Blades of Avernum Improvements

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AuthorTopic: Blades of Avernum Improvements
Shock Trooper
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Thoughts about problems with Blades of Avernum, unless it goes open - source they won't be fixed any time soon but anyway...

If there is one annoying problem it is the limitations affecting some script calls. For instance move_to_new_town can only be called in a special encounter that the party has walked into. These limitations have no clear rule; they must be memorized or found by reading the relevant notes. Which makes it harder to learn and use the Avernumscript.

Again, it is “syllabic” not “alphabetical”. For example, “town_visibility()” is a variable that is always defined. But you can’t improvise a call like “get_town_visibility()”, because the game has no provision for it. This is also a problem with the trait names, the High Level Party Maker, (t1Library.txt) has to list every possible trait name, there is no call like “get_trait_name()”.

The text response function currently requires enumerating every possible allowable case. Thus you can’t simply have the script accept a number at random, the number must be assigned a place in an allowed case. The underlying problem is that the Avernumscript has been simplified a bit too much in some cases. Sometimes the simplification requires more work just to do basic things.

Then there are so many errors and dysfunctional features, a bucket load of bugs documented elsewhere.

Thus the Avernum approach promises more flexibility than was found in Exile, but the promise may exceed the performance for the above reasons. Also the calls don’t translate all features of Blades of Exile. From what I can see, a Jewel of Return is impossible because none of the Avernum calls do what is needed, travel from the outdoors to the starting town or its environs. Thus the new is not always better than the old.

Possibly we could have the Geneforge style classification of terrain, floors and objects.

You can’t have both active and passive abilities in the same item, a restriction that may not be necessary.

Need the ability to customize the descriptions of custom items.

The First Aid in Avernum 4 was really useful, how unlike Blades of Avernum.

Avernum series games have an isometric style, outdoors the new style looks very artificial around mountains, and it is as obviously angular as any skyscraper. (I personally find the Windows graphics to be dull and drab.)

If there is one feature badly needed it is the ability to rotate viewpoint. Currently the north and the west are the favored directions. A rotate command would make the south and east favored instead. All terrain, loose items, floors and creatures would have to be moved to new positions. Thus 12,23 in the current viewpoint would be 35,24 in a rotated vista, for a 48 * 48 zone. Default viewpoint would be the current one. Where terrain has a distinct facing it must be inverted, thus south-facing hills must become north facing. Ditto where creatures have a distinct facing that must be inverted too.

It is not easy to make the outdoor appearance of a town match what is found when it is entered. Never an easy task when there are so few outdoor wall, building graphics.

There are all sorts of foibles and idiosyncrasies with town entrances.

The cliffs outdoors are always taken from the visually so-so G616.bmp, Surface cliff. Unless the party is underground, in which case it’s a case of G614.bmp. Thus the only way you can customize the outdoor walls is to rename another file as “G616.bmp” or “G614.bmp” as the case may be.

Timers
In Blades of Exile it is so easy to set a timer, just set a special encounter, then choose the appropriate sort of timer: General or Town Specs. In Blades of Avernum the routine is to increment a flag in the Start State of the town script. It is not as convenient as the set – and – forget Exile variety.

Magic Shops
To create Magic Shops in the Avernum world is a real problem. Quite a few BoE features can’t be replicated in Avernum, even the Avernum 3 – style Jewel of Return is a tough problem.

Combat
In Exile series, the monsters sometimes drop items when killed. While in Avernum, every last piece of monster equipment is dropped. It still retains its full market value. All monster gear is undamaged after the PCs have killed the monsters by every violent means permitted in the game.

Custom Spells
Canopy has an interesting concept, custom spells that are cast via “wands”. This gives an interesting variety to the scenario. Of course the uses of the various spells must be remembered, not easy to do when the wands don’t have this written on their item information screens. (As far as I can see, there is no way to give an item a custom description, you don’t seem to have the power to customize what appears on the item information screen.) It would be handy if this information could be made available to the player on-line, inside the game.

