promethean

Because the war has only just begun, and while no soldiers in an army are indispensable, Erika has nothing to lose by letting the highly capable ones live a little longer to serve out the war. We have yet to see if she is evil, or simply monomaniacal in her pursuit of the empire's downfall. Either way though, even evil need not be wasteful. Indeed, it could be argued that unwavering pragmatism could itself be a form of evil.

Could be... And, while I'm not unsympathetic to her anti-Empire plight (I was about to kill the emperor) after about 3 hours of sailing and teleporting around the underworld and rehashing every emperor-related conversation I could remember in the hopes I would trigger the right thing, all with no success, it felt really good to kill her. Had that not debugged the quest somehow, I would have been almost as contented to live with that as my end game.

So, I'm guessing some sort of bug here, because killing Erika did the trick. I killed her, went to the summon location, and everything worked as it should, and as if she weren't dead. Loading my old save pre-Erika death then worked too.

What if I kill Erika?

Could you ( or anyone else ) give the appropriate dialogue options to get there?

Erika never teleports over, I just get the message "your travels have been in vain" instead. From what I have read, Erika is supposed to teach me a ritual to summon her, but there is no dialog open for that when I talk to her, she does not acknowledge it at all that I have the brooches, which I take it is the trigger to teach me the ritual.

I'm playing on the ipad-- I have the five brooches, The four pieces of password, the ritual from khoth to get through the twoer, and i have completed the first two missions. I have gotten past the two towers, but when I get to the point where Erika is suppose to send me off to kill the emperor I just get the "nothing happens your efforts have been in vain" message. I have gone through every dialog option I could for Erika, Aydin, Khoth, and Aydin's partners, as well is the scimitar leader, and nothing has changed. Any help would appreciated

Thanks for confirming that it is a working feature. There seems to be something about the dosbox implementation I'm using that's stopping the numpad form working, or numlock. Is there a file in Exile that can be changed to remap what keys it will respond to for movement?

The "Help" within the original Exile game states that movement can be either with a mouse or with the number pad, e.g., 4 moves left, 5 pauses, 6 moves right, 2 is up and 8 is down. However, with or without numlock on, no matter what I do Exile is responding as if I had hit one of the arrow keys rather than move the player character. I even tried hard-coding with a keyboard key mapper, and I experienced the same. Is the in-game help wrong, or am I missing something? Thanks for any help.

I can confirm that the saves do appear to be fully compatible. I am playing a save on Android that originally came from an iPad, furthered it's live on a Steam PC version, and now sits in Android.

I can confirm that the saves do appear to be fully compatible. I am playing a save on Android that originally came from an iPad, furthered it's live on a Steam PC version, and now sits in Android.

Not quite the same: Android is a new(ish) platform, and dosbox on android is something of an unknown, new itself in terms of support & stability. So, if this is at all like your linux/wine comparison, it is like when Wine was still new & unknown, and someone came a long and said, "Hey, I figured out that we Linus folks can run Baldur's Gate!" Yes, it is obvious to anyone familiar with the state of those tools as they exist now that it could be possible, but it was not obvious in the case of Spiderweb games on android via dosbox. Or let me rephrase that: It was not obvious to me, and after a fair amount of effort, it turns out that it is in fact not possible for some games, not at this moment on the current crop of Android hardware & dosbox software. Speed & Stability are still major issues on Android for any Spiderweb game beyond the Exile series. And, should you find yourself thinking, "Yes, but even that was fairly clear to me." Consider this: It was not clear to me, and there may be others to whom it was not that bennefit from this.

Oh, regarding keyboard issues, the Hacker's Keyboard (available in the android marketplace) offers a much more fully-featured keyboard w/ function, cursor arrows, and numbers pad options. This has made many otherwise unplayable dosbox games quite enjoyable.

Not yet, at least not for clicking on small things, but the display on the Fire is as small as I'd want to go. Full disclosure though, I only played about 10 minutes of these, realized it worked much better than I had expected, and then came here to post about it. It was actually quite ironic for me: I expected to post to the board about being able to play Spiderweb games on Android, only to find that Spiderweb had beaten me to the punch by releasing Avadon for the platform! It's my third time around buying Avadon, but certainly worth it

This may requier root access, I'm not sure: /data/data/com.spidweb.avadon.humble/files/Library/Caches/Spiderweb Software/Avadon Saved Games/ At least on my system.

So, are you able to comment on the possible existence of other additional port projects...?

So, are you able to comment on the possible existence of other additional port projects...?

Really? Why would management mind? This ability is inducing me to purchase copies of the Exile trilogy, even though I already own the Avernum series. I can see how they might see it as a little odd, maybe not want it to take away sales of newer games, but given that it is most likely to appeal only to people who are already SpidWeb fans and game owners, I hope they don't see it that way.

