Thaeris

Some of that happened, too. I do remember that one of the old Exile helmet sprites was used in Nethergate for some of the special helmets, etc.

...One thing I don't quite get is why Jeff did not use a specific sprite for halberds in Avernum. That always miffed me a little.

Tee hee, Brutus:

14 hours ago, The Almighty Doer of Stuff said:

Exile trilogy, Nethergate, BoE, I believe. Many of the item graphics in BoE came out of Nethergate, unless I'm mistaken.

I believe what you meant to say was that many of the graphics in Nethergate were used in Avernum. Silly nitpick, I know, but I was just musing over all of this the other day, so...

...OT, but I think the coolest thing about the point above is that the sprite artist (I think that was Andrew Hunter?) did seem to incorporate some of the item art into the isometric character art. Not so much the weapons (which can be rather wild - some of the characters have maces, which are sadly absent in Avernum), but you can see lorica segmentata on at least one of the PC sprites when armored. That said, I do look forward to the day when the term "studded armor" is dropped from RPGs, and the writers understand that what they're actually looking at is an armor called brigandine, where plates are riveted to the inside of an outer textile or leather garmet, and all you see are the "studs" on the outside. Not saying that there could not be some sort of fanciful "studded armor" that wouldn't work, but it is a silly idea held over from older days:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigandine

...Interestingly, Exile of course did feature brigandine as one of the armor types, though I do not remember if it was better or worse than studded armor.

Well, if Slarty's question was aimed at me, this is my response:

I recall several years ago reading bits and blurbs on forums where people were discussing RPGs. Av3 was generally held in a pretty positive light on the forums I was looking at, so I got the impression this view was more widespread than it apparently is today. It's actually news to me that the original Av3 is not in fact looked as highly upon as Av2. Which I'm fine with, as I really like Av2!

Hmmm.

I'm not currently in the running for such a project, but porting over the information in the help files of the old Spiderweb games to a linked PDF format would be a very helpful community project. Perhaps you could attempt to wrangle in some volunteers?

...Would not opening the help files also pertain to Old Nethergate and the "original" Avernum trilogy as well?

First off, Av1 has a much-less-than-friendly UI. It was much more akin to the contemporary original (and older!) Nethergate, and I happened to like the latter more (it was also my first Spiderweb game, so that's also a thing). That alone can make playing it a chore in comparison to the later games. The setting is great as always, but it just doesn't make playing as enjoyable as Av2, with its much superior interface.

Next, Av2 is NOT balanced - and that's why I love it! It is very easy for an early party to drift off into a location or situation which they cannot deal with. Av2 puts you into a war scenario, and it's supposed to feel dire. All things considered, the game doesn't do too bad a job of this with the resources built into it. The "poor balancing" is a factor in this picture, and I'd not have it any other way. BUT, this might be an undesirable characteristic for some players.

Finally, Av3... It's for one, balanced. At max difficulty, it was FAR more difficult to wander into a situation that would out-right kill the party at low levels. If you want to just play the game, Av3 is very playable because of that balance. It then takes all of the lessons of improved UI and implements them. If you just want to mess around, you can do that, too - though there may be consequences for doing so. Because of time progression that's supposed to mean something, it places "deadlines" on activities and better engages the player. It also brings back that spirit of exploration which might have waned for players of Av2 - now there's an entirely new place to explore!..

...In short, Av3 does a lot of good things at once, which the other Avernum games might fall a little short on. Av2 is my favorite, as it was my first Avernum game, and I just love the setting. But, if you're not tied to the quirks that make 1 or 2 your preference, 3 is by far the most accessible game with the most options for play choices. It even has what amounts to "crafting" to an extent, being able to magically augment weapons and armor, etc. I personally don't think that specifically being on the surface has a whole lot to do with anything, though the lighting system is very spiffy in that regard (with the day-night cycle, etc.). Again, the latter is just a neat, new feature which adds more flavor to the experience. Also... going back to Av2 - I don't think it ever specifically ended. After you finished everything, you were just left to wander around, seeing if there was anything else left to do. I know you could eventually leave Exile in Av1, and (don't kill me for saying this) though I never finished 3, I get the impression you could leave as well. This gives the games some closure, which Av2 did not have specifically. Someone should correct me about Av3 and leaving if I'm wrong about that, however.

