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Erika Maroonmark

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Everything posted by Erika Maroonmark

  1. I just downloaded the Wineskinned Exile 1, but whenever I go to a window like "More info" on a character or the spell screen, the whole thing becomes completely unresponsive. Any idea why this could be? (I'm using El Capitan -- there's apparently an issue in general with Wineskin and El Capitan, but I was able to get around it; that's what allowed me to run the game in the first place.)
  2. Dramatizing something from the history might be cool as well. The First Visitation Expedition? The first mages getting exiled and building a society? Something along those lines…
  3. I'm really enjoying it so far -- I decided to do the Tinkermage thing because I usually play sorcerer-types and it seemed cool and different. And it's a lot of fun! Very tactical, as the reviews have been saying. It does mean that I don't have quite as much occasion to take Alcander along, though -- which is too bad, because he's hilarious. (Am I right that Intelligence doesn't do much for Tinkermages? It is kind of surprising, a priori, because of the "mage" bit; but my main stat is Dexterity and I am consequently pretty good at razordisks.)
  4. Like Alcander said: "sad little Dedrik". I love them both.
  5. Originally Posted By: Harehunter When I was taking my officer basic course in Combat Engineers, there was one rule regarding the ASP (Ammunition Supply Point). You could return unused ammunition, but you could *not* return unused demolition supplies. The reason being that these things have a shelf live before they become unstable, so they wanted to recycle their stocks. Inevitably, at the end of a training exercise we always had excess material. Our class was divided into two teams, and one of our projects was to build an obstacle called a 'log crib'. Of course we couldn't leave them in place, so we got the opportunity to destroy the other teams obstacle... Out comes the TNT (I started to say C4, but it is used for a different application). On the first log crib, we used engineering calculations to use just the right amount of explosive. When we set it off, the log crib was gone and the roadway was smoother than when we got there. On the second log crib, however, it was our last charge for the exercise. We calculated the correct amount of explosive to use, but we had to then apply the CEUFF in order to use up the rest of the material, including extra C4 and blasting caps. This time when we set off the charge, we converted one obstacle (the log crib) into another obstacle... a road crater. Being in a wooded area it was easy to see just how big an explosion we had set off. The nearby trees had been barked 70 feet off the ground. appl
  6. Originally Posted By: Kreador I had found and picked from the graymold patch long before I ever talked to anyone looking for it. Well, in that case…=D
  7. Also, the graymold itself: someone gave me a clue to its location in the dialogue, so I looked for it there, but I couldn't actually get it until I'd talked to the right person. Whereas in Exile, I'm pretty sure I just stumbled upon it and took some without having to go through the whole sequence (I'm assuming, since I have basically no memory of two of the characters involved). It was weird, but somehow satisfying. Another somewhat strange thing: Click to reveal.. I confessed to stealing the circlet from Meena and fought her. When she died, I found the password to steal the circlet on her body. I guess there's a way to get forced into killing her sooner, or something, but it was amusing to see "'Ankh'? Maybe it's a password!" when it was a password I'd already used. =D
  8. I'm pretty sure that, at the very least, the first reference to Pyrog that I saw was as "she". I *think* it was consistent, but I'm second-guessing it now.
