John S

Quote: Originally written by canisters, need canisters: i say sack the manual and go through the game by trial and error thats what i did and finished all 3 geneforge games in a total of 3 days my manuals are sitting somewere in the local rubbish tip going moldy and dissintergrating. (not meaning any disrespect to spiderweb softwere because without them gemes i wouldent have servived a boring 3 days of half term) Your parents failed to do the right thing for you when you were a child.

I think dialog pivots more on whether or not plagues have been defeated. The decay of Blackcrag and the Dragon Lair would be extremely unrealistic. Blackcrag is home to the Empire's most powerful troops, and the Dragon Lair is populated by DRAGONS. So not all cities decay.

Quote: Originally written by Waylander: Mica: Quote: The spellbook isn't precious, it's rubbish (who ever uses bolt of fire?). I guess if you don't know how to play the game efficiently, you'd probably use Fireblast over Bolt of Fire against a single fire vulnerable opponent. Of course the spellbook is precious, Lvl 3 spells are rare. What mage would turn up the opportunity for more power? And even if they didn't want to learn the spell, why not sell it? I carry around a special piece of metal that I use just to impale people on. They don't even have to be angry at me! Anyway, I call this special stabber a "sword" and I find it just about as useful as BoF.

The fact that there are necromancers named Necros is a theatrical effect. In games where the backstory of these characters is not inspected with great detail, I'm leaning towards the idea that rather than being the effect of nominative determinism, it is in fact the choice on the author's part to give them a relevant name. For example: Dialog 1 (Casually named necromancer): "Bob has lived on Cemetery Hill ever since his wife died." Dialog 2 (Theatrically named): "Necros has lived on Cemetery Hill ever since his wife died." See how "Bob" is quite disruptive to the building of suspense, while "Necros" makes it quite clear what's going to happen?

Quote: Originally written by Foley's Body: ... I KNOW! I was asking where do i find these mages that teach firebolt, light, heal, and cure... @.@ Oh, okay. Well, I just assumed you would have noticed that they're in almost every major city.

You only use Bolt of Fire in the most early part of the game. After gaining about five levels, it's useless. I see no reason why 20 extra damage to one target would top 80 damage to multiple targets.

Quote: Originally written by Marak: Poe FTW. *Giggle* Or maybe it was a rival mage. Fortunato was a member of the Masons, but the main charcter (whose name cannot be rememberd) is not.

Once you're in the game, your character's don't automatically learn spells in accordance with their casting level. You have to buy spells from mages and priests.

That didn't occur to me because I only read The Cask of Amontillado recently, and I played Avernum 3 years ago. But it seems that that is indeed the reference.

This might be Avernum 3 talking, but doesn't he apologize for attacking you once you charm him?

Quote: Originally written by Thuryl: Quote: Originally written by WST ben: I'll take it all the way it is. But a whole lot of health would be nice. What is the maximum health possible with the BoE engine? 32767. There have been reports that if any monster is healed to above 32767 HP (which is pretty hard to do, even in BoE), the game will crash. And if you funk up your game just right, the Vahnatai Warriors in the Final Gates (I think that's what the kids call it these days... Those three sets of walls filled with Vahnatai?) will actually gain health when they take damage, leading to quite trippy health levels.

Well sure, you can make the terrain and towns first, then scripts, then check everything. Or, you can make a one-town scenario. One quest, one plot. Nothing fancy, not even difficult. Then you can play it through and see where you need to improve. Then you release it for beta and other people tell you were you need to improve. And that's how you become better.

Outline the hands and head in black, at the very least. They're not very well-defined right now.

Exile has Magic Map. Avernum has Far Sight. It's considerably less powerful, and only useful if you suspect you're missing something.

I'm glad you've decided to see TM in action before passing judgement, Synergy67. And whether or not TM is abrasive/funny, he's still caused pages of discussion on things more important than which party you should use.

Quote: Originally written by Synergy67: Quote: Originally written by Kingy: This is possibly the most retarded thing I've read today. -------------------- Bring back TM So we can resurrect inane, blighty-tongued bickering and "improve" the dialog? He has created many scenarios in both BoA and BoX, and by removing him from the community we are hurting ourselves more than him. EDIT: Removed the more rude parts and a long speech.

What are you expecting us to do? Is this supposed to be a fan-fic thingy, or is it a joke, or is it secretly uploading a virus to our computers as we read...

Okay, I checked and indeed, neither Erika nor any other kind of NPC can cast Repel Spirit, Arcane Shield, or Simalcrum. Phooey. If you say otherwise, you're a damn liar. And goblins will bite you when you sleep.

I'm pretty sure I've seen Erika cast Arcane Shield, and I think I've seen random priests use Repel Spirit. And you can do all sorts of mean tricks with custom scripts. To make a monster copy a creature, you could just set a variable to the target's type and use a call to place the copy(ies).

Quote: Originally written by chicho: Quote: Originally written by Bender Bending Rodriguez: Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't this belong in the BoE board? well the kid is new here, just let him be cause all of us were aprentice sometime anyway Even though your title doesn't define whether you're a noob or not.

It's also probably a good idea to standardize the coding, so it all fits one style.

Quote: Originally written by Khoth: You have to open a cmd.exe window, and run it from there. If you just double-click it, it will start up, finish and Windows will helpfully close the window without giving you a chance to read the output telling you what you're supposed to do. Okay, so I've decided to try to work Alint. And I don't even know what a cmd.exe window is, not how to open one. Anyone feel like pointing me in the right direction?

I think Erika shows up at the end no matter what. And I would have sent you my save file of right before you initiate the blow-up thingy, except my computer decided to take a day off and never came back to work.

I don't think Hawke's Manse has Unlock Doors level 3. House on the Hill definitely does, though; my hint book says so and I didn't make any extra notes on it. I wish I could still play Avernum 3 without the hassle of e-mailing Jeff and everything.

Cutscenes are extremely sexy and visual, but if you want to be boring and descriptive you'll probably want to use either a mix of cutscenes and messages, messages, or actual talking dialog.