How about that! Never knew the origins of that track before this post - always thought that one had a great sound to it.

...What I'm still curious about are the credits to the title tracks of Avernum 1 and 2. Av1 had great late 90's vibes to it, while Av2 presented such a melancholy theme which mated to the bleak situation so very well. Av3 started to veer away in a different direction with regard to the splash music, but the theme is still close enough to the other two that the set still generally gels well together.

That's actually pretty rich! Unfortunately, it's only really funny when you put things like that in abstract, or devise a narrative which was otherwise not there. It's much in the same vein as what some Dwarf Fortress or other types of roguelike players tend to do, and those stories are simply amazing when the imagination is there. When it's not, you just get a grumpy gamer.

In terms of Avernum, you have the horrible irony of having what must be pretty legendary adventurers, who after a spell of kindness, plummet to their deaths along with many of the hopes of their fellow Avernites, as well as with a priceless artifact (or two, three, or what have you)!

ymfirst,

The small section I was tinkering around with (starting with Motrax's tunnels in A2) was not that exciting when I first began. "Flying through" the model would have been really lame, to be honest. I think I fizzled out because I started worrying about those small, bespoke models (like the stalagmites) rather than just mapping out the area. Of course, the area is pretty lame without the small details.

...For the outdoors, there are probably not as many small models to worry about as you might think. Walls and towers may occupy a few spaces on the tilesets, but they are just renders (or maybe just illustrations) of the same object rotated 90 degrees. In the end, it's just one model! Many of the floor tiles are just a texture. I suppose it would be possible to model the differences for an individual floor tile, but that would probably not be good practice... unless you are doing that to produce a normal or bump map, which would admittedly be pretty cool. Making really nice, high-poly models for anything and everything would certainly be a chore, but I never had that in mind. Good quality low-poly models would do the trick just fine, I think.

Back to your work, which of course is the main topic here, I find it interesting that the special encounter areas seem to be visible via special floor tiles on the outdoor map. I'm not sure they're all visible, but something's definitely happening there. I never made it all the way through A1, so I'm at a loss to comment further. Might be a great area to cross-reference with HareHunter's work, or might even be a great collaboration opportunity with the fellow himself!

Also... just a comment on the artwork in general: I love the first run of Avernum for the art, as it's quite distinct among the "generic high fantasy" theming the games present in general, though it is also fun to draw inspiration from all of the art (Exile to the current remakes) to try and draw a more complete picture of the world. However, I also happened to be watching a spot on SimCity 2000 a few days ago, and I must say... the complete map of A1 looks A LOT like a SimCity map! Certainly, they are both isometric, but the terrain elevation changes are surprisingly similar, though perhaps a little less complex than the Maxis game, to be honest. What I really started to wonder about is if SC2000 was a partial inspiration for Jeff when it came to the isometric landscape, or if the possibility exists that the Urban Renewal Kit, of all things, might have been used to draw some of the objects / tiles!

...Alternately, it might be fun to try and turn the Avernum tiles into city tiles for SC2000, if one cares to try and get the game running! Kind of makes me sad that the copy of the game we had was given away once all of our old Macs died.

Oh wow, that's outstanding!

...Your process sounds amazing as well! Was there some degree of reverse-engineering going on there in order to parse the .dat file? I, to be honest, have not spent much time crawling through those files, but it sounds like something worth looking into.

I actually started a project a few years ago where I intended to use AC3D to map out the outdoors of Avernum 2 in 3D. Is the Av2 map (or rather, maps!) coming at some point, and perhaps the Av3 map(s) as well? These are really slick, man.

If I ever get AC3D to run on Linux (my current OS), it would probably be worth my time to write a program to render the Avernum maps in 3D. Needless to say, I do feel a bit inspired now... Basically my process would be to use X-Plane Object 700 model format (a simple 3D format you can write with a text editor) to turn the information from the .dat file into 3D geometry. All of the special tiles (mushrooms, towers, etc.) would have to be bespoke models, of course. Really neat, of course, but now I'm rambling.

