Reve

Originally Posted By: The Lost Anvil Something I'd like to see if an Avernum: Origins ever comes out... It being made with something like A3 graphics. Something I'm sure everyone is wishing - but it'll never happen

I think, in all the games, Erika was the person I missed when she died the most.

So Erika is back as a Crystal Soul then?

I think this message on your support page isn't quite right: "Microsoft inexplicably made DirectX 10 unable to support earlier versions." Vista comes with DirectX 10 and supports all previous versions of DirectX too. The "d3dx9_*.dll" files are "helper" libraries which have been gradually added to DirectX over time - Vista obviously doesn't ship with those released after it (neither does XP in fact). Of course, the real farce is Microsoft screwing over their OpenGL support, making it harder to write something cross-platform (which is obviously their entire reason for screwing it).

Azuma - That's correct. Unfortunately, I killed the chitrachs, and my characters riposte levels are so high they'd probably be killed by riposting instead EDIT - actually, I've just realised, I didn't kill them after all! So I can probably do this after all.

I want to join the Anama with my mage characters dead - however, I killed the hostile chitrach, and my characters are very high level (got to Melanchion's keep). So, a weird question, but is there another way (including cheats if need be) to kill some of your characters?

Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: I have done a lot of work on the interface. Geneforge 5 now supports OpenGL and will tap some of the power of your graphics card. Out of interest, what sorts of things are you doing with OpenGL in this engine?

Quote: Originally written by Spidweb: In Avernum 4, we didn't have time. In Avernum 5, I just forgot. Hopefully, Avernum 6 will have cave cows. Beautiful, beautiful cows. And, at the end, there will be cake. - Jeff Vogel Cows! I'm making a note here, huge success!

Actually there are quite a lot of small bits of dialogue changes for nephil, and a few for slith - mostly when you're talking to either a nephil or slith. e.g. the nephil at the start and the slith in New Harston.

I must say that the writing in the Spiderweb Software games is probably the thing that makes it more than anything. Avernum 4 was a bit lacking in this regard, as Jeff knows - I'm looking forward to playing A5 when it comes out for windows.

I think the thing I missed most with Avernum 4 was the loss of a sense of scale of Avernum. I played Exile 1-3 and the demo of Blades of Exile, and I played BoA and A4 (I never replayed E1-3 as A1-3, though playing A1 to see the new bit added about the Lost Bahssikava is something I've pondered). While I did like the increased detail of the integrated world, the issue I had was that the sense of scale died out compared to previous games, where you really felt you were in a gigantic sprawling neverending maze. The descriptiveness of the earlier Exile games really made up for the lack of graphics for me. I think that if A4 had been in a subsection of Avernum (e.g. almost entirely set in the honeycomb, but at the same scale), it would have worked much better. I think that seeing as A5 is set in new caves, this sounds like the issue of loss of scale of the existing world will not be a problem, which I am looking forward to. I just hope that it's not like ZKR in that it doesn't link anywhere to the known world With regards to super-weapons, I think that generally they ought to be optional but with much more complex sub-quests to get them. They were a bit easy to get in A4. More like the Black Halberd or original E1/A1 Demonslayer quest.

Bugsbane - double damage vs Bugs Bunny

Quote: Originally written by Daniele C: Quote: Originally written by Andrea: That list of reserved rights is invalid and legally troublesome enough to render the code dangerous to use, even without the CPL. It's certainly incompatible with every known open source license, because it puts restrictions on the end user's right to license his or her own creations as he or she sees fit. Sadly agreeing... These added restrictions don't appear to be in the third release of the code, so yay for Jeff for doing that. Also, I see from looking at the license (see the readme) that he released it as GPL "either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version" rather than the less flexible GPLv2 only which is excellent news, as I was worried it would be stuck as GPLv2-only. So another big thank you again to Jeff for that, you've really listened to the community here. For those of you who don't know that much about open source software licenses, this means that once the GPL3 comes out we will be able to freely use Apache 2.0 licensed code in the project as well, which gives us a bigger pool of existing open source code to potentially utilize in the project.

With regards to code hosting, if it's under the GPL, Google's code hosting might be an option. With regards to development, the consensus seems to be the logical: - Make it work on new versions of Windows/MacOS - Fix bugs After that, the following are definite options, in ascending order of difficulty (in getting agreement mostly ): - Linux port, or cross-platform code base - Extensions to the interface, to make it easier to use, without changing the game - Support for more things in scenarios (e.g. new forms of scripting)

