Questions for 12/23/97-1/5/98
1. In the manual for the Scenario Editor you mention that you can open
scenarios in debug mode. I was wondering how you do this.
The game must be registered. You can then play your scenario in debug mode
in the game by loading a save file in the scenario editor, pressing 'D'
(capital D) and entering your password. In debug mode, the monsters become
much easier to fight, so you can play through faster.
2. Would it ever be possible to allow new PC races? Vahnatai, troglos,
goblins, or any of the other humanoid races?
Nope. Doing this requires modifying the code itself, and isn't something I
can figure out how to do properly.
3. Were scenarios intended to be released as shareware in and of themselves?
Read the license agreement. You can't charge for scenarios. People can ask
for donations, but they can't put in shareware barriers or such. I'll put a
clarification for this on the web site.
4. Also, is it kosher to create scenarios that are completely unrelated to
the Exile world? My first question was also asked with this in mind.
Go for it! There are practically no restrictions placed on scenario content
itself. I only ask that people not set scenarios in heavily trademarked
worlds (like Star Wars).
5. When I choose the monster "Alien Beast" from the M3 menu and click
anywhere it displays a big chunk of one of the monster PICT's instead of
just the chunk that it is.
Easy to fix. Load Alien Beast in the monster editor and immediately hit OK.
Alien Beast will be corrected.
6. The first problem is with a "stuff done" flag (0, 0) which is used to
count the number of times a certain event occurrs. I had noticed that, when
testing, the first time it was 1, the second time it 2, and the third time
it was 2! After setting a timer to print out the value each step, i can now
say that the behavoiur is at least predictable.
Perhaps some node is being triggered which is affecting the same stuff done
node, or perhaps this event is somehow happening again and again. One
workaround is to use a flag besides (0,0). That way, if another node is
affecting (0,0), the new node won't be affected.
7. What's with the "Not Enough time has passes since combat to rest"
message? I get this message almost every time I use a "rest" special. I
have tried putting an advance time of 300 before each rest but that doesn't
help. Is there a work around.
This is probably a bug. I'll fix this. For now, don't use rest nodes in an
area where the party is likely to get into a fight.
8. How does saving and restoring interrelate with editing the scenario? I
can see problems comming if I need to play through the entire scenario just
to get to the point I need to test.
Read the chapter in the docs on testing and releasing your scenario. You
can continue to use save files in the scenario after editing the scenario.
Just always restore the save file after saving a change, and hit ">" to
reset a changed level before editing it (while on a different level).
9. Can scenario special items be used during combat? (I suppose I could
just try that one).
No.
10. Why is the starting town forced to be medium - espically given that it
can be changed to another town after beginning?
It just is.
11. I can see I'm going to have trouble with the limits. My first town has
~105 special nodes ~80 squares with specials and 25 personalities. That is
after much scrimping, and leaving in a few bugs. At least some of the
limits have workarounds. (special terain, multiple identical towns etc.)
but I am getting worried about the event horizon. I cannot keep using
scenario specials to take up the slack.
Spread the encounters more. Instead of using on 64x64 level, use 2 48x48
levels, and spread the encounters among them.
12. Is there a better way to spy on stuff dones that a sequence of if-thens
with small messages?
Unfortunately, not yet. I'm looking into doing something about this.
13. How do you make a road? The only icons are the ones for a dot of road
but they don't connect when you place them next to each other.
Go ahead and draw them in the editor. They will be joined in the game.
14. How can I use specials to make a special item that returns the wearer
to a certain town when used? (Like the Amulet of Returning from Exile III)
The outdoor move specials don't seem to work from between sections (am I
right?).
Yes. But. You can only make it usable when in town mode. Have a special
encounter called when the special items is used, with these nodes ...
Town Block -> Text Message Saying Party is Moved -> Move Party Outdoors
(move party to outdoor location of town they're moved to) -> Stairway
(setting stairway type to 8 makes party be moved automatically without a
dialog coming up)
Read the descriptions of the relevant nodes in the Appendix on Special Node
Types for more info.
15. This is a question I've had that I can't figure out. It has to do with
the type of terrain in the Blades of exile scenario editor that monsters
can't walk over. (The tiles marked with a little B).
Go into the terrain editing widnow for the terrain in question. Blocked To
Monsters is one of the terrain abilities available.
16. I'm having a problem with the "place outdoor encounter." I set
everything right and read the documentation to be sure and everything's
set, but when I actually playmy scenario and I enter the encounter, I gett
a small message saying "monsters flee" and nothing happens. How can I get
it so the monsters don't flee and you have to fight them?
Edit Special Outdoor Encounters. There is a button to the upper right
marked "Monsters can't flee party". Press that when editing your special
encounter.
17. My full version of Blades hasn't arrived yet, but the scenario editor
docs that come with the demo don't give any information on how a monster's
experience point value is generated.
It depends on the monster's level. The higher the level, the more experience.


Questions from 1/6/98 to 1/16/98
1. I was reading some of your tips on how to improve scenarios, and one of
them was of course that things like profanity were not really acceptable.
In one of my towns there is a man who is very angry with the Nephilim. I
wanted his dialouge to include "Those damn cats".
Excellent question. If you'll look in the Scenario Details window, you will
see that you can set your scenario's rating (G, PG, etc.). Use this
feature! If you want to make a scenario with more adult language and
themes, go for it.
Softer language ("damn", "ass", etc.) is not terrible objectionable, and
would not hurt one's chances in the scenario design contest. Stronger
language (the f-word, etc.) is a different story. A lot of users find very
strong language quite bothersome, especially considering the relative youth
of many Exile fans and the fact that many parents play the game with their
children.
So "damn" is pretty safe, though I'd probably rate the scenario PG just to
play it safe. More than that? Use your judgement and common sense.
2. I have a small scenerio(1x1 outdoor, 4 towns)that is shopping center for
items you wish to have.
Don't forget to throw in a few things to fight. :-)
3. To E-Mail it you say to use Stuffit Deluexe. I use Zip. Is this okay?
How I exactly send in my scenerio? The instructions seem to make no sense.
You can E-mail a scenario file to us. You make the file an attachment to
the E-mail message. How you do this depends on your E-mail program. You can
also send it by anonymous ftp to ftp.spidweb.com/incoming. You may need to
learn how to use ftp. Finally, you can mail it on disk to PO Box 85659,
Seattle, WA 98145.
Sending files zipped up or compressed using compact pro is OK.
4. I'm also having problems with a special item. I have my character pick
it up, but the game says error out of reach. What does this mean?
A special item must have a number from 0 to 49. You're trying to give a
special item with a number outside this range.
5. I was wondering whether it was at all possible to implement a soul
crystal in BoE. If not, how could you still make use of the Capture Soul
and Simularcum spells. They are a wonderful Exile feature I wouldn't want
to miss.
The intention was that Capture Soul and Simulacrum would now be free
(though a bug has made this difficult). There's no way to restrict use of
these two spells in the scenarios.
6. Mr. Vogel, BofE gives us the right to make adventures aimed at
high-level characters. However, I don't see a way for players to make a
high-level party without going through a couple other adventures first.
Yes, they could use the character editor, but that encourages cheating. Is
there a way to let players make a party with more than 60 character points
apiece to start with?
Nope ... this involves changing the code itself, which only I can do. After
going through the 3 BoE scenarios, players will be pretty powerful. And if
they aren't, is using the character editor really such an awful thing? Go
ahead and make your scenario whatever level you want.
7. Whenever I create a generic lever in the scenario I am making, strange
things happen when it is flipped while playing. The first time I flip it,
it turns the lever terrain into a brazier. The next time it becomes a cave
floor, and remains a cave floor.
This is a bug in the default scenario. Go into editing terrain. Edit the
levers, and change the Transform To field to the number of the other lever
graphic.
8. Also, I recently received the registered version of the game, and I
would like to know if I'll receive registered updates of the game if any
are made.
Patches will be placed on the web site when available.
9. How do you make a special encounter take away a special item the group
has, like in Exile III when you bring the flower to the dryad?
Can't say this often enough. Read the section in the appendix on the
various sorts of special nodes available. Sure enough, there's a One-Shot
Special node swhich can give or take away special items.
10. How do you make moving walls, like the ones in Exile 3?
You can't.


Questions from 1/17/98 to 1/20/98
1. My question is what does the "Absorb spells" monster ability do?
Damage doing spells don't harm the monster. Instead, the damage is absorbed
and give the monster more spell points.
2. When you are putting items into a store for sale you start with an item
number and then say how many after that to include. But what if you want
items from different parts of the list, like one Bronze Broadsword, one
Steel Broadsword, etc. I see no way to change the item order or item number.
Modify the items list. Go to the end and make a Bronze Broadsword and Steel
Broadsword next to each other.
3. I can't seem to get boats placed. I put in the coordinates and nothing
shows up when I test.
Who knows. One of the fields must be off.
4. I also can't figure out the mechanism for importing PC's from another
saved game into my scenario. Also, can they only be from a Blades scenario
or can they be from any previous Exile release?
Only a party made in Blades. Take a party not in a scenario, load it, and
hit the Start Scenario (or whatever it was) button.
5. I have a question on Blades of Exile Scenario Editor. Is their any way
to edit the name of a town after it has been made?
I believe you can do this in the Town Details screen. If not, go into Edit
Town Text and edit the first string. That's the town name.
6. I am busy working with my scenario and I have encountered a major
problem. I have made 6 outdoor sections and they all look great except I
made them too high on the grid, the top one is at X=4,Y=1 and I need to
make 2 sections above it.
Unfortunately, because of the way the scenarios were structured, you can't
shift around or add or remove outdoor sections. Once the scenario is made,
the outdoors is pretty much fixed. It's an unfortunate limitation, but
there's not much I can do about it.


Questions from 1/21/98-2/2/98
1. Is there a way to call relocate outdoors in the middle of a chain of
specials? I tried this, but couldn't get it to work.
Peculiar. It should work. I'll look into this. In the meantime, save it for
the end of a chain.
2. Is there a way to set a space to a secret passage depending on the
values to a stuff done flag? Can I place a special on a space, set it to if
then, and if the flag is set correctly, make the space a secret passage? I
couldn't get this to work.
This should work. I'm not certain what you're doing wrong, but an If-Then
special which jumps to a Change Terrain node should do it.
3. Is there a way to move a boat to a certain location every time the party
enters a town?
No. There are no nodes for moving boats.
4. Can you use a teleporter to move a party from one town to another? I
faked one using a stairway disguised as a teleporter.
That's how you do it. Use a stairway nodewith Extra 2b set to 1. No dialog
will appear ... the party will just be moved.
5. Is there a way to make another terrain type act like type 50 does? I'm
creating a scenario consisting of several islands floating in the air. In
addition to terrain type 50 (which I'm using as air, instead of water), I'd
like to have some other terrain types I've created to use as air as well.
The problem is, when I place them, they are surrounded by grass, and don't
connect seamlessly to the other "air" spaces.
Unfortunately, no. Water is programmed to seam up correctly with other
things that act like water. If you want air, create them as custom terrains
(with numbers > 90) and line them up by hand. It's a pain, but it's the
only way to make custom terrain types that line up.
6. BTW- You said it is okay if a person expresses racist feelings against
the nephilim but it is bad if you must get slaves to win a game. If your
characters are working for the empire is it okay for them to express hatred
against the vahnatai, or is such thoughts as "You promise to kill the
vahnatai for what they have done to you" a no-no?
This is really a common sense thing, and what I was mainly thinking of was
using real-life people in the scenarios (a kill all the black people
scenario, to name one unpleasant example). Saying awful things about an
evil tribe of Nephilim is OK. Saying awful things about the Jews will get
your scenario taken off my web site.
7. I have set a Scenario General Timer to 6000 (2 days). When this expires,
a patch of Holly (that has previously been picked) is replenished. If I
move, or execute a series of Long Waits, the timer will deplete as it is
supposed to, and the Holly is replenished. But if I rest for a few days the
timer has not depleted (the patch of Holly is still barren). Is this a bug
in the game? Or does resting not use up ticks on a Scenario General Timer?
I believe that resting doesn't affect the general timers. This is because
weird things can happen when special encounters are called in the middle of
a rest.
8. I used ResEdit to directly change the BoE graphics file. When the
scenario is finished I plan to include the new graphics file.Theoretically,
it should be fairly easy (for Mac users at least) to switch the graphics
files in order to play the scenario. Is that OK?
No. Please don't. The software license specifically forbids modifying
thegame files, because people always mess up their game files when
switching them around and I get the bug reports.
Just use a custom graphics file. It works better, will make your download a
reasonable size, and won't mess up the graphics file.
9. Mr. Vogel, in previous Exile games there were sometimes indoor sections
where the Magic Map spell wouldn't work. Is it possible to make a town or
dungeon immune to Magic Map in BofE's scenario editor?
No.
10. The docs say that there's a Mess1 field where you type in whatever text
will appear when a text response is required. But that field doesn't show
up when you create a "Text Response?" node. The place where the field is
supposed to be is marked "unused", which means it will be ignored.
This is an error in the documentation. You need to display a message or
dialog explaining what the character is asking, and then bring up the Text
Response dialog.
11. Do I have to compress my scenarios with a program like Stuffit or is
that optional???
It's not absolutely necessary, I suppose. If your scenario is small, just
go ahead and send it uncompressed.
12. Can I use the custom icons your company used in your scenarios???
Sure.
13. I could use a little clarification on the stuff done flags. I
understand about choosing coordinates. What I don't understand is how they
get set to a single number. In example 2 you say that Stuff Done Flag(3,4)
gets set to 250, but you don't say how. Does the editor pick the number 250
or do I pick the number 250?
The editor does. Read the information on One-Shot specials. When a one-shot
special node is called, the Stuff Done flag in question automatically set
to 250. This is relevant when the special is linked to by a terrain type
with a white spot on it.
If the first special node called by a terrain spot with a white spot on it
is of type One-Shot special, and if the stuff done flag in that special
node is set to 250, the white spot disappears. Thus, when the special is
gone, the white spot marking a special will be gone to. This is used many,
many times in the three premade scenarios.
14. Where can I get a copy of Stuffit Max? I need to know if I am to submit
any Scinario's for BoE.
Do a web search for StuffIt, and you'll find plenty of places to download
it. There are no shortage of downloads sites with shareware utilites for
stuffing files.