  9. There are also a lot of more minor characters who are women in "traditionally male roles": just off the top of my head, in AEftP there's Acacia, Elspeth, Captain Rosie*, Jonnhalyn, Ethridge, Anastasia the armorer, Jasmine the armorer…actually, there are quite a few female armorers now that I think about it…some other guard captains as well, plus people like Mayor Evelyn and Vicky in government. Also, I think there are a couple of female slith leaders, but I never could remember those sliths' names for some reason. ^_~ Anyway, my point is that it could have been the case that anywhere you look in this game, you see a totally male-dominated world. But it's not. Among the townspeople you interact with, there are less "physical" jobs where I think you see even more of a balance: in addition to the mages, there's the innkeepers and rations-sellers. And then there are people like Gypsy: "oh, yeah, I travel around playing music. Sometimes for dragons." Pretty awesome. Also, is it just me or do the dragons switch genders semi-randomly? In Exile, they seemed to be all male, while in AEftP, they were all female except for Motrax and Khoth (which I found surprising, as Pyrog was the one besides Motrax that I considered most likely to be male). I think in some other games, there have been references to some dragon or other as both "he" and "she", though Athron was retconned to definitely being female pretty early on if I remember correctly. *Although I could have sworn that in Exile, Captain Rosie was described as being a guy, perhaps implying that Rosie was his surname? There are a couple of characters who I think were gender-switched between the two games, including a traveller in the Almaria inn who is now described as a "woman with a mustache" (I think his name was originally Monty or something?). Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S One thing I found interesting about AEFTP is that Erika's character has been gradually made less sharp. Compare: --- EXILE:EFTP: There is a piercingly beautiful woman sitting in the throne. She looks at you with an expression of haughtiness and utter confidence. AVERNUM: A piercingly beautiful woman is seated in the throne. She is sailing gracefully into middle age with a sense of utter equipose. She looks at you with an expression of haughtiness and utter confidence. A:EFTP: A piercingly beautiful woman stands before you. She is sailing gracefully into middle age with a sense of utter equipoise. She smiles as you approach, trying to put you at your ease. Earlier today, I was looking through a bunch of screenshots that I took while playing Exile – didn't find what I was looking for, but I had taken a screenshot of the dialogue box that pops up when you meet Erika outside her tower, which describes her as a "statuesque young woman" – which I took to mean that she was magically slowing down her aging process or making herself look younger than she actually was (and I think something along these lines may have been stated outright in another game…especially since Patrick is clearly pretty dang old). So I found the middle-aged bit rather weird, as I'd always thought of her as one of those older-than-they-look Aes Sedai-style mages.
  10. Also, what were the light sources for? I was collecting them for a while, but they didn't seem to do anything in dark places. I'm not finished yet, but I do have some general thoughts: I was always a bit confused by the exact details of the storyline in Exile, because for many years I just played the demo version and tried to discover every little secret, detail, and bit of dialogue in the eastern half of the world that I could. So when I've played the full version, I've often thought "am I supposed to know plot detail X yet?" and had some items before I was really supposed to, and the game didn't do anything to prevent it from happening (e.g. the graymold salve recipe – it's just there, and you don't have to go around tracking down Cortath). This sort of thing was alleviated in Avernum 1, but I never played the whole game. So I was pretty excited to finally experience the whole story as it was intended…but really, the fact is that you get "quests" from so many different places at once that it really is kind of confusing. You get a lot of things and information by exploring things just because they're there…the brooches are mostly rewards for quests that you get and know about early on (the spider mission, &c.) even in Exile. However, a lot of this might just be because I knew the storyline from Exile already (so I knew who and where the "good question" brooch guy was, for instance). The graymold sequence was new to me, but I did it without officially knowing why I wanted anything from Patrick. It's an adventure game, you just help people because they're there! So I got a few quests where I could immediately say "I'm one step ahead of you, pal, I already have that item." Not a complaint; it was just interesting. I sort of wish I could have unlearned some of the Exile storyline, though, so that knowing where to go could have been more of a mystery. Oh well. Edited to add: Oh yeah, and I was also kind of disappointed by the Orb of Thralni in this game…in Exile it was really useful for exploring; here not so much.
  11. There's also the "charming display of futility" sign in the swamp…which is no longer so charming or so futile now that there is no swamp.
