Profile for Ishad Nha
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Displayed name | Ishad Nha |
| Member number | 7662 |
| Title | Shock Trooper |
| Postcount | 292 |
| Homepage | |
| Registered | Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
Recent posts
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| Author | Recent posts |
|---|---|
| How do you make a party? in Blades of Avernum | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Friday, March 23 2007 15:30
Profile
I use a simple arrangement of two fighters and two spellcasters. The second fighter does the traps and locks. One spellcaster majors as a Priest and minors as a Mage, eventually goes up to level 8 in Mage spells. While the other majors as a Mage and minors as a Priest. This makes allowance for one spellcaster being stuck in a forcecage or otherwise incapacitated. I also give the front two characters at least one level of Priest spells so that they can heal themselves if needed, valuable at low levels. Frees up the spellcasters to cast offensive spells. (In the Avernum games I gave them 3 levels of Mage so that they could cast Haste at level 3 and counteract slowing effects.) Traits are usually Elite Warrior, Nimble Fingers, Divinely Touched and Natural Mage. I don't know that there is a lot of point bothering with the Divinely Touched trait anyway. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Where are the creations that will join you? in Geneforge Series | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, March 14 2007 03:39
Profile
In GF2 the Pit of Misfits worker Heust Blade was a good fighter alright. I found that all the creations could not be controlled in combat, which totally outweighed the fact that they didn't cost any essence. They were just more trouble than they were worth, especially in tricky fights. I simply used two creations (Drakons towards the end) and a Shaper. [ Wednesday, March 14, 2007 03:41: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| GF Questions in Geneforge Series | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Monday, February 26 2007 19:33
Profile
Back to Battle Shaping in Geneforges 2,3,4: Battle shaping in Geneforge 2 had a useful Clawbug. But Fire Shaping gave the Drakon, who was a good melee combatant, I usually had him move right up to an opponent and then hit. The magic side, the spit fire attack was good but never did enough damage, except against a few low level enemies. In melee there is the possibility of a high speed giving a second swing. For the last third of the game I had just a Shaper and the Drakon. (I was really into Strong Daze, knock all enemies out then attack just one.) When in Gazak Uss I backed up the two of them with a Rotghroth. (I have not finished Gazak Uss.) I found that monsters who join you, as opposed to being created by you, are good but that they can never be controlled. In certain fights that leads to massive headaches, the party needs to pull back and rest but the NPC insists on attacking powerful monsters. Does anyone actually use a small army? A few high quality creations are all you need. Cannon fodder has trouble hitting those tough high level monsters. The fewer the creations the higher and faster the Shaper gains levels. In Geneforge 3 and 4 I have played only bits of the beginning, I found a Fyora to be quite enough. (In 3 I am using the help of Greta.) A meat shield is quite useful considering that Shapers are weak, especially as the game progresses and the monsters get to have many more hp than the Shaper. [ Monday, February 26, 2007 19:45: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Frills in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, February 20 2007 18:08
Profile
"Hard coded" means hard coded into the open source Editor. Soon you will be able to customize every feature of the Editor, if you have a compiler. (You can get free compilers.) Even the new Niemand editor is open source or will soon be. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| The Future of Blades of Avernum in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, February 13 2007 18:21
Profile
Definitely other scenarios had special spells, the Exodus scenario had the best - developed system to date. Any of the Geneforge games would be easy to convert to a Blades of Geneforge. Like Blades of Avernum and Avernum 4, (and unlike Avernums 1, 2 and 3) they have a core program and a whole lot of scripts. The GF# Scendata.dat is much like the Bas file in a BoA scenario. As I have mentioned earlier, I am sure that Jeff Vogel already has his own personal editor for each of the Geneforge games. So creating a Blades of Geneforge is an easy job for even a busy JV. You might want the ability to port BoA scenarios, that would be a fun job. [ Tuesday, February 13, 2007 18:32: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| The Future of Blades of Avernum in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Monday, February 12 2007 20:46
Profile
As for the effort involved, it is no problem if you really want to have a BoA Geneforge scenario. You won't have to come up with a BoA - style spell screen/toolbar. I mean Kelandon showed how custom spells could work in Exodus. I don't recall any limitations as to what type of creature NPCs must be. Usually they are human but the game views them as Character ID numbers. The Louvre has a lot of Geneforge graphics for BoA, four separate sheets of Outdoor Terrain from Geneforge. Then there are seven sheets of Geneforge items, along with graphics for individual monsters. [ Monday, February 12, 2007 20:49: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| The Future of Blades of Avernum in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Monday, February 12 2007 20:22
Profile
