

On a similar note: I usually have a big stash of unused items in different parts of the city, these are the items which I am afraid to sell as they might get useful later. Being gone for days, and returning to the city, I do not find anything missing, even if I leave in a public place or in somebody's private quarters. Is this realistic? Why are the people around so honest, especially when I do not have any scruples going through everybody's drawers hoping to find a key ingredient to a recepy or another pouch of gold?

Dolphin, thanks for your explanation. Just one more question: if somebody does write a script, calling it "editor.txt", how does the game know to execute it? Or is the point to rewrite an existing script, for example the one corresponding to the very beginning of the game, to ask a series of questions whose answer will determine how to upgrade the character, which items to give and so on? Theoretically one would want to see a scrollable list of items and just choose the items he wishes, and to see the statistics/abilities windows as the game provides and just increase/decrease the desired statistics. Can a script do something that complicated? By the way, this scripting language, is it used only by Geneforge or also by other software, i.e. is this something common or something which exists only for Geneforge? Well, sorry if this was more than one question.

Could someone tell a complete dummie (me) what the word "codes" means? And what are "scripting abilities"? But excuse me if I say the obvious, opening Geneforge with a Resourserer (or some kind of resource editor) you can see lots of text-like information such as the list of all quests and their description, the list of all items, the list of all characters and so on. I have not looked at any of the game files, but I am sure one can get a lot of information about the game as well. If someone could tell me how the information is stored in the save game file (and where it is) I do not think it would be difficult to write a C program or something like it. But I am probably missing the whole point of this discussion, so please explain me.

I was always quite puzzled of the following thing: for many years a young shaper apprentice trains hard, memorizes lots of spells, does lots of routinely shores, blah, blah and blah, and then we start playing the game and in several months this youngster reaches the power to beat up everyone else around. This does not look very realistic in my mind. What I would have liked, although this seems impossible to implement, while producing the same satisfaction out of the game, is to start with a completely strengthwise and knowledgewise grown individual who needs to save the world by going around, talking to people, killing stuff when necessary and making intelligent choices throughout (and, yes, he has heard of spawners and can shape gazers in the very beginning). Something like a shaper from the shapers' council who has an enlightment... Or, continuing with the stream of absolutely nonsensical ideals, a human karate master/gladiator/king's son (always nice to introduce somebody with connections) who retired from the wars/pubs/women/men and came to a deserted island he/she knows nothing about and one day finds her favourite banzai tree/ wooden stick/weed plantation burned by a gazer/drakon/fiora. Since this was a sole memoty of a longtime dead grandmother, this person wants to get revenge and first finds the creature and its owner making the last one pay for the damages. While looking for the owner he gets in the midst of war between shapers, rebels, takers, blood-hungry serviles, drakons and genetically modified ornks, and... the revenge list keeps getting longer and longer. Having said this, I hope I am kept at least 10 miles away from designing GF4, when does it come out anyways?

Wow... all these cheat codes... BUT... I tried to kill Mr. Hoge on the very first level (or the second), right in the training school... and I CAN'T DO IT!!! I upgraded my character up to level 30, investing mostly into endurance and strength, made 7 creations (which deliver almost no damage and get all killed immediately) and succeeded in doing almost minimal damage. Is there a cheat code like Iwanttobereallystronger, or givemethebestarmorandswordinthisgame??

I have finished playing the demo (this means my knowledge is limited to the first and most of the second island), but... 1. First of all, how many different factions are there? Loyal shapers, Rebels, ... does Litalia belong to a different faction than Rebels? 2. I have found that way too many people ask which faction of thought I belong to, I tried to be somewhere on "everyone is free to make their own decisions" side (which I guess is more Rebelish), but never completely admitted that in public. As a consequence both in Sun Ru and Rebel camp on the second island I am considered with doubt, no one accepts me with open arms and teaches me all the kowledge they have . So, is it better to choose a faction right at the start, or is there a way to postpone the decision until very end? 3. How do "drastic" items influence the opinions of those around, I don't mean killing someone, but giving research notes from the mine to a human mage or delivering a canister to Rebel on the second island?