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After all these years, WTF in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 17 2004 06:52 Profile #37
Okay. That makes sense. They don't have infinite bandwidth, they pay a fee from a service provider based on the bandwidth they consume. I think they have a set amount of bandwidth for their current rate and would have to switch to a more expensive plan if they exceeded it or be shut down temporarily.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
After all these years, WTF in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, October 16 2004 21:47 Profile #35
Correct me if I'm wrong, but when you display images, you still have to transfer data through the server which consumes bandwidth.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Perfect Forest in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, October 16 2004 21:44 Profile #10
What do you mean by "not going in the path of the beam"? Could you be a little more specific?

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
After all these years, WTF in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, October 16 2004 19:54 Profile #32
We used to have Avatars on IkonBoard. According to Mariann, they consumed too much bandwidth.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
The Scenario That Wasn't. in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, October 16 2004 13:11 Profile #12
quote:
To be fair, just about everything has been done in one way or another. For instance the plot for Avernum reminds me a lot of Ultima. And Jeff himslf admits this.

In the code for the BoA editor, he says
"Thank you to all the great rpg's that came before Exile that provided ideas to steal" or something. The fact that the stories take place in Avernum limits us dramatically.
These apologetics are really incorrect on two perceived limitations.

1) All plots need not take place in the Avernum universe and even if they do are not limited to the "kill the monster plague" mentality. There are good scenarios in BoE (Drizzt's and Brett's for example) that do. There many good ones (Alcritas' for instance) that do not. These have all developed innovative ideas and plot lines that are not in the cookie cutter Vogelesce style.

2) The limitation of the Blades of Avernum engine is far more solid, but it is also far more fluid than one might think. I use Blades of Exile as an example. If you would have asked if Special Spells, pseudo-joinable NPCs, the Cube of Teleportation, and Frame Animation were possible in 1998, you would have probably got a resounding "no" from the "experts" at the time. BoA is at least an order of magnitude more powerful and I suspect that there are even less limitations if creative designers put their minds to it.

bjlhct2 -- I do not want to sound pompous by saying this, but I seriously doubt anyone really cares about posting your plotline. You are, of course, free to post it here, but you should realize that, for all intensive purposes, the chances of a scenario being made off of your plot being made is breaktakingly slim.

This is not to say that your plot is flawed, uninteresting, or unworthy of playing. Designers tend to be fairly independent and creative individuals who enjoy using their own ideas. Ideas are usually not the shortfall of scenario design -- time and motivation are. These posts have been made in the past, and have faded into distant memories.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Interesting idea and an also interesting post in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Friday, October 15 2004 19:07 Profile #14
Strictly speaking, it does not have to be done with the author, but any good BoE scenario has some fairly sophisticated coding that, by its nature, is uncommented. Even an experienced programmer would have a hard time figuring out how to exactly translate it.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Perfect Forest in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Thursday, October 14 2004 15:55 Profile #7
You cannot use the mirrors until the HP drain begins.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ethics? in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 10 2004 16:07 Profile #43
quote:
You fall into a common trap here, old friend: you assume evolution naturally leads to a better species.
I never said that evolution makes a species "better", just more apt to survive to the changing conditions it is in. Right now conditions are pretty amicable to just about any human being without a serious defect, this does lead to the things you speak of. So, yes we agree.

However, I do think you are oversimplifying the problem as H.G. Wells did in The Time Machine. Evolution is an extremely complicated and subtle process.

I've seen papers on many sides of the issue using complex mathematical models. The problem with the stupidity argument goes back to the question of what is the cause of intelligence. There is some genetic component, but a lot of it is environmental. Where we will end up on the stupidity end is a question as to the true nature of intelligence.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Ethics? in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 10 2004 06:56 Profile #39
quote:
The theory of evolution applied to human societies (and morality values!) does lead to a question: if we are evolving all the time, are we better now than ever before? Is humanity getting better and greater all the time? And can we separate people who are more "evolved" from others?
Evolution depends on something called natural selection. This states that individuals who are more apt to survive to the current set of dynamic conditons are more likely to survive and able to pass their genetic material to their offspring.

You could apply this to human societies, but I give a caveat to doing this. In modern society, people with most diseases survive because of advances in medicine. People with genetic disabilities are, for the most part, able to get treatment (which does not change their genetic makeup) and able to pass on their genes to their offspring.

