The Almighty Doer of Stuff

Thanks. I do indeed have "The Crusaders" in my possession. On another note, we'd really, really like to know how to reach Milu, if anyone knows. I sent PMs to both of her forum accounts but I suspect she's not receiving email notifications.

A couple things. First, and very importantly, I have accumulated as many scenarios as I could, both from TrueSite, other sites, and from helpful community members, but several scenarios are still missing. It's been a while so I'll ask again. This is the list of scenarios I have whose archives are corrupted and cannot be unpacked. EDIT: Got all these. Thanks! Caer Selwyn The Claim Domestic Evil Dragon Quest Escapades in the Green Mountains Foreshadows Fort Emerald Robbery Isle of Serin Kistar's Quest Mortishire Parody Signs and Portents The Za-Khazi Edit You may notice that some of those are major draws to BoE, particularly "Foreshadows" and "Signs and Portents", and it really wouldn't do to have those unavailable. Surely someone has working copies of some of these scenarios which they can email to me? TheAlmightyDummyEmailOfStuff (at) gmail (dot) com ----- Also, the community created a great quantity of scenario reviews, many of which were useful, insightful, and helpful, and many of which were derogatory and downright rude. There was a good amount of spirited debate the last time the issue of what to do with these reviews came up. But it's been a decade since BoE was released as open-source, and these are my thoughts: The reviews will always be helpful and good to have, but I think simply archiving them and starting fresh, with a very simple, uncomplicated system and a handful of recommendations based on community experience, would be best, once OBoE 2.0 is released. We have an rudimentary, official project website now at http://www.OpenBoE.com/ where we will be hosting graphics and scenario archives, and having a review section would be swell as well. The biggest reason for my thought that we start fresh is, as I said, it's been ten years, with only a single new scenario made in that time, "Pilgrimage to Thrakos" by Sylae. BoE itself is TWENTY years old as of this coming December. Tastes in gaming have changed dramatically and BoE is distinctly niche at this point, so I think in many ways the perspectives of the classic reviews may be dated and inapplicable to the modern gamer, even retro game enthusiasts. I'm not proposing that we hash out a system right now; OBoE 2.0 is still being worked on and we have time to think about it. I'm mostly just looking for a general community feel about the idea of starting fresh in general, and maybe the idea of going simpler vaguely. More important right now is, as I said, retrieving the missing scenarios. Thanks! -------- EDIT: I've crossed out the scenarios I've obtained. Also, here's the TrueSite list of ancient scenarios which have been missing for many years, if anyone has them: Augmentary The Dark Cave Death Cove The Duel Excalibur Halmeni Horror Hidden Valley Moui's Kingdom New Blood Patty's Quest Prazac's Quest Silly Town Silly Town 2 Random Rampage Another question though: If we do manage to dig up Shotts's scenarios, what do we do with them? They're mostly mean-spirited attacks on community members, pretending to be adventures. I'm not sure sticking them in the scenario archive is a good idea. Thoughts, if it ever becomes relevant?

Yay! Tim Farland granted us his graphics! He didn't give us a specific license but for formality's sake I think CM is going to contact him on GitHub and ask him for some Creative Commons thing. I have a headache and maybe CM can give any further details if any are needed here.

Thanks, GIFTSm! I actually put two together already, one based on a graphic from Mab and another a modified version of Kelyar-Ihrno's yellow-poncho dude. (That vahnatai now has normal legs and throws razordisks.) So we've got one with a sword, one with razordisks, and one with a ball of energy (the last being the purple-robe-yellow-coif dude from Kelyar). What we'd kinda like is another waveblade wielder and two more spellcasters. We also want a couple new nephilim and a couple new slithzerikai, if you're up for it. That way you can make a party of six. Here's what we've got so far for PCs: We'd ideally like eight of each humanoid, and then the four slots in the fourth human column could be filled by whatever mix of the four we happen to get, I guess. What we're guessing we'd want is at least one more sword wielder and two more spellcasters, for the vahnatai, and perhaps one would be crystal-wielding. And here's two new vahnatai weapons I did today, if they inspire you at all:

Would anyone who is on LinkedIn be willing to send Mr. Farland a message on behalf of the project? Just post here first and I'll give you a message you can send. Neither CM nor I have accounts there. EDIT: Conveniently, my mom had just the other day signed up for a LinkedIn Premium trial and will send Mr. Farland my message. Still, if anyone knows of a more effective way to contact Milu or ShyGuy besides this forum, it'd be appreciated.