This isn't a lame misleading post about how you can actually kind of sort of play games through something like RDP or Logmein or VNC. This is actually running a few of the older Spiderweb games, on your Android. The playable are are all of the original Exile series, including Blades. Here's how: First, this was all done on the Kindle Fire, so you're mileage may vary, but as Android hardware goes it's fairly middle of the road, nothing too cutting edge, so most higher end phones and any of the major tablets should work about as well. My recommendation is for a tablet, but if you can manage to enjoy playing on the smaller screens too, well, good on you. What you'll need: 1. Dosbox on PC. You'll do your setup here, for no other reason than I assume your PC is faster than your Android device. There's no reason you couldn't otherwise do it all native in Android. 2. Windows 3.11 install disk images. Dig out your closets and raid the garage, we're going old school. You'll be playing Exile on windows 3.11 on dosbox on android. I've read SciFi novels (Rainbow's End) which predicted this type of embedded recursive emulation and thought, "Why wouldn't they just use all their technology to find an easier way?" Well, the future's here, and it's just as kludgy as predicted, but in this case it works, and it works really well. There is no significant lag, stuttering, sound artifacts, or anything. 3. Prepare an empty directory to install win311 into, boot up DosBox, mount the install media in one virtual drive and you directory on the C:\ drive, keep ALL of the default drivers and settings the installer recommends, and let loose on the nostalgia because here comes the only decently stable consumer Windows system until XP hit the shelves. 4. Visit this page for links to a few necessary drivers and other useful goodies. In particular, I recommend the S3 video drivers and the SoundBlaster audio drivers. Everything else is unnecessary, but if you want to do anything else in the win 3.11 environment, I recommend Win32S for some basic 32-bit support and WinG for some basic pre-DirectX support: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=9405 5. On Android you need DosBox Turbo. I tried aDosBox, which is free, but it significantly under performs compared to Turbo and was too slow to be usable. anDosBox is another choice, and their speed is probably about the same as Turbo, but it's interface is not as friendly or configurable. 6. Assuming your Win311 is complete, just transfer that whole directory structure over to your Android device to wherever you choose to run things from. 7. Last, make sure your dosbox.conf is properly attuned to your win311 install. I have removed all the comment lines (for space) from my own and pasted it below as an example. It mounts an additional directory to the D:, but that is not really necessary if you don't want that. Otherwise, it allows you to easily access anything on your device. Beware though: Windows 3.11 didn't have much in the way of file protections to prevent accidental mishaps with your file structure, and it was not uncommon for poorly written programs to ruin or even delete entire disk volumes. So, some sandboxing is prudent. 8. That's it, you're ready to go! Download the demos of any of the Exile series, install, realize they're awesome, and purchase full copies! LAST: You'll be tempted, as I was, to reach too far. To want the Exile remakes, Nethergate, maybe a Geneforge. Near as I can tell, it's simply impossible in 3.11 unless you want to rewrite drivers and perhaps additional work as well. They really seem to require a real version of DirectX, WinG is not enough, and that means Win95. Win95 will run, and run decently, at least on the Kindle Fire. But I spent days tracking down fixes for problems, and while the ultimate result was a usable Win95 system w/ basic DirectX 1 support (yes, version 1 only: 2 & 3 made things unstable) the result was still that Nethergate & Geneforge ran too slow to be at all playable, as in 10 second to move space, and Avernum wouldn't start at all. Good luck! Example dosbox.conf: [sdl] fullscreen=true fulldouble=false fullresolution=original windowresolution=original output=overlay autolock=true sensitivity=100 waitonerror=true priority=higher,normal mapperfile=mapper.txt usescancodes=true [dosbox] language= machine=svga_s3 captures=capture memsize=63 [render] frameskip=0 aspect=false scaler=normal2x [cpu] core=auto cycles=max cycleup=500 cycledown=20 [mixer] nosound=false rate=22050 blocksize=2048 prebuffer=10 [midi] mpu401=intelligent device=default config= [sblaster] sbtype=sb16 sbbase=220 irq=5 dma=1 hdma=5 mixer=true oplmode=auto oplrate=22050 [gus] [speaker] pcspeaker=true pcrate=22050 tandy=auto tandyrate=22050 disney=true [joystick] [serial] [dos] xms=true ems=true umb=true keyboardlayout=none [autoexec] mount d ./sdcard/ mount c ./sdcard/dbgames/win31/ c: cd windows echo type win then return to start