The real question here is: To what degree does natural selection play in our society today? The answer to this is debatable and there is no general consensus in the scientific community. However, I think there is fairly good agreement that it is not as strong as it used to be ten thousand years ago for the reasons I cited above.

An interesting thought to ponder is that in the next century, we will probably have the ability to control our genetics. At this point all bets are off. The effects of natural selection will probably become minute compared to the human induced selection that we could create.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Interesting idea and an also interesting post in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 10 2004 06:42 Profile #2
About the group thing, what Kel said.

However, if you really want to help out the community with graphics, I would say our biggest need right now is some GOOD Slith graphics (which, if of decent quality, will use in my next scenario). The default ones are little more than green stick figures.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Graphics from other games in Blades of Avernum Editor
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 10 2004 06:38 Profile #11
The artist. The company is very unlikely to give you rights to their graphics if they own them, they paid for it. If the artist still has rights to the graphics, he/she is much more likely to let you use his/her graphics.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Graphics from other games in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 10 2004 06:38 Profile #11
The artist. The company is very unlikely to give you rights to their graphics if they own them, they paid for it. If the artist still has rights to the graphics, he/she is much more likely to let you use his/her graphics.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
And who remembers me? in Blades of Exile
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 10 2004 06:36 Profile #4
Now that really was unnecessary... :mad:

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Lost Death at Chapman's in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, October 3 2004 08:02 Profile #1
My guess is that the author never submitted it to Spiderweb, or that the scenario was too unpopular to remain on the tables. Hopefully the author, or someone else who has it, will be able to send it to you.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Avernum 4 in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Thursday, September 30 2004 14:19 Profile #52
quote:
Originally written by Andrew Miller:

Instead of spending so much time biting the hand that feeds you, why don't you find a new hand? There are many scenario builders out there with as much capability and much more glitz. Maybe you've just forgotten how much you actually like his products after all - otherwise, why keep creating scenarios using his software?
Okay, name them. Blades of Avernum is probably the most simple while being the most powerful and while being cost effective editor on the market. It has the core components there and support would easily make it even better. Besides, complaining has made better service and, to some degree, better products from Spiderweb. That's what we really want.

As far as A4, we, Spiderweb's customers, are just saying that we think it's a bad idea. Yes, it is Jeff's world; yes, he is free to do as he pleases with it, but his customers have a full right to tell him that they really do not want another Avernum game, they want something else. It is to Jeff's benefit to listen to the desires of his customers as they are the ultimate arbitors of his work.

FYI: The community existed before there were these boards. It was not as large, but there were still a decent number of dedicated people.

[ Thursday, September 30, 2004 14:26: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Wednesday, September 29 2004 07:32 Profile #33
I hear a good point here that I didn't really think about but assumed to be true. Our complaining did lead to much better support for Blades of Avernum. So far, I am quite pleased with the support it has received.

If you look at Jeff's statements in interviews, this has been largely because of the loyalty of the Blades designing community. Heck, we've got a promise to try to fix a lot of bugs in the near future and at least a got him to take community suggestions under consideration. This is what we pushed for in Blades of Exile and we are getting it for Blades of Avernum.

I'm willing to bet if the community just gave up and left, we would (1) probably not have a Blades of Avernum period, and (2) even if we did, it would not have the support it is now getting.

As someone who's been around here since BoE was released, I can tell you that service for the product was better than nothing, but was still not exactly the best. It's hard to compare because at the early times there really was not a core designing community yet. Fortunately, in the short term, things are looking pretty good.

As far as Za-Khazi, it was good in the early days of Blades of Exile, but use BoE players have been spoiled by the high quality works which have yet to materialize in Blades of Avernum.

Theodis - The business practices of your company are quite odious. Thank you for informing me as I will never purchase their products now and discourage everyone else I know to do the same. I'm thankful with your attitude that you are in a computation field where nobody can get hurt or killed by your shoddy practices.

The reason I am so disgusted with this is because my field (engineering) does not live in a nice pristine ivory tower. My computer codes MUST work or people can die. If I release a bad code, it is my duty to at least inform my industry customers of its shortcomings. Yes, the stakes in the game design industry are a lot lower, but still, the ethics should be constant.