That is generally true of GOG - I don't know about Steam, never used it on my end personally. The one thing to bear in mind is that the specific version for a given OS is something you generally can't work with. If you needed a really old version of a Mac game, say OS9 or earlier (still in the PPC era), you probably won't find those anywhere except from the realms of the abandonware sites, which might be a taboo subject (even amongst us Avernites!).

...Then there are games which could work on other platforms, but they are not configured for it, etc. I wanted to have a "legal-feel-good" version of Fleet Defender, so I bought that recently. This is a DOS game, so it should run fine under Linux via DOSbox. However, GOG does not currently have a Linux version from Retroism at this time.

This is potentially a useless question, or one with a simple answer: JUST USE WINE.

However, because I prefer to suffer (it's the Avernite way), and because more projects I will fumble around with forever couldn't possibly hurt (just causing unending misery instead), why not ask?

...What is there a way to get the old Avernum games to run in Linux without resorting to using WINE? It's a dumb question for sure. But, is it possible? Or, are we just going to wait for the source to be released like, a decade from now, and then have someone compile it to run natively then?

Alternately, is this a good space for another discussion - what if the source code is released under an appropriate license, such that it can be distributed across the various repositories? The catch would be that you'd still have to pay for the game data. Several open source projects actually work this way. Examples would include Arx Fatalis (never played it, just learned of it recently), FreeSpace 2 (know that one well, only total conversions are completely free), and I believe Penumbra works this way as well (this is a really cool game engine, just way too freaky for me to handle). This model kind of lets the community keep things alive while also letting the developer continue to get their due, even if it's not a lot. Also keeps the end users happy, knowing that as long as there's a will, they will continue to be able to enjoy their software.

...On that note, I'm also going to extend my thanks to Jeff for making BoE open source, as well as the maintainers of said source. It's the other game I really wish I had back in the day, but now it's open to everyone in entirety!

You might be in luck! I only had two Spiderweb games in full growing up, Avernum 2 and Nethergate (having the latter, given its current lack of availability, is kind of cool these days), both of which were on very nicely printed CDs. Both of those games shipped with the Windows version. The Windows partition of the CDs also shipped with demos of the games Jeff didn't have for Mac as well - neat little time capsules! If you have the original hard media, it couldn't hurt to drop them into your drive and find out what happens.

...You also might try emailing Jeff. Otherwise, you might try and see if the GOG versions have what you need, though that might require a little bit of money.

I just kind of want to vent some frustration here: The OS I'm moving to is Linux, and it's quite shiny and new. The OS in particular is Solus. One thing I find very bothersome is that some of the higher-ups there seem to think that because some packages are old or unsupported, they are not needed. Unfortunately, a lot of the stuff I enjoy is the older software, or it's software that relies on those older packages. Linux being Linux, if you know how, there's probably a way around the problem. Unfortunately, if you don't (that's me) it makes it very hard. That said, I sympathize with your dilemma. Even "back in the day" this was an issue. I remember Hornet 2.0 would not run on Mac OS9, and it really made me upset...

...Fortunately, there ultimately was a way around this many years later. Emulate Mac OS7, and finally, I can play Hornet again! On that note, I am confident there will be a solution in the future for whatever issue you have. In the meanwhile, I'm sorry for your trouble!

Oh man, looks like I'm going to have to work on trying this out! Upgraded from Windows 10 to Solus 4.1 a few months ago, and was just musing the other day about what it might take to get OBOE to run on Linux. Looks like there's one less thing to wonder about.

Thanks, Folks.

I happen to be craving some meaningful discussion with regards to forums right about now, so I'll bite...