Questions from 2/3/98-2/13/98
1. Did you get my scenario? I uploaded it a few days ago. Thanks.
Everyone needs to calm down. We can only spend so much time downloading,
looking over, and virus checking scenarios. We'll try to do it within a
week, but can make no promises.
2. Do you need my scenario's password?
I don't need people to send me their passwords. I have my own sneaky ways
to get into them.
3. Is it possible to have NPC's that will join the party? That is, they
would become PC's: the NPC would "disappear" from the game, and a new party
member would be generated (with pre-determined stats and the same name as
the NPC).
Nope. You can't win 'em all. This is one cool thing that Blades can't do.
4. Can you make special items which are linked to graphics files like the
province maps in Exile III?
No.
5. Is it possible to put the Orb of Thralai in my scenario?
Yes. Just make a special item which can be used, and link it to a special
node which makes the party fly.
6. I created a custom icon for one of my scenarios, pasted it in like any
other custom icon, then edited it with the Scenario Editor. However, the
next day, the icon for that scenario was generic!
The only graphics you can customize are described in the custom graphics
chapter, and have to be included using the techniques described in that
chapter. You can't customize your scenario's icon.


Questions from 2/14/98-3/20/98
1. First, the one-shot Display Message special displays its message every
time its space is stepped on. How do I get a message to display only the
first time the special is called? Do I have to use a stuff-done flag?
Yes.
2. The Change Boat Ownership special doesn't seem to work at all. Has
anyone else mentioned this? Right now I'm working around this by blocking
access to the boat until a stuff-done flag is tripped.
I'll look into this.
3. One last question: the "move party to outdoors" town special allows a
party to be moved to any outdoor section, but as far as I can tell the
"move party" outdoor special only allows the party to be moved within the
same outdoor section. Is there a way for a party outdoors to be moved from
one outdoor section to another, or do they have to be in a town?
The only way to throw a party from one outdoor section to another is while
they're in a town.
4. I am starting work on a Blades scenario that will involve custom outdoor
terrain. I have run into problems with editing terrain types and then
editing outdoor terrain.
I chose custom graphics for grass plus all of the water tiles that run up
against water (so I could draw desert islands). When I do this, it seems to
break the auto-cleanup in the terrain editor for painting in water. Instead
of putting in the appropriate tiles it puts in the same tile over and over
again.
If instead I draw my terrain and then edit the terrain types, the terrain
looks fine... so all of the custom graphics are getting correctly mapped
onto the terrain code #s. I think the problem must be with how the editor
automatically fixes water edges... somehow it's getting locked into always
painting the same terrain type no matter what. It behaves the same in towns
as outdoors.
Answer: This is an odd phenomenon, and not one I've heard about before. In
general, leaving the terrain types that get automatically altered (water,
mountains, cave walls) alone as much as possible is a good idea. Changing
the graphic number itself shouldn't cause any problems, but I'll look into
this. There might be a bug.
In the meantime, stick with your workaround. Draw the stuff as normal
terrain, and then, before release, put int he custom graphics numbers. This
should hold you until I come up with a fix.
5. I was just wondering - are we allowed to include modified Blades of
Exile graphics in our scenario's custom graphics files? What about graphics
from previous Exile titles?
Sure, and sure. Just don't use these graphics in your own non-Exile games.
While you're at it, you can use Exile graphics on your Exile web site, as
long as you include on the page "Exile graphics are copyright 1994-1998,
Spiderweb Software, Inc., all rights reserved."
6. If I rearrange the order of the items in the predefined item list, will
that cause the inventory of characters who are brought into the scenario to
be changed because the item numbers for various items differ?
No, but good thinking. The starting items are hard coded into the program
itself.
7. When dealing with outdoor areas, does area 0,0 have to be in the top
left or can you arrange them differently?
(0,0) is always top left. You can't remap the coordinates.
8. In the Blades of Exile editor , how can I make a Soul Crystal like the
one in Exile 3 ?
Nope ... the party is assumed to already start with a Soul Crystal. They
can automatically cast Capture Soul, etc.
9. Is there any way to get it so that when a character casts a spell, it
damages the party?
Nope.
10. Is it possible to simply swap the position of 2 items in the Edit Items
list? If not, this would be an extremely useful feature to add, especially
for designing custom selling lists, and for adding items that use custom
graphics.
Just the hard way ... rewriting the items.
11. There doesn't seem to be any way to remove a special ability from an
item once it is given one...
Sure there is, in the Edit Special Items window.
12. Are piercing crystals supposed to group together like they did in Exile
3, or is this something you changed for BoE?
Read the bugs area in the Scenario Workshop. Some of the Macintosh bugs may
still be relevant.
13. Would it be possible for you to give us more possible terrain types?
The 256 can be somewhat limiting, especially when the first 90 can't be
changed.
Afraid not. 256 is a pretty serious limit. A byte only represents 256
different values.
14. I'm also having troubles with my game files getting corrupted whenever
I try to Delete Last Town, and then make another town over it. For some
reason it also complains about a false password, even though the scenario
wasn't password protected. I am using the Windows version.
This is, indeed, a serious bug in the Windows Scenario Editor version 1.0.
There is a workaround.
Whenever you create a new town in the Windows scenario editor, ALWAYS save
the scenario just before and just after making the new town. Then you won't
have any problems. Hope to have an upgrade available soon.
If you've already been stuck with this bug ...
First, back up the scenario. Then use the Delete Last Town feature
repeatedly, saveing after each time, until all of the towns in the scenario
are correct and uncorrupted. Let me know if you have any trouble with this.
15. when editing the graphics of items, how much space is actually used?
When I try to use all of it, I have items that, when placed next to a wall
or something similar, they appear to be partially inside the wall.
Read the Custom Graphics chapter in the docs. The base graphic size is
28x36. Each row should have 10 28x36 graphics, one after the other. Items
should be positioned in the middle of the 28x36 rectangle. Dialog and
dialogue graphics need to be spread over 2 consecutive spaces.
16. I need to have a town with 11 people in it. There's no way around it. I
cut all the people I could. The extra 11th person (a vagrant Vahnatai) gets
moved to a different town later when a special gets triggered. Can I list
him as belonging to a different town and just incidently put him in this
town?
This is mentioned in the documentation. You can put a personality from a
different town into a town. You can put personality 117 (in town 12) into
town 4, for example.
17. Right now the story is that he's avenging the death of Erika Redmark
and in order to stop him you have to bring her back in the form of a
Crystal Soul. The question is -- am I allowed to do this? Is Erika an
untouchable NPC?
Erika is dead. I dunno - I, personally, for the sake of the story, would
prefer she stay dead. While using characters from the games is cool, people
should probably think twice about doing major things to them (like killing
them or bringing them back to life), because other people will be wanting
use of those characters in their scenarios.
18. So I went and threw in the Friendly Spiders and made them Depressed. I
did it too well and it makes my previewers cry. That defeats the point of
this very silly scenario! Should I mess it up so it's not so good? Should I
do something else entirely? Should I get new previewers?
Even friendly spiders have bad days. The spiders have often been depressed
in the Exile games, like when the aranea took their eggs, for example. I
don't see why this should be a problem. Of course, on the other hand, when
all your testers really hate something, it's often worth rethinking.
19. Would you be mad if I have major NPCs named Mully and Sculder and a
friendly alien beast named "QueeQuag"? I COULD always name the alien beast
"Pooky" if there's a problem.
(grin) Having named the casts of entire towns after characters from TV
shows, I can't see how I could object.
20. Why Cant I Play My Sinreoes On My Copy Of Boe ( Unregistered)
It needs to be registered.
21. I regret to say I think I have found a bug in the Windows scenario
editor. I am making a scenario with over 10 towns; when I built #11, it
messed up. The town named changed to "yyyy", except with dots over the
"y"s. In the terrain, it showed no town boundarys, all entrances were in
the upper left corner, and there were walls and conveyor belts in a zig-zag
pattern all over.
This is, indeed, a serious bug in the Windows Scenario Editor version 1.0.
There is a workaround.
Whenever you create a new town in the Windows scenario editor, ALWAYS save
the scenario just before and just after making the new town. Then you won't
have any problems. Hope to have an upgrade available soon.
If you've already been stuck with this bug ...
First, back up the scenario. Then use the Delete Last Town feature
repeatedly, saveing after each time, until all of the towns in the scenario
are correct and uncorrupted. Let me know if you have any trouble with this.
22. I have noticed that you can't use dialogue pictures in a 1-shot
dissplay message node...I had to take a picture from your dialogue picture
sheet and put it in my custom sheet then I used a 1-shot message(terrain)
and set 1000 as the picture, can you make it so I don't have too? Or can
you anyway and I'm just too stupid to find out how?
This is how you do it. If you want a dialogue face in a dialog box, make a
custom graphic sheet and copy the facial graphic into it.
23. This is prob'ly a stupid question, but is there any way that you can
get all yer items taken away, then get them back at a later time?
Nope.
24. Any chance of your putting Exile I, II, or III on BOE (or someone else
who you think can do it)?
Nope.
25. When you press the tilde key, it displays a distorted monster PICT in
the terrain window. Is it supposed to do that? Why?
In the game? This is a debugging tool, so I can find out what's going on in
memory.
26. When I try to run Busywork Bandits, it gives me two standard 'scenario
screwup' messages, one with error 35, one with 36. Then BOE quits because
of error type 2. What gives?
The first upload of this was corrupted. Try it again.
27. I forgot to mention that I'm having trouble getting a monster to drop
an item when it dies - I have the item (#383) set to drop 100% of the time,
but when I run through the scenario, it doesn't drop it.
Monsters don't drop treasure in debug mode.
28. I'm having problems with my copy of Blades of Exile. For some reason,
all monsters have exactly 4X the health (hit points) they are supposed to
have. And also have an extra attack (If "Attack 1 number of dice"=2
normally, it will now have 3). I'm wondering if this is a known bug in the
game. Or if I've done something wrong.
When you play a low difficulty scenario with a high level party, the
monsters become stronger. Scenario designers should always make sure to set
their scenario difficulty at an appropriate level.
29. You mention for the design contest no EXPLICIT sexual content....please
define Explicit for me. I mean, would it be ok to have a bordello in yopur
town.  You can't see them naked and can't get it.; Also, would it be
bad if almost everyone responds to the word rape. You can't actually
complete this task. All they do when you ask about rape is run away and the
town gets angrey at you. Well, sometimes they don't get angrey....depends
on the character.....
This sounds like an R rated scenario. There's nothing inherently wrong with
this. Things can be adult. Just try not to go out and offend people. As
always, try to use some common sense. Imagine what it would be like for
someone else to play it. Show it to other people. Common sense, sometimes,
is our only real weapon.
30. I only have one gripe with the scenario editor. When you place anything
except terrain, you have to click on the button again, which really sucks.
The documentation does list keyboard shortcuts.
, - edit monster
~ - place same monster
.. - edit item
/ - place same item
I use these all the time.
31. You either have the above graphics (i.e. white castle etc.) or the
below graphics (i.e. yellow castle etc.). Is there any way to get both?
'Cuz I haven't found anything on it in the docs.
Edit a different terrain type and turn it into the desired sort of castle.
32. You are going to produce more scenarios for BOE, right? Because all the
ones I've played so far really kinda suck.
Beyond Bandit Busywork? Doubtful. We're working hard on Nethergate. But be
patient ... the custom scenarios are getting better.
33. Is it possible, with the scenario editor, to make things like the slime
pools in Exile III?
Afraid not. There's no way to hook a special node into casting a fireball
or similar spell.
34. I have BoE, and can't seem to figure out how to make shopkeepers, and
how to modify their wares. Could you please assist?
Open Blades of Exile Base (BLADBASE.EXS in Windows). Look in Warrior's
Grove. There's several excellent examples of shops in there.
35. What's the difference between "change terrain" and "transform terrain"?
I couldn't figure it out from the docs. Thanks.
Every terrain type has a Transform To value. When you use a Change Terrain
special flag, it changes a terrain type to a type you select in the special
node. When you use a Transform Terrain special flag, it changes a terrain
type to the Transform To type set in the terrain type itself.
Go into editing terrain types if you want to see what the Transform To
values are.
36. Just a quick question about the stuff done flags. I understand the
whole thing about there being a grid of values that you can change with
specials. What I don't get is why there are so many values for a stuff done
flag. Does it make a difference if a stuff done flag is set to five as
opposed to eight? I mean if you've found a sword or something that's it
isn't it,1=found, 0=not found.
There are usually only 3 values for a Stuff Done flag: 0, 1, and 250. 0
usually means not done, 1 means done, and 250 also means done and is used
by One-Shot special nodes. Other values might be used, but usually not.
37. I can keep track of the flags if it's just zero or one, but how do you
keep track of dozens of them each with two hundred and fiftyone possible
values? Did I misread something or is the rest of the world just smarter
than me?
Take notes. Lots of notes. If flag (0,3) is 0 if the treasure was taken and
non-zero otherwise, write that down on a piece of paper. It's the only way
to keep things straight.


Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:35:18 -0700
To: Elhioc <Elhioc@aol.com>
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: A PC Bug

>Hi!  I have the PC version of BoE, and I've found a strange bug with the
>Scenario Editor.  Whenever you make a one time Dialogue (any pic) or something
>like it, pieces of the text appear when you want to make new messages in
>different Special Nodes.  Like if I have "You will see..." written in one part
>of the one time Dialogue thingy, that message appears in a different node,
>when I create it and select any message thing.  Is there a way to fix this?

Thanks for the bug update. I'll look into this and try to have it fixed in
the next upgrade. If you can come up with some specific instructions for
how to , in a new scenario, make this bug reappear, it'll be a lot of help
in solving it.

Alas, the scenario editor is a very complex problem, and teeny bugs are
appearing all the time. I'm squishing them as fast as I can.

----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:39:01 -0700
To: pteryx@ime.net
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: Blades of Exile question...

>>Will this happen?  I hope not; I REALLY need to rearrange a large portion
>>of the armor accessory list and there isn't room to just stick rearranged
>>lists at the end of the item list as Jeff Vogel suggests on the website.
>>-- Pteryx
>>

Limits of the number of items, terrain types, monster types and so on are
just an unfortunate fact of life. It's the only way I can get the system to
work. If you need to define a large number of items yourself, other items
will have to go.
----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:37:44 -0700
To: lump@shaw.wave.ca
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: BOE Questions

> Also, what happens when your party takes an item with a custom
>graphic out of the scenario - will the item continue to be shown as
>the custon graphic?

All items with custom graphics are taken away from the party when they
leave the scenario. The party also loses items which summon monsters.
----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:30:48 -0700
To: "Yasunaga-san" <richy@hgea.org>
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: Cursed Items

>In BoE (for windows), I find that for some reason the cursed items will
>just stay on! I've equipped Dancing Boots and waited and waited but I still
>did not get slowed.

May be a bug. I'll look into this.
----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:43:04 -0700
To: lump@shaw.wave.ca
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: Guard ability

> Could you describe the guard ability further? I was playing a very
>good scenario (beginner level), and near the end, I began fighting a
>Vahnatai Warrior with this ability (you have to)... his health jumped
>from 65 to 5000+... is it supposed to work like this?!?

Yes. Designers beware! Guards become MUCH MUCH more powerful when they're
activated! That's the point of the guard ability! Test your scenarios, and
make sure any guard you have to kill is still possible to fight!
----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:27:11 -0700
To: lavald@computan.on.ca
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: I have a question + BUG

>I want to create a area where the floor does magical damage, but if
>you get permission to access the area by someone, the floor doesn't do
>damage (changed to normal floor). How can I change all the spaces.
>I've asked many people, but no one seems to know anything about it.
>There are about 20 spaces going in several directions.

Set a Transform To flag for this terrain type to normal floor. Then, when
you want these floors to go away, use a Rectangle Transform To special node
for the entire dungeon. Bear in mind that this will transform all spaces
with Transform To set.

>P.S. I think I may have found a bug, when I try to import a town from
>one scenario to another, if the passwords aren't the same, I can't
>save the scenario. It says invalid password. I use the PC version.

This is possible. I'll look into this.
----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:29:49 -0700
To: lump@shaw.wave.ca
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: Question

> I was wondering if it was possible to activate a special encounter
>when the party attacks a character, like what happens when you attack
>Erika in Exile 3. I tried a town block, but that didn't activate
>until the character was already dead.

Hmm. Another possibility for a future update. Right now, there's no way to
hook in a special when a town becomes hostile, only when a character is
killed.
----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:46:27 -0700
To: "Breezekeeper" <patrags@altamaha.net>
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: Question

>I was wondering if you could make a town/fort  that if the PC's get
>hostile to the NPC's, it would trigger a special that would  close the
>gates, trapping the PC's inside?

You can only have something like this happen for a special node called is a
character is killed (not made angry).
----
Date: Thu, 16 Apr 1998 01:31:28 -0700
To: "Cipriano G." <cipri@dds.nl>
From: Blades Help <spidweb3@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: question about BoE Scenario editor

>I have been trying to make a message come up only once, but It won't work.
>not even if I use a one-shot-display message.
>
>how come?

Who knows? You're not setting something right. Probably you haven't
specified a Stuff Done Flag.

I get a lot of questions along the lines of "I'm trying to use a feature
which works, but it doesn't work for me. What is wrong?" Every seldom once
in a while, it's a bug, but, more often, you're doing something wrong, and
haven't given me enough info to diagnose the problem.

Using this program, you'll have to do a lot of troubleshooting and What's
wrong? figuring out. I really can't help most of the time. You'll just have
to puzzle through it.
----
X-From_: spidweb@spidweb.com  Tue Mar 24 00:32:57 1998
>From krizsan  Tue Mar 24 00:32:57 1998
Date: Tue, 24 Mar 1998 00:32:55 -0800 (PST)
X-Sender: spidweb@popserv.wolfenet.com
To: Toxic Borg <ToxicBorg@aol.com>
From: SpiderWeb Software <spidweb@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: teleporting

>As far as I can tell there is no way to use the portals in the blades of exile
>scenario editer to transport the party to a diffrent town. It's very annoying
>to have to use a stairway when you supposedly teleporting somewhere. In the
>next upgrade could you please add a value to the teleporting nodes that would
>determen what town you'd end up in, thanks.

The stairway special node can already send people to different towns
without showing a dialog box. Use this special node on a portal. There's an
Example of this in the lich fortress in Za-Khazi Run, which sends the party
into a bug filled pit very far down.
----
X-From_: spidweb@spidweb.com  Thu Mar 26 01:27:30 1998
>From krizsan  Thu Mar 26 01:27:30 1998
Date: Thu, 26 Mar 1998 01:27:27 -0800 (PST)
X-Sender: spidweb@popserv.wolfenet.com
To: leonlin@ix.netcom.com (Leon Lin)
From: SpiderWeb Software <spidweb@spidweb.com>
Subject: Re: [Blades] Problem with making NPCs appear

>I'm having a problem with making NPCs appear in towns after the player has
>completed certain tasks. I place the NPCs in a town and set them to only
>appear when a major event has occurred. When the player completes a certain
>task related to the NPC, I use a Major Event Has Occurred node to set the
>corresponding major event code. This should cause the NPC to appear.
>
>However, whenever I do whatever is necessary to trigger the Major Event
>node, and go back to the town where the NPC is supposed to appear, the NPC
>is not there. I have to go outside and type '>' to reset the town before
>the NPC will appear. Interestingly enough, if I don't visit the town where
>the NPCs are supposed to appear before triggering the Major Event special,
>they appear normally.

This is correct. The town gets saved, and the NPC doesn't appear until the
town gets reset (when the party visits 4 other towns or dungeon levels).
This is an unforseen result of the way the engine worked out, and, alas,
all I can recommend is not having the major NPCs not work this way unless
you have enough towns or dungeon levels for the party to visit to make sure
the town the character is in resets. Sorry about that.

>Is there a way to call a special ONLY if the player casts a spell on the
>subject space?

Only with the spell Ritual of Sanctification.

>1. The largest city in my scenario, Sorren, is under quarantine. The
>only way you can get in or out is by being searched by the guards at the
>gates. The point is, if they let you in, I call a swap rectangle
>terrain, with 0, 0, 64, 64, so it will swap ALL the closed portculli
>with open ones. There are no other portculli in the town. This doesn't
>work. The text message for the special will showup in the talking dialog
>- but when I leave talk, the gates are still closed.

Not sure. There are other things you can try, though, like the Rectangle
Transform Terrain (of course, you'll need to set the Transform To field on
the relevant terrain types). The Opening Stone in Valley of Dying Things
does this sort of thing. Take a look at that.

>2. I have lots of cobblestone roads in my various towns, only to find
>that when the game automatically converts some of them to diagonals,
>they show up as diagonals on top of cave floor - in a town on the
>surface.

That's right. The game adjusts cobblestone roads ont he fly. If you don't
want this to happen, make a new terrain type with the cobblestone graphic.

>I have a town where once the leader of a bandit fort  has been killed,
>lots of characters change by disappearing or appearing (by the  advanced
>properties, dissapear and appear on event). The problem is, characters
>only appear, not disappear. This is a great problem as before event 1 the
>cmdr.  is ill and has a deputy in place, but after the new commander
>appears but the  deputy is still there. Is this a bug? (I'm using the
>latest version of the  scenario editor for the PC). Thanks.

Towns are remembered for a while. The character may be being remembered as
still being there because the town hasn't been reset yet. There is a way
around this.

Make the character that disappears its own monster type, like Deputy Fred.
Have a special encounter be called when the party enters the town, which,
if the point in the game where the deputy should be gone has been reached,
calls the town special node with rids the town of all creatures of type
Deputy Fred.

Awkward, but it'll work.

>However, there are
>problems.  Blades Editor gives the user no control over spells or
>alchemy.

And suppose you didn't let players cast spells? What about the half of
their parties that are primarily spell casters? What would those characters
be good for?

>I really don't want people to drag in their invincible parties
>and end the Pax Romana with Divine Thuds.  Is there a patch to disable
>spells and/or prevent people from importing their experienced parties?

No, and no. If a player wants to take in a really buffed party, that's the
player's right. Some people like to burn through the scenarios with really
powerful parties. It's just sort of one of the assumptions that comes with
the world.

>Also, a rewritten, quickly self terminating Quickfire would be very
>useful.  Can you help?

This can be simulated. There is a special encounter which cleans up
quickfire (and other such effects). Call this for the entire dungeon when
you want the quickfire everywhere to go away.

>Will any adjustments ever be made to the Editor? Like a spell editor, or
>objects that react to spells?

It's possible. However, updating this sort of system can cause lots of
problems. When I release Blades of Exile 2.0, everyone with 1.0 will be
unable to play all the new scenarios unless you upgrade, which would cause
a huge mess. Plus, many of the old scenarios wouldn't work right anymore.
It may happen someday, but it'll have to be for very good improvements.

>If I start a new scenario using lets say v1.0 of the scenario editer then
>upgrade my scenario edited to v1.0.3 will my scenario that I started with v1.0
>be upgraded???

Yep. At this point, all of the scenarios made with all editors work with
all other versions of BoE.

>Is there a way to make items stay where you put them, even if you leave
>town?

That's what the editor documentation is there for. In the Scenario Menu you
can find a option for making rectangles where items are remembers even when
the party leaves town.

>Just had a player report on a wierd thing. In ROS, I have a portal that
>moves the party to another point in the dungeon (a sealed room), than
>starts a general timer set to run out after 10 moves. The special called
>when the timer runs out moves the party back to the original portal.
>
>This works fine, unless you go into fight mode and stay in fight mode until
>after 10 turns have passed. If you do that, the special that should have
>been activated when the timer runs out is never called/never works.

That's right. The game can't teleport the party when it's in combat mode.
There is, however, a way around it. Use a Combat Block on your special
encounter ... you can have the game jump to a special node if the party is
in combat. Have that node start the timer over again (at 10 moves). Then,
as long as the party stayts in combat, the timer will keep restarting until
they leave.

>How does one clear the special ability when one changes an
>item to something that does not have one?  For example, I was trying to
>change the second "Torches" into "Fish" with a custom graphic.  I gave
>up and changed the Vahnatai Robes into my fish.

This is an unpleasant glitch, and I'm glad you called it to my attention.
The only way to do this is to change the item type to Weapon, go into
Abilities, press Weapon Abil, and choose No ability. Awkward and bad. I'll
fix this later.

>One last related question:
>What determines the amount of food an item is if it is food?

Set the item's Item Level.

>Hi!  I've been a fan of the Exile games ever since I played Exile II a
>year ago.  Blades is a great continuation of the series and I am very
>impressed with the Scenario Editor.  I'm working on a very large,
>complex scenario and I have a question.  In one part of the game, you
>step through a portal and are teleported to an entirely different town.
>The only special I can find that switches towns is the stairway
>special.

This node is how you do it. Look in the Editor Docs Appendices, describing
the Stairway node. Note that if you give the right value for type of
stairway (8, I think), no dialog is brought up and you automatically are
moved to the other level. There's a teleporter of this type in Morog's
Castle in Za-Khazi Run.

