Xoid

That area can only be reached by falling through a trap in the upstairs portion of Fort Dolthar. There isn't a lot to see there, just a trio of basilisks, a statue and a rock.

4x Thahd named "Cannon Fodder", status: 2x Killed in Action, 2x Absorbed. Roamer named "Caustic", status: Absorbed. Roamer named "Vitriolic", status: Killed in Action. Plated Bug named "Creeper", status: Absorbed. Plated Bug named "Crawler", status: Absorbed. Battle Alpha named "Brain Dead", status: In a vegetative state. Drayk named "Barbecue", status: Killed in Action. Drayk named "Napalm", status: Absorbed. Cryodrayk named "Frosty", status: Went rogue, then Killed in Action. Cryodrayk named "Chilli", status: Alive at endgame. Didn't name many more creations than that, and I can't remember those few others that I did.

Update: Both of these lists are... rough, at best, but it is a half-decent indication of where I'm at. What has been done? Tower of Magi (A2 Version) is floored, terrained, and mostly creatured. In-house testing of most completed scripts is done. What still needs to be done? There are still seven towns left to be scripted. (Including the three mentioned below.) There are still three towns left to be creatured, floored, itemed, scripted and terrained. There are still five towns left to be itemed. (Including the three mentioned above.)

Do not go out the same way you got in. Once you have turned the wheel, exit through the opened portcullis directly to the south of the wheel.

Pyrog's Lair is east of Bargha. Bargha is north of Spire. Spire is north of Fort Spire. Fort Spire is north of Dharmon.

When you fall through the trap door you'll end up in a little underground cell. Once in your cell, there is a secret passage to the west. Go through it. Fight your way through to a stairway up. You'll be back in the giant's fort proper. To escape, you'll need to turn the wheel near the trap that you fell through orignally. You can either hunt down and kill the Giant Chief for a key, or have a party with a high STR.

I somehow doubt you are asking about this, but... if you are talking about what you can use to edit resource forks, then you could try resedit: http://www.mac.org/utilities/resedit/ResEdit_2.1.3.sit.hqx I think that there are a number of clones, but I know that there are similarily named applications for PC that do nothing of the sort. If you are talking about image editing programs, like paintshop pro, or MS paint, photoshop, etc, then you are probably better off finding your own. There are about one million image editing programs out there, and everyone's tastes are different. But here are a couple of Windows programs for image editing/manipulation: http://www.tucows.com/preview/214261 http://www.tucows.com/preview/194967 Don't know any decent Mac applications, not suprising considering I'm on the Wintel platform.

@Overwhelming: 'K. Sending snarky email w/ dodgy version now. I'm not joking about that y'know. (What is this, like the 17th edit already?) Seems like that email bounced too. Probably a good thing really - the current version is that much different from the previous, but does need serious cleanning before release. To quote the bounced email: Quote: It is buggy, incomplete, the graphic sheets need a complete reworking, it needs converting to Macintosh format (something that I cannot do.), I'm certain than there is at least some swearing in the README file, the scripts have not been put through their paces to my liking, and there are a couple of "evolutionary dead-ends" somewhere in the folder as well. All in all, it is a god damn mess. @Poit: I have no idea if the scenario I am going to "fork" off from the template will ever be made to my own exacting standards. I'm a pessimistic perfectionist with a penchant for procrastinating. Unintentional tongue twister. Heh. Hopefully, the template will be at an acceptable standard sometime soon. Apart from cleanup, some scripting, and proper documentation, I don't think that there is a helluva lot left to do.

@Ian Dressari:There is a single 'S' in Dresari, Mechwarrior. Back on topic: Shaping Golems and Pylons seems a little... wrong to me. Golems requiring a stone frame and skill to make it, and pylons require inordinate amounts of crystal to make the casing for the creation inside. Turrets on the other hand... damnit... where is a devilish smiley when you need one? Battle Gammas. They seem to be legal creations, they'd have to be, seeing as there are some in Dhonal's Keep, so why can't we access them? While I'm on the issue of the legality of creations for loyalists: why doesn't anyone bat an eyelid when a drayk/drakon/gazer/rhotgroth or variant thereof is in your party? There should be at least a couple more options for purist loyalists in terms of their creations and such. If Battle Gammas were a (relatively) cheap and accessible creation for their overall power, it might make investment in battle shaping worth it again. And Clawbugs... where is the poison that their description says they have? I've been irritated by that omission since GF1, you'd think even Jeff would've either fixed the clawbug or it's description by now.