This isn't a lame misleading post about how you can actually kind of sort of play games through something like RDP or Logmein or VNC. This is actually running a few of the older Spiderweb games, on your Android. The playable are are all of the original Exile series, including Blades. Here's how: First, this was all done on the Kindle Fire, so you're mileage may vary, but as Android hardware goes it's fairly middle of the road, nothing too cutting edge, so most higher end phones and any of the major tablets should work about as well. My recommendation is for a tablet, but if you can manage to enjoy playing on the smaller screens too, well, good on you. What you'll need: 1. Dosbox on PC. You'll do your setup here, for no other reason than I assume your PC is faster than your Android device. There's no reason you couldn't otherwise do it all native in Android. 2. Windows 3.11 install disk images. Dig out your closets and raid the garage, we're going old school. You'll be playing Exile on windows 3.11 on dosbox on android. I've read SciFi novels (Rainbow's End) which predicted this type of embedded recursive emulation and thought, "Why wouldn't they just use all their technology to find an easier way?" Well, the future's here, and it's just as kludgy as predicted, but in this case it works, and it works really well. There is no significant lag, stuttering, sound artifacts, or anything. 3. Prepare an empty directory to install win311 into, boot up DosBox, mount the install media in one virtual drive and you directory on the C:\ drive, keep ALL of the default drivers and settings the installer recommends, and let loose on the nostalgia because here comes the only decently stable consumer Windows system until XP hit the shelves. 4. Visit this page for links to a few necessary drivers and other useful goodies. In particular, I recommend the S3 video drivers and the SoundBlaster audio drivers. Everything else is unnecessary, but if you want to do anything else in the win 3.11 environment, I recommend Win32S for some basic 32-bit support and WinG for some basic pre-DirectX support: http://vogons.zetafleet.com/viewtopic.php?t=9405 5. On Android you need DosBox Turbo. I tried aDosBox, which is free, but it significantly under performs compared to Turbo and was too slow to be usable. anDosBox is another choice, and their speed is probably about the same as Turbo, but it's interface is not as friendly or configurable. 6. Assuming your Win311 is complete, just transfer that whole directory structure over to your Android device to wherever you choose to run things from. 7. Last, make sure your dosbox.conf is properly attuned to your win311 install. I have removed all the comment lines (for space) from my own and pasted it below as an example. It mounts an additional directory to the D:, but that is not really necessary if you don't want that. Otherwise, it allows you to easily access anything on your device. Beware though: Windows 3.11 didn't have much in the way of file protections to prevent accidental mishaps with your file structure, and it was not uncommon for poorly written programs to ruin or even delete entire disk volumes. So, some sandboxing is prudent. 8. That's it, you're ready to go! Download the demos of any of the Exile series, install, realize they're awesome, and purchase full copies! LAST: You'll be tempted, as I was, to reach too far. To want the Exile remakes, Nethergate, maybe a Geneforge. Near as I can tell, it's simply impossible in 3.11 unless you want to rewrite drivers and perhaps additional work as well. They really seem to require a real version of DirectX, WinG is not enough, and that means Win95. Win95 will run, and run decently, at least on the Kindle Fire. But I spent days tracking down fixes for problems, and while the ultimate result was a usable Win95 system w/ basic DirectX 1 support (yes, version 1 only: 2 & 3 made things unstable) the result was still that Nethergate & Geneforge ran too slow to be at all playable, as in 10 second to move space, and Avernum wouldn't start at all. Good luck! Example dosbox.conf: [sdl] fullscreen=true fulldouble=false fullresolution=original windowresolution=original output=overlay autolock=true sensitivity=100 waitonerror=true priority=higher,normal mapperfile=mapper.txt usescancodes=true [dosbox] language= machine=svga_s3 captures=capture memsize=63 [render] frameskip=0 aspect=false scaler=normal2x [cpu] core=auto cycles=max cycleup=500 cycledown=20 [mixer] nosound=false rate=22050 blocksize=2048 prebuffer=10 [midi] mpu401=intelligent device=default config= [sblaster] sbtype=sb16 sbbase=220 irq=5 dma=1 hdma=5 mixer=true oplmode=auto oplrate=22050 [gus] [speaker] pcspeaker=true pcrate=22050 tandy=auto tandyrate=22050 disney=true [joystick] [serial] [dos] xms=true ems=true umb=true keyboardlayout=none [autoexec] mount d ./sdcard/ mount c ./sdcard/dbgames/win31/ c: cd windows echo type win then return to start

It works extremely well, smoother than the original iPad. This is so awesome.

It works extremely well, smoother than the original iPad. This is so awesome.

Original Genefore on an Alienware m11x latpop running windows 7 home premium. Core 2 Duo processor, nVidia GT 335m video card. Version 1.01 of Geneforge. There is noticeable mouse lag and generally sluggish performance of the game, for example slow movement and animation, at the same time that the game pushed processore usage to 100% on the core it's running off of. It seems like something in the game is pushing proc usage to 100%, monopolizing the proc even to the point where the rest of the game can't do what it needs to do. Trying the demo on my wife's computer, I experience the same thing.

Has Jeff V. given any indication on the price of the iPad version? No, this is not the start of a "Y so many $$$ lol!" thread! I'll gladly pay the asking price for the PC retail version, on the iPad. Same game, after all. I'm simply trying to determine if I'll get the PC version first. If the iPad version follows the typical iOS model with something like a $9.99 price, I'll get the PC version and the iPad version. If it's going to be the full freight on iOS also (completely reasonable) I'll fortify my patience and wait until that random day in June.