  12. Originally Posted By: Lightning Spammer Is it just me, or is this game significantly harder than any of Jeff's games so far? I'm not sure if it is any one thing that I've noticed, but "normal" seems quite "hard" and I never had this much trouble with past Avernum games nor with Geneforge. Hmm…I'm only really familiar with the Exile trilogy and Avernum 3, but I thought the opposite. I'm pretty far – just lost to Grah-Hoth, will try him again later – and I don't think I've really done any deliberate level grinding, unlike in Exile. In this game, I pretty much just went out and started doing stuff, a mentality which I think was primed by the addition of the tutorial. In fact, while playing this I often thought "hey, I could probably have done this on Hard" (which surprised me, since I'm really more of a casual gamer by nature). I've also never felt trapped in a dungeon, or in an outdoor area by a group of wandering monsters. When I first got to the Great Cave, I found myself avoiding monsters and not doing much exploring until later, but avoiding monsters was pretty easy because there are so few of them. I also didn't use the editor. One thing I'm definitely appreciating is the lack of PC death/being turned to stone in AEftP. (And Return Life is such a great spell!) This might be why I found Exile and the original Avernums harder, but what I used to do was to reload the game whenever a character was killed (carrying all their equipment around until I could get to a healer was too much of a pain, especially when you can only carry 12 items or whatever it was in the original Exile). Same with stoning. I didn't have to be afraid of basilisks in this game! =D The order to do the quests/dungeons in did take a little figuring out, though (especially since Exile was very "ok, here's a dungeon, kill everything", rather than "well, you beat the first tier, come back later"). I'd always thought that the Nephilim castle (with Anastasia and the necklace) came "after" the Nepharim fort (with the Cotra prisoners), so I put it off relative to other things, but then I blew right through it when I finally went there. (Weren't there also Nepharim in there in earlier incarnations?) I also found that what I was capable of taking on advanced quite abruptly – sliths kept killing me, and then suddenly they weren't really threatening anymore. It was the same with the ogres, and especially the giants.
  13. Originally Posted By: BenS EDIT: not forcing the game to be over even when you've done the 3 major quests was a nice touch; nod to Skyrim? I think the original Exile was already like this: you could choose to leave when you found the exit, but if you didn't, you could keep doing stuff indefinitely. Didn't King Micah say something like "Your reward is that you can have any position in Exile that you want, but until then, just keep on doing whatever"?
  14. Also, sometimes when there's a large group of enemies close together, it's hard to find the right mouse position to target a certain one…for instance, the enemy will be standing "up" from its neighbour, but to target it, you have to move the mouse "down". I haven't really played the later Avernum games (I don't really know when this changed), so I'm used to spellcasting and ranged attacks where selecting a spell or whatever means "cast this spell from where I am". It's pretty convenient just to be able to press M-A-A or whatever and have my mage go up a couple of spaces automatically to be in range, but too often (indoor battles, mostly) I'll pick a spell, they'll run, and they can't get far enough and I've just wasted their turn. It would be nice if there were some kind of warning, but I guess I just have to get used to this new-style combat (I remember the good old days of Exile where Bless Party and Heal All really meant "bless the party" and "heal the party", not "bless everyone except the lead fighter, who is around a corner fighting the boss" and "heal everyone as long as they're within a certain radius"). Man, those indoor battles…
  15. iden Originally Posted By: No sense allowed Divulge. This one is probably my favourite.
  16. I'm playing the Exile games on BasiliskII on a MacBook. I just tried to open the Exile 2 editor, and I got what I can only describe as a "purple screen of death": the screen turned entirely purple and everything stopped (e.g. I had Spotify on in the background and it stopped playing). I had to turn off my computer and restart it. (Now that I've just had this happen, I remember that the same thing happened with the Exile 1 editor several months ago, except that I think the screen was red – I'd forgotten about it except that I knew the editor didn't work, so I didn't use it.) Anyone know what this is or what to do about it? Or should I just count my blessings that I can get the games to work on this machine in the first place?
