Using BoE to Create E4

[Rannous]

I've got a question, and I don't know if this has been covered before.

 

I know Jeff has publically said that there would not be an Exile 4. However, with Spiderweb's permission (and I assume an agreement to charge a licenseing fee for Spiderweb equal to purchasing A4), would it be possible to use the BoE engine and some labor outside of Spiderweb to create a port of Avernum 4?

 

I know that there are still some holdouts like myself who don't care for the Avernum version, and vastly prefer the older Exile style.

 

All it should take is permission and some grunt work, right? Isn't this do-able? And if not, why?

 

Val Rannous

[Thralni]

I'm very confident when saying this can not be done. The BoE editor doesn;t have a port function. The BoA editor has. besides, Avernum 4's engine is totally different.

[Lilith]

Well, it wouldn't be impossible, but it'd be more of a remake than a port.

 

And it'd take an awful lot of grunt work, on the order of months to years. Towns and monsters would have to be redesigned to suit the BoE engine, combat would have to be rebalanced, dialogue would have to be rewritten, and all the scripts would have to be manually redone as nodes.

 

I'd say this falls very much into the not-worth-it basket. If you disagree, well, you can always try to do it yourself, I suppose.

[ben4808]

It would basically be just another scenario, albeit a larger than average one.

[Alorael at Large]

A4 is getting most of its accolades for the scripting and combat, not the plot. On a different engine, all you have is the plot and it's nothing to brag about.

 

Instead of making E4, try making a huge but entirely new scenario. Like At the Gallows, maybe!

 

—Alorael, whose project to make A4 playable with punchcards is on hold indefinitely.

[Quiconque]

It would take weeks of dedicated work just to convert one town in that direction. Ugh. Just play Exile 2 again and live in solipsistic bliss.

[Kaos]

Same here i really don't like the isometric movement of avernum i would prefer exile any day.

[stu_pidd_cow]

Think about it: firstly you need to play the game over a few times to get the feel of directions, then you have to map out the outdoors by measuring every step. Doing so would halp you choose what to set the outdoor scale on. Then for each and every individual town/dungeon you must do the same to see if you should use a small, medium or large scaled base and then get every terrain piece (from walls right down to the amount of mushrooms on the ground) in its precise place. Then you've got to figure out how to do the special encounters. THEN you've got to talk to everyone, find out every word there is in the dialog. Then you must place every item (from swords & clubs right down to rubble and rocks). Most of all you're going to have to recreate monsters, items and the scariest one: the graphics

 

If you ask me, you're wasting your life...

and when I say life, I mean life!

 

I truly feel sorry for Jeff Vogel!

[Lilith]

Please don't revive two-month-old topics just to say what everybody else has already said.