BadYeti

I'm not sure if this is the proper forum, but I wanted to make a small suggestion on Spiderweb's iPad UI. I've been playing Avadon on the new iPad, and it's an awesome game. But, I consistently have trouble closing the expanded map. As in, I dread expanding the map because I know that when I try to close it I will either move the view window to the far bottom left of the map or will select a new location for my party members. I try as hard as I can, but cannot just hit the Close button without also hitting some point on the map surrounding it. I'm not sure if this is just because of my fat fingers, but I would love to see Spiderweb either move the expanded map Close button or disable map selection in the region around the close button. Thank you very much.

I'm evaluating the demo, and really love the writing, setting, characters and combat system so far. That said, I don't really understand the ability tree design. So far as I can tell (and please correct me if I'm wrong), most of the abilities (other than the two bottom-tier ones that are not prerequisities for any other abilities) can be improved between ranks one and eight. Further, it's my understanding that abilities can not be ranked beyond the level of their prerequisites. And finally, it looks like two ability points are gained per level after level one, which starts with three ability points pre-assigned, leaving a total of 61 points (3+2x29) at the level cap of 30. Does this mean that it's impossible to ever max out any of the top-tier talents? So far as I can tell, it looks like players have to pick which of the two top-tier talents they prefer, then max out all three first-tier talents (whether they like them or not), then max out the full middle column (again, whether or not those are talents the player cares about), and finally max out the outside column corresponding to their top-tier talent of choice. Only then would their top-tier talent of choice be fully unlocked. Yet, at that point, they would only have enough points left over to take it to rank five. And that's assuming they put no additional points into the two abilities that aren't tied into the prerequisite tree. Am I misunderstanding something? This seems like a really bizarre design choice for a skill tree. The whole idea of a skill tree is to allow players to customize their builds to suit their own playstyle or character concept. The prerequisite web is so tight in this design, the player really only makes one choice: Does the player want to "specialize" in the right and center column or in the left and center column. Deciding how many points to allocate to specific talents is obviated by the need to keep everything in two columns (plus a third first-tier talent) at the same high level in order to permit any of the higher-tier abilities to be ranked up. It just seems to me like there's hardly any customization or decision-making for the player to participate in, unless I'm misunderstanding the design (which I certainly could be). You may as well just have a binary decision at character creation on which of the two paths you'd prefer, and have the game auto-level it since you're pretty much locked into all the selections in order to unlock the higher tiers. So, am I misunderstanding the design or can anyone help me understand the benefit of such a non-customizable design if I'm not misunderstanding it? Thanks, and again, I do really like the game other than the ability tree design.

Originally Posted By: Verbose PDN is verboten. The standard Mac application switch is Command-Tab. It doesn't work with A6? —Alorael, who is fairly sure he's used the key combination to switch out of A6. The catch is that he's running the game in Windowed mode, so it may be playing a bit nicer with the rest of the system. No, it doesn't. At least not in full-screen mode. I haven't tried it in windowed mode, as I have a lot of trouble with cursor confusion when I've tried to play it in a window.

These may be dumb questions, but I'm trying the Avernum 6 demo on one of the new MacBooks and have run into some inconveniences. I was hoping someone might have advice to help me rectify them. 1. Is there any way to move diagonally using a Macbook keyboard? Their keyboards do offer cardinal cursor keys, but no full keypads. I can't find a laptop-friendly key equivalent to the 7, 9, 1 and 3 keys for diagonal movement. Being able to move diagonally seems helpful for saving on movement points and manuevering in tight combat conditions. 2. I'd like to play the demo in full-screen mode. But when I do so, I no longer can multitask. Normally, what I'd want to do is have a work-related spreedsheet or some web pages up, and then ALT-TAB (in Windows terms) to the game when I'm free to kill a few moments by swiping with four fingers (horizontally to bring up the Mac application switch list or vertically to bring up the Expose selection window). So far, I've been unable to find any way to swich applications or multitask while Avernum 6 is running. Thanks for any suggestions!