Would you like to promote the Blades of Exile project? Would you like to wear snappy pixel art from the game? Buy a T-shirt here! http://shop.Spreadsh.../BladesOfExile/ $13.49 for a swell T-shirt, no royalties for us. Recent additions include the stills from the old promotional animated GIF I made, and the newest is "Blades of Pixile", an original 16x16 pixel, 8-color picture inspired by the Empire ruling in the sun and Exile, rebuilding their lives in the caves. (I think the Avernum remakes use that same concept in their logo. I know I saw it somewhere around here and it inspired the shirt.) (EDIT: Decided not to sell it, since it doesn't feature graphics from the game and I decided it was misleading. Also I guess it's just really ugly. ) I also reduced the sizes of the images across the front of the shirt, and they look much better. Have a look! (There is another thread, dead since 2015 and with a link to a CafePress shop no longer functioning, and there are several new designs, so I posted this new one.)

I'm not sure a spartan room in a fort is quite the same as a house or mansion. But yeah, you can keep loot there. In A3:RW I imagine you'll be able to leave it anywhere though.

Exile 3 and Avernum 3 have a House on a Hill and Hawke's Manse. The house is abandoned, the mansion you buy. It's possible he'll add more for A3:RW, I don't know, but other than putting items you find to decorate there's not much to customize. There are some interesting encounters in the mansion though.

Does anyone know how to contact Milu, Tim Farland, and/or Shyguy? They all made some nice BoE graphics that might be nice to get permission to use. Tim Farland seems to be on LinkedIn but I'm not a member and so it won't let me contact him. Milu and Shyguy, I have no idea.

He's going to do what Steve Moraff did, and abandon fantasy RPGs altogether in favor of Mah Jong software. He wants to give that Moraff a run for his money. He has some really great ideas for Mah Jong that nobody's ever thought of before!

We err on the side of caution. There are only two or three things that we didn't put in legacy checks, and every time CM brings one up I press him for any details about how it could have been used deliberately or even accidentally.

I said I don't know what it does, not that I don't know what it doesn't. It is NOT to do with the Intelligence base stat, which is something you asked. I also provided information about a similar ability, Will, and answered your concerns about legacy compatibility. I don't wish to get in any more griping matches with you about pointless things, Slarty. You criticize my every post whether there's anything wrong with it or not, as if you're just looking for excuses to make me look bad and ruin my day, and I don't have time for that negativity in my life. You can be helpful to me sometimes, and I'm grateful for that, but it's getting more trouble than it's worth. I am contributing to this project and I am being helpful. If you want perfect answers, this is an open-source project and you can look it up yourself. EDIT: You posted while I was posting but you ellipsised out all the parts that specifically addressed what you were complaining about. Nice.

There is an item ability called Intelligence. It is not, despite what one may think, a simple boost to the Intelligence stat. I don't know the specifics of what it does. Celtic Minstrel seems to be implying it never affected Mindduel in original BoE but that tendency was added in OBoE. Backward compatibility/legacy behavior is being maintained. I suggest changing the name of the item ability to avoid confusion. I believe Will, another item ability which I mentioned but couldn't recall the name, always claimed to affect Mindduel but actually did nothing at all. I'm not sure though. EDIT: Furthermore, no legacy behavior which affects gameplay has been changed for the purposes of legacy BoE to OBoE, except where we feel reasonably certain that no existing scenario relied on it or took it into account during the design/balancing process. If such changes were made, and there are many (bug fixes, making things work as advertised, etc.), legacy-scenario compatibility checks are put in place to prevent altering the behavior of legacy scenarios. The only big change that I can think of is the addition of additional races, including the option to start with Vahnatai PCs, and the ability of designers to add PCs with their own races and stick them in the party. Existing NPC "races" like Bug, Reptile, etc. have specifics for inclusion in parties as well. The specifics of implementing that is something else that can be discussed and tinkered with, I suppose.

Hi, Solberg! I don't know much about A3:RW, I still haven't gotten through the first two. I beat E/A1 twice and started it a dozen more times and I can't seem to get back into it, but I might try again soon. I'm curious where Jeff is going after that; he's always been pretty resistant to breaking the formula that has been keeping him in business. Open BoE is going strong, if you're interested in that. I look at your Location note. When I think "In the Ether" I tend to think of Pete Townshend doing that strange, gurgling, near-retching "singing" he did from "Endless Wire". I'm not sure if that was one of his random "experiments" or if there was some point to it (I never caught the lyrics) but it always makes me cringe. It kinda sounds like it hurt. I know I can't do it.