Have you tried looking at door.txt script that comes with every scenario? It has an example of how to do this sort of thing. The problem you are having is that there is only supposed to be one ELSE statement at the end of an IF-ELSE statement. This is because the ELSE statement is the "in the advent of nothing matching the preceeding if statements, do this". But... you can have something similar to this: Code: if (condition) { action;}else if (condition) { action;}else { action;}

@Overwhelming: Since I am working on a vastly different version, do you want the: Incomplete, non Mac-patible version that is still a work in progress. Older version that is slightly buggy and incorrect. Version I am working on, when it is actually complete. @Poit: I'll be the first to admit it was a big undertaking but I did say that I have oodles of time. I wouldn't have started if I didn't know that I could finish it. It was ambitious, yes, but I waited until I had about 13+ sections completed in a little under 3 days before I even dared to raise the community's expectations. Frankly, it is not the sort of thing a n00b should undertake, but I knew I could cut it if I tried. That and I have worked with more complicated editors than blades. I don't claim to know it inside out, but I can't help but snigger at anyone who says that it is 'complicated'.

From what I've read from a walkthrough, from various posts, delving in the scripts, etc. there is a need for a vast amount of money near the end of the game in order to get Orois Blaze and Tolleran's augmentations. If you are more than willing to waste numerous trips back and forth, it is possible to max out in all skills, without stealing. 1) Don't buy any items whatsoever. Exception: ingredients that make an item that is worth more than their cost. 2) Simply grab absolutely every item that is worth four coins or more. Any item that is stackable and is worth less than four coins - wait until you have a stack that is exactly divisible by four. Don't sell flawed crystal shards in groups not divisible by four, always sell regular thorns in numbers divisible by four, etc. Nearing the end of the second Island I had almost 12,000 coins without selling a single herb, research note or piece of shaper equipment, and I had purchased every spell accessible and stolen less than 100 coins worth of goods. Between excess armour and weaponry, quest rewards and selling ingredients that are more expensive than their resulting item, it should be easy to train in every spell twice, purchase training from Vandrin + Gretchen twice, get the augmentations from Orois Blaze and Tolleran, and still have enough cash left over for about 12,000 worth's of investment available for the creation skills department. This is, however, end game. It should be more than achievable to get at least 3 of the mods from Tolleran, whilst still getting almost every spell from Khyryk. This is via the pro-shaper angle. It should be easier as a rebel to make oodles of cash via that traitorous weasel in Stonespire who wants the shaper equipment, seeing as he won't take it off your hands upon freeing Agatha.

Update: Documentation is coming along nicely. I've made a few modifications to scripts, simple ones mainly. 'Balancing & Corrections' of items, monsters. If that ain't your thing, then it will be simple to remove those changes. Almaria, Blosk, The Castle, Patrick's Tower and Silvar are all done for! Uh... creatures, floors, items and terrain. Cotra Ruins, Formello are both at the 20~30% terrained stage. ToM A2 is just after finding an 'origin', and is barely started. Details: Scripting for towns will be restricted to descriptions of what stuff looks like. E.g. the little blurb about Rone's lil' room in the Castle being done in the Vahnatai style only recently, etc. Or for placing the quickfire in that 'treasure room', inside the laboratory in Patrick's Tower. Scripting for towns will also include naming NPC's that have actual names. E.g. Kelli from Patrick's Tower, Patrick, etc. Magic doors that have differing TUS, STR and Unlock Doors requirements, as well as being able to be unlocked by the spell... after removing the magical part of the lock? It is now possible. Minor modifications to the door.txt and magicdoor.txt scripts, but modifications that shouldn't have been necessary, IMHO. They are backwards compatible with previous 'versions'. (I.E. Jeff's originals. And there was much rejoicing.) @TM I said in a previous post that I might be making all the towns that I listed. I'll now say that I will be making them. There will be the six major towns as they are when first entered in Avernum 2, minus dialogue. A second version of Cotra - as it would've been if it wasn't hit by that Empire raid. Angierach - because I'm making a reconstruction for the scenario that I will be making out of the template. Patrick's Tower - because I already have, and because I felt like it. ToM A2 Version - because the scenario I will be making off of the template is set inbetween A2 and A3. ToM A3 Version - for other's convenience. (The template is basically going to be everything that I am reconstructing - before I modify anything for the changes that would have to have taken place over the course of the Avernum/Empire war.) I've tried my hand at custom graphics - I just pray to god that Kelandon will convert the Windows version for me when I'm done - it'll be a true pain to... uh... 'borrow' someone's Mac, learn how to use it and then convert the scenario myself. Final size is likely to come in at around 2 to 5 meg's when zipped, unless I cut down on graphics: which I WILL do. The scenario, when done is looking to be a bare minimum of 2Mb. The scenariodata.txt file is already at around 1000+ lines of code. But it is neatly set out, and documented. Final Blurb: My software design and development teacher would be so proud that... I'm finally documenting my code. *sniff sniff, wipes eyes* It's a penguin!

