Crynsos

Indeed, the difference is highely hearable. But yes, the size CAN be big, but I talk more about loopable thing... a few tracks for an average sized scenario, every one down to a few minutes at most... can't take forever to download that... Also, tell those "many" dial-up users to upgrade, there are better and way faster things out there... for less cash! No really, just because some people chose to (or sadly have to use) ancient connections or technology (see: IE 6), it doesn't mean you should still program for them or look too much down on them as your main target group for a project while screwing up the majority of your users with low quality stuff... has been done in the past, ended bad...

Hm, yeah I guess that would be the better version... maybe call the old invulnerable something like "Highely Protected" (as seen in the Exile Trilogy, Rentar-Ihrno) and call the new Invulnerable version just what is is supposed to do?

Quote: Now for a quick question. Look at this sheet. (It's the items sheet from Exile 1, if you're wondering.) Can anyone tell me what that pole weapon on the last line is, and whether it's worth adding to BoE? Also, what's the white thing on the second line? And lastly, the arrows and the tools – should they be added? (Tools being the last on the second line.) And also, what about the gold (my inclination is "yes") and the food (I'm leaning towards "no")? In case you didn't get your answers yet... The item at the first picture looks heavily like the typical twin spear of the Slithzerikai, didn't even know they had that in Exile 1 but I'm very much for adding it in as an alternative to the fake trident... 2 spikes is true slith style. The second item at the first pic looks heavily like a wand, you know, the usable magic item aside from scrolls and potions. (And these two being right beside it is not coincidence either) I'd say add the arrows for sure, as well as the wand as a a nice alternative. (Example: Bone Wands) Gold should be added, not sure about the tools but more like yes, if you mean the mold / mushrooms as the food, better not. Quote: Now look at this sheet. What on earth is that thing between the halberd and the bow on the first line? Is it worth adding? What about the scroll on the second line? The shield on the third line? (I think the shield isn't worth it.) The thing between the halberd and bow is most likely cash as the places of ALL other items on the previous sheet are the same... some other form of currency maybe? And I doubt we need to add that. Scroll looks worth adding if it can be properly enlarged, shield not at all. Quote: And last but not least... the current set of item graphic has one that is blank. Is there any reason to keep that? Do people consider it useful to be able to make an item that's invisible? Or should that slot be filled with something else? I'd rather always keep an invisible spot available for everything that can be transparent (= everything but terrain), as people usually always find some use for them.

I said .wav because .wav is lossless and a basic music format understandable by any operating system. Midis would work but are way too old and sound terrible with modern music. MP3 would work but there are better things than that... OGG is a nice alternative, but I'd rather use FLACs to make really good music quality possible... Hard disks these days are not tiny anymore, rather pick quality than the absence of it...

New node suggestions: Maybe the option to put someone into debt per intention should be possible? Add an option to the cash changing node to either reduce cash to 0 as default or even to a negative value for adding debt? Along with that, did anyone think about making it possibly to put customly made music into scenarios? The music during the older Exile games was nice, but except effects, there isn't really any sound to play ingame? Idea: A scenario based music list (trigger for the first node is entering the scenario or the first area trigger, music gets looped till turned off or a new music trigger is found), which gets changed whenever the player enters a certain area (= the area contains a node to change music #0 to music #1). Similar things could be done for things like talking and fighting modes. Triggers should be also able to disable music fully and get activated at any time, anywhere. (Talks, outdoors, indoors, etc.) The preferred music file type should be probably .WAV.

The invulnerable ability shouldn't get removed, just fixed. (see my report in another thread) Mindless has some uses now and then (undead, fearless soldiers, etc.) and probably should stay here. But it would be of more use if monsters could use fear as a magic spell and possibly even as a gaze ability. I guess invisible could be removed and replaced with simply transparent monster pictures, but then again the character could find the enemy by simply "looking" at it, unless that is disabled when using a certain pre-set transparent monster picture.