>I deeply sympathize with the needs that forced your posted change
>to scenario listing policy. However, you neglected to say how it
>will now be determined that a scenario _does_ get listed. Do you
>(Jeff) play it a little, and pitch all the obvious losers? You
>certainly can't play all of them all the way through, and if this
>catches on you won't be able to play even the beginnings of them all.
>
>Or have a peer review group? Maybe volunteers? Or make it a
>requirement of listing that the author review N other scenarios? Or
>let the submitter find his reviewers, and require submission of N
>email adresses of those who had played it through and vouched for it?
>
>The spur that prompted this note is Prazac's Quest. According to
>the README, the author is in 4th grade. On the one hand, it got
>a BoE error message (jump to non-existent town) in the startup
>town. On the other hand, all of it that could be seen was _very_
>impressive for a 10 year old and (depending on what the rest of
>it looked like) might even be enjoyable for an adult. How are we
>supposed to rate that?
>
>Ivan

I'm answering this instead of Jeff. I (Mariann Krizsan) handle the web
site, I can be reached at krizsan@spidweb.com.
Basically I look at all scenarios submitted to us with a master scenario
editor. Scenarios are then easily judged. If I can look at the entire
scenario on one screen, with the only dialogue being something like "hi my
name is Bob", we reject it as being trivial. If there is more meat to a
scenario, then we usually accept it. I check the dialogue randomly, we
check the towns and outdoor sections for quality of painting and
complexity. This is always what we have done before however we are more
strict now because we are getting more trivial stuff then ever before.

Prazac's Quest is an example of a borderline case. It is not very good in
terms of plot but for a 4th grader it's excellent, and he clearly put a lot
of time in painting towns etc. I think he deserves some "peer review" and
credit.

>As for Scenario building.  Is it possible that monsters can step on the one
>shot special give item buttons?  I put a special in the outdoors near the
>starter town, and three others elsewhere.  The other three mostly work, but
>unless I create a party and run them right out to the buttons, some of them
>disappear!  Buttons and all!  The only solutions I can think of is either the
>monsters are picking up the items or it's a bug?

Monsters never trip specials. Check to make sure that the Stuff Done Flag
tied to those one-shot specials isn't being used in a special encounter
somewhere else. This is the number one cause of disappearing one-shot
specials.

>Another problem I had was creating a special item.  I used the jump to on the
>menu and then changed my mind, and decided I didn't need it.  But now I can't
>delete the special.  I keep getting a message that I'm inserting the wrong
>number into the box.  I put -1, but when I open up the menu again the number
>is something like -19427  and the special slot is unusable.

This, one the other hand, may be a bug. I'll look into it.

*** Here is the link for a Blades of Exile mailing list. It seems worth a look.

>http://www.insidetheweb.com/messageboard/mbs.cgi/mb23194
>

>I have a few questions. First. I can't find the list for the Type of
>Dammage and the Type of Traps in the docs. Where is it?  It asks me what
>type of trap in 1a field.  What is  the difference between generic
>stairway and stairway when you edit nodes in town specs.

There is a list of all the different special node types in the appendices
of the editor docs. Run the editor and hit F1 (Windows 3.1/95) to see the
editor docs.

>How do I delete a area description rectangle.

The town and outdoor menus have an edit area rectangles option. You can do
this there.

>One more thing when I was working
>on my scenario and I loaded a town and there was a whole bunch of
>terrain types all messed up. Is this a bug?

Look on the Bugs page in the scenario workshop on our web site. Also, you
can get an upgrade there which will correct this problem.

In a message dated 4/18/98 11:08:36 AM, you wrote:
>Iām having trouble figuring something out.  Suppose I want to give the party 100
>gold as a reward for completing some task, but want to make sure they only get
>that reward ONCE.  Whatās the best way to do that?

Assign a Stuff Done flag to the party getting the reward, and use a One-Shot
give item special node, with no item set and the amount of gold set to 100.

>I'm just now finishing up a scenario on my Mac.  What do I need to do, if
>anything, to modify or convert the .meg graphics file so it's usable by PC
>users?

Submit it to us. We'll do the conversion ourselves, making sure that the
palettes match up and everything like that. It's a service we're more than
happy to provide for hard working Mac and Windows scenario developers.

>In future updates of the scenario editor, could you add some if-then
>specials that check whether any of the members of the party are Nephilim or
>Slithzerikai (similar to the 'has cave lore?' and 'has woodsman?'
>specials)?  I remember that either Exile II or III could do this, but it's
>not currently a part of Blades.  Thanks.

This is a great idea for a 2.0 expansion. Thanks.


File this under things that are currently buggy:
When I use the Orb of Foul Vapours in my Mac editor 1.0.3 it fires
a 4x4 sleep cloud!  When I change it to fire a sleep cloud, it fires a 2x2
sleep cloud, so the problem isn't swapping mislabelled abilities.
When I give the ability Mass Charm to a special item, it pulls a
Mass Sleep on every monster within range.  This means I have to conceal the
item's ability or the player will notice that it is mislabelled.

>2.
>When I place too many varied monsters in a town, some of them show
>up as cave floor. It's because Blades doesn't have enough free memory. So,
>do I increase the memory in the Get Info box? If I put my scenario on the
>net, what garuntee do I have that the downloaders have a souped-up version
>of Blades? Is there some way around this? I really need to know because I'm
>making a scenario with plenty of monsters and people in each town.

Don't put too many monster types in any given town ... Blades of Exile can
only handle so many monsters at once before its memory gets overloaded. 

>Just one quickie. Is it possible to make a shopkeeper that  sells
>things that aren't in sequential order? (A rock, a sword, and some
>arrows?)

No. Recreate the items ont he item list in sequential order to have the
shopkeeper sell them.


>Terrain types 246-251 (the special encounter spots with the white dots) are
>changeable because their number is above 90.  When I edit them, they seem to
>have just the regular attributes of their corresponding terrain types.  How
>then does the game remove the white dot when a one-shot special is triggered
>on them?

If memory serves, it looks at the terrain type's graphic to see if it's one
of the terrain types with a white dot, and adjusts it accordingly. At any
rate, I suggest just leaving any special white dot terrain you plan to use
alone.

>I'm having problems with the One Time Monster Encounter messages coming up
>when I have a Wandering Monster random encounter.  I really don't understand
>the Stuff Done flags, I expect.  And why there is a Stuff done 1 and Stuff
>done 2.  I've found that if I label all the One Shots 250, I can only use 9
>One shots in my Outdoor territories.  I have taken to labeling the Stuff Done
>boxes by the number of the town and then the node, and then using numbers I
>haven't used for the towns for the Outdoors.  For example, I have 8 Towns.
>Therefore it's safe, I presume, to use 10 as the first number to use in the
>Stuff Done flag box 1.  Then I can go through 0-9 for the second box.

There are 300 different stuff done values to keep things easier to
organize. For example, you can have town 0 use flags (0,0),(0,1), over to
(0,9), and town 1 can use (1,0),(1,1), to (1,9), and so on. Helps keep the
flags straight. That way, you are much less likely to use a Stuff Done flag
in town 10 you've already used in town 8.

Similarly, if there are, say, 4 outdoor sections, I tend to give the first
section the (100,x) flags, the second section the (101,x) flags, and so on.

Taking notes is generally a must. Also, lok at Bandit Busywork ... it's a
small enough example to understand. I've been meaning to write an article
to help decode it.

>Hmm... I read the bug report regarding Relocate Outdoors not working min
>the middle of a chain of specials, and the suggestion to move it to the
>end.
>
>I have a RO at the end of a chain of specials, and it displays a couple
>of messages, but there is no movement, and no message about not being
>able to move the party, either.

This sort of special node does work correctly, when I've used it in the
past. When calling a node of this type, try this: have it be called when
the party steps on a certain space (like the floor just before the exit).
Do not call this while the party is leaving town ... defintiely won't work.

Valley of Dying Things uses this sort of node a lot. Look in there for
examples.

>how do you change a scenario's name after it has been set?

Just change the name of the file. Make sure it ends .exs. This will work
correctly.


>#1. Whenever I design a new monster in an 'unused' slot from the Edit
>Monsters menu, that
>monster, regardless of which icon I pick, always makes the 'Eeee' sound
>when killed, which
>is often inappropriate.

If memory serves the type of monster (human/reptile/whatever) determines
the death noise.

>#2. This is a problem I have with the Alien Beast icon, but it's a
>unique one.
>If I select Alien Beast from the pull down monster menus in the Edit
>town Terrian menu the Alien Beast is
>placed except that the icon is that of a Packleader.

This is odd. Please let me know whether you're using Mac or WIndows and
what version of the scenario editor you have.

>I also said I have a suggestion.  Do you think you (Jeff) could put a
>little document
>up on the Scenario Workshop page that describes the thought process you
>go through when designing
>dungeons, puzzles, and Terrian.

I just think them up. That's really all I can say. I sit and think of
things that would be neat. I also read the New York Times addictively ..
it's a great source of cool ideas.

>Is there a special node that would let me check to see what type of
>Pc's are in the party? If the party is in a newly explored region, or a
>different world, humans might be not be that conspicuous, but a nephil
>or a slith probably would be.

Afraid not. This is something I, quite sadly, forgot.

>In the contest instructions you say that maps must be made with the scenerio
>editor how do you make maps there is noway that I can see.

This is a mistake ... when i say maps, what I mean in the dungeon levels
themselves, not the maps you read like in Exile III.

>Dear Mr. Vogel,
>
>For a long time I was perplexed as to how to place an animated graphic
>(e.g., waterfall) in a the dialogue graphic box.  I finally figured out
>that you have to type in 400 before the graphic, plus the number of the
>animation, but I didn't see this anywhere in the documentation, so I
>thought maybe I'd mention it.

Yeah, this should work. Thanks for mentioning it.

>I was reading about how trivial scenerios are not wanted.  I have made
>a small scenerio that you consider trivial.  It consists of just 1 town,
>an arena.  You may bet or fight for treasure in the arena.  Tell me if
>this trivial.  If so I will send it to you as an augment for other
>people who wish to have an arena in their scnerios.

If something like this is really complcated and shows interesting concepts
other designers can use, we may place it in the Scenario Workshop. If it's
not really something, though, we prefer not to get fragments of scenarios.

>Dear Jeff Vogle,
>In my senero I want to have a cretan type of gate open if the party has
>a special item (Like the "Orb of opening" in Vally of dying things)
>excypt actavated when the party steps onto this gate and only open that
>gate. How would I do this. (I know to use the Call Special when used, I
>just don't know what kind of special to call)

There is an If-Then special node that checks is the party has a certain
special item.

>I was just wondering what in-game effects setting monster types to
>Important or Magical Creature have... the other ones are pretty
>straight forward...

At this point, not really anything. Later expansion is a possibility.

>I have been trying to get these questions answered for the past week, but
>Jeff seems to not pay attention to them. I

What can I say? It's a busy thing running a software company, and advice
type questions sometimes have to wait a little while to be reached.

>1) I have created a small scenario (for the mac) called The Lost Pearl of
>Tizzrah. I have not released it yet since I need a question answered for it. I
>have made a few special nodes, on NPC's, that allows you to give a special
>item to them, if you have it. It works fine; I have an IF-Then special that
>allows you to give it to him if you have it. The only way to give it to him,
>though, is by saying the thing he needs, in dialouge. (This makes it more
>creative rather than putting a node on the ground, and stepping on it.)
>The problem is, is that when I give him the special item, and ask for the
>same thing again, he will say that I don't have it; making it as though I have
>not given it to him yet. How can I make it so that he will respond saying that
>I have given it to him?

When it's given, set some Stuff Done node to 1. WHen the party asks about
whatever the keyword is, check if that Stuff Done flag has been set, and,
if so, give the "You gave it already" response.

>2) In my newest scenario, The Quest for Gontura, it deals with a Gontura, a
>sword, that has been sealed up, in a cave, by 100's of Gahges's best mages.
>Now, the only way to get into the cave is by doing a special task in three
>other, different caves. I have not gotten up to that part, yet, but I just
>wanted to tell you that.
>Now, I started it, thinking that I had all the room I needed in a 4x4 outside
>area. I was wrong. I had origionally decided to have Gontura in the
>underground, but had mixed feelings about it. So, I made my outdoor section
>3x7, allowing you to go into the underground area, and the upper part of
>Exile. I had to start a new scenario, but copied my beginning towns.
>Now, when I playtested my work on the scenario, I noticed something strange.
>Every special node throught my work had the beginning picture from my Intro.
>Text. Even if the node wasn't set for a picture, it always displayed that
>picture. I do not know if recreating my scenario did this, or making my
>beggining town have a secret staircase that leads to the same town, but lets
>you out of it. I think that this is a bug, but I am not quite sure. Could you
>please help me with this as soon as possible?

When you use a Display Message node or other node that just shows two
message strings (not a 6 message dialog box) the default graphic is always
your scenario icon. To customize the graphic, use a One-Shot dialog node.

>Let's say I want a
>NPC to be personality 0, but after a certain Stuff Done Flag has been set, I
>want to change the NPC's personality number to 3.

Place two NPCs, one with personality 0 and one with personality 3.
Eliminate one of the when the stuff done flag hasn't been set, and the
other with it has. This is the only way to change an NPC's personality.

>In a scenario I am designing, there is an NPC who owns a jewelry
>store.  He wants to retire, and is offering to sell his store for 2000
>gold (The back room, incidentally, is a place where the party can leave
>items.)  When the party buys the place, they get a special item, the key
>which lets them in, and the NPC vanishes into retirement.
>If the party does *not* buy the store by Day 45, then the geezer
>passes away, leaving the store to his heir.  In his will, it is
>discovered that he has left a Ring of Resistance to the party, because
>he liked them.  A messenger is dispatched, who delivers the news of his
>death, and the ring, the next time they enter the town.
>Here's the problem:  In the event that the party *does* buy the
>store, how do I get the NPC to vanish without also triggering the effect
>which announces his death and delivers the ring?  If they buy the store,
>he lives on in retirement, so the delivery of the ring would not be
>appropriate.