With regards to Spiderweb in particular, I'm stuck in the past. And I'm OK with it. This means that my first SW game was Nethergate (the original one!) and my next was Avernum II. Back then, I was a child, money was not abundant, and the games cost $30 each. On the bright side, they came on a gloriously printed CD in one of those cool clamshell cases (which I wish Jeff still sold). I've since nabbed the rest of the original Avernum trilogy, BoE is now open-source and free, and the games, lovingly made as they are, are now more accessible and affordable than ever. On the down side, I've not had the free time to invest in the newer games or the remakes. Even worse... I've not managed to coax myself into doing so, either. And so, I've become locked in the past. Andrew Hunter and Phil Foglio's artwork populate the lands of the underworld in my imagination, and I feel no desire to move past that. And because that's all in the past, what do I have to contribute now?

Moving a little bit forward - I played the Geneforge demo till it could be played no more when I was young, but games like Avadon just didn't draw my attention. The engines and graphics of those games simply did not capture my imagination like those first Avernum and Nethergate games did. Perhaps Queen's Wish is different, and would be something I'd like? I'm sure it would be if I find the time - Jeff does fantastic work, after all. In the meanwhile, I just don't feel stirred enough to make such a change. The reason for this sentiment is as follows: what do the new games do so well that the old ones have not done already in terms of their mechanics? I've played many games focused on grinding, and after years of grinding in real life, that mechanic just doesn't appeal to me any more. There is no doubt some degree of realism to it, but the way in which characters advance by this method is not wholly convincing. In fact, such a method just seems tiresome to even contemplate. Because I am admittedly stuck in the past, my sentiments could be completely wrong, but I've not been steered otherwise. I've not been sold on a pitch that convinces me that my sentiments are wrong! And so, if I feel (key word there) like no innovation is taking place, why would I hang around?

...Perhaps the problem here is a consumer's dilemma. The Blades games let writers and developers go forth and create, but the heyday of that activity seems to have passed. What you are left with, therefore, are mere media consumers. This should not be taken as a smear on those people - all individuals on this forum are part of their number. But, solely being in such a position does not generally promote much of a lively conversation. Namely, a brief question is asked (I have done so several times), answered, and then the poster moves on. There just doesn't seen to be a whole lot of intellectual discussion going around when the majority of posts are focused on consumer issues rather than creative issues. Forums in general are centered around niche interests. So, if your niche interest happens to be games made by a certain company, but all you can come up with are consumer issues, how can you expect to have enlightening discussions? You need to have enlightening discussions in order to connect with other forumites and therefore have a community in the first place!

So, in my opinion, if something can be done to break the "consumer's syndrome," that would be the first big step. The sad truth about solving said problem is that it's up to the individual consumers to solve it! As per being stuck in the past, that's my own fault. But, it's also a niche issue, and it's why I'm even here at all. As per what inspires us and what attracts us in games - ideas and innovation - perhaps that needs to be more of a focus here? It isn't to say that no such conversations occur, but the afore-mentioned consumer's mentality doesn't do much to keep those conversations moving. Unfortunately for me, I've seldom looked for that sort of content here, not found much of it, and when I do make it, it's generally on a different forum.

To close with a question to which I have no answer: "How do you build an online community?"

On another note, I will contend that most people who lift assets without consent tend to be hobbyists, modders, and the like. Their behavior is morally and ethically questionable at best, but their intent is generally fairly innocent. They will typically not see a dime for the hard work [of their own] which they do produce, and simply resort to using the assets of others because, well, it's hard work after all! I want to also clarify that I'm not condoning this behavior, but I do understand it. I have seen other modders do this sort of thing, no profit was involved, and they were just trying to tell a story in most cases. I would be surprised if anyone who's ever tinkered or thought of tinkering with games has not come into contact with such people, or was such a person at one time themselves. If there's an analogy for this, it might be like playing with Star Wars and GI Joe action figures in the same session as a child: the original IP holders would not approve, but it doesn't hurt anything. Marketing your own material by blatantly using those assets is a different story, however.