At the end of the day, the custom “spells” are just scenario states, they lack all of the features of the real spells: spell levels, description screens and ability to buy them. If these features were to be available for the custom spells, they would require the use of scenario states and SDFs. Basically they are second-class citizens. The Blades of Avernum program is not GURPS, it is not infinitely versatile and it can only be customized so far.
Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00
Shaper
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Thoughts/comments...

quote:
... For instance move_to_new_town can only be called in a special encounter that the party has walked into...
Okay, you have a point here, and it's a bit annoying that we as players have to "click to continue". But this is a minor annoyance at best - it isn't going to stop designers from using the call.

quote:
For example, “town_visibility()” is a variable that is always defined. But you can’t improvise a call like “get_town_visibility()”, because the game has no provision for it. This is also a problem with the trait names, the High Level Party Maker, (t1Library.txt) has to list every possible trait name, there is no call like “get_trait_name()”.
Umm. If I understand what you're getting at, you're complaining about something that is easily remedied by keeping a piece of paper and a pen to hand, or by using flags. In-game, what could you possibly need to check whether or town is visible or not for? And, suppose that you do (because you might need somebody to tell you a piece of information ONLY if the town is hidden, for example). All you'd need to do is reserve a flag for the town's visibility - if it's 1 it's visible. You're still only using one call, so I really don't see the problem here.

quote:
The text response function currently requires enumerating every possible allowable case. Thus you can’t simply have the script accept a number at random, the number must be assigned a place in an allowed case. The underlying problem is that the Avernumscript has been simplified a bit too much in some cases. Sometimes the simplification requires more work just to do basic things.

I think here you're fighting against the call, not the call being broken. For any one word/number there are only so many variations, and I'm not even sure capitalisation counts. So really, copy/pasting a few different alternatives isn't an issue.

quote:
From what I can see, a Jewel of Return is impossible because none of the Avernum calls do what is needed, travel from the outdoors to the starting town or its environs. Thus the new is not always better than the old.

Why won't it work. Okay, the object is going to call a scenario script state so it can't be passed from scenario to scenario. That may be an issue. But from within a scenario it'd work. In fact you could make a crystal transport to any town. How?

Right, you'll know the co-ordinates of each town in your scenario (I hope). Upon using the item, you could make the crystal ask which town you wanted to go to (maybe even doing an Av4 thing where you must visit each town first). Then using
the call change_outdoor_location(), transport the party. Voila.

quote:
You can’t have both active and passive abilities in the same item, a restriction that may not be necessary.

See the Blaze Ring from APF.

quote:
Need the ability to customize the descriptions of custom items.

Okay, I'll give you this one. But it's not a huge thing - this is nitpicking at best.

quote:
The First Aid in Avernum 4 was really useful, how unlike Blades of Avernum.

Wow. This is totally missing the point. What you're suggesting is that Jeff goes back to all his earlier games and rework them to include his best ideas. This is stupid. And besides, First Aid can be useful if a scenario is desgined to use it - see Lord Putidus.

quote:
If there is one feature badly needed it is the ability to rotate viewpoint. Currently the north and the west are the favored directions. A rotate command would make the south and east favored instead. All terrain, loose items, floors and creatures would have to be moved to new positions. Thus 12,23 in the current viewpoint would be 35,24 in a rotated vista, for a 48 * 48 zone. Default viewpoint would be the current one. Where terrain has a distinct facing it must be inverted, thus south-facing hills must become north facing. Ditto where creatures have a distinct facing that must be inverted too.

Why?! Why-oh-why?! This would be far more work for Jeff, designers, graphic artists - everybody. And what for? I can see very little gain here. You say it's "badly needed". Care to explain why?

quote:
It is not easy to make the outdoor appearance of a town match what is found when it is entered. Never an easy task when there are so few outdoor wall, building graphics.
Yes it is. Especially with custom graphics, and careful designing. See anything by Ephesos or TM for proof.

quote:
Some guff about graphics
I think this is personal taste. Personally, I don't mind the outdoor cliffs.

quote:

In Blades of Exile it is so easy to set a timer, just set a special encounter, then choose the appropriate sort of timer: General or Town Specs. In Blades of Avernum the routine is to increment a flag in the Start State of the town script. It is not as convenient as the set – and – forget Exile variety.

Mmm... it is much more powerful though. I haven't touched BoE for ages, but I think I remember how these worked. And it was much harder to flash dialog boxes at intervals. And I don't know if inc_flag(x,y,-1) is that difficult to begin with...

quote:
To create Magic Shops in the Avernum world is a real problem. Quite a few BoE features can’t be replicated in Avernum, even the Avernum 3 – style Jewel of Return is a tough problem.
Magic shops? As in shops which sell magic. Easy. add_item_to_shop(shop number,3000 + spell number,spell level)

What's the problem here?