An licensed engineer working for a company that misuses its products in such a way is ethically obligated (under the universally accepted Engineering Code of Ethics) to (1) cease service to that company, and (2) inform the public of its shortcomings. Failure to do so would result in serious fines and a revokation of that engineer's license. Unfortunately this does not always work in practice, but I feel these standards are applicable to any field and should be adhered to.

[ Wednesday, September 29, 2004 07:33: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Tuesday, September 28 2004 21:52 Profile #22
So, let me get this straight, if a company releases a faulty product, it is ethically correct to continue to sell that product as if it were not defective. Is this what you are saying?

Keep in mind, the 'yelling' you so claim is after years of Jeff's arrogant responses on this subject. I agree, we could stop purchasing products, but we do not want it to come to that.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Jeff's rep and the Perils of Creating a Scenario Editor in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Tuesday, September 28 2004 20:42 Profile #13
quote:
Originally written by Theodis:

After reading a some of this recent hate stuff towards Jeff I'm starting to get the impression that people seem to think building a game and providing continous support requires next to no time or effort. It's giving me a great laugh since game development is the field I'm getting into and it isn't simple. For everyone that thinks it is why on earth are you wasting time with Jeff's editor? You could obviously do better yourself if game development is a piece of cake for you.

On another note I did buy Blades of Avernum mainly for Jeff's scenarios since I think he does an excellent job with his scenario design. Most work done by other people I can't stand since they generally seem to have the misconception that plot should be constantly badgering the player. Either that or they have no sense in clever dungeon design.
I think most of us appreciate the time it takes. I know this myself. However, I also feel that products should work as promised and advertised. If a car says it can get 30 miles to the gallon highway and I only get 20, then I would definitely complain. The company should at very least change its gas milage standards.

Jeff does not even go so far as to admit there are a whole bunch of things that are broken. At very least, he should have a comprehensive list of bugs posted on the website. Ideally, he should fix them. His argument has never really been from a time constraint (although I'm sure it is a factor), but from a customer service inconvenience one. I am sure there is some time tradeoff that can be made here.

As far as Blades of Avernum, there really are not that many scenarios out there. A Perfect Forest is a toy scenario really. As a scenario designer, realize that it is impossible to cater to every audience in the playing community. You prefer Jeff's scenario design theory. While there is nothing inherently wrong with this, it got very tiresome after seven years of Blades of Exile scenarios.

I suggest you play Blades of Exile scenarios. You will find many good ones there.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
An idea, and hear me out on this... in Blades of Avernum Editor
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Tuesday, September 28 2004 20:21 Profile #16
quote:
Reckoning still sucked, and I cannot hold respect for someone who would disgrace BOA so. 20+ good scenarios does not make up for one that disgraces the name. If it had been just a bad scenario, then yes they would. No need to continue, you all have way too large a stick up your a** anyway.
Squirrel -- You are are being extremely rude and offensive to the board members. Consider this your final warning.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
An idea, and hear me out on this... in Blades of Avernum
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Tuesday, September 28 2004 20:21 Profile #16
quote:
Reckoning still sucked, and I cannot hold respect for someone who would disgrace BOA so. 20+ good scenarios does not make up for one that disgraces the name. If it had been just a bad scenario, then yes they would. No need to continue, you all have way too large a stick up your a** anyway.
Squirrel -- You are are being extremely rude and offensive to the board members. Consider this your final warning.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, September 26 2004 07:16 Profile #51
Okay, this topic has crumblied into mindless flaming.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Still Alive? in Blades of Exile
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Sunday, September 26 2004 07:12 Profile #9
Actually, mine was Spy's Quest which was pretty bad.

Also, Mewse, could you please change your sig to something more appropriate? Thanks.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, September 25 2004 19:17 Profile #46
quote:
Now that I may or may not have been trounced on every subject I originally came in to discuss, I'll sit back and wait for a mod to drop by and prove to me that I am in fact only hallucinating that I live in New Hampshire, and am really Jeff Vogel's alter-ego
I could check your IP and such, but I think we can take your word for it.

FBM -- You are really crossing the line. Please desist.

[ Saturday, September 25, 2004 19:18: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
Why does Jeff have a bad rep? in General
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, September 25 2004 14:54 Profile #29
quote:
-Anyone who makes games for anything but the money as a primary reason is not a professional, they are a hobbyist. You will not find them making games the quality of Spiderweb's.