...So again, the real concern seems to show up when you either have shameless, blatant theft and plagiarism of ideas or materials, or otherwise when money starts to flow (or alternately, be diverted from the IP holder). Or worse, both. Fortunately (and unfortunately in some cases), those sorts of activities are generally quite apparent and easy to shut down. The bulk of people who tinker with game assets and use them for their own purposes just aren't worth the worry, so why bother making the assets hard to get to in the first place? As a further aside, note that many people have managed to get into the game development field because they were modders and tinkerers... It might actually hurt the industry in the long run if they made things too inaccessible.

In the context of the forums, modders may end up in Avernum, but the unscrupulous will certainly wind up in The Abyss. 😋

Fear of theft regarding intellectual property... from my opinion, is mostly just fear. However, someone who does lift art assets and use them in a different paid product without consent may very well not like it if they get caught. It's not to say it isn't done, but I'm guessing most of the culprits who engage in this activity are not profiting much, if at all, from their lack of originality. That said, unless they are engaged in blatant piracy, those individuals likely pose little-to-no threat to the original developers by using the assets alone. The threat to the original developer or IP holder would be a competing product (free or paid) which would reduce their own income. If that product also happens to use stolen assets, then the hammer swing just gets harder and faster.

...As per why the assets are accessible, consider that the original developer wants to access them as well. To make new filetypes or encrypt existing filetypes, etc., just slows everything down (possibly in more ways than one) and also discourages modding. The latter is not a selling point, especially if people will buy their product for the sole reason of running a mod the original developer didn't even have to make! That's kind of the selling point of Blades of Exile, after all.

I assume this is Nethergate: Resurrection. Playing as the Romans in the original game, I do indeed recall fighting Sylak. The battle with Sylak was indeed a challenge, but it was possible, in fact perhaps necessary. I always wanted to send my party through the portal (I had enough marks, after all), but I could not get past Sylak without a fight.

Well, I have never heard of running a Mac emulator as being illegal. My apologies for suggesting an improper course of action if that is indeed the case.

I will also confirm that I don't see an easy way of getting OS7 from Apple as of this time, but from past experience, I will say that was the case at one point in time.

I will conclude that my statements from past experience are true, though the current state of affairs may have changed things. Again, pardon my intrusion - I will comment no further.

I am making a blatantly ignorant post here, but perhaps my musings have enough merit for someone to try out:

Does someone here run SheepShaver or Basilisk II on Windows 10? SheepShaver and Basilisk II are Macintosh emulators. You can in fact (last time I checked, at least) download the whole of MacOS 7 directly from Apple, and the rest of the guts needed for the emulation come with the emulator download. Perhaps trying a different emulation route may solve some of the problems which I continually read about people having with Windows 10.

...On a side note, trying out a Mac emulator might introduce you to new things. One of the classic RPGs which was never made for Windows was Odyssey: The Legend of Nemesis. The game runs very well on SheepShaver, complete with its musical score. It was also a game which Jeff himself spoke very highly of back in the day. Just a thought.

I might have to threadjack this thread a bit, because it's close to the subject matter I like to speculate about...

1. Light and fauna in "early Exile." Exile has always been a magical place. It doesn't need to be relegated to the supernatural entirely, as Jeff keeps a good deal of science fiction in play. Thus, natural light sources in the caves are not entirely magical, even if magic was used in the creation of [some of] the glowing fungus that illuminates the underworld. The lands of the Vahnatai are darker than Exile, but they are lit like the rest of the caves. If the caves above the Vahnatai were dark, why do the Slith have eyes? I always thought it would be a great storytelling point if you encountered a cynical character who countered the general story of how the mages lit the lands and provided the fauna: that stuff was always there. All the mages did was to make it more suitable to humans, and perhaps unintentionally, for the humanoids (the Nephil, etc.) who are made to suffer along side them.

2. Ecosystem and geology speculation. I tend to think about materials available in Exile more than I do other things. Materials available tend to influence what people are capable of doing or making, or at least doing with relative ease. Copper and tin should be relatively hard to come by if more realism is going to be written into what you make of Avernum. The nice thing about bronze is that it should require less energy to process into a finished good. Fuel is going to be your main concern. Iron and steel need much more thermal energy to process in comparison. Steel is simply iron fused with carbon, but you have to get the carbon in there somehow. You'd get that from the fuel of course, which could come from crappy cavewood, coal, or maybe even bones. Coal will require a lot of effort to mine, cavewood is not great and needs to first be made into charcoal/coke, and bones are... kind of intense, if you get my meaning.