You can set a Stuff Done Flag which, when greater than 0, makes the
character not be there anymore. It's set in the Edit Placed Monster window.
Set this flag when the party buys the store. When it comes time for the
store owner to die and for the party to get the ring message, use an If
Then special node to check if that Stuff Done FLag has been set, and only
run that encounter if it hasn't.

>1) What is the difference between Hostile, Type A and Hostile, Type B? I
>couldn't find anything on this in the documentation.

They both hate the party, but type A and type B creatures hate each other
as well and will fight each other.

>2) Is there way to have monsters in a room that do not move until you
>step into the room?

Set the placed monsters as paret of a special encounter group and have a
special encounter place them when the party gets close.

>Is there a way to make an item disappear when you leave a scenario, other
>than making it summon monsters? In the scenario I am making, there is a
>really powerful sword. I want to make sure people can't take it out of
>the scenario by leaving before the scenario is completed.

All items with a Special Class higher than 0 or a custom item graphic
disappear when you leave the scenario.

>When I play a scenario with custom graphics, if there is a group of
>wandering monsters outside whose icon is a custom graphic, instead of
>seeing the group icon, I see cave floor or some other other terrain icon.
>Is this a bug in the engine or in the scenarios?

The engine. It was fixed in a later version.

>I want to have a certain character only sell the party something if they
>have brought him a special item. I have a stuff done flag assigned and I
>used the dialogue node type 'response depends on flag' to make what he
>says different if they have already brought him the item. But how can I
>get him to only sell them stuff after they bring the special item?

You have to hard code this with special nodes. Have a special node which
checks to see if they have anough gold, and, if they go, call a node to
give them the item and a node to take the gold away, and a node to set a
Stuff Done flag to indicate that the item has been sold to them.

>Also, in the docs it says for Dialogue Node type 23 (Special Item Shop in
>the docs or Magic Shop in the editor): "There are 5 different,
>independently maintained lists of items the shop can give." Do I determine
>what is in these lists or is it fixed? How can I see them?

It's randomly chosen. The game picks a few loot level 1 treasures, a few
loot level 1 treasures, and one each level 3 and 4 treasure. To have an
item not appear in a store, don't give it a loot level.

One warning from a user:

I spent a long time wondering why some parts of Blades of Exile were
corrupting (mainly PC icons on 'Get' dialogue, no status icons, strange
text effects). After a few days I realised that my windows settings had
been set to large fonts as soon as I set it back to normal fonts the
problems were solved. You should probably warn people about this (unless
it's only my graphics card that causes this problem).

>While messing around with the editor, not my actual scenario, just a junk
>scenario that I try out my ideas with. Anyway, while i was messing around, I
>noticed that while in a town, the waterfall terrain would not work! For hours
>i sat there until i saw it right in front of my face! I just made another
>terrain type with the waterfall pic and made it a conveyor south! Lo and
>behold, it worked! Just thought Id mention it since it wasnt in the docs.
>
>PS: This conveyor tequnique can also be used to make currents in water. IE.
>The currents in my scenario that pull you into the wirlpools.

Great trick! Since I'm not sure if this is mentioned in the docs, I'll make
it clear now. Waterfalls only work outdoors! They don't work in towns.

>I've noticed that the default "Transform to what?" field for all terrain
>is 0.  This causes a problem when using the "Transform Rectangle Terrain"
>node.  When used, it causes all terrain within the rectangle to change to
>Cave Floor.  I tried to go through and change the "Transform to what?"
>fields of all the terrains, but it turns out that the editor won't let you
>change that field for the first 90 types.  It seems to me that the default
>"Transform to what?" field for each terrain should be that terrain's
>number, with the exception of the levers.

This is a good point. I'll do something about this in the next upgrade.

>What determans the graphic shown when a missle is shot?

The type of the missile (bow, etc.). You can't set this yourself.

it occurs to me that the graphic for sling stone might not be right. I'll
look into this.

>2. I have a monster asking the party to get a special item and bring it to
>him. Once they do so, he says thank you and takes it. Now how do I get the
>item removed from the party's special item list?

There's a One-Shot special node that gives and takes special items. All of
the special notes are described in some detail in the appendix on special
nodes.

>To Jeff
>Please help me, me and my little brother are trying to make a scenario but
>when ever we try it the buy button on the shop keepers doesn't work it just
>brings up the screen for not understanding.
>What should I do to solve this problem?

Give that node the trigger word 'purchase' not 'buy'.

>You have to help me !!!I made 8 towns and full dialoge for all the towns
>and I created all the mosters and everthing .....But I DONT HAVE ENOUGH
>ROOM!!! .by and accident i only made the scenario 1x1 which i admit was
>stupid ,and i need a way to make more room .Like the way you did in valley
>of dying things were you made the outdoor section under the school ,i need
>to learn how to do something of that nature or my scenrio is going to suck.

Make a new scenario with the outdoors the correct size, and then use the
Import Town feature to pull the towns in from the other scenario. If you're
using Windows, you may need to download the latest version of the Scenario
Editor from our web site for the Import Town feature to work.

>And 1 more question my custom graphics that i used from your other
>screnarios that you included with the game how do i use those .And yes i
>tried the online manual and it didnt work .

When you can't get things to work, all I can suggest is try again. Look at
it carefully, and figure out where you're not doing the right thing. Also,
if you're using the Mac version, early versions of the editor didn't
display the graphics, though they showed up in the game. Download the
latest version at our web site.

>How long does it take for a scenario to post?  (I submitted mine about 10 days ago.)

It can take a week or two. We have a lot of things to get done, and there's
only two of us. We'll do what we can, but be patient. We'll get to it.

Also, bear in mind that if you're scenario needs frequent update, we'll
tend to be much slower to update it. After all, frequent updates put an
unfair burden on us.

>Is there a way to charm one or more party members so they end up fighting against
>the party?

Not until Nethergate.

>Is there a way to take items away from the party (all scrolls, or
>for that matter, all items)?  [e.g. the party gets captured and
>their stuff is taken away.]

All items: no. If an item has a special class, you can strip it away.

>Why is there a limit of 50 placed special nodes in any given town?
>I have run up against this several times.

You have to limit things somewhere.

>Is there a way to award negative experience for killing something
>(friendly creatures for instance.)

No.

>Is there any way to transfer saved game files between PC & Mac?

No.

>>
After picking some alchemy
ingredients, how do I give a message that the ingredient is still
growing and cannot be picked?
>>

There are examples of this in the 3 scenarios that came with Exile. Basically,
have the special encounter call a special node checking if the Stuff Done flag
for the ingredient being gotten has been set yet. If not, give the item. If it
has, jump to a special node which says the stuff is still growing. THree
special nodes in all, with an If-Then node being the first called.


>>
When I made a few custom graphics, I tested them out.  The problem is that on
my PC, if there is any white on the bitmap image, the game reads it as
transparent, so I have some creatures that, when placed on grass, leak green
from their white robes or whatever.  Any way to fix this?
>>

Use off-white pixels instead of white pixels. White pixels are always
transparent, but you can just use very, very light gray instead.

>>
Some characters are not responding to the "buy," or "sell" buttons within the
dialogues.  I was able to fix this problem for sell, by inserting the word
sell into the "xxxx" field, but, of course, this won't work for "buy," because
it is only three letters long.  I thought that leaving the field as "xxxx"
would still make the character respond to the "buy" button, but it doesn't
seem to work that way . . .  I've looked all through the instructions, but
find nothing to help.  Can you tell me what might be wrong?
>>

The buy buttons asks about Purchase, not Buy. Set the field to '
'purc' and you'll be fine.

NOTES ON MACINTOSH AND CUSTOM GRAPHICS FILES

>Jeff--
>
>Tried the fix suggested for the problem of losing track
>of the resource fork when using Stuffit Expander to unzip.
>Did not work, at least where Riddle of the Spheres is
>concerned.  Tried using ZipIt, instead, and it worked
>fine.
>
>Haven't tested the set-creator-and-type approach on other
>scenarios with custom graphics, but frankly, I expect it
>would not work on those, either.  The problem when Stuffit
>Expander unzips the archives is not that the type and
>creator values are incorrect (although it does happen that
>they are); rather, it is that Stuffit Expander acts on the
>assumption that they are DOS/Windows files, and therefore
>have only a data fork.  As a result of acting on that false
>assumption, the file Stuffit Expander will generate has no
>resource fork-- and hence no PICT graphics. I'm not sure if
>Stuffit Expander appends the information for the resource
>fork of ZIPped files to their data forks, or simply discards
>it; regardless, merely changing the type and creator codes
>should not fix the problem.
>
>Perhaps, if the resource information were simply appended
>to the data fork by Stuffit Expander, and if the data fork
>was previously empty, and if the type and creator codes were
>recognized by the application setting them as belonging to a
>file which must contain a resource fork and must not contain
>a data fork, the suggested fix would work.  I'm can't think
>of a type and creator code combination that would fit that
>bill, however, at least on a Power Macintosh, because even
>pure resource files are allowed to contain PowerPC native-mode
>code in the data fork, which in "fat" binaries would correspond
>to the 68K-mode code contained in the code resource.  Sigh.
>Anyway, the ZipIt fix works fine; perhaps you should simply
>omit the bit about editing type and creator codes after Stuffit
>Expander has been used to unzip the file.  :-(
>
>- Bill (haz1@nwu.edu)

>I'm CONFUSED about the scenario editor in Blades of Exile.  First of all, It
>won't let me have more than 8 town entrances outside.  Does that mean I can
>only have 8 towns??

You can only have 8 entrance PER OUTDOOR SECTION. More outdoor sections,
more towns.

>Then, in Exile III, I think, you could read the Book on
>Pedestal.  How do I make that happen?  Also, I read the Docs about 20 times,
>but I can't figure out how to edit a book.  Help!!!  Can I only use the
>already written books, or can I change the writing?

You can't change the writing. If you want customizable books, make the
SPecial Items, not regular items, and have special encoutner be called when
the item is used. There's great examples of this in Small Rebellion. Look
at the Special Items there.

WARNING ABOUT THE SPECIAL THING HAPPENED SPECIAL NODE

>Fields 1b and 2b appear to be reversed.  1b, where it says to list the # of
>the major event, has the "create/edit" button next to it, and when you
>press it, it jumps to the number of the node equal to the number of the
>event you entered. (e.g., enter '2' in the field so it will check status of
>event #2, and the button jumps you to special node #2.)  Field 2b, "call
>this special..." has no "create/edit" button next to it, which you kind of
>need.
>
>Has anyone used this?  Should I just assume the texts should be reversed?
>(I'm about to run a test)

As a result of extensive testing by an independent research group (i.e.,
myself, 5 min.) I conclude the following:

The texts describing fields 1b and 2b are CORRECT.  It is the "create/edit"
button that is in the wrong place.  So don't use it, or you'll
inadvertently end up editing nodes that happen to correspond with your
event numbers.  In order to edit the node that gets called, you'll have to
go to your general list of special encounters, edit a new one there, and
then put its number in field 2b.

BUG FOR IMPORTING TOWN

Blades of Exile Scenario Editor V1.0.1(Macintosh) has a bug in Import
Town. I imported a town from another scenario which changed the town
number. The Town Dialogue was not properly altered by the copy.  The
first ten slots which describes the personalities we

>Hi, I'm a Blades of Exile user and I've been making a scenario. I
>decided to test it the other day and as soon as I started it said:
>Blades of Exile does not have enough room for these graphics.  Some
>terrain may look like cave floor ect.

You're putting way too many graphics in your towns. Try to cut down on the
number of different graphics you're using, especially animated ones. Less
terrain types and less monster types, and you'll be fine.

**

NOTES ON COMBAT BLOCK:

I am having problems using Combat Block in conjunction with specials.  I
have a corridor leading to a nice treasure with a trap in front of the
treasure. I put a combat block node as the first node of the trap
special, before going to the trap, but my PC's can traipse all over the
special when in combat mode.  I played around with it for a while and
discovered that if I use any terrain type with a white dot on it, combat
block does not work.  I changed the terrain type to a normal floor, and
combat block works.  Checking the terrain types, I found that the only
difference as far as attributes went was that the floor was marked
"clear" and the floor w. special, was marked "clear,special" I made a
new terrain type to look just like the regular floor, but with the
picture the same as the one with the special. Combat block no longer
works. Change terrain type to plain floor (no white dot) and combat
block works fine.

**


>Recently, I have been trying to find out if anyone making a scenario for
>Blades of Exile can use graphics from Realmz scenarios.  I contacted
>Fantasoft1@aol.com on the matter and they said that the artwork is under
>contract and can only be used in Realmz.

This is correct. Do not take graphics from Realmz.

>Not only is this depressing, but
>it's also puzzling; the Exile trilogy and Blades of Exile use many graphics
>from Realmz, so I'm contacting you.

Realmz and Exile co-licensed a small set of graphics, which they share. All
of these graphics are already in the Blades of Exile graphics set. We will
not help distribute any scenario which contains Realmz graphics.

>Is it possible to use Realmz graphics in
>Blades scenarios under these circumstances?  Should I contact the artist of
>the images directly?

No. And no. These are Fantasoft's graphics. Please don't touch them.