Oh, and see above for the Jewel of Return (which isn't even that good an item...)

quote:
Combat
In Exile series, the monsters sometimes drop items when killed. While in Avernum, every last piece of monster equipment is dropped. It still retains its full market value. All monster gear is undamaged after the PCs have killed the monsters by every violent means permitted in the game.
WRONG. We as designers can set the chance of a moster dropping an item. And we can stop it all together by adding destroy_item calls in the creature's DEAD_STATE.

And monster gear being undamaged has never happened in ANY Spiderweb game. Or most games I've played. It's just too much work.

quote:
Custom Spells
At the end of the day, the custom “spells” are just scenario states, they lack all of the features of the real spells: spell levels, description screens and ability to buy them. If these features were to be available for the custom spells, they would require the use of scenario states and SDFs. Basically they are second-class citizens.
See Exodus as to why you are wrong - spell levels, an easy to use system for reading spell information and the ability to buy them.

quote:

The Blades of Avernum program is not GURPS, it is not infinitely versatile and it can only be customized so far

No, point given. But Jeff says in the Docs he never intended to make everything possible. However, we're just scratching the surface of this beast, and things like E:R and Exodus show us how we can push the engine to great things at the moment. There are still lots of things we haven't gotten round to discovering yet.

As an aside, have you nosed around in the BoA Editor much, or is it just the port you've worked on?

[ Saturday, September 15, 2007 03:01: Message edited by: Nikki xx ]
Posts: 2864 | Registered: Monday, September 8 2003 07:00
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By Magic Shops he means the random item shops from Exile.

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Posts: 9436 | Registered: Wednesday, September 19 2001 07:00
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This problem really only applies to people interested in making custom graphics. The monster/terrain graphic dimensions that Jeff gives are wrong. To get the real dimensions, copy a square of floor terrain, paste it over the empty dimensions box, and shift it down one pixel. If you erase most of the floor, you'll get a clear line that gives the proper graphic dimensions. No pixels past this line.

Graphically, BoA is sub-par to BoE. Not only do graphics take a lot more time to make, they suffer from the dimensions they're given. In BoE you could make large monsters, small monsters, long monsters, tall monsters. In BoA you're restricted to short or tall. No giant lions or snakes or things like that, just tall creatures or short creatures. You can sort of work around this (Dark Wyrm graphic), but it's very hard and almost not worth the effort. Details are also lost in the transition from two-dimensional graphics to isometric graphics.

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quote:
Originally written by Nikki xx:

In fact you could make a crystal transport to any town. How?

Right, you'll know the co-ordinates of each town in your scenario (I hope). Upon using the item, you could make the crystal ask which town you wanted to go to (maybe even doing an Av4 thing where you must visit each town first). Then using
the call change_outdoor_location(), transport the party. Voila.

change_outdoor_location() doesn't do what you think it does. It can only be called from a town script, so it can only be used inside a town to change where the party will go when they leave town.

quote:
quote:
It is not easy to make the outdoor appearance of a town match what is found when it is entered. Never an easy task when there are so few outdoor wall, building graphics.
Yes it is. Especially with custom graphics, and careful designing. See anything by Ephesos or TM for proof.
If it requires careful designing, it's not easy. :P

I don't think this is the sort of task that can be made much easier than it is, though.

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quote:
Originally written by Drakefyre:

By Magic Shops he means the random item shops from Exile.
Ah. But there is a way around this with the get_ran call...
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quote:
Originally written by Nikki xx:

quote:
Originally written by Drakefyre:

By Magic Shops he means the random item shops from Exile.
Ah. But there is a way around this with the get_ran call...

The trouble with that is you can't have the shop's stock turn over periodically, as TM discovered when he made a random item shop.

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As for the Blaze Ring, it has one active special ability and no passive abilities at all. Here I am using the terminology from the BoA Editor Help file. If you have both active and passive abilities in the same item, one will suppress the other.

To see what I mean about the hassle in enumerating every possible case, read state 12 from t2Raiser.txt in Kelandon’s High Level Party Maker. You can’t just say “what level party does the player want”, you must have this for every possible input number:
check_text_response_match("1");
if (got_text_match())
what_num = 1;

Another example is from the scenario Exodus, states 50 and 51 in the scenario script, where Kelandon would have liked to name the monsters in each slot of the Soul Crystal. Unfortunately he has to enumerate 255 cases, one case at a time.