  17. Originally Posted By: Goldenking Originally Posted By: Dantius ...especially when I can think up like a dozen criticism of current culture that are orders of magnitude more damning than "Our centuries-old language has a mild sexist bent!" That is not necessarily as accurate as you may think it is. There has been research on linguistic relativity that have shown that language does have an effect on cognition. After all, as language is one of our primary tools in describing the world, if we do not have a word for something, it is harder to grasp. This goes from the obvious, like the Mesopotamians not talking about automobiles, to the extreme, such as the lingual control exerted by the state in Orwell's 1984. So, if we have a sexist language, that becomes a serious, usually unconscious, barrier to gender equality. That's the reason why feminist movements advocated change in the language, such as the classic "chairman" to "chairperson." If the novels of Juhani Aho are any indication, Finland wasn't a particularly awesome place to be a woman in the 19th century, any more than the rest of Europe. This is despite the Finnish language having no grammatical gender (even "he" and "she" are the same word), and different words for "homo" and "vir" ("ihminen" and "mies", respectively, whereas in English they're traditionally both "man"). Usually what we do when we don't have a word for something is borrow it or invent it. Look at all the unrelated languages that have words for "car" that look something like "auto". On the flip side, Icelandic is famous for having invented words for certain modern technological things (the word for "computer" is a good example) instead of borrowing them (something to do with a language academy that preferred native Icelandic words). If the ancient Akkadians had ever seen a car, their language would have had a word for one. English didn't have or need a word for "chipmunk" until English-speakers started living on a continent that had chipmunks, so they borrowed/adapted one from a language that did have a word for it. I think the most damning evidence for the "Whorfian" view of vocabulary is the "revolving door" of euphemisms as words for certain things start to be used as insults. Words like "lame", "crippled", "idiot", and "moron" used to be technical terms, before they were replaced with more "sensitive" terms like "handicapped" and "retarded"…and then those became insults as well. And now we have kids calling each other "LD" and "special" as insults. Replacing words with other words didn't change people's attitudes about the things they represented. Specifically, people's attitudes about disabilities of various kinds are still such that they are quick to use whatever the currently accepted terminology is as an insult. The kind of studies that have shown the influence of language on thought tend to be ones with findings like "If a language doesn't have words for 'left' and 'right', using compass directions instead (so your left hand could be your "east hand" or your "southwest hand" depending on which way you're facing at the time), speakers of that language are more likely to be aware of their orientation with respect to compass directions than speakers of languages that use 'left' and 'right'." But I'm not sure how convincing I find this, either, since it might not be necessary to be a native speaker of such a language: where I went to college, there were areas called things like "North Campus" and "West Campus", and after a while I often found myself giving people directions and telling them to "go south" or something (as though I were in an adventure game, haha), because I was thinking of everything in relation to "north" and "west". If North Campus had just been called "Freshman Housing Quad" or whatever, I don't think I would have developed the strong sense of "this way is north (because I'm going toward my dorm)" that I did. I got around my high school with ease, of course, but I certainly couldn't have told you which way was north; my sense of direction in that place was completely visual and non-linguistic.
  18. I got it to work on my Intel Mac laptop with Basilisk II (http://www.emaculation.com/doku.php/basiliskii_osx_setup) about a week ago, actually. Similar story: I had the Exile Trilogy CD, then went off to college with my Intel Mac. I complained about this on Facebook at the time, and a friend recommended SheepShaver, but I found the whole thing too intimidating. Basilisk II turned out to be quite easy to set up – I was pleasantly surprised. It's System 7.something (I think SheepShaver is 9), but that's the system I originally played Exile on when I was a kid.
  19. I like how Avernum makes you actually go through the plot in some kind of order–you can't say certain things until your characters know to say them. (I had fun going around and saying "divulge" before I'd registered Exile. )
  20. "Who would not give up willingly all matrimonial ambition,/ To rescue such an one as I from his unfortunate position…" </Pirates of Penzance>
  21. Different starting position? Hmm, maybe we'll get to start out at Fort Remote–that's pretty far away from previous ones!
  22. I've tried opening the file up from both the CD and the version I downloaded and subsequently registered…but if I don't need it to beat the game, then I guess it's not that big a deal. (Edit: I tried ending combat before the offending character moved, and it worked! )
  23. The Avernum Annotated Maps are always worth a try, too–in certain areas, there's almost nothing different between the two games.
  24. Oh! I'll try that…I think I've been going straight up from the door every time. XD So I need to be somewhere else when I reach that horizontal–*hops off to try it* Thanks, guys! Edit: …Okay, no. The last couple times I've tried it, it's seemed like whenever character #6 is done moving, the thing crashes. I've done it from several starting spaces. ><
  25. I posted about this same problem a really long time ago, shortly after I registered the Exile trilogy (about a year ago). Right after registering, I started playing Exile 2 and everything worked fine…until some point in the fourth chapter. When the Empire guys show up in the Almaria storeroom, my game would spontaneously quit at some point during that battle. I tried opening the file with the copy of Exile 2 on my computer (Mac OS X, by the way) and the one on the CD–same result. I figured (corroborated by others' advice here) that my save file was corrupted. I recently started over again and seem to be having the same problem. So apparently it's not the file. What should I do?
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