Harehunter

Sigh! These times, they be a'changing. When I was your age, back in late '60s, I could be gone for hours without causing my mother any concern. I just had to check in a couple of times a day. And the closest we had to cell phones back then were the props used in the original Star Trek series. As for bicycle repairs, that was my responsibility. All I needed money for was a patch kit, or possibly just a new tube, a few tools (first my dad's, and then later I bought some with my allowance), a hand pump, and 30 minutes later I was cruising the neighborhood. At first it took longer until I had learned how to do it right. One other thing I thought of this morning that I enjoyed; tennis is a good individual sport for the summer. I would spend hours practicing against the back board, until I got good enough to take on other players. I'm trying to think of ways you can show your mom that you are mature enough for a little freedom. Try volunteering to help with the chores around the house; dusting, vacuuming, washing dishes. I don't know if you are doing these things already. Seeking to take more responsibility than your parents ask of you is a sure way to gain respect from them.

I do believe we are being pun-ished.

For this you will get a special mention on my Avernum 6 Maps pages.

Insectus Programmis Eurekus! Just had to hold my mouth the right way. Quote: Verry Eenteresting! --Arte Johnson

Actually I just looked at A6, and the Ctrl-click and Green check mark are there as described. However, I failed to replicate the replication effect. Maybe I'm not holding my mouth right. Insectus Programmus Elusivus.

Or could this be a Mac vs PC think. I don't get a Green Check Mark. And the only way to get the screen to pop up to select the quantity is Shift-click, not Ctrl-click. Or could this bug actually be Insectus Programmis Pseudicus?

It is mainly your Mage spell casting that is affected by the so-called encumbrance effect of wearing armor. Priest spells are not affected. Basically, wearing armor of any sort has a cumulative effect on the ability of a character to move. The better the armor, the heavier it is and therefore its effect on movement. While looking at the inventory screen, pay attention to the numbers for carrying vs encumbrance. The first number should be well below the second one. As I recall, the rules for the weight you are carrying change from game to game. In Avernum 4, it includes everything you are carrying. In Avernum 6, it includes only what you are wearing; the game now assumes you will drop your pack before engaging in spell casting. A couple of skills affect this encumbrance thing: Strength and Defense. Strength is the most effective factor of course. Defense, by its effect on your agility, also factors in to increase your armor wearing capacity. But note that maxing out your mage in these skill will never allow wearing more than mediocre armor. Best to stick with magical armor which gives bonus points to defense while still weighing as much as its basic component such as leather. Some people on these forums have gone through great effort to determine the exact algorithm by which these values are calculated.

What ever you do it should be something you enjoy. Otherwise you will not be able to stick with it. Not only was I not physically cut out for athletics, my mind was simply not motivated in that direction. Band suited me well. I was engaged mentally and emotionally as well as physically. Riding a bicycle was also good exercise as well as transportation. Later when I joined ROTC in college I discovered another activity that I was quite adept at; land navigation or, as the sport is known, orienteering. I'll let you Google that one on your own. Most importantly, don't worry about what other people think of you. As long as you are doing the best you can with the abilities you have, you have nothing to be ashamed of. Be honest with yourself, as well as with others. If your interest lies in the hard sciences, go there. Or the arts, or where ever your heart and talent lead. You will always be able to find people who have similar interests with whom you can share experiences. One question I am asked frequently is, What does it take to be a good programmer? To their surprise, the answer I give is NOT mathematics, but rather I tell them to study languages. Understanding math problems and arriving at a numerical solution is more about understanding two languages and being able to convert from one to the other. Programming is no different. You are translating a problem presented to you in English and translating it into some language the computer understands. Having a skill for logical reasoning, being able to take apart the problem presented to you into its basic parts, and reassembling it again in the other language is also a must. I always get a tremendous feeling of satisfaction when someone approaches me with a problem, and with a magical flourish of flying fingers over the keyboard, I turn his problem into a solution, and his frown into a smile.

Insectus Programmis MegaGoliathon!!