-If a game has a great story, good plot, good characters and good gameplay, I think it has some heart behind it, period. If Jeff really only wanted money he could have made his games far, far deeper.
You are probably ignorant of many Blades of Exile scenarios. There are a good number of them that, many people feel, are superior to any of Jeff's games. Of course, you are entitled to your own opinions of them, but that statement above is debatable. What is not debatable is these designers did NOT get paid for their work. They did it completely on their own time and are the hobbists you speak of. Also not debatable is the fact that many people feel that these adventures are better than anything Jeff has designed and probably will design.

quote:
Oh yes, and the mail fraud thing. I really tried to look at this both ways but I simply can not within me find a shred of sympathy for 'the community' on this one...
This was more of a satire thing than anything else. Taking it seriously is not meant to be true. Alcritas is a lawyer and just showing how technically Jeff is a felon. Your caustic response to this is quite insulting in my opinion.

quote:
May be a shock to your sensibilities or a slap in the face, but it's a simple fact. I have no clue how much money Spiderweb makes but if these games are a primary source of income for Mr. Vogel, it's almost certain that he needs to keep making them. He's not getting a continous flow of income from Blades of Avernum; it's not an MMO. Once it's done, he has got to move on and start making a new game to keep the company alive.
While I agree with this in part. Jeff, by his own omission, claims that the Exile Trilogy still makes him decent sales. Probably not as much in their hayday, but still, they are a source of income. I agree he needs to make new games, but from what I have heard, a few months extension on any one title will hardly break his bank.

quote:
It's not because it's a poorly designed game or a completely unsupported one, but these things simply will be found with an active community, and unless you're a really heavily funded development group with a load of money, you can not afford to fix them.
Again, fixing is not such a time consuming process such as to retard his income severely. I understand there are limitations, but Jeff could afford to fix them.

Jeff's argument was never, "I cannot afford this". If this was so, I could understand. His argument was, "I don't want to make people download a patch because it could confuse some people who don't visit the website, and I don't want to take the time to refer people to the appropriate links."

Money was never the primary issue (although it is an issue, yes) with this as far as Jeff has indicated.

quote:
He's trying to make an enjoyable game, keep his company alive and make a profit for himself. That's good...but the community's requests, if it was not indicative of the majority of paying customers, would simply have to come second (fourth) to the above three issues.
You see these four things as independent issues when they are not. For a game like Geneforge, this is true. A game like Blades of Avernum is dependant upon having good scenarios to play for sales. Sure, you might get several, but in the long term, the sales are directly related to the number of good scenarios released. I sure wouldn't buy BoE if there were only ten cruddy scenarios released for it.

The point of BoA is NOT to make an enjoyable game in and of itself, but a powerful editing tool. The four default scenarios are not the real selling point of Blades, but the infinite supply of enjoyable scenarios to play.

This only happens if you please the people who make these scenarios, so for Blades of Avernum, these are really all the same issue rather than four separate ones. I can tell you for a fact many pure players WANT to see a more powerful and working editor as it means better scenarios for them to play.

Fortunately, Jeff is doing a much better job with Blades of Avernum than Blades of Exile. He has agreed to seriously consider the suggestion/bug list the players and scenario designers have handed him. We will see if that support continues.

The real rant of the community has been the way Jeff treated them. Dealing with him was frustrating because he has shown himself quite ignorant of the scenarios his product produced and was completely unwilling to compromise or accept any position contradictory to his own. The "I know better than you from my pristine ivory tower" attitude was what really ticked the community off.

As I said before, he has indicated positive signs to this. If he wants to keep the good designers in Blades of Exile, who will produce good scenarios early on in BoA and increase sales, he needs to listen to their needs and concerns.

[ Saturday, September 25, 2004 14:55: Message edited by: *i ]

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00
downlaoding scenarios in Blades of Exile
*i
The Establishment
Member # 6
 written Saturday, September 25 2004 14:15 Profile #1
Could you be a little more specific of what happens when you try to download scenarios? It's hard to help out with this unless you are very specific. Be sure to tell us what platform you are on and what browser you are using.

Once you have the actual game, just move the .exs and graphics file (.meg or .bmp) to the corresponding folder in the game.

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Your flower power is no match for my glower power!
Posts: 3726 | Registered: Tuesday, September 18 2001 07:00

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