**

>OK.  Could you please tell me what the artist's web site or e-mail address is?
>We can't use Realmz images, but there is still a chance he can take requests
>(just make different versions for requested creatures).  Thank you for helping
>clear this up.

The artists's E-mail address is Wormius@aol.com, but please don't ask for
graphics unless you're willing to pay for them. Also, Fantasoft's web site
lists the URLs of other people who've done art for them.

**

>The problem is, these scenarios will have a lot of material (monsters,
>items, etc.) based on a different fantasy background, which I envisage
>fitting in well with the Exile world. The problem is, where would I, and
>you (regarding the contest and also distribution matters) stand, as the
>stuff I would be using would not, in effect, be mine.

As long as you aren't using anyone else's materal (for example, a South
Park or Star Trek scenario), I ahve absolutely no problem with this. I
knew, when I made the editor, some people would want to make their own
fantasy settings which have nothing to do with Exile.

**
>An update for blades of exile win95/mac
>that would include the option of editing spells
>only in that scenario

I can guarantee this will never happen. Editing spells is just too much of
a mess.

>If we had a fishing rod, we could set it up so
>you could only use it beside water squares, and
>you would get food.

Make it a special item. When you step on a space you can fish in, have a
special node on that space ask the party if they would like to fish.

**

>A question about your rating system.  I notice some of your games are
>rated Easy, Medium, or Hard Difficulty.  Does this refer to the
>difficulty of the monsters, or the puzzles in the game, or what.  About
>what "level" characters should attempt what difficulty rating.

The difficulty of the monsters. More damaging minsters -> higher
difficulty. There's more info in the documentation. Also, play the 3
scenarios that come with Blades for an idea of what difficulty goes with
what level of monster.

**

>1) in my scenario, the spirit of an ancient Haakai mage takes the
>body of one of your party members so he can come back to the physical
>realm again. how can i get the scenario editor to have the player
>pick a PC then totally remove the PC they picked from the party?

There is a special node which kills a character. This is the best you can do.

>2) how many scenarios have already been submitted and how many do you
>estimate there to be at the deadline?

Look on our web site to see all the worthy scenarios which have been
submitted. How many more will come in? Beats me.

**
Hello, Mr. Vogel. I have a question concerning the amount of time that 
passes in one day. In the editor manual, it says that two days are about 
7500 moves. But, in one of the users' questions I read, he or she stated 
that one day was only 3000 moves.  How many moves exactly?  
>>

About 3000 moves. A few terrain types slow sown movement a little and there's
some rounding that goes on.

>>
By the way, does time pass more quickly outdoors?  If not, it seems to 
me that it should because the outdoors are on a larger scale than the 
towns.
>>

Yes. One step outdoors equals Ten steps indoors.

**


>Can you move a party from one town to another by the move party special node? If
>so, then can you move a party from outside into a town using a special node? I
>know about the stairway, but is there another way?

The Stairway is the way. Read the special node description Appendix in the
docs. One of the values for the flags in the Stairway special node move the
party to another town without bringing up a dialog box.

**

i don't know if you have found ithis, (I'm willing to bet you have though) but
if you make a missile and give it a missile property, say lightning, then
change the item type to a weapon, you can create a "Lightining Sword" or other
weapon that does additional magic damage.  Experimenting, I have made other
useful items such as "Lockpicking Swords". 

I have noticed that you have made it possible to make weapons that do extra
magic, fire, and poison, but there is no "cold" weapons???  I really think
that should be something added to the newer editor.  

(What an interesting undocumented feature!)

**

>Spiderweb,
>I have a tad of a problem here and I have NO IDEA how to fix it!  I
>have a town where, after you complete the first quest, the vahnatai mob
>the town and destroy it with their shapers.  That sets an SDF.  When you
>next enter the town, it calls an if-then which checks the SDF.  If you
>have seen the town destroyed, it calls a stairway speial which pops you
>into a destroyed version of the town.  The "always change level" is set
>to 1.  When I enter the town the second time, though, it says, in the
>box in the lower right "Cannot change level now".  What do I do?  

You can't use a Stairway special node when you're trying to use it.
There's an option in the Scenario menu called Set Variable Town ENtry.
Use this instead.
\
> Also, is the requirement for moving
>quickfire that you can see through it?  I haven't had time to test
>this.  There's my problem.  Solve it (please!).

Quickfire moves through any space you can see through.

**
>Have you ever thought of making a monster ability of "Resists Charm"?
If charming is based on the PC's level compared to the target's, then it's
possible to charm any monster, even really important ones since a
monster's max level is 40, and a PC's is 50.

Setting a monster to be immune to magic should protect it from charming.

>When you edit a placed monster and assign it a facial graphic (for dialogs
>with it), there is an option to set the graphic # to 0, which should leave
>it blank. However, when I did this & tested it, I received a long error
>message about possibly corrupted graphic sheets, then the program continued
>on as normal. Only a blank, black space appears where the facial graphic
>normally would be. (Which is what I want.)
>
>I'm on a Mac, and am using a custom graphics sheet. What can I do? Thanks!

USe a custom facial graphic to get a blank portrait. It explains in an article in 
Scenario Articles how to do this.

***

>I'm receiving a series of error message that show up in the lower right
>text window in BoE when I load a scenario I've created in. It appears to be
>associated with custom terrain graphics I've created. Basically, I receive
>the following message:
>
>No room for graphic.
>debug 0 0 2791

And so on.

You've overloaded the buffer Blades keeps track of graphics in. Use less
different terrain and monster types in the town.

***


>I've just made 2 good dungeon. I've set the entrance of the first one. In this a
>stairway brings the party to the second one. Then I've set the entrance of this
>so that a part of the general map is separated from the "world". But when I play
>the dungeon and I exit through the second entrance, my party exit near the begin
>of the first cave (in a mountain square).

You need to use the special node which changes the parties location outdoors. Read about
the different sorts of special nodes.

***



>1.  From reading the online docs I don't think there is much of a way to 
>fix this one, but is there any way to make the party leave from the 
>starting town in the normal direction when they leave town for the first 
>time?  That is, if the outdoor scenario start is one square to the north 
>of the first town, and the party wants to leave town to the west, is 
>there any way of making them appear to the west of the town?

If you manually set the exit locations for the town, it should override the
party starting location.

>2.  Much more importantly, some of my towns which were started 
>containing grass or grass and flowers appear with strips of cave floor 
>along their western edge when they are entered during play.  When I go 
>to edit the towns these strips do not appear anywhere.

Place the party so they can't go within 4 spaces of the town edge.

>3.  Finally, (possibly related to the last problem) I'm having a trouble 
>that might be related to the corrupted town bug, but I can't seem to 
>find the symptoms of that bug described anywhere.
>What happens to me is that my towns work fine when I enter them for the 
>first time during play.  Sometimes they work well the second time.  
>Sometimes they work well all the time.  Now and then, however, the party 
>appears in a vast tract of cave floor. Other than the nearby cave floor 
>the rest of the terrain is unseen.  Sometimes a conveyor belt is shown 
>too.  

Hmm. This definitely sounds like a data corruption. Maybe the game. Maybe the scenario file.
Maybe the editor. Probably not the scenario file, though. I suggest reinstalling 
right away.

***

>when i make a town, i like to place it in the outdoors section.  but, i
>don't know how to tell the program "this little lighthouse thing is town
>#2".  do you understand? if so...please help me soon!!! thanks!!!!

Look in the documentation on editing the outdoors. It's explained quite clearly
there. You use one of the buttons on the editing button area.

***

>I know that the max size of the scenario entered is 1MB but is that
>1MB zipped or unzipped?

Eh, say zipped.

***

>Hi, I didn't know which of your  E-Mail addresses to send this to, so I picked
the one that had the most to do with Blades of Exile. Hopefully, I will be
submitting a scenario to your contest, and have three questions to ask:
One, is there a size limit for submitted scenarios?

1 MB zipped.

Two, how do you  figure out the ratings for the submitted scenarios.

Use your own common sense, and read articles on the usbject int he Scenario Workshop.

Number three is about the editor itself; is it possible in any way to make special
items into maps like you did in the previous Exile series?  

No.

***

>I've noticed that when terrain is changed or transformed, the appropriate
>"frills on shore" do not accompany the change.  I'm trying to set up
>terrain that swaps between "pit/barrier" and "cave floor" to represent cave
>bridges that move to different ledges.  When I change the terrain, the new
>terrain has smooth edges, and none of the rough look that normally borders
>cave floor with pit/barrier.  I also end up with a thin line of rough cave
>floor between two spaces of pit/barrier (one original, one newly changed).
>This looks really bad, but changing the pits to water, or something else
>with no "frills on shore", will change the theme of the whole room.
>
>Is there any way to make the frills show up with the changed terrain?  Is
>there any chance this will be made an automatic feature in future releases
>of the editor?

Possible, but questionable. A tricky oversight on my part, but difficult to do the
way the code is written right now. 

***
>This can be for either the "articles" or "questions" section of the
>scenario workshop.  It's just a list of the item type flags that are
>already being used in the standard list of items, so players won't
>accidentally create new items that use the same flags.
>
>The following type flags are used in the items in the standard list:
>1-19, 21-36, 38-42, 46, 47, and 50.
>
>Flags not used are 20, 37, 43-45, 48, 49, and 51-1000.

Thanks for the comment. I'm not sure about the wisdom of 3rd party users 
using type flags. I suggest giving your items with custom type flags a non zero
special class, so that the item is taken away when they leave the scenario.

***

>I have an idea for a future scenario that basically has all of the action
>taking place within one city, but with each building (or a selection of them)
>actually consisting of 'stairways' taking you to another town that is the
>buildings "interior".  My question is, what are the limits of this?  How many
>stairway specials could I have within one town? 

No limit to this, except, of course, for the number of specials you can have in a town.

***

>One type of shop that can be given in a scenario is a "Magic Shop", or one
>that rotates through different items. From the documentation:
>
>Node Type 23 - Special Item Shop
>This brings up a shop window where the party can buy up to 10 randomly chosen
>items. These items are changed every 3000 moves, and are often magical. There
>are 5 _different, independently maintained lists of items_ the shop can give.
>A is the cost adjustment of the shop (0 .. 6) and B is list of items to sell
>from (0 .. 4).
>
>What I would like to know is exactly what the 'lists of items' referred to
>are. I believe by knowing this I can avoid placing certain unique items in
>slots where they might be chosen as buy-able, and also get an idea of what
>shop has the better choice of items.

The list of items in the scenario. The game goes by the treasure level of the
item to figure out whether to put it into the shop. Items which aren't given
as treasure don't end up in the shop.

>To this I append a list of questions about the nature of the world of Exile.
>
>1. Is it true that there is constant daylight on the surface world?

No.

>2. Is the world round or flat?

Round.

>3. Do cave trees photosynthesize? Can they die? Are they really made of wood?

Yes, yes, yes. They're magically mutated.

>4. Do demons have wings? Some? All?

Some.

>5. Does the world become colder or warmer as the depth increases? Two items of
>consideration: Morog sends the party down to a frigid area, while the
>Slithzerikai fear cold (builders in Exile III) and would naturally live in
>warm places.

Colder, but sliths live near volcanic areas. When they can.

>6. Are there infinitely many gods on which priestly magics of the abundant
>different cults can call upon? Or are priest spells simply mage spells in
>disguise?

Whew. Good question.

>7. What is the explanation for the abundance of life in the caves without
>energy from sunlight?

Magic. And I wave my hands really hard. 

>8. When Grah-Hoth uses Linda's soul for the demon-gate in the Tower disaster,
>how does the real Linda manage to hide and speak?

Her soul is torn apart. A shred remains, enough to make her (barely) alive.

>9. How do the Exiles tell time? They obviously wouldn't see the sun rise and
>set, so when do they know to go to bed? How do they count the days?

It's pretty messed up. Each eprson basically lives by their own biological clock.

>I have not seen an answer to this on the FAQ page.
>It seems there are two general classes of "good" scenarios:  neat little
>packages which hold together well and epics.  Are these rated
>differently for the purpose of the contest or will the epics likely
>dominate?

All other things (incl. quality) being equal, the larger scenario will probably win.

***

An interesting trick:

I've discovered a way to create locked containers(chests,
cabinets,etc.). You have to make a unlockable terrain type that changes
to a container. The items you want to have in the chest are placed on
the unlockable terrain and editted so they are contained in something.
This way the player won't be able to access the items until they unlock
the terain and it becomes a container. Of course this isn't perfect. The 
player has to walk into the object to get the open message and the open
message always displays a picture of a door and asks you to bash open
the 'door' of the object which, if do this to something like a chest,
sounds kind of funny. This can be over come by not 
making the terrain unlockable and instead using a special which require
a special object
(key) to change to terrain to a container.
This same principle can be used to make a dead body appear after some
monster is 
kill which contains the items the party gets. You have to make sure
there are no barrels
or crates in the area of this or the player might push it over the
contained items and it will 'pick up' the items. The items will be in
the barrel or crate instead of the body. 

***

In the game I'm making with the Scenario Editor some of the bigger towns keep
giving errors when playtested.  They say "not enough room for graphic, debug
0039," or something like that, and doors, once opened, appear as cave floor
rather than as open doors.
>>

You're putting too much stuff in the towns and overloading Blades of Exile's
graphics buffer. Use less different terrain and monster types.