The Magic Shop uses up a lot of precious strings in BoA unless you give most items an equal chance of occurring.

This scenario also illustrates my point about custom spells being second-class citizens. Yes you can buy them and have levels but the description screens are not as good.

As for timers, you can’t have one run for more than 255 moves if you do it by incrementing a flag, unless you use two flags and some fancy footwork. I struck heaps of problems with timers when I ported the Exile scenario River and Leaf to the Avernum world, in particular the On the Dacgban zones. They are tough if you want to have two running at the same time.

Rotating the viewpoints, the Neverwinter Nights game does it well. I feel it would add realism to the BoA world. I don’t think it would create that much extra work, apart from the graphics. I have had a stab at it myself.

Damaged gear is found all through Nethergate: Resurrection, I think designers should alter monsters so they don’t always drop perfectly good stuff.

One other improvement, Mac scenarios could use a graphics format that was credible, that could exist on a Windows computer. This is discussed in this post on porting scenarios from Windows to Mac formats:
http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=002923
Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00
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quote:
Originally written by Ishad Nha:

One other improvement, Mac scenarios could use a graphics format that was credible, that could exist on a Windows computer. This is discussed in this post on porting scenarios from Windows to Mac formats:
[URL=http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=002923]http://www.ironycentral.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=15;t=002923[/ URL]

Probably, yeah, but for that you'd probably have to completely alter BoA so it would understand where to look for the graphics and what to look for. Besides, we can put in custom sounds :P

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Posts: 3029 | Registered: Saturday, June 18 2005 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by Ishad Nha:

[QB]As for the Blaze Ring, it has one active special ability and no passive abilities at all. Here I am using the terminology from the BoA Editor Help file. If you have both active and passive abilities in the same item, one will suppress the other.

Umm. I just don't know if I see the point of having both active and passive abilities, even if I do see what you're getting at now. A ring that casts spells and adds +2 to magery may as well be a ring and a scroll, though, hadn't it?? What makes you want a passive and active item so badly?

quote:

To see what I mean about the hassle in enumerating every possible case, read state 12 from t2Raiser.txt in Kelandon’s High Level Party Maker. You can’t just say “what level party does the player want”, you must have this for every possible input number:
check_text_response_match("1");
if (got_text_match())
what_num = 1;

Okay. But all you really have to do is copy and paste. And this isn't using any other states is it? It's all contained in one single state, and managed with if calls.

Personally, I don't see this has hassle since all you have to do is press [Ctrl] + [c]...

quote:

This scenario also illustrates my point about custom spells being second-class citizens. Yes you can buy them and have levels but the description screens are not as good.

I think this is preference. I don't mind reading text in a dialog box, so I'm okay with it. And besides, how often do you read spell descriptions?

quote:

As for timers, you can’t have one run for more than 255 moves if you do it by incrementing a flag, unless you use two flags and some fancy footwork. I struck heaps of problems with timers when I ported the Exile scenario River and Leaf to the Avernum world, in particular the On the Dacgban zones. They are tough if you want to have two running at the same time.

Use a variable if that's the case - these can go much higher than you should ever need.

And for two at a time, use two variables...

quote:

Rotating the viewpoints, the Neverwinter Nights game does it well. I feel it would add realism to the BoA world. I don’t think it would create that much extra work, apart from the graphics. I have had a stab at it myself.

Sure, okay, but really, I don't see the point. This is just like asking it to be in first-person view - that'd add realism too. What is inherently wrong with the view we have at present?

quote:

Damaged gear is found all through Nethergate: Resurrection, I think designers should alter monsters so they don’t always drop perfectly good stuff.

Ah, fair point. I'd not considered N:R. And I toyed around with this last night, and it can be done. But making burnt armour if you kill a baddie with fire, or whatever is out of the question.
Posts: 2864 | Registered: Monday, September 8 2003 07:00
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quote:
Originally written by Nikki xx:

quote:

As for timers, you can’t have one run for more than 255 moves if you do it by incrementing a flag, unless you use two flags and some fancy footwork. I struck heaps of problems with timers when I ported the Exile scenario River and Leaf to the Avernum world, in particular the On the Dacgban zones. They are tough if you want to have two running at the same time.

