The Almighty Doer of Stuff

Some months ago I went through all the legacy Windows BoE graphics, replaced them with legacy Mac versions, and fixed a bunch of errors. The errors were mostly things like incorrect mirroring in monster graphics, stray pixels, and transparent pixels that should be opaque. The biggest changes were putting the Living Statue on the white cave floor that matches BoE caves and giving it back its missing attack graphic, and flipping a few monsters that were oriented in the wrong directions.

Here is a temporary link to the files: http://www.BladesOfExile.com/BoEGfxFix.zip I included every graphic because I can't remember exactly what I changed, but focus is on the monsters, items, and terrain.

The point of this post: Does anyone have any feedback, suggestions, or concerns about this? I plan to include these graphics with a Thrown Missiles-patched BoE copy on BladesOfExile.com at some point, once I get it all up and running.

Dancing Boots grant Agility in GF1:M? Interesting. In Exile, they are a cursed item that slows you down, which evokes in my mind uncontrollable dancing that keeps you from moving where you want to go.

I wonder how many people grasp the Exile 3 reference with the Feisty Slap gloves.

I have a light switch in my apartment which is not connected to anything. I leave it in the down position anyway so I don't get anxious. :P

Oh, you were last here in 2015, says my profile stalking. FOSS BoE and Avernum 4-6 were definitely around then, but if you didn't notice then it's just as well that you noticed now.

Welcome back! If you don't remember Avernum 4 from 2006, you might not know that Blades of Exile is Free Open Source Software under GNU GPL 3.0 as of 2007.

I like the avatar.

This is a map from Avernum: Escape From The Pit. The Alien Blade is at marker (a). I believe it's in the same place in Exile: Escape From The Pit, although some of the details vary.

https://homepages.uni-regensburg.de/~mim09509/Avernum/AvernumEscPit/Towns/ErikaBandits.html

EDIT: Just checked. Yes, it's there, but unlike in Avernum: Escape From The Pit, there's no ledge to land on. You need to fly directly into the northern wall.

I think lockpicks, weapon poison, and a few other things may have been included for low-magic or no-magic parties. For one instance in Exile 3, if you joined the Anama, you couldn't cast Unlock at all.

Lockpicks would break occasionally but could be used over and over. Also, merchants never sold out of anything, ever, and money was infinite as well if you wanted to grind.

Really, it could easily have been made useful in BoE if Special Nodes were allowed to check for Lockpicking skill. Disarm Traps and Poison were equally useless; use Dexterity instead of Disarm Traps, and the Envenom spell instead of weapon poison. Allowing for checking any statistic would have been useful. OpenBoE enables that, at least. It's still not done being developed though.

Yup. Exile has Lockpicks, Fine Lockpicks, and Magic Lockpicks. BoE could have different varieties too but lockpicking skill is so useless most scenario designers didn't bother.

My suggestion would be good, I think, because it ties Spiderweb Software's newest game back into its very first game.

Yes, Exile has lockpicks that can break and even then only can unlock weak locks. You can bash in weak doors too, with Strength skill, which risks injury. Stronger locks require the Unlock spell which can also fail over and over, and some doors act like you can unlock them but you actually can't. Unlocking doors in Exile is a matter of saving and reloading. At least it's nearly instantaneous to save and to reload.

I wonder if open-source BoE designers could come up with an optional alternative for new scenarios, which is more fun and less random. Maybe someday.

Yes. Make it financially worthwhile for him.

There's a Linux version of Exile III, at least.

Yes, I recall having that problem with slow performance. I stopped using Linux when I got a new laptop a couple years ago though, because of the warranty.

Suggestion: Living Tools of Violence and Mayhem

Drizzt's site is archived, but the scenario ZIPs are frustratingly absent - unless they're mislabeled.

Thanks. I didn't understand what was being said.

So now we just need the final version of "Shadow of the Stranger". My very cursory googling turned up nothing. I don't know where I'd look. Drizzt had a website once upon a time.

Just aesthetics.

The terrain view is oriented diagonally, and therefore so are the compass directions.

Could I have a link, please?

Spiderweb Software games ALWAYS feature lots of backtracking. Many people keep notes if they can't remember where everything is, including things like locked doors, magic barriers, etc. If you want to see everything in the game, you have to come back to certain things later.

Stareye's own website has version 1.0.1 of At The Gallows, the same version which is in our archives.

My archive is the same as CM's, although I've been working now and then on neatening the filenames of the scenario ZIPs. Otherwise it's the same.

Oh, really? Fascinating. I recall it being somewhere else in A1:EftP, come to think of it. I was googling around though, and someone said there was a script to get the Alien Blade off that body, findable only by hex-editing. It may have been a decoy, though, come to think of it. Anaximander taking his clothes off is in the code for Exile 3 but that's not attached where it claims to be either. Thankfully.

It's impossible to get the Alien Blade except through the character editor in Exile 1. In the Exile series, barrier strength is set by town/dungeon level, not barrier by barrier. The blade is on that body between the barriers, but Jeff, the developer, neglected to include a way to reach it.