Lazarus.

You could certainly try Shadow Vale, but I'd advise you not to get your hopes up. It's a hard thing to convince someone to spend their time making a graphic for a random stranger on the internet. An artist may be inclined to grant such a request for a Blades designer, because it is understood that the designer will be "repaying" by investing time making a scenario (the artist is presumably a Blades fan, so completing a good scenario would be payment in itself.) But PC graphics are usually for personal use only. That said, I hardly speak for the artists of the community. Request away, and perhaps a kind soul will take a liking to your proposed graphic and decide to make it.

There aren't that many community made PC graphics, your best bet is to find an NPC graphic and turn it into a PC graphic. Try to find one that's a large sheet so you have the sitting and attack-ready poses, then either repeat the attack pose for each weapon type or edit the image to put different weapons in the character's hands. You'll lose the un-armored poses (but who seriously wears no armor?) and potentially the different weapon poses, but its better than nothing. I think Nemesis posted an angel graphic at the Blades Forge, that would be a good start. Not sure about the jedi though, I'm inclined to say it doesn't exist.

What Niemand said. State switching caused me no end of problems for my first creature scripts, consider taking out the attack state. Creature scripts are pretty much always a pain. If it's not state switching screwing things up it's message calls or any number of annoying quirks.

I'm amazed Windows BoA didn't keel over from this one. If there's anything it hates more than out of bounds parameters it's nonexistant images, and this one has both.

I'm also on Windows, so I can't help you any further. I was volunteering others for the job.

You should probably upload a copy of the scenario (or at least that one town where the error occurs) and have another Mac user test it. It may be a problem with your copy of Blades. If this were an unhandled exception like Windows users get I'd say it's a script error, but as far as I know these random crashes don't happen on the Mac version.

It would appear that Aran has sorted out whatever was wrong with the Forge. The downloads now work, at least for me. Haven't actually opened up the scenario though.

So is this officially released yet? Like, can it be hosted at scenario databases / posted at CSR (Assuming you don't object to either)?

Originally Posted By: Sarachim I asked him once how the Arc was going to end, and he said "everyone dies." That's particularly unenlightening considering that everyone is already dead.

Salmon offered a free game to the winner, so you could have won that. Cash not so much. I can't comment on the prizes for the next contest, as it hasn't even been announced yet. A free game is about the best you could hope for.

The only workarounds involve placing items in the editor, but putting them in invisible or blocked containers. Not always a solution, but sometimes it works. Or you can just deal with the fact that you can see the items. Technically they're 'contained' because you have to search the container to get them, so its just aesthetics.

http://www.geocities.com/lazarus989/prepackagedscenarios.zip The three prepackaged scenarios for Windows, these came straight off the BoE disc I believe.

http://blades.ermarian.net/script/code-snippet/working-npc There's really no other way to control joined NPCs, unless you're going to manipulate them from a terrain script or something ridiculous like that. Edit: This is probably a bit beyond the scope of a beginner scenario though, so I'd have to advise against creations at least for now. I don't know much about the Geneforge world, but it sounds like your original idea works around the creation issue just fine; if I were you I'd finish that, and save shaping for a follow up if you liked the result.

I've played most of the 8+ scenarios, but there are still some classics that I'd like to play. I'll see if I get to it over break.

A room description in the tower gets cut short. "Bars? Locks? I think it's Jai" May have happened elsewhere as well, I wasn't always paying attention to them.

Since it's an entirely different town for the night scene, just make it underground and you're done. To cover all bases you should set ticks forward to morning time once you return back to the original town, that way if the party went to sleep at night, the "dawn" part will indeed be during the day.

Since I'm too lazy for email... -The sign in front of the inn just says "The." Intentional? -The nighttime scene at the inn should be, well, night. -Outdoor encounter: "If the monster plague had been stopped it just" -When the party talks to "The Exiles" they should be set to face them. I'm thinking of the inn scene in particular here. And welcome back, of course. That makes two Blades comedies that I've enjoyed.

You can't change outdoor cliff or wall graphics without replacing default data files. It can be done on Mac, but not on PCs. At least not neatly.

Custom spells are almost a must for really high level scenarios, because the default spells lose all usefulness. This in itself is quite a chore, and only really suitable to a scenario the size of Exodus. Most of the default creature abilities have already lost all usefulness at this high a level, so you'd have to rely entirely on scripted abilities to mix things up. With these two barriers to entry, it's not surprising that of all the designers to attempt 50+ level scenarios, only TM and Kel have pulled it off. And that's not even mentioning the issues Thuryl brought up.

Nothing wrong with "Twisting confusing dungeons, which may be designed with the intention of getting the player lost." Nothing wrong with towns containing bread-- even towns containing exclusively bread. Nothing wrong with.... alright I still say no Barney dragons. The point was that simply "not doing what UV does" isn't a useful guideline for good design. UV has wildly overpowered monsters, and lots of them. Does that mean including high level monsters is a cardinal sin? Hardly, although some have said that these type of monsters "don't work," for balance reasons. Instead of suffering through UV and learning nothing, why not play Exodus (which you can say what you want about, but is certainly the only well balanced scenario for high level parties) and decide for yourself? UV has terrible town design as well, Warrior's Grove and the maze probably being the best examples of this. But looking at shitty towns doesn't help you make good ones. Play a scenario by TM or Ephesos and see what good town design looks like, and you may have to go back to BoE if you want to see a legitimate maze. As for barney dragons, vahnatai, and bread towns-- you probably aren't going to find a good scenario to teach you how to include those things. But it CAN be done, and seeing how UV came up short isn't going to teach you how to do it right.

Are you actually objecting, or just being contrary?

I've heard atrocious scenarios, like Foul Hordes and Undead Valley, referred to as good lessons for designers to see what not to do. Seriously? I have poor hopes for the person who doesn't immediately know that mazes, barney dragons, and towns full of bread are all bad ideas. This shouldn't have to be expounded on, it should be basic knowledge. Just a rant, not directed at you in particular, Ackrovan. People-- play good scenarios to see what you should do, not crap to see what not to do. You don't look at a first grader's finger paintings to see how not to paint, and you don't subject yourself to the [censored] that is UV to learn how not to design.

255 characters per string. message_dialog takes two strings, so double that.

Oh yeah, turn off word wrap when you're counting lines.

I did the manual counting thing for a while as well, it blows pretty hard. I switched to EditPad Lite, and then Notepad++. I'd highly recommend the later. Both have Go-to-line functions, but so should any halfway decent text editor. And yeah, overlong lines generally mean the previous string was missing a quote or something. I think parenthesis and brackets give "unmatched" error messages, but of course those are still worth checking because it's easy enough to check and it's a common error.