Use a variable if that's the case - these can go much higher than you should ever need.

Of course, if you go outdoors, save, and reload, variables die. Flags are more reliable. I never use variables for anything that I want saved beyond the immediate tick.

Using two flags to keep track of time is clunky, but it works. I don't mind clunky. I mind impossible. The string limit makes enumerating every possible text response more problematic than one might at first expect (e.g. it proved impossible to list every stored monster in the Soul Crystal in Exodus in the fashion I was attempting).

It is impossible to remove items from a store once they are added, which is the major barrier to a random item shop and proved annoying also in the HLPM.

As I recall, we had a pretty serious discussion about calls that should be added, back in the day.

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quote:
Okay. But all you really have to do is copy and paste. And this isn't using any other states is it? It's all contained in one single state, and managed with if calls.

Personally, I don't see this has hassle since all you have to do is press [Ctrl] + [c]...
The point isn't about the effort to write the script that does the matching, it's that this system severely restricts that capacity of a script to get input from the player. As an illustration, consider the 'numeric input' that is used in places like the HLPM. Even if the designer wanted to sacrifice all 750 allowed strings for the script on a single numerical input function, the function could still only recognize 750 distinct numbers. That hardly all the numbers there are and not even near all of the numbers that a script can handle, namely -32768 to 32767. While I fully realize that Jeff has no desire to do anything about this I can see two solutions to this, one of which would be easy to program and solve most of the difficulty, and one which might be tricky to program robustly, but spectacular in its generality compared to what we have now.

The first method would be to create a numeric input box that a script can display with a call. The box would look just like a string entry box, though possibly with a small reminder that it only accepts numbers. The game engine would take the string the user entered and convert it to and integer doing whatever was necessary; cutting out non-digit characters, assuming that a black string is zero, etc. In the script the call would then return the value the user entered. Easy to make and easy to use.

The second method would be to basically expose sscanf within scripts, creating a call that would take a string to scan, a format string, and a set of variables to store the results in. It would allow tremendous flexibility, but there would be a great deal of error handling to be done, and the Avernumscript engine isn't really suited to having calls with variable numbers of arguments.

Concerning graphic formats: I'm in two minds about this. On one hand it would be dead easy for Mac BoA to just read bmp files exactly like the Windows version. This would have the advantages that Windows wouldn't ruin Mac graphics files and Mac users wouldn't need weird editors just to get their graphic into the game. Also, resource forks are technically deprecated even on Mac OS.

On the other hand, the system of graphics in resource forks is wonderfully elegant, it allows many types of resources to coexist in the same file, and it allows nice opportunities for customization due to the cascading nature of multiple resource files. One feature that would be relatively simple to implement using resource fork graphics, for example, would have been for BoA to add the graphics for items with custom images to the save file containing the party, allowing them to be carried to any scenario. While it's not something we really need, it sure would have been awesome.

quote:
The First Aid in Avernum 4 was really useful, how unlike Blades of Avernum.
You mean to say that First Aid in Avernum 4 was fantastically broken, unlike in BoA, where it really does nothing until a designer chooses to work with it. I have no problem with that.

I do agree that it's unfortunate that we can't specify the wallset to be used for outdoor walls and cliffs, but if you really need it, just use ~12 terrain slots and make a permanent wallset of you own for the job.

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quote:
Originally written by Niemand:

As an illustration, consider the 'numeric input' that is used in places like the HLPM. Even if the designer wanted to sacrifice all 750 allowed strings for the script on a single numerical input function, the function could still only recognize 750 distinct numbers. That hardly all the numbers there are and not even near all of the numbers that a script can handle, namely -32768 to 32767.
If you were desperate to do that through scripts, you'd just ask the player to enter the number one digit at a time, but I think everyone can agree that that's a horrible solution.

EDIT: Thralni, please fix the link in your post. It's stretching the tables.

[ Sunday, September 16, 2007 07:37: Message edited by: Thuryl ]

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quote:
Originally written by Ishad Nha:

As for the Blaze Ring, it has one active special ability and no passive abilities at all. Here I am using the terminology from the BoA Editor Help file. If you have both active and passive abilities in the same item, one will suppress the other.
And we all know how accurate that is. I'm not going to stop and test this just now, but saying 'the manual said...' is not proof to the contrary, especially when the person who made said manual admitted he made mistakes.

quote:
The Magic Shop uses up a lot of precious strings in BoA unless you give most items an equal chance of occurring.
How unlike the BoE magic shop which, coincidentally, also gives an equal chance of all items to appear. It's also superior because it allows plot-critical items to appear that the party isn't supposed to have yet!