***

>I am trying to incorporate pushing a barrel/crate to a location as part of
>a scenario I am writing.  I have found that I can not push the item over a
>special, and that it also will bounce off slime spots and blood pools.  Are
>these correct, and what else is impenetrable to a crate?

Pretty much special spaces, and anything that blocks vision or movement.

>I also can not
>write an "If crate on space" type node.  Is there any way to know if a
>crate is on a space other than spiking the crate with an object and
>checking for that object?

Nope, although that's a clever solution.

>Also, I did not make a scenario name when I started as I was not sure what
>it would be.  Now I can't seem to get anywhere to put one in.  Is there a
>way to do that or do I have to start over and import stuff into the new
>file?

Change the first Scenario text message.

***

>Imagine this situation, please:
>
>Your scenario consists of ONE outdoor section. This section is
>split in half by a chasm. Slith live on the western half and Nehpil on the
>eastern half.
>
>There are four wandering monster placement points, two on the
>western side and two on the eastern side. There are four types of
>wandering monster parties: two with all Sliths, and two with all Nephil.
>
>Given that this is all happening in ONE section of outdoors, is
>there any way to make sure that Slith wandering monsters only show up on
>their side of the chasm, and Nephil on show up on THEIR side?

No. To do this you have to have two outdoor sections, one section with the
Nephilim encounters and one with the Slith encounters.

***

>Is there a way to create a question that is  answered by typing in
>something? (Like the Test of Mind in Exile II).&nbsp;

Yes. Use a Text Response special node.

***

>Dear Spiderweb guys,
>Every time I go into a certain town on a senario I'm working on for
>blades of exile, the screen turns black and when I try to move it says
>"you've reached the world's edge". What can I do about this????
>chris

It's too close to the edge of the outdoors. Move it farther from the edge.

>I'm receiving many "no room for graphic" error messages when loading a
>scenario on Macs.

Use less different graphics in the towns. This is the only solution. Note,
however,
that eliminating custom graphics will not help this problem. You need to
reduce the use of graphics which come with the game.

***

>Is it possible to make boots that protect you from certain terrain types
>such as poison swamps or burning lava? The boots should only protect
>against the specific terrain and not things like weapons, spells, or
>monsters.

The best you can do is protection from poison or fire.

***

>When I use Trasform Retangle. all the terrain turns to cave floor! I see the
>problem is all terrains have Trasform to 0 (Change to Cave Floor) But I can't
>change it for the terrains before the pit terrain. How can I stop this from
>happening?!?

Only transform spaces where you can change the transform to value.

***

>I imported a town from one of my scnerios, I had the sizes of the
>towns the same, but since i made a password for them, I can't import
>without the program saying "send in $10".  I says this every 30 sec. and
>then it quits on me!  What is wrong?

Try upgrading to the latest character editor ... some early windows
versions had a bad import town feature. Or, change the password for the
scenario to 0 before importing. This might help.

***

>I use the latest version of the scenario editor, 1.0.3. A few days ago,
>I noticed some problems in my scenario. The last town seemed to have
>been trashed: whenever I tried to edit its terrain, it crashed, and the
>text+special nodes lists were full of rubbish (random numbers, it
>seemed, resulting in blank node types, neverending loops when entering
>the town in BOE, a 0 by 0 town when I did get in, etc.)

I'm really sorry this happened. Weird crashes can happen at about any time,
including during the rather complicated operation of saving the game.
Always make sure you have plenty of spare room on your hard drive, and
always make sure to back up your scenarios.

>1. Could the scenario designing that we are doing be even minutely
>considered programming?

Kinda-sorta. A lot of programming concepts (if-thens, for example) are being
touched on. And, while it may not be programming, it's definitely design,
which is just as important.

>2. In someone elses question, you mentioned that you used "Borland
>Turbo C++ 4.5" to make the Exile games. I'm interested in learning how
>to program simple text-based games. Would you suggest the Borland, or
>any others?

I actually have no idea what people are using now for basic programming.
I just use what I've always used.

-----------------
>Just wondering....I opened up a custom graphics file in ResEdit on the 
>mac, and noticed a second PICT resource appended to the file, with 
>smaller terrain types. (I'm guessing this is for the shop window) How do 
>you accomplish this on windows with bitmap files? I was playing a 
>scenario, and its graphics were screwed up in the shop window since 
>items used custom graphics.

The second PICT file doesn't do anything. Mac or Windows, it doesn't matter.
Only one graphic with custom icons is ever used.
-----------------
>Problem: Outdoor combat on custom terrain graphics uses "cave
>floor", not the custom terrain, when building an arena for the outdoor
>combat to happen in.

Right now, there's no way to do that.

>Problem two: Custom wandering monsters. When custom wandering
>monsters appear, they look like cave floor.

This is fixed in a later version of Blades.

-----------------
>I'm having two problems with the Blades editor and game (only while
>testing).
>
>1) The game is suddenly telling me I have insufficient memory to display
>graphics. Doors which are opened become cave floor, new monsters become
>cave floor, etc. It's true that I have used up every item slot, every
>monster slot, etc in a large town--but that shouldn't do this. I realize
>that my operating system (WE.1) and memory (16ME) must be part of the
>problem. But what could I be doing with the scenario to contribute to
>this?

You're using too many different icon types in the town. Cut down.


>2) Under what circumstances, other than an ongoing conversation, would I
>get a "Can't change level now" message? I have a simple non-generic
>stairway with a message. The message works but the stair fails . .

Probably you're trying to use the stairway in combat.
-----------------
>Does anyone else have problems finding ideas?

Of course. To get ideas, you really just sit down and think them up.
And, if they don't come, there's no dishonor in it. Scenario design may
just not be for you.
-----------------
>An addendum to Brian's excellent Article #36 "Setting Mage Lore":
>
>Some players run single-PC parties, i.e. with only one character.
>(Try it - it's a lot of fun; tough at the beginning, but you go up
>fast and all the GP/neat stuff doesn't have to be split 6 ways).
>Any Mage Lore requirement over 20 prevents such a party from _ever_
>getting the spell/item, because the Blades engine puts a max
>of 20 points on any skill for any single party member.
>
>Keep Has Enough Mage Lore? at 20 or under.

Not quite. It totals up the Mage Lore in the _entire_ party. This,
if each of the 6 party members has mage lore of 4, they have to 20 required.

However, I must point out that 20 is quite high.

>Is there any way to transfer the exile 3 map to blades of exile?

No quick way. You would have to redesign the whole thing by hand.

###

>I don't know if you would want to put these up, but I would really appreciate
>answers to these questions:
>1. Why can't I use 'Steel Greathammer' as the name of an item, when you used
>'Bronze Studded Armor'?

An inconsistency in design.

>2. I created a custom item graphic.  I applied it to an item, and then placed
>the item in a town.  My problem: why is the middle of the graphic in the top-
>left corner of the space I put the item in?

This should be fixed int he latest version of BoE.

>3. When editing Town Text, what are Comment 1, 2, and 3 for? I didn't find
>anything on them in the documentation.

Just for your comments. No bearing on the scenario.

>4. In the item editor, what type does Missile(No Ammo) stand for?  This isn't
>in the docs, either.

Look harder. It's a missile weapon that can be fired again and again without using ammo.

###
>Is it possible to make a dark outdours section? Is it also possible to
>change the light level of a town, possibly to implement night and day.

Nope.

###


>1, Is there any quick way to import maps from the previous exile games
>for use in blades of Exile?
>2, Is it possible to store a variable after the player leaves the
>scenario? (IE if they finished your first scenario and are about to
>enter the sequel and you want the sequel to remember how/if they
>finished the last one)

No, and no.

###

>Can I use modified BoE graphics in my custom sheet?

Sure.

###

>1. Sometimes, when I create a new scenario, items which should have an ability
>of 'Poisoned Weapon' w/strength 5 will be different, such as 'Flaming Weapon'
>Str. 0, or even 'Mandrake' Str. 10.  One time I got an Alien Blade which was a
>Ressurection Balm.  Is this a bug?

Not all of the weapons in the default scenario are designed quite right. It's
worth checking the unusual items before you give them to the party.
 
>2. When I make an item, sometimes I give it the wrong ability.  But when I
>press Cancel, the original ability is gone.  Is this another bug?

Most likely.

###

>It seems the 'one shots' in the special nodes don't work. Messages keep
>appearing and the same encounters keep appearing when entering the space I
>placed the special node. This problem was also present in the demo.

This definitely works right. Otherwise, all of the already done scenarios wouldn't work. :-)

>My other problem could be a silly one, but I can't find a road among the
>outdoor terrain types. 

It's the floor type that has a little brown spot in the middle. The roads aren't drawn in in the editor.

###

>I made a new town for a my scenario.  I saved it.  Then I tested it out, but
>it erased my town.  I created the town again, this time with a special item
>inside.  I saved three times and tested it again.  It erased my town again,
>but the special item I created for it was still there.  Why did it erase my
>town?

Look on the general FAQ on our web site for bug fixing tips, and make sure
that you have the latest version of the scenario editor. You may still be
using an old version and not know it. This sounds like a bug that was
decisively fixed very early on.

Oh, and always always always back up your scenarios!

###

>I dont know if you can help me with this, but maybe you can point me in
>the right direction.
>
>Something I noticed with the scenario editor that makes it a little
>difficult is a missing table.  I think it would be EXTREMELY helpful if
>there was a list of items by number.  When making shops or using special
>encounters, it often asks for the number of an item, but I dont know the
>numbers to all 170 odd items that are in the editor... So, there is this
>dilema with having to look in other spots every ten minutes to make sure
>I am putting the right number in.
>It seems that no one else has had this problem, so maybe they know
>something that I don't.  Mind letting me in on the secret?

Look at the text dump options in the Scenario menu. You can get a text file
listing your item types.

>I've read everything I can find in the docs, your editor website and
>elsewhere, and can't figure out what I'm doing wrong. I realise it's
>probably just a silly beginner's mistake, so I apologise in advance for
>bothering you about it. The problem is that when I use the 'staircase'
>node in one town to move the party to another town in a different outdoor
>section (in this case, setting up an island-to-island ferry), the party is
>indeed moved nicely to that town. But then when the party leaves the
>second town, it finds itself outside the previous town, in the previous
>outdoor section. Why does this happen? (For what it's worth, when the
>party moves to that town by boat, this doesn't happen.)

There is a special node which changes the party's location outdoors.

###


>Yet again..., I will ask. Did anyone make a "meaningful" walkthrough for
>creating a Scenerio? Not one that "shows" us a pre-made Town, but actually
>"walks us through" creating one?

Beyond the simple walkthrough in the documentation? Not really. But between
the docs and the examples and articles and answer questions files in the
Scenario Workshop, there are plenty of resources to help people write
scenarios. In particular, look inside an already completed scenario, open
the dialogue, and look at a shop someone else made. A good example is often
just as helpful as a walkthrough.

###

>I was wondering if it is possible to make a small dialogue box and have two
>butttons below with messages I can make.  I remeber some things like that
>Exile3 but I can't think of any examples.

Nope. For weird situations, Yes and No work very well.

>Also can you make a similar box with diffrent buttons.  (the slime cave, door
>opening pedestal)?

###

>I've got one town in my scenario that uses 9 of the ten special
>encounter slots. Up to 8 are called on entry to the town, linked to
>stuff done flags to see if the character they place is alive or dead.
>These work fine. The ninth is called in a special if you step in a
>certain place with a certain special item, with a dialouge box
>explaining what's happening. However, this encounter doesn't work
>properly. If I put it in the first encounter slot, it appears even if
>I don't activate the special, and if I put it in the last it doesn't
>appear at all. 

There's already a way to have a stuff done flag attached to a characer,
so, when you kil it, it doesn't reappear.

In another town, I've got a group of hostile monsters
>in a special encounter which activates in a long special that changes
>several stuff done flags and has a major event occur, as well as
>destoying their friendly counterparts. This doesn't work - they refuse
>to appear, whichever number I use for them.

The chain of specials may not be reaching them somehow. Rearrange the
order the nodes are called or have those creatures appear by a special
node triggered somewhere else.

###

I have a rectangle (26,20) upper left, (28, 24) lower right. When I use the
Destroy Items special set to:

Top of rectangle: 20
Left of rectangle: 26

Bottom of rectangle: 24
Right of rectangle: 28

I believe it should destroy everything within that rectangle. However, only
items in the upper left of the rectangle (at 26,20) are being destroyed.

Is this a bug, or am I doing something wrong? Help!


Afraid not.

###

>I replaced the graphic in terrain type 251 (it was a brown desert special)
>with my own graphic (a red desert special, complete with white dot). I've
>left the parameters for this terrain type as they were - the terrain
>properties are clear,special, it can be walked upon, and it has no special
>properties.
>
>Is there a way to make the white dot automatically disappear as it should
>for a one-shot special? In other words, I want it to act just like a grass
>special or a stone floor special. After the party steps on it and something
>happens, the dot disappears for a one-shot, or remains if it is not a
>one-shot.
>
>I know how to code it to do this on a special by special basis, but I plan
>on using this throughout a scenario, and it would be difficult to do it for
>every possible one-shot I might create. Any help is appreciated.

There's no way to do this, although, these days, I recommend that people move
away from the white spot thing. If you can find a way to have none of the
specials use the white spots, the game does tend to look better (Nethergate
doesn't have them). I'm afraid, at this point, hardcoding the spot
disappearing is the only option.