Next, we see that a lot of metal refining in Exile is done with magical fires. Perhaps these "fires" are just heat, and not combustion? I bring this up, as it's worth wondering about how much oxygen is produced by the fauna of the caves in comparison to how much is used by their occupants and their industry. If no one is gasping for air down there, one has to assume that the ecosystem is pretty darn robust (even without sunshine and assuming the worst about industry). There also seems to be enough airspace down there that gasses released into the caves are not high enough in concentration to, you know, kill everybody.

So, to conclude my derailment, I believe it's safe to conclude that iron and steel are scarce in Exile because they're harder to refine. Perhaps a place like Fort Draco not only sits on a healthy iron deposit, but perhaps it also sits on a source of coal like lignite. Draco thus has enough of a carbon source, and potentially a fuel source (if magical fires are reduced in their importance) to make steel. The steel then gets distributed to craftsmen in the Great Cave, who have their own convenient natural furnaces to process it into whatever.

*COUGH*

So, derailment aside, light is an interesting discussion in Avernum/Exile. Light is naturally tied to the production of many life-giving processes, such as the production of oxygen. The latter of course is needed by humanoids and their industry. That said, there seems to be enough light, at least in the short term (consider the Vahnatai's sleeping period) to facilitate all of this fairly well, even without the intensity of sunlight. For how long and for how much seems like the makings of the next Avernum title.

Have you tried Encyclopedia Ermariana?

https://encyclopedia.ermarian.net/wiki/Main_Page

Necroing - I've not played with Open BoE for a while, but the old UI, if it's not been messed with since making BoE "open," really could use a facelift. A few suggestions:

1. Control UI settings through the preferences menu. Have checkboxes for standard "retail" window sizes, or custom sizes. Then add linked boxes for those custom options - it's ideally an easy way to let the user make the game suit their needs. Just make sure that switching between retail and custom does not change the custom settings!

2. Retail window sizes are what they say they are... custom sizes would allow you to adjust how many tiles (or resolution in general) are displayed on the game screen. With the small resolution of the original graphics and the really good resolution of modern monitors, having a larger game screen would be really important for BoE... because it's still a wonderful game.

3. Game zoom/graphics smoothing would be a really cool feature to add. Zoom would allow you to make the tiles larger or smaller, obviously. Smoothing - which could be an optional feature - would automatically blend highly pixelated graphics into smoother ones. Some programs I use actually do this based on the zoom level.

4. A feature that could tie into zoom/smoothing might be no limits for the sprite resolution... only sprite ratio! Thus, if you want high-res sprites, you can upload very high res graphics into your campaign/mod, just as long as they are the correct ratio.

...I hope this suggestion finds the Open BoE folks well - community projects like this keep wonderful games like this alive.

Tell you what, when I played the demo, I may in fact have finished the slime quest before I dealt with the bandits I recall fighting. Seeing as I'm getting ready to finish the slime quest myself, I'll pop back in when I've done so!

A short question, after the prelude of course:

I first played Avernum 3 as a demo in college. I really liked it, but being cheap and/or poor, I never bought the game. I recalled a variety of things to do in Upper Avernum, and that included fighting a hovel of bandits on an isolated island to the far north of the usual settlements. Buying the boat was a prerequisite to get to the area of course.

Years later, and probably a few years between starting my current run and resuming it, I attempted to find the bandit island once again. The problem is that I have no idea how to get back there! Furthermore, looking at Harehunter's linked sites, I don't even see it on the maps!

So, finally, the short question: Was this dungeon only in the demo, or can I just not recall how one finds it? Or, perhaps it was some figment of the imagination? Should the latter be the case, it was still pretty awesome. I do seem to remember that the dungeon was kind of a one-time affair. With the waterfalls surrounding the place, once you were in, you either succeeded or didn't, because there's be no way of going back without cheating.