Thaluikhain

Hmmm...in that case, I might swap the coastline terrain for normal water before I do anything, and then go from there...or just ignore the coast when it changes back. Also, can muck about with the automatic changing of terrain edges the editor does, I suppose.

My scenario (slowly) is getting made, sort of, but I have another question. When swapping terrain with edges (such as the water terrain, which gives you a grassy coastline on the edge of the water area), is there a way for the edges to automatically be swapped when I swap the rest of the water, and back again? I was thinking of swapping the above ground water to the cave water and back, but if I had to work out the locations and code for all the coast myself when swapping back, it'd take forever and I'd likely stuff the whole thing uo.

Might be funny if you kept swapping the graphics for sideways or upside down ones. EDIT: I'd done some odd things to some Dark Wyrms, and found that only the top left part of them counts. If you have two conveyors facing each other, the thing will bounce back and forth between them.

Ok, thanks...I'll see what happens with that.

Working on a new scenario (one that's really small so I might actually finish it before I lose interest this time), and I was wondering how conveyors work, especially in relation to monsters. What happens if a conveyor tries to put a monster (or for that matter, anything else) in a square that's blocked? Also, what happens with conveyors when a monster larger than just 1x1 is on them, or partially on them, or covers more than one going in different directions?

No-one has mentioned sea-kittens? PETA decided that people wouldn't eat fish if they had a cute sounding name, so they "officially" renamed them. Also, the "technical" name for caviar is "sea kitten babies". http://www.peta.org/sea_kittens/ Now, I must admit I didn't have much respect for them before this, but that's just...what?

One vague suggestion..."scale mail" may be the popularly used term, but the correct term is "segmented laminar" or something along those lines, IIRC...although the name is rather long, using something like that might help add to the character (though, not having any idea what your scenario is about, it's hard to say). Also, now that custom graphics is fixed, greaves can be made to properly create a full suit of armour.

Originally Posted By: Necrophilius well... i hadn't too much time as I had to study. Graphics are here http://img704.imageshack.us/img704/6213/graph.png some are remakes, some not mine, and some.... new ^^ any comments & suggestions ? I'd be glad for advices That is an awful lot of custom graphics...you're not going to try and use all of them, are you? Quite a feat if you did.

Hmmm...would there be a way ot taking the xy co-ordinates of specific creatures at various times, so you could cause things to happen where they were, even if they were moving around? Say, if someone had been killed, you could create an undead creature on the spot where they were...if you wanted to be really tricky, you could have that only happen if they were killed by certain things, but that'd likely be too much mucking about.

Hmmm...to be really sure you could have: Set stuff done flag to 1 -> Kill Party -> Increment stuff done flag -> If stuff done flag is higher than 100, end scenario, otherwise go back to Kill Party Though that's a silly amount of overkill

Holding any group to the ways of peace isn't terribly wise if their are humans or other higher anthropoids in it.

Well, if you made them as new monsters with the call node when killed thing as a special ability.

Originally Posted By: Ishad Nha PCs are like Angels, they have no clearly defined gender. There is no provision whatsoever for gender in the BoE game. At some point the game could be altered to declare some portraits "male" and others "female", and the death sound would depend upon the portrait number, but in the meantime... If Angels don't have gender, how did they mate with human women to breed hyrbids known as "nephilim"? Seriously, though, I meant for monsters, not PCs. I'm against linking various bits of the characters...I liked having a human with slith bonuses, which Avernum, or at least the later ones, won't let me do.

Sorry if this has been said before, but it would be nice if you could specify the death noise and blood/slime created when something dies...for humans, it randomises between the male and female sounding ones, which is odd when you've got a character of specific gender.

One thing I'd like is a thing that resets, or maybe just alters, the amount of moves before the party eats again. Replacing one monster with another sounds interesting... I'd like to see a way of keeping track of if a creature was injured, and how much...for example, if you had a way of swapping one monster with another, the second one could be injured if the first one was.

They'd squeak when they die, rather than have the humanoid growl, though.

Been thinking about how the weapons work in Exile, in particular, the stone/bronze/iron/steel/magic progression. Would it be better to have something like crude/poor/average/fine/extra-nice/magic or something instead? By which, I really mean people renaming the weapons in scenarios. It just seems that the quality of the construction would be more important than just the material. The other thing I've been thinking about is how the weapons work, the main difference is simply the amount of damage they do. A rapier is the same as an axe, they are both better than shortswords, but the broadsword is the best human single handed edged weapon, and all. Now, that's always seen very weird to me, and not really realistic...though, it is better than Avernum, where people carry pikes. Which is just crazy. Also, historically, rapiers, shortswords and broadswords represent rather different ways of making swords. Unfortunately, I can't think of anything else to do. You could muck about with the weight a little, or maybe change the bonus damage and random damage a bit, but the only way to really make them different would be to start chucking in special bonuses for different weapons, counting them as magic and all, which seems unwise. Again, more for customising for individual scenarios than anything.