A bug I remember pretty well: When you manage to gain cash above the limit, simply by selling stuff or gaining a lot cash at once, it changes into negative cash, which uses every newly gained cash to put you into the positives again. Another one: Monsters which have 0 - 50 armor and are "Invulnerable" can be still damaged when you either have an extremely high damage attack (I think) or another monster with a rather high dice compared to sides attack. Of course, a high dice attack is made to be armor piercing or the like due to a higher chance to hit, but it shouldn't pierce invulnerability. The invulnerability effect that can be used on player does not have this weakness if I remember right. This does not work with anything else than melee combat, but the (totally forgot the name) electrical secondary attack that can be used on weapons on-hit can also deal damage to Invulnerable enemies last I checked. Now about the bladbase.exs (Classic Windows 1.0 Repository Version) About the post 2 posts about this one, I believe Worgs were supposed to be automatically Hostile A. Also, why does the Brew of Lethe has a deletion note next to it? It appeared as a regular item at least in Exile 3 and thus has not really a reason for deletion. If it's due to the second Brew of Lethe further down the list, we should replace the first item with another instead of just deleting it. My suggestion would be a modificated Skribbane Herb. Some REALLY minor errors in bladbase.exs: Name Changes: Item #225 to Platinum Bar Item #326 to Gold Necklace Item #332 to Silver Necklace Item #333 to Uranium Bar Item #334 to Gold Bar Item #194, Ebony Lizard usually summoned Basilisks, not Giant Lizards, methinks. Item #274, Lightning Rods has an ability value of 20 instead of 10 as maximum. All hammer weapons (Bronze Hammer, Iron Hammer...) are displayed as maces in the Bladbase file, yet were changed to the new "blacksmith hammer" icon in all three standard scenarios. Monster #83, Drake uses the Bear Picture. Monster #186, I believe the Dark Wyrm had a certain powerful darkness breath but does not have it anymore. Monster #189, Unused has a Slith Warrior Picture instead of the standard unused picture.

Originally Posted By: w of the dueck clan I believe the mackies can use .gifs or .bmps as graphics. Also, the .png format was brought up a coupla times in the past. I still want my alpha-layering! I think the Mac version never used gifs, and especially not BMPs as that is a Microsoft owned format. Nice to hear, and yes alpha layering would be quite useful for everything that isn't terrain... and maybe even that! (*thinks about terrain layers*) If it can be implemented more or less easily, that is... Originally Posted By: Celtic Minstrel I could be wrong though; however, it's definitely planned. (Though we need to retain resource files for backwards compatiblity, unfortunately.) Good to hear, both of it. Of course we need to be able to retain backwards compatibility, but it would be best if the game could understand both old windows and mac programmed maps but uses "primarily" new format maps with purely PNGs as images, if possible. (Possibly there should be three different scenario folders, one for old windows, old mac and new scenarios?)

Sooo... after finally gaining interest and time for Exile again, I've read the changes list since the original Open Source Release and have to say... wow, very well done. Especially since I remember that the code base was said to be very old and heavily customized, but I have no idea into what you guys may have already converted it meanwhile... gotta test out the changes myself to get the real feeling for it I guess... Anyways, aside from the above, after reading through the list I wasn't sure if it wasn't there or I just overread it... from what I know, you guys want to try to unify the codebase from the Mac and Windows Version as soon as possible, well does the Mac version accept plain image files as custom graphics yet? Or is it still necessary to do something with... ResEdit or whatever it was called back then to enable that? Also, if the Windows version is still based upon plain BMP files, I heavily suggest to move over to the PNG format for custom graphics in both code bases (or the unified one in the end), as it is Open Source as well, much smaller than BMP(lossless compression) and pretty common these days anyways. I'll try to check out all the nice changes you guys worked out over the many months I haven't been around, sounds really good, full respect from my side.

Maybe a bit late but... did you ever defeat one of the "Undefeatable" Characters in an Exile game? Like in E3 (The only one I can speak of, since I HAD it registered), I managed to kill Rentar-Ihrno after a good, and LONG battle... the Empress was also supposed to be undefeatable, lived no more than a few minutes (Maximum) when I attacked her though... Those are the only "Undefeatable ones I can think of now... anymore you killed?

Good idea, which lets another idea pop up in my mind. As far as I've seen (and can remember from the Mac version, the BoE font "MaidenWork" isn't used anywhere in BoE itself. (At least I didn't see it, maybe something is wrong?) If it's really nowhere yet, use it in all/most texts, would probably look great...

Another minor improvemet: Make it possible to use custom scenario icons. Currently you can only use the pre-made ones (and a few buggy item ones, see Echoes: Black Horse), and this is probably the only graphic, which can't be changed through a custom graphics file...

