A2 question (Portal Fortress)

[mully1121]

I've just gotten through the 3rd guardpost and I can't get across the water (I've got the Orb). Every way I try I keep drowning. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

Shannon

[Dikiyoba]

Dikiyoba suggests you find a boat...

 

Edit: Warning! Staying up too late at night can result in giving bad advice. I thought you were in a different place than you were. Sorry.

[Tom]

If you're past the third guardpost, then the boat should be on the other side of the little lake, which means that you must fly. I'll suggest that you just need to straighten out your route. You can go straight along the cave wall and make it just fine.

 

Don't go from dock to dock if that's what you're doing, either, because docks count as water. I don't know why you can't land on them, but if you do, you drown. You can start from a dock, though . . . but you shouldn't need to.

[mully1121]

The boat is in my way if I go along the cave wall. The boat blocks my path and I end up drowning before I can reach land.

[Kelandon]

I don't remember this being hard... start from the northeastern-most piece of land (not the dock, but the LAND — it's (81,54) for the Party Location). Use the Orb of Thralni and move directly east.

 

If the boat is somehow in your way, remember that you can move diagonally to get around it.

[mully1121]

That's exactly what I've been doing, the boat is in my way when I go directly east. I can't go over the boat (text comes up saying not until I'm on the ground) and when I go around the boat I can't get to the land without drowning. Hate to be a bother, but this has been driving me crazy, I know it shouldn't be this hard.

 

Thanks

[Kelandon]

Then move diagonally. Here, look:

 

_________

s - - - x -

- - - - - -

 

This is what it looks like, right? You're starting from the s, and you need to get around the boat, taking no more steps than it would take to get over the boat. Then do this:

_________

s 1 2 3 x 5

- - - - 4 -

 

If for some reason this is not possible, you should post a screenshot (or e-mail one to me).

[Thralni]

Quote:

Originally written by Tom:
Don't go from dock to dock if that's what you're doing, either, because docks count as water. I don't know why you can't land on them, but if you do, you drown. You can start from a dock, though . . . but you shouldn't need to.

Trying to answer this with gravity: maybe when you try to land on the dock, the dock collapses under your wheight and extra forces downwards when touching the ground? Just a thought.

EDIT: fixed typos: two ways to spell "dock."

[Lilith]

And from a game engine perspective, it's treated as water so that you can travel under it with a boat.

[:Slash:]

Mighty nice spelling there, Thralni...

 

That puzzle can only be solved by moving diagonally using the mouse controlls. I remember having the same problem, but I managed to solve it pretty fast.

[Tom]

You can use the keypad, too.

 

I know that the engine treats it as water. My puzzlement was from an engine perspective; namely, the idea being that since I can walk on it as well as boat on it, why not land on it? You can both boat and walk on that ice moat in the Archives, and in Exile, you would occasionally get boats in lava, which you could also walk through . . . why is it that landing on lava with the Orb doesn't result in a 'You land in a pool of molten rock and simultaneously melt and burn to a crisp. Luckily, you pass out from the pain before you melt past your waist.' message, but merely a few screams of excruciating pain and some relatively paltry fire damage?

[:Slash:]

Quote:

Originally written by Tom:
You can use the keypad, too.

I know, I know... Since I've played all of my spidweb games on my dads laptop, I never could use the numpad, so I rarely take it into consideration...

As for the engine behaving strangely, my guess is that all the boxes for lava(and, indeed, that ice sludge found here and there) were checked, so to speak(You know, 'party can walk on - check' 'boat can travel on - check') and the engine mixes it up and lets you walk on it, but not land on it...

[Tom]

Not exactly; the tile is a base water type, with a special attribute that allows the party to stand on it, and another that gives a boat the option of landing or piloting underneath. Lava is a base ground type, with a special attribute that does fire damage. Shockfloors work the same way, with magic damage.

 

I've no bloody idea about the icefloors.

 

When the party attempts to land on a dock after flying, the base type turns out to be water, and so you drown. I suppose it's necessary; if the base type were ground, a boat would not be able to pilot underneath it. You win some; you lose some.

 

I also don't know about Exile's lava floors. Perhaps they were a base ground type with a special attribute that let a boat on it.

[:Slash:]

Granted, I forgot the under-bridge part .

 

As for the ice floors, it would probably be impossible to check, since the only place I recall seeing them in A2 is in the Empire Archives in the far North-east of empire-controlled Avernum, and there the floors are inside the building, where you cant use orb.

[Dikiyoba]

This is just a guess, but I think that ice floors are a "bridge" terrain with cold damage that allows you to boat through it but also walk on it (and take cold damage). At least, I think the ice had cold damage, since I don't remember ever taking cold damage. I never used the boat, though, because of the ice lizards in each corner. You can't enter combat mode in a boat.

 

The ice floor graphics are still around in BoA if anyone wanted to mess with them...

 

Dikiyoba.

[Kelandon]

I think the reason that you can land on lava is the same reason that you can walk on it: it's not actually pools of molten lava. It's just ground with lots of lava around, so that landing indiscriminantly (or walking inexpertly, without Pathfinder) makes you brush up against some hot stuff. Or maybe get swept by the hot clouds of air that tend to billow by in a volcanic eruption.

 

As far as how the engine works this way, I'm pretty sure that these characteristics are defined independently. I think the setup is more BoE than BoA, so I'm not sure how it works precisely.

 

And some scenarios *cough* *LP* *hack* have already used the ice floor.

[Lilith]

Quote:

Originally written by Kelandon:
I think the reason that you can land on lava is the same reason that you can walk on it: it's not actually pools of molten lava. It's just ground with lots of lava around, so that landing indiscriminantly (or walking inexpertly, without Pathfinder) makes you brush up against some hot stuff. Or maybe get swept by the hot clouds of air that tend to billow by in a volcanic eruption.

I have heard that the Hawaiians have a word, "aa", for lava with a thin crust of solid rock covering it. It's two syllables -- "ah-ah". Supposedly, this is the sound one makes when walking over it.

[Dikiyoba]

Aa is completely hardened lava that is very sharp and rough. It's stuff that you don't want to walk on barefoot or slip and fall on.

 

Dikiyoba is sorry that Dikiyoba missed or can't remember the scenario(s) with the ice. But it proves Dikiyoba's point.