With BoA, while it may not be set-and-forget, you actually have some control of what shows up there.

quote:
This scenario also illustrates my point about custom spells being second-class citizens. Yes you can buy them and have levels but the description screens are not as good.
You have got to be kidding me. The description screens are not as good? I've heard hollow arguments, but that's the worst one I've heard in a long time. It's made worse by the fact that you're again wrong. Compared to BoE, BoA offers more room to describe it and its effects. In fact, it is in some ways superior to the main spell screen because it can offer larger and more detailed explanations of the spell.

quote:
Rotating the viewpoints, the Neverwinter Nights game does it well. I feel it would add realism to the BoA world. I don’t think it would create that much extra work, apart from the graphics. I have had a stab at it myself.
No, not that much extra work. You only need:Several of the standard graphics rotated.Many, many hours (probably close to at least triple-digits) to build the code, involving modifying the positions and rotation of pretty much everything.Many more hours to test the code, essentially being a massive beta test to hunt out glitches and exploits.Every scenario released for BoA to this day to be compatible with this new feature.Essentially, most of the work would not end up with you, but with the rest of the BoA community, all for a feature for which there is little call.
quote:
Damaged gear is found all through Nethergate: Resurrection, I think designers should alter monsters so they don’t always drop perfectly good stuff.
So a community of designers, some new and inexperienced, some old and talented, should bow to your every whim?

Suffice it to say that I wouldn't hold my breath.

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quote:
As I recall, we had a pretty serious discussion about calls that should be added, back in the day.
I shouldn't have read through that list. I didn't even think about those things but now I want them too.

I suppose my biggest wish for this game is that it would be a little more popular. The designing community hasn't grown that much since the release of the game and I'm not sure if people outside that group are even playing the scenarios anymore... On top of that, for whatever reason, some of our more experienced designers just up and quit (*i, Kelandon). I wouldn't be so upset if it wasn't for the fact that I think BoA could make a comeback.

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Member # 6193
Profile Homepage #15
Getting player input is a humongous headache. Preferably there'd be a way to dump the player's input into a string, and then another call to compare two strings. Check_text_response_match() blows, and don't get me started on got_text_match (What a ridiculous call. Why the hell is check_text_response a void?)

It would also be nice if the broken calls were fixed, but the rest of the stuff I don't particularly care about. Passive/active abilities would be kind of cool, and I've often lamented that there are no custom item descriptions, but I see zero need for timers or some of those other things. Most of these other things can be worked around with varying degrees of elegance (The graphics complaints in particular can be solved simply by making custom graphics. Even if BoA went open source the solution here wouldn't change.) Also I don't know what you mean by town entrance issues (Although that BoA might do something goofy with this isn't hard to believe. Just haven't ran into it myself.)

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"Heart of Earth located in Europe, Ass of Earth located in USA."

Frostbite: Get It While It's...... Hot?
Posts: 900 | Registered: Monday, August 8 2005 07:00
Law Bringer
Member # 4153
Profile Homepage #16
quote:
Originally written by Niemand:

I do agree that it's unfortunate that we can't specify the wallset to be used for outdoor walls and cliffs, but if you really need it, just use ~12 terrain slots and make a permanent wallset of you own for the job.
Actually, you can do this. You just need to include graphics sheets that overwrite the outdoor cliffs (657) and the outdoor walls (616 for surface, 614 for caves).

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TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached."

Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice.
Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00
...b10010b...
Member # 869
Profile Homepage #17
quote:
Originally written by Nioca:

You have got to be kidding me. The description screens are not as good? I've heard hollow arguments, but that's the worst one I've heard in a long time.
Simmer down. This isn't worth getting angry about.

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The Empire Always Loses: This Time For Sure!
Posts: 9973 | Registered: Saturday, March 30 2002 08:00
Shaper
Member # 7472
Profile Homepage #18
...And this is why we need a laughing graemlin. That comment was made out of amusement, not anger.