My suggestion is to make all of those missiles match bladbase, because regardless of those three, all other scenarios in existence are working off bladbase. Slarty, regarding Micah's Gloves, BoE always assigned them the Intelligence ability, from the beginning. I remember that clearly. It's possible Jeff made the change to simplify things, or something. Hidden stats isn't really something any abilities do except for the Mindduel one whose name I forget. (I think Intelligence was given Mindduel effects because of original advertisements so rather than just because, IIRC, right, CM?)

Right, and using Scenario Strings or special Description Strings (which could be used for other description stuff like Special Items, Jobs, and I think we should put strings on monsters for Scry Monster) would make that simple. You make your items, plug in the number to each item you want to have the same description, and you're done. -1 leaves a default or blank or something. EDIT: Come to think of it, using regular Scenario Strings would allow them to be easily accessed by nodes and such, if you wanted to call a description in Display Message or something, for whatever reason. If that were important to anyone.)

Thanks for your input, MisterManlyMan! For reference, the entirety of BoE is about 20 MB, if you don't count the documentation. The program will not be large or slow just from having a few hundred extra 256 character strings. I just did the math and if you have 512 items each with unique 256 character identified strings and unique 256 character unidentified strings, it will add 262,144 bytes to the scenario. That's not really a concern for computers made during this millenium.

Who's attacking Jeff? I'm not. That's old stuff and he's always done his best. I've always admired him. I was just saying, people getting annoyed at all the limitations is a major part of the history of BoE and its community, and getting rid of them was always something people badly wanted from an open-source release. I can blame Spider for the limitations if you want.

What did I do this time, Slarty...?

Also, as far as... ...I think I can say with a good amount of certainty that you are the only person on the planet who would at all be put off by partially-duplicate descriptions. That's what Copy-Paste is for. I get you're the lead developer and you make the final decisions, but I can still advise recognizing that designers like to do the designing, and remember that any time someone came up against a limitation Jeff implemented, there was a lot of griping and insults headed his way. The design community has consistently despised any form of limitation that Jeff put in just because he personally felt it was a good idea rather than because it actually adds something useful to the software. I don't expect that will change.

My philosophy on anything in BoE is to give more control to the designer wherever possible. I've been saying that all along and it hasn't changed. The designers are the drivers of the interest in this software, without whom players have no reason to use it, and I am in favor of removing all restrictions, even related to balance issues, which are not required to make the software function. Just because we can't see a use for something doesn't mean someone else can't come up with something creative with it we hadn't imagined. BoE has always been about that, and there has always been soft, community-based control over excessive "Monty Haul" type scenarios and badly-written scenarios without needing to actually force it on people. That's how designers have always learned and improved. As for preset items, I say the most generic descriptions possible, if any, should be applied to starting equipment. "This is a simple knife. It does a small amount of damage with a sharp edge, and does more damage with increased Strength and Edged Weapons skills. More Dexterity will let you hit more often." Sorta give a little gameplay tip for new players, since this is the first equipment a new player will see. Alchemical potions maybe ought to be set within the scenario, with a handful of strings set aside for them. As for stacking, I think it'd be best if, when you pick up something that stacks with something you have, the new description overwrites the old one, so you always have the fresh one from the scenario you're in. This includes starter arrows.

It just seems so complicated. I think it would be better to just have two description fields that call Scenario Strings or some sort of Description String we could add, and then just write the string permanently to the item when leaving the scenario. That would take care of duplicate descriptions and all the associated copy-pasting, and still keep things very easy to understand. It would be intuitive because it follows the already-existing scheme of other message fields.

I slept on it and this is my official position on the matter: We should either hide the string when unidentified or allow for two strings. Otherwise, we should eliminate the feature altogether. I believe physical-only descriptions are boring and will just make extra work for designers for no useful benefit, and creating a syntax for hiding parts of it will make extra work AND be just one more thing for designers to learn for no useful benefit.

I'm not really suggesting we offer swapping graphics so much as emphasizing that realism isn't always the goal, especially in a game where the sprites are 28 pixels by 36 pixels. BoE is and always has been a creative-writing based game. I think any extra text that is included would be better to be about creativity and flavor rather than strict realism.

Some games will even change the GRAPHIC of the item when it is identified, not just the description. I know Castle of the Winds did this, and I'm certain there are others. From a literal standpoint, the item doesn't change shape, but from a gameplay standpoint it can be desirable depending on how the game is designed. Beyond that, the dry physical description of an item alone isn't going to be especially interesting to most players, and I fear it would become busywork for the designer, instead of flavor for the scenario which I think is the interesting part of the concept.