othersean

On 3/3/2023 at 10:50 AM, ultra112 said:

oh man hoping a miracle can happen.

Same -- I've kicked in $30 for a remake of one of my two favorite Spiderweb games (G2 and A3).  It's sobering to think that Geoff is scrabbling for $80k when fresh college grads make low six figures at big tech companies.

This was the main reason I gave up on Avadon -- too much time spent walking within cleared zones. It felt like I spent the majority of my time reading something in another window while my character moseyed to the spot I had clicked. I didn't notice it much in the original G1, and G1:M feels far better than Avadon, but it's still a noticeable annoyance.  Too bad the "exitzone" cheat no longer works, so I could at least use that to save half the walking time.

 

Queen's Wish seems to do better, with smaller towns, fewer sub-dungeons, and a quick-travel system in a continuous world map.  I don't think that would work for Geneforge's disconnected zones, though.

Thanks!  For some reason I thought we might chat a bit more before the stabbing and burning started.

I pacified the three lands, and got a Nisse key, but all the refuges seem to  be deserted, and when I went to the first, I got a message that "The Calamity has returned, and it has even affected this remote place. The Nisse have withdrawn."  I can use the key to get into their private quarters, but that just makes them mad.  Did I take too long and mess up my game, or have I failed to do something obvious?

 

Thanks!

1 hour ago, Randomizer said:

Jeff will probably never do it himself, however it is possible someday before the Earth ends that someone else will make an update version that will work on current computers. Your best bet in the meantime is to use an emulator program or run a Windows version in a partition.

 

That's too bad.  From what I understand, the (only? main?) problem is that 10.15 refuses to run 32-bit programs.  As long as the game engines are written in portable C or some other high-level language, simply recompiling in 64-bit mode would allow them to keep running.  I understand why this would be way, *way* down Jeff's todo list, but it's still a shame.

 

I can stick with 10.14 for awhile to satisfy my occasional urge to fire up Geneforge or A3, but eventually I'll get a new machine or something, and be forced to switch to 10.15.  I guess at that point I'll see how much effort is required to use an emulator...

Congrats!  A3 was a masterpiece of open-world combat tourism, and I'm happy to pay for the remix.  Is "buy[ing] the game from our own web site" the same as clicking on the humblebundle.com button?  I'd rather hand my $20 directly to Spiderweb, with no middlemen taking a cut.

I didn't see anything in the documentation or on the forums about this, so does anyone know how "vitality lost to wounds" works? It doesn't seem to be a big factor -- 10% or less -- but it's enough to make it impossible to create top-level turrets.

Bummer -- I was hoping I had just missed a non-murderous option in the Khalida quest, since she's a helpful member of my standard party (tinkermage leader + Khalida + someone).

Do you have a decent fix to the bug where your party decides to run left? Reloads fix it for a bit, but once you catch the bug, it seems permanent.

Check out Strategy Central -- I think there's a discussion of a Servile build like this.

I found it helped to play with a book or magazine next to the computer, giving me something to do during long walks. Avadon's larger zones are cool in some ways, but the walk times can be trying, especially when exploring a subzone like Moritz'Kri's Tower.

Nice work!

IMHO nothing short of a tabletop RPG with a human dungeon master can deal with the creativity necessary to solve moral dilemmas. You could try to raise the Slith eggs yourself, to be your own loyal army; or you could hard-boil them all and carry them as food.

I agree, by the way, that the games' simplicity can be seen as a strength. If I wanted to confront and resolve hard, realistic moral dilemmas for awhile, why would I buy a computer game to do it?

It took me awhile to fully "get it," but I came to love the way you can steal everything in sight (including "bump-stealing" from boxes in Avernum), then store it in huge piles on the ground, and no one else will touch it. Not realistic, but definitely amusing.

I just reached the Castle with a singleton on Normal (roughly following Randomizer's Torment build), and it has been fun so far. On the one hand, you're insanely over-leveled, and simply crush enemies in one-on-one combat. On the other, you have to pay more attention to positioning to deal with swarms. It's a bit like being a Geneforge agent.

 

I imagine Grah-Hoth and his summoned army will be miserable, but I have enjoyed most fights so far, and haven't been caught in any serious stun-loops.

Right -- there's the usual "torment singleton" thread. It's usually possible, but a grind. I admire the people who do it, but don't really understand them. I was more interested in setups that were fun or unusual for the ordinary gamer, and not just possible.

I just finished the three main quests on normal with my standard boring party -- sword fighter, pole fighter, priest, mage -- and wanted to run through the game again in a different way. How have people found it most fun to do this: Increasing difficulty? Going single- or double-ton? Using some non-standard party?

That's probably because it's at least dual-core, as are most machines these days. Try it while running on battery on a laptop, or while running another CPU-intensive job. The wastefulness bothers me, for no particularly good reason.

It's not convenient to switch between Avernum and other applications, especially on a laptop. Like a number of other Spiderweb games, Avernum always pegs one CPU (even when hidden), so I have taken to pausing the process Unix-style by going to a Terminal and entering "killall -STOP Avernum".

 

This has worked in the past, but now apparently Avernum keeps control of the sound card, so no other program can output sound while I have a suspended Avernum. I have to resume it and either quit it or allow it to continue sucking CPU for other programs to emit sound.

 

Do other people briefly switch to Avernum when frustrated by another task, or briefly switch to something else when frustrated by Avernum? Given the load time, doing a save-quit-restart whenever you switch is kind of a pain.

I think the number of pylons is about right -- few enough that it's worth your time to find an efficient route for completing quests, but a sufficient number to avoid walking back and forth across the world. With no pylons and no quest list, I can't imagine myself finishing A1. Then again, A3 only had half-assed teleportation (Orb of Thralni + portal guy), but is still one of my favorites.

Avernum runs at 100% CPU all the time, which generates a lot of heat. I usually go to a terminal and enter "killall -STOP Avernum" when I want to do something else without quitting. That annoyingly silences sound from other applications, but at least it stops the CPU drain.

The pathfinding in general blows. The "that's too far" message is B.S.: with static obstacles, it's trivial to find a path; with possible enemy or NPC encounters, it's probably not too hard, and even if it is, the game could error out with a "other agents too close" message.

 

Since you can't run into enemies or NPCs on a boat, the boat pathfinding is even more pathetic.

 

The combat pathfinding is annoying, but at least forgivable -- there's a lot of stuff that can happen in a step while in combat.

Ditto -- While the consequence-free theft of earlier Avernums is completely unrealistic, it was fun and -- more importantly -- easily predictable. You could close a door and know whether or not theft was OK; if you wanted to take a chance, you could steal something in an open area. Now you have to figure out the rules of whether or not someone saw you stealing, and they're not always clear.

Speaking of level 3 spells, has anyone compiled a list of how they differ from their level 1 brethren? In the old Avernums (up to A3), they were often a huge step up; in the newer ones, extra spell levels are mostly useless, or at least not very significant. I gather that AEFTP falls somewhere in the middle, but I haven't found it documented.

Thanks for the heads-up -- I had just assumed that the same-named battle disciplines had the same (or similar) effects. Now that I know they don't, I will pay much closer attention, and probably ignore most of them.