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Scenarios need reviews! Please rate these scenarios at the CSR after playing them!
AmnesiaWitch HuntWhere the Rivers MeetFoul Hordes
Posts: 2686 | Registered: Friday, September 8 2006 07:00
Shock Trooper
Member # 7662
Profile #19
Text response requires one call for every enumerated answer, even if several of the answers are parts of the same word, see Exodus custom spells.

Oh yes, Avernum spell descriptions are better than Exile, which isn't saying much.

Last November I was able to work out a script for a magic shop, it used quite a few strings but you could customize the appearance of items. Said script is found in the Codex.

Suppression of abilities, I tried it on a Runed Halberd in my unfinished Avernum port of Shadow of the Stranger, the manual proved right this time.

The big picture is that the calls put restrictions on designer options, many times designers have to work around them.

One problem is not knowing whether you can do something until you have read the manual yet again.
Posts: 292 | Registered: Monday, November 13 2006 08:00
Shaper
Member # 3442
Profile Homepage #20
Originally written by Ishad Nha:

quote:
The big picture is that the calls put restrictions on designer options, many times designers have to work around them.

Maybe this will just highlight how backward I am with scenario design, but there are only one or two ideas that I haven't been able to figure out a way of doing in this engine. That's it. And I'd like to think I've done a few neat things within my scenarios - nothing compared to TM, Kel, Laz and the like, of course.

As far as I can see, there's always a way around a problem, even if it's a really messy chunk of code that could be simplified into one call.

quote:
One problem is not knowing whether you can do something until you have read the manual yet again.
You could just go ahead and try it, and then if it doesn't work, consult the manual...

Enraged Slith said:
quote:
I suppose my biggest wish for this game is that it would be a little more popular. The designing community hasn't grown that much since the release of the game and I'm not sure if people outside that group are even playing the scenarios anymore... On top of that, for whatever reason, some of our more experienced designers just up and quit (*i, Kelandon). I wouldn't be so upset if it wasn't for the fact that I think BoA could make a comeback.
I agree, 100%. It'd be nice to have fresh blood, and we've succeded to an extent - just look at the entries from the last few contests.

Just who exactly is an active designer here, anyway??
Posts: 2864 | Registered: Monday, September 8 2003 07:00
Off With Their Heads
Member # 4045
Profile Homepage #21
quote:
Originally written by Nikki xx:

Just who exactly is an active designer here, anyway??
Heh.

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Arancaytar: Every time you ask people to compare TM and Kel, you endanger the poor, fluffy kittens.
Smoo: Get ready to face the walls!
Ephesos: In conclusion, yarr.

Kelandon's Pink and Pretty Page!!: the authorized location for all things by me
The Archive of all released BoE scenarios ever
Posts: 7968 | Registered: Saturday, February 28 2004 08:00
Agent
Member # 27
Profile #22
quote:
Just who exactly is an active designer here, anyway??
Though I've "completed" a scenario, I have yet to actually submit one. I recently started a new project that I'm optimistic about.

I'm also working on some new very similar NPC graphics that I hope to turn into something cooler, which you can get a little more information about at the Shadowvale forums.

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Enraged Slith's Blades of Avernum Website

Look out, there's a three-headed monkey behind you!
Posts: 1233 | Registered: Wednesday, October 3 2001 07:00
Law Bringer
Member # 4153
Profile Homepage #23
quote:
Originally written by Nikki xx:

Just who exactly is an active designer here, anyway??
I'm working on some stuff, but I'm also working on re-organizing my life. I was recently kicked out of one of my two improv groups, I'm trying to fix some things with my girlfriend of nearly two years, and I might actually put an appropriate amount of time and energy into my classes this semester. So, while I have an active project, don't be expecting anything all that soon.

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TM: "I want BoA to grow. Evolve where the food ladder has rungs to be reached."

Gamble with Gaea, and she eats your dice.
Posts: 4130 | Registered: Friday, March 26 2004 08:00
? Man, ? Amazing
Member # 5755
Profile #24
Hasn't Jeff mentioned that he isn't likely to spend a whole lot of time repairing this program? I know that having BoE in open-source is exciting, but I get the feeling that it isn't likely to happen to BoA for quite a while. And Thralni is also an active designer.

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Synergy, et al - "I don't get it."

Thralni - "a lot of people are ... too weird to be trusted"
Posts: 4114 | Registered: Monday, April 25 2005 07:00

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