The mechanics are fairly straightforward: Special Geneforge (or Nethergate) skills can be handled as Stuff Done Flags. The call change_pc_skill_pts can enable BoA skill points to be converted into values for SDFs, into skill points for "Geneforge/Nethergate skills", via the Increment Flag call. (Edit: this is not such a bright idea if the party will be going from one scenario to another. Especially if some of the scenarios are Geneforge and some not. A better idea is to have a second set of "skill points" for "Geneforge skills", both the skill points and the skills will be represented by SDFs.) The means to do this can be given to trainers or to a Special Ability With 9000 SDFs there will be plenty of room for special skills and spells. In Geneforge 4 there are 19 skills, 15 types of monster shaping and 40 spells. Actually selling these things will probably require dialog nodes, one text response per skill/spell. By contrast, gaining these skills by canisters will be quite straightforward. Actually viewing the Geneforge skills will be a bit tougher and may require a lot of use of print big str or the use of a dialog box. In the latter case, the punctuation and layout won’t be optimum. [ Tuesday, February 13, 2007 18:29: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| The Future of Blades of Avernum in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Sunday, February 11 2007 00:22
Profile
As for Blades of Geneforge, there may already be such a program. Glancing through the Data folder of Geneforge 2 I noticed a whole lot of small icons with numbers like 1600&. They struck me as looking like icons for a hypothetical Geneforge 3D Editor. (I would not be surprised if Jeff Vogel uses something like that to create the Geneforge games.) In theory you could create BoA scenarios which are based upon the Geneforge world but it would take some doing: disabling all existing spells, creating new skills&&. Distributing skill points to the custom skills after gaining levels would be a problem. A Blades of Nethergate would be an interesting idea. Once again, creating a Nethergate - based BoA scenario would be quite a problem. [ Sunday, February 11, 2007 00:24: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, February 6 2007 19:53
Profile
Yes the list of fixes would be useful for porting, also people can try out any pet ideas and see if anything comes of them. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, February 6 2007 17:14
Profile
If anyone could post a list of the tweaks needed to get the 3D source code to compile that would be handy. The average user of the BoA Editor would not have that knowledge, unless they already knew a lot about programming. Currently the same list of item shortcuts does apply to all towns. However, if the Editor is being recompiled from scratch it becomes possible to have such a list for every town. If we are redesigning the Editor what we say goes, it is no longer a case of what the original designers decreed. You might need to save the list of shortcuts in a separate (external) save file. Such a file is really only needed by the designer of the scenario anyway. It need not be large, there are currently 10 shortcuts, each of which lists 10 items. 300 or 400 Bytes per town. [ Tuesday, February 06, 2007 17:19: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Monday, February 5 2007 19:21
Profile
Edit Item Placement Shortcuts in the Scenario menu allows you to decide the percentage chance of each item occurring in a given type of terrain. This is what the Add Random items command in the Town menu actually executes. That is why the latter is so set - piece, the choosing actually takes place elsewhere. A good idea is to shift the Edit Item Placement Shortcuts command to the Town menu, just above the Add Random Items command. Niemand, have you actually tried to compile the 3D source code on Dev-C++? I did and got 11 major errors, hence there was nothing compiled. [ Monday, February 05, 2007 19:28: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, January 30 2007 18:37
Profile
Here I did a three - way check: comparing the BoE Editor Help file with the Bl A Fileio.c source file and the BoA Editor documentation. I have not finished work on the list of routines that are apparently not correctly translated. As I recall there were a few problems with horses and boats&. Then certain calls had the wrong number of arguments&&. Then there were a few punctuation problems. The list is at home. As for compiling the 3D Editor, I will have to download the latest version and see what happens. I tried it on last year's version of Dev-C++ and couldn't compile anything at all. This was using the 3D source as downloaded, there were no modifications of mine that I recall. [ Tuesday, January 30, 2007 18:46: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Monday, January 29 2007 18:29
Profile
The import function really needs to be customized for each individual scenario. Currently it is based upon a plain vanilla default scenario with no custom terrain, items or monsters. If Niemand can create a Windows 3D Editor that can be compiled on common IDEs then porting should really take off. Even now you can customize the translations with discrete hex editing. A lot of the special node translation routines are not accurate representations of what the BoE Editor help file says about the nodes. Here customization can really help. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| problem getting into formello in Avernum 4 | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Monday, January 29 2007 17:23
Profile
That restriction on movement is a good idea too. Otherwise your low - level party could blunder into something too big to handle. So the game needs a pacing mechanism which ensures that the party does not have the ability to explore areas where the monsters are just too tough. The flip side is that the game is more linear than its predecessors. In Avernum 1 you could make a bee - line for Erika's Tower quite easily. This could lead to big trouble. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Friday, January 26 2007 15:34
Profile
Kernel Knowledge was the coordinator of the Windows compilation. I e-mailed him and he said that it was done on KDevelop, a Linux program. (Address: chrono232@fastmail.fm ) So far I have not been able to compile it on Dev-C++ or Borland, I think that is due to language specific features. What we really need is source that can be compiled on common Windows compilers so people can experiment with their favorite new ideas. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Item Collection Scenario in Blades of Exile | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, January 16 2007 18:27