Were-ursag would be more interesting than were-wolves...mind you, if they are from somewhere else, they might have some really weird animals over there that they might turn into, something not seen in Exile or the Empire. Sliths turning into reptile beasts sounds cool, though when you think of it, there's no reason why they'd turn into reptiles just becuase they are also reptiles, any more than human turn into apes or horses because they are mammals. As for orcs being green because of the world they come from...why exactly would they be? If, say, it was camouflage amongst their plants or something, if some plants followed them into the Empire's world, you could have a forest full of (practically) invisible orcs...also a good reason for them not to wear much clothes or armour, to go with the savage thing.

Would the lamppost work better with animation? Flcikering flames and all, I mean.

Originally Posted By: Mistb0rn Quote: Also, what's that thing to the right of the snowman? I think it's some sort of snowed-over cave entrance. Maybe an igloo? Would thebe a way to represent a snowstorm? Something animated that you couldn't see through, or maybe more than one and some that you could, though you'd need to set it up so they kept randomly swapping in the editor or something.

Oh...I tried making snow terrain once, never was able to get it to look right...would be interesting to see a version that did. Just an idea...you know how the 3 basid walls (birck, basalt and adobe) all have different looking windows and doors and stuff? Would it be worthwhile creating new graphics so they all had the same options? I mean, taking the birck wall arched door and sticking it on the adobe wall, so you don't have to use the red-brown flat door? It's just that it, IMHO, can seem a little odd to have a town where different building materials mean differential architectural stles, but all doors etc in the same sort of walls look the same. Also, in "Nephil's Gambit", the scenario made good use of the marble tabletop as a wall...I'm thinking that making a set of walls, doors and windows with that might be an idea. Even if those ideas aren't that useufl, making the graphics would only entail copying and pasting for existing graphics anyway.

Originally Posted By: Niemand While it may be awkwardly stated, it's not unreasonable that geography should be a major cause in the development of skin pigmentation. It is my vague understanding that this is often the case in humans in the real world. He's saying that their skin is dark because it confers a useful advantage, not because they are somehow inferior. Then again, why can't Lamarckian evolution or something weirder apply in Exile? Though, it mostly keeps everything else realistic, with magic and random monsters thrown in. And yeah, poor word choice.

Was wondering, would anyone use a set of custom PC graphics if it was included with a scenario? One that you'd swap the original PCS.bmp image for, and replace with the original after the game was finished. Maybe even something like "You find the legendary Golden Armour of Tetnwidn (please change your PC graphic to one of the Golden Armour of Tetnwidn pics in column 2)"?

I was wondering what scenarios, or parts of scenarios (if any) people found scary? I was thinking of getting back to starting the (hopefully) scaryish scenario I'd dreamt up ages ago, and was looking for some better ideas. For me, the scariest Exile bit was in Exile3, wandering round that dungeon in the dark with the giant worm things.

Hmmm...I know this is a month cold, but still...oh, feel free to ignore anything and eveything I say, of course. Firstly, I dunno about having orcs (especially ones that sound very Warcrafty) in Exile. Part of the charm of Exile is that it wasn't the same humans/elves/dwarfs again...ok, you had goblins, but they didn't do anything of note, the important people were humans, nephil, sliths and vahnatai. Although cat people and lizard people are fairly common, there's no reason for sliths to use pole weapons and nephils to prefer archery and so on, it gives them a bit more individualtiy, and vahnatai seem fairly new and inventive. Now, if you were to call these green-skinned monsters, say, the "Zharg" or summat, and have them predominately use axes or something more exotic for cultural reasons, they'd be much more memorable. As for the plague...is it going to be widespread, or localised? I can't speak for others, but I'm getting a little bored with terrible threats popping out of nowhere to destroy the world in every form of media...having it localised to a small area (an island, say) is easier for suspension of disbelief, and lets you kill everyone off in the end if you like. Are the orcs going to be generic monsters, or are they going to have personality? I personally prefer BoE scenarios where the bad guys have character and some motivation. If, say, the orcs didn't particularly want to kill the humans all that much, but they just happened to be on the land they wanted, it could make them more sympathetic. You mention their own land being barren and unable to support them, which is a good place to start, IMHO...you might want to stick in something about it being their "Promised Land" or something, or that they were here first (maybe), it's their land and they want it back. Were-wolves...maybe something a bit more exotic, some other sort of were beasty. Mind you, I've always wanted to see shape changing monsters in Exile, but it's pretty hard with the mechanics to do much about them. I'd be very interested to see how you do these. Keeping spell casters themed might be tricky as well...pity you can't choose what magic spells each type, or individual, knows. As for monster stats, you can always nick the stats from some other mosnter, say, Troglodytes or sliths, and tamper a little bit with them. But yeah, I've no idea how you can tell if they are too hard or not.