*i

Glad someone figured out the reference...or at least had the courage to point it out, bwahahahahaha!

Vent, I don't like to step in here, but it seems clear to me that you are overreacting. It's okay. We all do it now and again. Please, I ask you to tone down your responses and let's keep this place a friendly environment for everybody. Okay?

And how do you know they aren't?

Yes. We're back to Avernum titles now, since that's the new thing.

Ask and you shall receive.

editor - Brings up the character editor, enabling you to freely edit your party’s skills, traits, and spells. Before this will work, you must enable it on the title screen. fps - See Avernum’s current frame rate. ouchouchouch - Heals and cures your group. leetbuffz - Gives each of your characters multiple blessings. owmybrains - Cures any character that is suffering from a mental effect. Also removes a death curse. iampoor - Gives you 500 coins. imdrained - Recharges your spell energy. backtostart - Returns you to Fort Avernum. Very useful if you get stuck. ikilledathron - If you killed the dragon Athron before she could give you a key piece of information, this cheat code will teach it to you. forgiveme - Makes all of the areas in the game forget your crimes. If you were hated there, you won’t be anymore. Note that certain crimes (stealing artifacts, killing major characters) won’t be forgotten. iwanttobestronger - Gives you some experience. giveasnack - Gives your main character some cake. showmeall - Makes all characters (even ones you can’t see) appear on your automap. dontshowmeall - Stops making all characters appear on your automap. resetboats - Returns all boats to their starting positions. Boats you previously purchased will no longer be your property. Use the backtostart cheat if this strands you somewhere.

Correct, I was just trying to avoid a discussion on how to get the Orb.

There's a cheat code. Type "Shift-d" and enter "ikilledathron".

Well, yes, that too, but I suspected the person asking hadn't made it that far yet.

You need to enter the Abyss via the northwestern corner of the Great Cave. Head north and pass through Bargha in the northeast corner of the Abyss. There you will enter the giant lands. Go to the Giant Fortress, kill the boatmaster to get the key. There is a gate just east of the Giant Fortress that you can now access. Head north through the gates to find a boat. Take one of the boats and sail west. Just west of the Northern Isles, one of the tunnels on the north side will take you to Khoth's Lair. Hope this helps!

Quote: Others have mentioned the auto-routing imperfections. The boat piloting does, at least, mirror real life. It would be harder to steer a boat than to walk on dry land. To this, I ask, "So what?" Pointing and clicking some place and the characters walking there on land is just a convenient way for me to tell them what to do. It's not like there's realism there anyway. Why not make boats behave in the same convenient way?

Quote: An interesting perspective not without its merits but I question its place, relevance, and invocation in 2011? if not 2011 how about 2030, 2100 etc... It will be relevant unless we fundamentally alter humanity, then all bets are off. Until that time, everything we use is an accessory. When I drive a car, I still need to remember that I'm driving a car and need to know the basics of how a car functions. Same goes when I use a hammer, wrench, or any other tool. A computer is a tool, a powerful tool for crunching numbers very fast, but one nonetheless. Maybe this is my perspective that arises from me developing engineering software specifically for simulating physical systems. I want a certain level of control over what my computer is doing, and want it to behave in completely predictable ways. Quote: A possible alternative is to create sheer wonderment and delight by achieving what seems magical and as forgiving/generous as possible. I'm a big time believer in the *ideals* of "making errors impossible" by design and adapting machines to humans and not the other way around... I'm all for adapting machines to human usage for convenience and ease of use. Like it or not, software will never be perfect because the people that write it are imperfect and cannot possibly anticipate everything a user might do. I still maintain that if you want to use a tool, you should learn the basics of its use. By all means, make it easier, but don't have it "think" for me, unless I specifically tell it to do so.

Just to add, I agree with point A. I shudder at B because even with a series of diffs, we still get a large amount of data after a while, especially when we consider branching, which I still think the user needs to do anyway because you cannot store branches of everything, and the computer is just not smart enough to prune the way I want it to.