There are, literally, a ton of minor oversights in that version. Work is progressing on v 1.0.whatever. Mainly focusing on documenting deliberate changes, fixing bugs and adding the towns. So if you plan to use the template - as it is now - you can save yourself time and trouble by simply making changes that are easy to export to a different scenario. Essentially: alterations of the terrain are going to need to be redone if you use the improved version when it comes out, so stick to things like dialog, scripts and towns.

I remember getting an error message, "improper command in line 1302" in Dry Peak after joining another faction when I played GF2 the first time, not long after after it came out. This comes about from talking to one of the guards around Dry Peak. I wanted to replay GF2, since I'm kinda tired of BoA at the moment. Since I format my machine on an almost monthly basis, I had to re-download GF2 from scratch. Considering the fact that the only thing wrong with line 1302 was a missing bracket, I thought it would've been fixed by now. Has this bug not been discovered before, or simply never been fixed?

Sorry about the hiatus, and not responding if anyone has emailed me about this. I am still working on it, just got caught up in an exam a week ago, and have been practicing far too much geneforgery. I have got Almaria & Blosk mostly done, The Castle & Patrick's Tower completely done. I have about 2 other towns in varying stages of completion.

I was fairly certain that it would crash the game when actually in BoA proper. It did. However, it is curious how the 3D editor let it work at all though. Unless someone does know the rumoured method of a three icon terrain, having the taller trees on a hill is little more than a pipe dream.

Was there a reason that Jeff used the custom graphics method for trees on hills in DwtD? The documentation says something about floors needing to be a certain shape and such, but is this a hard and fast rule, or just generally a good idea? I thought I'd try to do something similar, without requiring custom graphics. Essentially: hills as floors, + trees as terrain with the correct special property enabled. Might not even be necessary to do that. I have not had time to test any of this junk extensively, this is a proof of concept more than anything else. It seems to work in Issac's 3D Editor though. Code: EDIT: the code is irrelevant now.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think that if you want the same effect as divine warrior did in Avernum 2, the only way to get it in Avernum 3 is through the heroic brew. Whilst a number of the potions are useless with a strong party near the end-game, the brews are of great assistance. A select few of the elixers are also worth your time and effort. If you manage to stockpile enough ingredients, your potion making skill can convert them into a decent source of income, although using them for knowledge brews is usually the smarter choice.

His coding ability is nigh on irrelevant: there are GPL'ed or LGPL'ed, or similarly licensed libraries for dealing with graphics, and a lot of these are cross platform. If he really wanted to, he could have found a library that is cross-platform for Mac OS X and Windows, possibly even for Linux too. Somewhere out there has to be a simple cross platform library which is free, enen for commercial applications. That leaves the only plausible option: laziness. Not that I have anything against being lazy, mind you, a lot of friends of mine are lazy. If you don't get the joke, don't comment on it.

I've tried screwing around with the offset and had clipping issues, the player being drawn over the pillar. I think it is possible with the bottom 2/3's of the pillar as the terrain, and the top 1/3 as the scond terrain though. Regardless of that, it is almost impossible to place it without altering the wall configuration - and that simply hasn't been very successful. I can try placing it one space lower and having strange offsets, and manually blocking the correct square. Seems like a lot of trouble to go to, particularily if using the resulting pillar would be a counter intuitive task for those using the template. An aside: I hate typos. Especially my own... "is is"... argh. Also, it just occured to me, I never got the 'leave your sanity at the door' greeting, does this only apply to new members, and not those who really only made one or two posts in an obscure thread three years ago?