Profile
Yes, though you missed the announcement because it was in another forum, not because you have been away from this board for a while. In the Blades of Avernum Editor forum there was a topic: The Future of Blades of Avernum (Page 1) (I have copied and pasted the relevant text below). Board Administrator Member # 1 Karma: written December 09, 2006 11:51 AM -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Some quick notes before I go out the door. I have plans to release the code of Blades of Exile before too long. First, though, I have to find it. The Windows code is trapped on an old machine, and I need to figure out how to get it out. The Blades of Avernum code won't be made public for quite a while, though. It does still sell, slowly, and I want to try to recoup a bit more before I give it away. Reducing its price to $15 has helped sales, and I am still generating new people to play your scenarios. About the Unhandled Exceptions. I would bet money the situation here is caused by using calls to affect characters/items/whatever that are out of range. (Like setting the level of character -3, or character 220.) Whenever I looked at a scenario with this sort of crash, the problem was accessing something out of range. Pre-Intel Macintoshes handle looking out of bounds of an array fairly well. Windows (and Intel Macs) frequently crash under the same circumstances. That's why you're getting the crashes when you move the thing from Mac to Windows. A lot of this is my fault for not putting good enough error checking in. I skimped on this because I was freaking out over how long it was taking to make the scripting engine, and it was a real mistake. If I have to patch Blades of Avernum to make it work on Vista, I'll also try to tighten the script error checking up a bit. - Jeff Vogel -------------------- Official Board Admin spidweb@spiderwebsoftware.com -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Posts: 668 | From Seattle, WA, USA | Registered: Sep 2001 | IP: Logged Though if the official BoA Editor was anything to go by, very few compilers will be able to handle the BoE source code. [ Tuesday, January 16, 2007 18:38: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Item Collection Scenario in Blades of Exile | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Sunday, January 14 2007 22:56
Profile
I am informed that the basic meaning of the Code of Conduct is to avoid the use of hex – editing as a means of bypassing shareware barriers. So uses of hex – editing for customizing BoE terrain should be acceptable. Ditto uses here. That of course still leaves the massive number of items to be sorted through and prioritized... Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Customizing the first 91 terrain slots in Blades of Exile | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Sunday, January 14 2007 22:54
Profile
Yes, that is correct as far as I know. I am informed that the basic meaning of the Code of Conduct is to avoid the use of hex – editing as a means of bypassing shareware barriers. So uses of hex – editing for customizing BoE terrain should be acceptable. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Hex - Editing in General | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Saturday, January 13 2007 19:28
Profile
By “piracy” I mean using hex – editing to bypass the Spiderweb shareware barriers. As far as I know this is physically impossible to do with any of the Avernum games, there are just too many layers of protection built into the games. Even if it were possible it would just be too much hassle. It is clearly true for Blades of Exile and Exile 3. I imagine the same is true for the Geneforge games, but I haven’t checked. If you can't vaguely threaten the registration barriers with hex editing then it is no threat. Likewise, if it is possible but you need Jeff's inside knowledge to do it, it is no threat. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Hex - Editing in General | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Friday, January 12 2007 19:25
Profile
Piracy What constitutes a minor infraction for a member: … Requesting information about hex-editing. Hex – editing does not permit any form of piracy of the games. They are also protected by secondary defenses anyway. (“You can’t use this item/portal/whatever until you register the game.”) Do we really need a ban on discussion of hex – editing when it does not permit piracy and it does serve legitimate purposes in creating utility programs and files? Perhaps the moderators or Jeff should test if it does permit piracy, if it does not possibly it should be legalized? Even if it did permit piracy, it is the slowest method there can be, you have to manually alter the save file every time. Furthermore it doesn’t deal with the secondary defenses outlined above. Unless you are living in third – world poverty it is much easier just to pay the registration charge. About the only thing you can really hex – edit is the save game file, the programs themselves are way too complicated. At least one program is open source: the Blades of Avernum editor. The forums inform me that the Blades of Exile editor will soon be open source too. I see no reason for the prohibition in this case at least. Games can be pirated by means far easier than hex – editing anyway. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Item Collection Scenario in Blades of Exile | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Friday, January 12 2007 14:24
Profile
I just actually read rather than glanced over the Code of Conduct. As I understand it, the whole Blades of Exile game is about to become open source. Now the Code applies to all Spiderweb games, which are usually never open source. Should the code be amended to cover an open source BoE editor? Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Item Collection Scenario in Blades of Exile | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Thursday, January 11 2007 20:31