Certainly, I understand the importance of version control and use it frequently in the course of my job, but I see this as a solution in search of a problem. The solution can actually lead to other problems because the computer must construct a conveniently searchable database with branching and must decide what to prune because we can't branch everywhere -- there's just too much data to store. While yes, I see some merits to your idea, it still can never truly replace me saying that this point is really important and under no circumstances shall you prune it until I say otherwise. Guess what, I just had to commit an "out of game" act called designating a save point. Anything less and we run into a problem of lost data when the user doesn't want it. Maybe I'm old school and I think that if you're playing a game on a computer you should actually have to know the basics of how a computer functions. I see no problem when using an application on a computer you have to occasionally have to remember that you are still using a computer and treat it accordingly.

I agree with most of your points except one where I have a major disagreement. Quote: ...all the player cares about is being able to go back in time if they need to and being able to continue from where they left off without ever losing anything, the player really doesn't need to do busywork like name games or pick save slot 17. At least this player creates saves at key points during the adventure. If I want to save my game right before some particular decision to see how the game would have evolved differently, I should be able to do that. It seems to me your proposed new system would eliminate this capability, which I am not for at all.

Yeah. Had to return to the Spiral Crypt much later to finish off the final section. I would suggest: Either make the monsters get gradually tougher, make the barrier stronger so that piercing crystals will not work, or (probably best) make the encounter easier.

Did you try using the mouse and clicking on the other side of the chasm? Key place to test is south of the Giant Castle.

I disagree with it not being a bug. The encounter should not disappear completely. There should be at least a "there is nothing else to do here because the pages are all blank" message like just about every other such encounter explaining this.

This part seems like a bug since the spellbook encounter effectively "disappears" after you read it rather than giving the typical "nothing else to do here" message. I suggest contacting Jeff and reporting the bug.

I suspect much of this falls back to legacy issues that could have been corrected without too much trouble. Combat was different back in the days of Exile and earlier Avernum games. First, your party always went first if memory served. Also, it would not be very often where the monsters would swarm your party with such high and rapid damage where any of your characters would actually die. In other words damage dealt versus HP was a bit lower back then. Nowadays, it is not difficult at all for monsters of slightly higher stats to take out an unprepared party. Unfortunately, the inability to use magic outdoors anymore exacerbates the problem.

I do think you you phrased it quite right. Playing this iteration did feel like Avernum circa this game was a bit less wild and more civilized. Not sure I necessarily agree with your reasoning, but it does, to me, at least. Now, to be fair, this is my third time seeing the game and I'm quite a bit older than my first experience with it, so maybe it's just an illusion. I don't know. Once I find time to slay the Emperor, which will mean I'll have finished most of the game, I'll write a short review.

Quote: A slight disappointment is that there's only one class, and only specialization in skills will build a class. But also that means that overall there's less choice. If I remember well Avadon had 4 classes even if some skills was shared between different classes. That said it's just a slight disappointment, original Avernum had also only one class, and stuff like special attacks are a good change to compensate less skills. And if like Avadon many skills provide special capacities at different levels that's also for me a good replacement of some other stuff. I suppose you could argue that there is less choice because the number of skills is reduced. I would argue you have greater flexibility in how you develop your characters throughout the game, unlike in Avadon where your choice of class dictated the role of that character.

Just a reminder, even when something appears on the FTP, please do not put up a link to it on the forums until Jeff announces it publicly. The reason is that it's not released until Jeff says so, and we don't want bugged copies in the unlikely event the initial FTP version gets corrupted or bugged in some way. Thanks!

Quote: Just a reminder, while we're at it. Talk of illegal activites (and that includes software piracy and keygenning) isn't allowed here. Nobody has done anything wrong yet, but this thread could easily go that way. Just to clarify the intent of the rule: talking about illegal activities in the abstract is fine. Talking about plans to commit or committing specific illegal acts on this forum is not, and will probably lead to banning. In this case, talking about keygens is okay, and even discussing a keygen-proof system as a suggestion is fine, so no foul here. Where the line is if we talk about how to acquire or use keygens to crack software.

Try going back to Ogrhym-Tor and see if something can be redone there. Otherwise, I recommend e-mailing Jeff directly with the details of your problem.