Funny that no one deigned to comment on that email. Anyway, an update: I've found an irritating little problem with the BoA editor, when placing a floor underneath a sign, the sign becomes blank. It'll take me a day or two to ensure that every sign has writing on it. I've also nailed down an almost embarrassing oversight: floor 3 - the one with the tiny gray speck at the bottom right is actually placed in the scenario now. That 'green splotchy crap of a cave floor' is also placed where it should be, including under terrain features that almost completely obscure them. Nothing quite like painting a 1 pixel wide border of red over one of those two floors' graphics in Avernum 2 (purple on the other one) and spending three days making your characters wander around aimlessly, 'eh? Boy, do I ever so need a hobby. The itemised list of changes and reasons for them is coming along nicely. Finally, I have completed an almost perfect replica of The Castle, including: creatures, floors, items, terrain, scripting of the little observations 'you' made in Avernum 2, e.g. "This dusty room is packed ceiling high with dressed blocks of stone, cement and other building materials. These supplies are here so that any damaged walls can be quickly repaired." However, there are some problems. The big-arse 1x3 icon high pillar - I've scoured the documentation and found no reference on how to do this. I remember a while back somebody made the claim that is possible, but no reference on how to do it. I also took the liberty of adding three 'stone blocks' to the room that that description belongs to. I'm uncertain as to where a couple of the wandering guards should be placed exactly, so I will try to place them approximately where they are in Avernum 2. The reason I am including scripting already done is because I want the towns in the template to be pre-made, like in Warrior's Grove. The script(s) should be relatively easy to modify. Since I am forced to include a 48x48 town as the first town - at least, I think I am, I reconstructed Patrick's Tower for that one. As an interesting note: Captain Rabin's dialogue says that he has fifteen soldiers under his command, he actually has at least seventeen.

Hmm, there really should be a devilish grin smiley here... Quote: Originally written by Atrus: You can very likely create them with Linux. Which doesn't fix the problem, but Linux emulators (Cygwin?) are a whole lot easier to come by than Mac emulators, as well as typically free. Still, Kel's approach is least hassle. Ask someone. I do have a copy of linux buried around here somewhere, but I have neither the space, nor the inclination to convert this machine to dual-boot. I've had nothing but problems with linux, mainly because I can't download a version, and the only copy I've got doesn't include documentation. Ridiculous really - what kind of distro doesn't include at least the man pages? @ Kelandon and Thralni: I'm very thankful for the offers, and I'll check with you later to see if you are still interested. I need to finalise what I'm including and such: I would really prefer to keep file sizes to a minimum. [RANT] I am... uncomfortable with relying on other people to ensure compatability of my work. I'm assuming that this sort of thing is why nearly all scenario designers use a Mac. Seems counter productive to the whole "I'm porting my game to another operating system, so I can make money off it's users too" philosophy. I understand that resedit isn't even supported anymore - if Jeff really wanted to do the best by both platforms he wouldn't be using an unsupported and irritatingly one-way-street-esque method of storing graphics. I know that non-Wintel users can be frequently frustrated by developers refusing to be inclusive of either their architecture or platform, but that hardly justifies doing what is, essentially, the same thing to the platform of 'choice' of a majority of everyday people. [/RANT]

Yes, I have done a search on this. If there is a thread that explains, in plain english, how to do this, then I couldn't find it. Every topic I've come across from the search feature has been from Mac to PC. sigh I seem to get the general impression that I need to convert a *.bmp to a *.pict and put the result in a *.cmg file. Can anyone explain how to convert a graphic from PC to Mac, step-by-step? And what the hell does CMG stand for anyway?

This is about as close to a cut-and-paste of the email I received from Jeff. Interesting to say the least, but unsuprising, considering previous emails. Quote: From : Spiderweb Software Inc. {spidweb(at)spiderwebsoftware(dot)com} Sent : Tuesday, 11 October 2005 2:42:57 AM To : "Clint Peters" {xoid(at)hotmail(dot)com} Subject : Re: Could Jeff settle this, please? Quote: This is referring the Avernum 2 Template that I made. There is a question of legality of the scenario, plus any derivatives. Whilst any number of members on the forums could argue the case one way or the other, I would prefer Jeff to state under exactly what conditions legal action would be taken. Preferably on the forums so no mistake could be made. (Feel free to copy this on the boards.) This is the sort of intellectual property weirdness that gives people fits. Obviously, writing your own version of Avernum 2 from scratch and copying the data files would be a Bad Thing. But remaking Avernum 2 in MY game? Heh heh. I have no idea why you would want to do this ... remaking Avernum 2 would be a TON of work. But heck with it. Go ahead. As long as Avernum 2 is being remade ONLY as a Blades of Avernum scenario, knock yourself out. I'll get a kick out of seeing how far you get. -- - Jeff Vogel Spiderweb Software, Inc www.spiderwebsoftware.com