Quote: Originally written by jg.faust: Quote: Spiderweb Software, Inc. Reserves the Following Rights: - Right to place any and all applications, game scenarios, and derivative works created in whole or in part from or by the Blades of Exile game/editor source code for download on our web site without prior approval of the author. - Right to place any any all applications, game scenarios, and derivative works created in whole or in part from or by the Blades of Exile game/editor source code on 3.5" disks, CD-ROMs, or similar media for distribution and sale, without prior approval of the author. Fees charged for said media will not be part of or be construed as part of any shareware fees set forth by individual authors. All fees are for production and distribution of the media only. IANAL, but shouldn't a "non-exclusive" qualifier be in both of those clauses? Right now, it sounds almost like only Spiderweb is allowed to publish these derivatives. I know that this doesn't make sense in relation to the rest of the license, but I hear that stating and restating the obvious is the lawyer way... If he is relicensing under the GPL, as he says, he doesn't need to worry about specifying either of these, as the license explicitly allows you to do both. Basically, the GPL allows you to redistribute any works under it, and charging a fee for doing so is also allowed under it. Here's the bit from the GPL3 on the fee bit for example: "You may charge any price or no price for each copy that you convey, and you may offer support or warranty protection for a fee." On a side note, hopefully the GPL version will be "GPL-going-forwards" (i.e. GPL(any version), GPL2+ or GPL3+) - being able to use it under the GPL version 3 means we can merge in any code under the fairly popular Apache 2.0 license in the program, which GPL2 is not able to do so. Also as an aside, I'd like to thank Jeff for listening to the community here and taking time to help make his wonderful contribution of code as valuable to us as possible.

The CPL license used by the open sourcing of Blades of Exile has a really nasty patent retaliation clause in it (which was removed when it was converted to the Eclipse Public License, considered to be the 'new' version of the CPL to use - the EPL left the rest of the license unchanged and kept a milder patent retaliation clause). It's also incompatible with almost every other open source license out there, such as the GPL. Furthermore, it is not supported on Google's open source project hosting - see http://code.google.com/hosting/createProject (they only support a few commonly used licenses, also to ensure compatibility of licenses). Despite the name "Common Public License", it's not widely used. The CPL is, in fact, IBM controlled, and they can release a new version of the licenses without any notice. The CPL also references US laws and therefore may not be enforceable in other countries. ... I would dearly like to see another license chosen. To that end, I would like to give a few suggestions: Jeff - If you just picked the license without looking into it much, and just want people to be able to distribute the code freely, I would suggest the 'Revised 3-clause BSD' or 'MIT/X11' licenses. These are 'highly permissive' licenses and code under them can be used in most projects. If you want a more comprehensive license that takes patents into consideration and is still widely accepted by the community, I would suggest the "Apache 2.0" license. This is compatible with the upcoming GPL version 3 (and LGPL 3) and so is still very mixable with other code. If what you want is to ensure a community around the project, where people must give their contributions back to the community, the most effective license for this is undoubtedly the (L)GPL. I can't see a reason to pick the LGPL over the GPL for this project, as it won't be linking to other projects, so the GPL may be more logical than LGPL for this. ... I hope you will take this under consideration.

Quote: Originally written by Ormus: For my next releases of the BoE for Win32 I've decided to separate sound resources from main executable and I've moved them to DLL file. Just wondering, why not put them into a directory as separate sound files? Then people can much more easily remove/replace individual sounds. Quote: Originally written by Ormus: EDIT: I would like to invite other people to work with the code. I'm a student and there comes slowly time of exams for me. Soon I'm going to disappear from the net and you won't see me here until I pass all exams. Why not put it somewhere like SourceForge? Unfortunately, Google Code's limited set of licenses does not include the CPL (which is a horrible [due to insane patent retaliation clauses] and not much used license).

How can Goblins not be on that list? It would have to be goblins or vahnatai really. New races are not needed. Either could be justified if one was say found as a a baby and raised.

Yeah at least a smaller reward for driving the drake off would have been better.

I think at least a text warning that you didn't collect pick up any more money each time you do hit the limit is vital. Otherwise, you have to keep an eye on it, and if you miss spotting that you are at the limit, you suddenly permanently are losing all that money with no warning

Just peeking at the walkthrough it says that you can fight or not fight Rentar in the first instance in the Basalt Fortress, and again fight or not fight her at the end. It also says that if you fight her in BF she drops some items so... My quick question is, if I fight her in BF, can I still see both endings? Or does that prevent me from trying the peaceful ending option?

Quote: Originally written by Aussieavernum: I like the idea of a natural occorance that disrupts order. EDIT: In fact, I am going to work on my BoE scenario called Cavequake Chaos. Yeah what would happen if a cave quake opened up a tunnel to the ocean above, and parts of Avernum started flooding?

Heh I get video files open in my text editor in Windows, it's not just MacOS that gets confused

Eugh I hated the timed events in Avernum. I want to be able to take as long as I want to explore everywhere. When I played Avernum 3 (well Exile 3 is what I played) I set the clock back to day 1 on a regular basis

I must say I hated the experience draining in the earlier games. I always loaded the game if it happened. I'm glad it's not in Av4