Profile
It is easy to have Artifacts Hall for BoA, there aren't that may scenarios. Exile scenarios that have custom items could be very numerous, after all there are around 300 BoE scenarios. Obviously you will have to limit the number of scenarios covered by any one version of BoE Artifacts Hall. Hence you must have a selection criteria. Then you will have to check for customized items in each scenario, compare names listed in the scendata.txt for each scenario with item names from the default list? ( Alternately, here is where hex - editing really comes into its own, you can use it to draw up tables listing all properties of an item. ) [ Friday, January 12, 2007 14:25: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| A new remake in Blades of Avernum Editor | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Wednesday, January 10 2007 21:30
Profile
Porting The 3D Editor crashes disastrously every time you attempt to port any BoE scenario. While the official Spiderweb editor should port properly, within the limits of its porting algorithm. The actual process used suffers all sorts of flaws and glitches. For instance, you can't customize the translation tables for items, terrain and monsters unless you hex - edit. Porting is easy enough, I tried both Valley of Dying Things and Inn of Blades, both were ported properly. Newly ported scenarios will be found in the Data folder not the BoA Scenarios folder, after all they are not ready for immediate play anyway. The folders will have names like bladeinn.bas or VALLEYDY.BAS. [ Thursday, January 11, 2007 02:43: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Geneforge or Avernum Series? in General | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, January 9 2007 18:26
Profile
From what I could see, Avernum 4 was deliberately simplified to speed up game play. Maybe Jeff was trying to appeal to arcade game enthusiasts? Possibly he took the simplification a bit far. It also had a more linear plot than usual. To top it off there were no boats or means of flight. On my PC the Exile graphics are nice and bright, relatively realistic for 2D versions. While BoA graphics are dull and as angular as any skyscraper. (I mean that outside clff graphics are angular.) Blades of Avernum has a theoretical potential to be more versatile than Exile but this potential is not always realized. Move to new town can only be called by stepping into a special encounter&&. Certain things possible in Exile are not possible in BoA, for instance Recall Crystals. As for the future, the only way to tell is to see how Avernum 5 turns out. Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |
| Customizing the first 91 terrain slots in Blades of Exile | |
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Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
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written Tuesday, January 9 2007 15:17
Profile
Customizing the first 91 terrain slots. This is impossible using the official Editor; the changes will be lost as soon as the Edit Terrain Types screen is closed. However, this is easy to do via hex – editing. (Hex – editing is alteration of the exs file using the MS-Dos Edit command, or its Mac equivalent.) The procedure is: Open the MS-Dos Edit command, “cmd.exe”, probably found in Start Menu > Programs > Accessories. Type “Edit”, and press Enter. Choose File menu and Open the relevant exs file: note that “Open Binary” is simply a word wrap feature. Tweaking of Terrain Here L equals the Line Width. When L = 16: line 1,962 column 9 thru line 2,218 column 8 hold the terrain listings. When L = 70: the listings are found from line 449 column 25 through line 507 column 60. The following values are true for Windows scenarios. Column 9: Picture number in ASCII code. Column 10: Picture number in ASCII code. Column 11: Terrain blockage (0 thru 5) list. Column 12: Extra values. Column 13: Extra values. Column 14: Special properties. Column 15: Transform to what? Column 16: Can fly over? Listed on the line below Column 1: Can boat over? Column 2: Blocked to horses? Column 3: Light radius Column 4: Step on Sound Column 5: Shortcut key, if any*. Columns 6,7,8 appear to be empty. Picture number is recorded as a two – bit number. In Windows scenarios column 9 is the base – 256 digit while column 10 is zero or 1*256) *It is recorded as the actual letter, not as an Avernum-style numerical encoding. It too is listed on the line below. Control + Key Inserts Hex – editing is done using the ASCII character set. Really you will need a list of the entire character set. This can be copied from many programs. When L = 70, line 4,308 of the editor program has about four – fifths of the total symbols. Once you have the list you can just copy and paste from it. Some symbols can be entered directly because they are on the keyboard while others can be entered as shown below. Control + P Inserts After pressing Ctrl + P, press Ctrl + the appropriate letter of the alphabet to get the ASCII symbols with numerical values 1 through 26. Unless it is one of the letters listed in the paragraph above. Press Ctrl + [ to get the symbol with the value 27. Some symbols can be entered without first pressing Ctrl + P: They are all symbols above, and those entered by the letters B,I,J,K,N,O,T,U. Pressing Ctrl + M gives the two symbols having the numerical values, V, of 13 and 10. Apparently, if the document has not been saved already: Ctrl + I and Ctrl + M won't have the same effect. The Space, V = 32, can also be entered via the Spacebar. Quality control, type the End button, the cursor should move to column L + 1. So if L = 70 the cursor should move to column 71. If it doesn’t you have something that can really stuff up the scenario. Morality of hex – editing, I don’t think Jeff really minds, the program is about to become open source soon anyway. [ Tuesday, January 09, 2007 15:25: Message edited by: Ishad Nha ] Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00 |