I, on the other hand, was very skinny back then, and not very athletic. Bullies like to pick on someone weaker than they are. PE was the worst period for that. To get out of PE I enrolled in band. Played clarinet for 6 years, and really enjoyed it, especially during football halftimes. Lunch time was chess club tournament play in the cafeteria. The best thing I found that discourages bullies, is to just ignore them. They all suffer from an inferiority complex, so therefore they have to do something to make them feel superior. By ignoring them you A) make it less interesting to pick on you and make them feel that they really are less important than you are. As to your weight, it takes more than a bit of discipline, but if you truly want to get it under control, you can do it if you put your mind to it. I would recommend that you make the attempt. A year and a half ago, one of my co-workers died of heart failure. He had been very heavy all his life, but when he was diagnosed with diabetes, he became strongly motivated to correct the problem. He was doing very well, had lost 50 lbs, and was getting his diabetes under control. But the damage to his heart was already done. He was only 53 years old. This event has revised my philosophy about life. Every day is a blessing. Live in it to the fullest, and be sure to let the people you love in life know it. You never know when your last day will be.

Actually, I have a sign from Spencer's Gifts in my office proudly proclaiming said wisdom. ??Wisdom?? Of all the things that I have lost, I miss my mind the most.

Make sure you copy the original file to a safe place. The only backup you will truly miss is the one you didn't make! Then, yes, pop up the file in a text editor like Notepad, and overlay it with the new text and save it. Make a copy in a separate folder titled Cheats, so that you can put the original version back in place should you wish to.

I blush at your praise. I don't rank myself nearly that high. My web site languished for a couple of years with little to no notice. It was not until the server that hosted Silver Harloe's Annotated Maps for Avernum went offline, that I felt comfortable mirroring someone elses work. Once I got pulled back into the SW community, I have come to appreciate the interaction with other gamers. For the past few years I have been having increasing trouble with the left side of my body, arm and leg. The medications I was taking to relieve the symptoms made me sleepy. It was all I could do to make it through a days work. Thank god I get to sit at a desk all day, but losing the use of my left hand severely impaired my work. Last December I decided to change neurologists. He diagnosed me with a form of Parkinson's Disease. He changed my medication, and it has had a tremendously potent effect in reversing the symptoms. I am able to use my left hand again, my walking is almost normal again, and best of all, I am clear-headed enough to grind through even the heaviest days at work. I am even taking on the task of polishing my C++ skills in order to present my Blades of Exile Scenario Editor to the Mac community. I doubt it will be as popular as the one the Celtic Minstrel is working on, because it has been out in the community longer. But if even a few people prefer mine then I am happy.

Fortunately, there are a few of us who strongly believe in backups. Here is your cheat. Paranoia is a healthy attribute in DBA's. Murphy is alive and well in Information Technology.

Quote: If nothing else, please bring back Divine Thud. A man of my own heart! That and Null Magic fields. Quote: after Avernum 2 gave us REAL Waterfalls. I miss the hilarious scream too… Ditto.

As a rule, you are correct in your assessment. But there are a good number of youngsters who will seek the nostalgic. Consider, for example, the Society for Creative Anachronism. Not many actually join, but many enjoy the experience of a Renaissance Fair. Scan the web for sites celebrating the Myst series of games. And Dungeons and Dragons lives on; not with the rage of popularity it had when it first came out, but there are still clubs to be found that meet on a regular basis. As long as there remains interest in Sci-Fi and Fantasy there is hope for games such as these that provoke thought about different societies and exercise the brain with problem solving. Not all kids are cut out for physical sports. But those who have more of an intellectual bent will seek out these games that are not just point based, but they actually tell a story.

I don't suffer from insanity. I enjoy every moment of it!

Quote: I admit I am not that socially well-adjusted... Infact I'm hated in my school. Trenton, I thoroughly understand. It ain't no fun being a geek in junior or high school. In small towns in Texas (back in the '70s), the student body was divided into four groups; the "In crowd" (cheerleaders, football players), the ropers, the dopers, and the people of color. I fit into none of those groups. I felt I was the one not "Socially well-adjusted". College was better because there I found more people who were serious about learning. From there, it was just a matter of picking my way through the job market until I landed my dream job. Today, I work with a dozen really talented people who all believe strongly in team work. Working at a job you truly enjoy is like having a life's paid vacation. Keep your chin up, do nothing of which you would be ashamed of, keep your wits about you, and you will do just fine.