It's quite odd that you're missing that file... but if it's really not there (It should be usually in your Scenario Editor Folder), just reinstall the game... (and either delete the old version, or just move the new installed BladBase file and delete the rest again, works with both the full and demo version) Or you can look around at the BoE Fansites for a edited BladBase files, there should be a few around with most/all remaining minor bugs corrected... (Which are still existent in the original version) quite useful edits...

Erm, Orcs? The Exile Universe is made to be different from others, or did you often see Nephs or Sliths in other games/books? There are enough other games with orcs, and few scenarios with orcs... (< 5 if any at all) Ogres are brute and dumb enough... The rest doesn't sound too bad...

IF suggestions are welcome (even though it's surely too late already), A5 (or A6 if it will come out someday) should be possibly a bit more like G4, like the characters should be able to move more anywhere than in squares like in all Avernum & Exile Games. It was never a problem to me in all previous A & E games, but somehow this doesn't fit anymore into A4, probably because of the new town = outdoors feature... which would lead to another thing: Training and loot. I played A4 for a bit, but believe to haven't seen any "unlimited" source of monsters or ways to get "unlimited" cash, in case a player got finance problems or spent too much skill points in non-battle skills and is too weak to fight properly... Would be nice additions, if possible...

Don't forget we already have quite a lot of creations... if I remember right, ever creation has 2 special higher-leveled species, which makes... 15 Base creations (5 per type) x 3 = 45 creations... or maybe a bit less... but still quite a lot to choose from...

Greta was a great character in G3, and in G4 she's not much worse, just a bit more passive (at least at the beginning) Don't know much more, haven't played further than the demo yet...

You sooner or later get a few returning darts, arrows or whatever anyway... or you make something yourself... but this is one of the things (which if not changed) makes Exile a bit more realistic than Avernum generally... Like in Exile, big fireball, big area hurt, no matter which being is in there... (Friendly Fire hurray!) In Avernum, cast, pick target, pick target, pick target... and never be able to hurt anyone else than your enemies... boring... and unlogical...

Yes, I have to agree clearly with you about it's simplicity, just thought that this would be another possibility if just enlarging won't work. Shouldn't be a problem with the file size anyway, most scenarios are < 1 MB anyway... Good to hear that anyway...

Did you change the name of a scenario file or load a save file which was made in VoDT? (If you removed the VoDT scenario file from the BLADSCEN Folder) If no, maybe try reinstalling BoE...

About the alien beast thing, if its not clear already, there's some problem in the program itself, not with the graphics or the graphic selection in the editor, the number to find the mind crystal graphic is just set twice or something like that... And here another thing, not a fix but useful if possible, especially for longer scenarios: Make the game save dialogs records in seperate files, so more/unlimited notes can be saved. If not possible, try to enlarge the dialog records, would be probably quite useful...

Better keep it as it is now. I think it was possible in the Trilogy, but was changed now with a good reason. (as *i said) Certain items in BoE are very valuable or even needed to win the current scenario, which really should be kept and not sold by accident.

Well, I checked it yesterday again, before I freed the sliths, all was fine, when I've done this and returned all MY stored items were not there anymore. At later playing files (Around after the Battle for Zaevess) I saw that even the other stored items (Which I'm not allowed to take) vanished as well. Too bad that you don't fix them, I doubt it's a BoE error though... Well, I'll just leave Spears then just before choosing a side to play other scens.

Well, just after playing again, I noticed a bad bad bug, or misplaced special. Spears may be a bit old, but not too late for important bug fixes, or? Well, I just noticed that ALL items in Fort Silver have disappeared, including all items which I stored there. (Not too few) As much as I've checked, this probably happened around the time when I helped the sliths to free the slaves... Stareye, could you please at least look into it?

A thing about custom graphics for Mac users, to make it easier for everyone: Try to make the Editor and OBoE player accept BOTH .MEG files (so older scenarios can still be used) and .PICT files. Pict is to my knowledge the standard Mac picture format, as it is BMP for Windows. The Quality is quite the same as much as I've seen and .pict files are much easier to produce, which would be useful for every scenario creator. (And if a .meg file doesn't work but other graphic files are delivered with the Scen, the Mac user should be easily able to use it, once PICT gets accepted)