Quote: Chess was never truly socially acceptable in, say, high school. Maybe not to most kids in high school, but I was the co-captain of our high school chess team, and that was (just) before the Fischer-Spassky match in (all together now) Reykjavik Iceland. Maybe that's why I became a computer programmer??! Oh my aching head.

If you read my Updates and News page, you'll get the whole history. First off, the credit for the Avernum 1 maps goes to Silver Harloe. I merely scraped them off the web for my personal use and to preserve them should the server go offline. He had started the 2nd game, but never got past the newbie area. The inspiration for doing the complete maps for Avernum 2 came from his work on Avernum 1. Secondly, the credit for the Avernum 3 maps goes to Rache Leukefeld. She had completed one version, rather simple in form, and had started a much more elegant version. Again, I made the effort to scrape it for my personal archive. Rache never did complete her second version, so I did it for myself. I am happy to share that with the SW community. Scraping these two websites took months to do. You have to make sure you follow every link so you don't miss a page. Then you have to do some editing to remove the ads that the web server would stick in. (Remember, I wanted these for local use, with no need to hit the internet.) Then you have to survey your own copy, again checking each and every link, making sure you have captured all the images. Along the way I was learning HTML and Java, just trying to figure out how these pages worked. As to how long it took to do Avernum 2 and Avernum 4, I would guess it took about a year apiece. This is because I have to put in a lot of overtime hours at work. Avernum 5 and 6 are incomplete. They only took 3 months apiece just to scrape the maps. How did I get the full detail? In Avernum 2 there is a Mage spell Farsight. I used the Character Editor to build a really juiced up team with insanely high abilities, then explored every nook and cranny. Save the game, cast Farsight, anything interesting, no? restore the game, proceed to the next area. Once I had the entire area mapped, alt-PrintScreen, Paint, save. A bit of work building the HTML pages (I shunned tools like Frontpage. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy!). Combine the text walkthrough written by Matt P. and voila!. In Avernum 4-6 there is no magic spell to see unseeable areas, and even so, some areas are far out of range even for that. I got the hint for a cheat while Googling the pages of this forum. Actually it was for Avernum 5, but the principle is the same for all three games. The tricky part was how best to present the maps, as they did not fit the models used for the first three games. Again, I used a walkthrough written by Matt P. to flesh out the pages in Avernum 4. I intend to finish Avernum 5 and 6 in the same fashion. Yes it took a lot of time and patience, but this is the sort of stuff I live for. I like putting together picture puzzles you get out of the box, but programming is like solving puzzles you can only see with your mind.

Quote: you're deluding yourself I resemble that remark.

My theory is that Jeff got tired and had nothing creative to put in that region, so he just used Fort Emerald to block off that region.

My first adventure game was Adventure, aka Colossal Cave. This was strictly a text based game played on a terminal hooked up to the universities main frame computer. It was so popular that they had to restrict it to being played from 6:00 to midnight when they closed the computer center. I was also writing programs in FORTRAN and keying them on 80-column punch cards. Trenton, I haven't thought about those good times for quite a long while. Thanks for bringing a breath of fresh air to these forums.

Quote: Also, I'm not surprised that 22 Strength gives you lower bonuses on some things, as the game might fail to locate a matrix entry and return 0 for the bonus level. No program can be fool proof, because fools are so ingenious! It is difficult to prevent all such glitches when writing a program. You know how it is supposed to work, so when testing, you cannot possibly know all what someone is going to try to do.

Quote: eah? Well you know who else liked dogs? HITLER, that's who. Also he was a vegetarian. And supported animal rights. I guess there is something to be said for the whole "stopped clock" thing. George S. Patton was another dog person, and we all know what he did to Hitler's army. Actually, I'm more of a "Turner and Hootch" guy. But as for the cat, have you ever noticed the effect they seem to have on gravity? They lighten themselves to leap up onto the fence, but let one get in your lap and you cannot move! Just try to get up out of that chair when that cat has curled up on your lap. I guess that is where the word "cat-atonic" comes from. BTW, back on topic, while Exile 1 is a very good game, and it develops the early history of Exile, Exile 2 and Exile 3 are larger and their story line gets increasingly complex. Personally, I enjoyed all three of them, as I had actually started with Exile 1.