>I have a question on the Blades editor. The four types of breath weapon you
>can give to a monster are fire (does fire damage) cold(does cold damage)
>,electricity and darkness.
>What is the difference between the two? Does one count as magic? Does
>Darkness turn out their lamps?
>Are they in fact the same thing?

Certain magic items protect from fire. Others from cold. If memory serves,
nothing protects from darkness.

###

>I'm not ashamed to borrow!  My question is, now that Nethergate is out, can we
>rip-off, er, borrow artwork from Nethergate for custom graphics in Blades of
>Exile?

You can use Nethergate art in Blades of Exile scenarios, and ONLY in Blades scenarios.

###

>Dear Mr. Vogel/Ms. Kriszan:
>
>I have a few things:
>1. To make the illusion of moving walls (but to get it to look right they
>can't it during this) change a terrain you aren't going to use into a wall.
>then change the 2nd wall type into floor during runtime and change the floor
>(you may have to make a 2nd floor terrain too) into a wall.

Interesting idea.

>2. Why won't Capture Soul/Simulacrum work? Those are my favorite spells!

Upgrade to the latest version.

>3. I found a way to make an underground outdoors section. create a cave
>scenario or a grass scenario. Itmust be at least 1x2 or 2x1. then put a
>mountain barrier on the grass side and a cave wall on the other. It isn't
>perfect, but it works!

This is how Exile III has both outdoor and dungeon sections.

###

>I was just wondering if there was a way of re-using a stuff done flag,
>ie. Every time it is accessed it simply adds 1 to the current flag. If
>I'm not making sence, here's what I'm using it for:
>Every time you step on this rune, your xp goes up by 100. It does this
>25 times, then stops. I didn't want to use 27 nodes (there were 2 others
>in this town, one of which did it 35 times!) so I re-used some nodes.

Sure you can. There are special nodes to increment a stuff done flag, and
other nodes to check if the flag has gone above a certain point.

###

>In the town specs there are some speacle that say unused. What are 
>they for

For you use put special encounters in them.

###

>May we use nethergate item graphics in blades?

You can use Nethergate graphics for Blades of Exile scenarios, but only
Blade scenarios (not different games).

###

>In the gaphics files and scenarios. you used
>
>a yellows fort on cave floor -zakahzi run, morog's fortress
>a wall of garbage -adinitration -dying things, the gnats pit
>scroll rack -cunnig cypt- za kahi run.
>a wall that looks like ciruits, -the contol room, duying things
>
>they grraphic exists but how do i pick these graphics? they do not show
>up on the list fo the editor. are tee your own custom graphics and do
>you use them the same way as custom graphics?

These are used as custom graphics.

###

>I was wondering if stairway special nodes had to be steped on to work. I
>am trying to put one in when talking to someone so that if you accept
>thier mission you will be teleported to another town, but when the node
>is called I get a message saying can't change town. So can I do this?
>How? If not thanks anyway.

You can't change towns/dungeon levels during dialogue.
###


(1.)
In the scenario editor, when you make a new scenario, the "world hieght/width"
will not allow you to select more than 9X9. What is the problem?

It just gets too big for the game to handle. There has to be an upper limit
somewhere. And, believe me, 9x9 should be more than enough.

(2.)
Could you e-mail me back some 'easier to understand' instructions on how to
make custom graphics.

There are piles of examples and discussions of the topic on our Scenario
Workshop. We can't make it much easier than that.


(3.)
In Exile III. When you join the Anama your mage spells are taken away. Is
there a way to do this in the scenario editor?

Nope.

###

>How do you make a town look like it has been attack. Like in exlie III 
>if you don't kill the slimes in time a city might be destroyed. So 
>some of the walls are brocken and some crake

Yes you can. There's one feature that lets you have variable town entrances
depending on the value of a stuff done flag. I refer you to the documentation.

Recently, I received several complaint E-mails about the future of Blades
of Exile. I have placed them here, along with my responses, to clarify
what's happening with BoE.

- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software, INC.
spidweb@spidweb.com

###

>If what some Blades players write is true - less than 50 people are 
>playing BoE, why the devil spend time writing scenarios?

Where ON EARTH did this statistic come from? That's crazy ... how could
we possibly support 2 full-time employees if that few people bought our games?

Lots of people are buying Blades. We've sold several thousand copies since
it came out. However, most of the buyers now aren't on the Internet. Thus,
less scenario submissions, and they mainly get their scenarios from the demo CD.

>The Spidweb contest seemed to generate lots of interest last year - 
>but Blades was also new then. Is Spiderweb planning another contest? 
>Checking the Spidweb.com site, only the information from last year is 
>available.

I thought we put up a not about that. There probably won't be another BoE scenario contest.

The first contest was a VERY time-consuming endeavor. It took a full-time
employee AT LEAST a full day every week to keep up with it. If we did another
contest, it would compromise the release date on our next game, and this really
isn't the most efficient use of our time.

>If I sound disgruntled, I am. I just can't see spending massive 
>amounts of effort writing scenarios for free, for several dozen 
>people.

Again, several dozen people? Sheesh! If it was that few people, I would have given up long ago.

>Jeff needs to make a decision about BoE, IMHO. It needs (at least) an 
>update with bug fixes. A new version with added features would be 
>even better. If the new version won't run the old version scenarios, 
>so what?

Easy for you to say. At this point, with a very large installed base,
creating a new generation of scenarios which older versions can't use
is a tech support nightmare, not just for me, but for you. There will
need to be a very compelling reason to release a new version, and most
of the bugs now are in very peripheral features of the editor.

Not to mention the fact that the older Blades is burned into a lot of
CD-ROMs. There can't be a new release of BoE at all until we go through
the current printing, which will be a while.

>In any case, a clear statement about the future of BoE from SpiderWeb 
>needs to be spread throughout the electronic community. Players are 
>(according to some) dropping off rapidly, probably after exhausting 
>the available scenarios.

That's not necessarily a bad thing. New generations of players are
replacing them, after all. Believe it or not.

>Do you think if the BoE Editor manual were rewritten, with examples 
>added and so on, that this would encourage more people to develop 
>scenarios?

Not really.

>This is, in part, what I do for a living, and I'm willing to take a 
>stab at it if it's worth the effort. But, if BoE is indeed dying, I 
>can't see the point.
>Brett Bixler

BoE is NOT dying. But it is evolving. 

###

(This is Jeff Vogel, despite what the signature says. Feel free to pass
this on to the Blades mailing list.)

>I seem to recall you saying there would be no more games based on
>Exile. Therefore, why, are you creating Avernum? 

I never, ever said that there wouldn't be games based on Exile. I said
there wouldn't be Exile IV. Big difference.

>It appears to be based
>largely on Exile I. While I have not played Exile I throughly, there is
>nothing wrong with the game itself. The graphics may be outdated, but the
>storyline and gameplay is fine, so why bother with it?

Updating outdated software products is a very important part of running
any software company. Exile is desperately in need of a long-overdue
upgrade. The storyline and gameplay are very good, but, in many ways,
it's very crude. It really deserves better, both in presentation and
sales, than it's getting.

>Second, will there be any updates to Blades in the future? I bought
>it twice, mainly due to the media it came on. The first time I recieved it
>was for my Mac, but, you probably don't remember, I used it for a school
>presentation, and needed a PC-compatible copy. When I bought the PC copy,
>it came on a cross-platform CD *sigh*. There are various things that would
>be nice to see added to it. I'm on the BoE mailing list, about to become
>admin soon, and it would be nice to know if there is a clear yes or no on
>updates to Blades. Several people are planning on petitioning, and I
>somewhat doubt its effectiveness, because you are still in it for the $$,
>and know what's going to be a draw for customers. If you knew you aren't
>going to update it, it would be nice to tell everyone to save you and them
>the trouble of it.

At this point, no updates of Blades are planned. This is explained on the web
site, but, basically, creating a new generation of scenarios which won't work
on the current installed base of thousands of users will be a logistical and
technical support nightmare for everyone involved.

The moment, however, that something happens to the computing enviroment (such
as a new OS version) which makes Blades no longer work right, you will see an
upgrade with lightning speed. I will do EVERYTHING to make sure that the
scenarios you all work so hard to write will always have players.

>As Asa Swain wrote you, some of the messages are getting
>increasingly hostile. There is a general feeling of abandonment of the
>Blades community by Spiderweb Software. Not because of a lack of new
>scenarios on your page(at least not me), but mainly because such a
>seemingly versatile product hasn't seen any updates recently, with the
>exception of those which may fix some lurking bug.

People don't realize how hard it is to upgrade a shareware product. Older
versions of Blades have appeared on CD-ROMs all over the world. Even if I
upgrade it, for years, people will still try out the old versions.

I still get registrations for Exile v1.0, and it's five years old!

>If you release this information, I'd like to know, but it may be
>confidential. Just out of curisoty, about how many registered users of
>Blades are there? There are estimates that only about 50 people are playing
>it, which seems grim.

With all due respect to all concerned, someone totally pulled that figure out
of his ass. The day I release a game and only 50 people play it is the day I
quit this biz and get a real job.

There are thousands of registered users, and more every day.

###

>Greetings.
>
>Congratulations on Blades of Exile. It is a very intriguing game, and the 
>ability to create complex scenarios makes BOE stand apart from the rest.
>
>One thing that I'd like to comment on is that, being somewhat of a scenario 
>designer, I've found it somewhat frustrating in my designs to use one of the 
>basic elements in scenario design: monsters. I know that you probably haven't 
>revealed any formulas for your games to prevent people plagiarizing your 
>work. I can't say I blame you, looking at what happened to AD&D. But not 
>knowing how some of the different monster stats work makes it incredibly 
>difficult to try and find a suitable balance between the monsters that I want 
>to put into an encounter and the relative strength that I imagine or expect 
>the PCs to have.  Also, one quite impressive aspect of your scenario 
>designer, in particular the ability to create new monsters from scratch, is 
>in practice extremely unwieldy for the same purpose. Knowing how the 
>characters and monsters compare helps the encounter design. For example in 
>AD&D, it was relatively simple to plan out an encounter. For each level 1 PC, 
>I could put one orc ( a level 1 monster) into the encounter and have a 
>reasonable expectation of PC survival. For every two level 2 characters, I 
>could put in two gnolls (level 2 monsters), or three orcs. And so forth.
>
>Is there some advice that you can give to aspiring scenario designers on how 
>to use the monster editor and/or how monster levels compare to player levels? 
>Perhaps something like, "for every 8 HP, adjust the level up one" or "zombies 
>are roughly as strong as level 1 adventurers"? I'm sure that being able to 
>balance monster strengths for the encounters will help to improve the quality 
>of scenarios that are being designed. Too often, I've noticed that the 
>designer simply slapped together a haphazard collection of monsters and 
>called it good enough. (Let's see. 20 slimes, 5 liches, 3 ice drakes...)
>
>Thanks!
>Robert
>Robert094@aol.com

Yes. There is only one piece of advice I can give.

Playtesting.

Period.

This is the ONLY way to know whether your scenario is the right difficulty
level. Have people play it. Play it yourself. Take it from one who knows ...
the is the only way to ever get the balance right.

###

>Is it alright to use graphics from Nethergate in Blades of Exile? 

Yes ... you can use graphics from nethergate in Blades of Exile scenarios.
But not any other games.

###
Some people have complained recently that the Scenario Workshop is not updated
very often. There's a very good reason for this ... we get very little to add.

It's not like there are piles of new scenarios coming in, and we just ignore
them. There are almost no new scenarios and scenario evaluation reports coming
to us. At this point, most of the people ordering Blades are not, repeat, not
on the Internet. They get the demo CD to play scenarios, but they aren't
making their own.

When scenarios do arrive, we make an effort to get them up speedily, though,
considering the number of other things we have to do, this is sometimes
difficult. We apologize for any stress this may have caused. 

- Jeff Vogel
Spiderweb Software, Inc.
http://www.spidweb.com
###

<spidweb@spidweb.com> Subject: Re: Blades Quirks
Cc: blades@spidweb.com


>1) When I went to change a town name from "17:" to "17: Castle Quarter"
the editor repeatedly would save the file and then crash. Subsequent openings
led to crashes (general faults). When I finally tried just "Castle Quarter"
on an older saved version (thank god) nothing went wrong. How could this be?
Is the editor perhaps sensitive to saving blocks of text that are too long?
That is, i
>think I may have actually been changing "17:	" to "17:
>Castle Quarter	". Does that make sense? I'd like to
>keep the risk of future repeats low, as this obviously corrupts the file. 

I've never heard of anything like that. Your editor may have been corrupted,
which would explain why reinstalling helped. 

>2) I wrote to you about a year ago with this problem, and it has recurred
in what might be a telling way. I have a city composed of 25 towns strung
together. I found that my party would often be sent in the opposite
direction, as though they were entering / leaving on the opposite side of a
town from the actual side. My solution was to keep the town entry / exits
asymmetrical (and switched to win95). This has worked. But I still find this
can occur with stairway specials. I have a tunnel entry (i.e., not an
edge-of-town stairway like the others) at something like (4, 32) with the
town boundary at its max setting. My party entered town from the opposite
side, at (59, 32), via a stairway, and immediately was told it faced this
tunnel opening. So there does seem to be some confusion of values along one
axis, but the other axis seems not to matter.

I can't guarantee that, when the engine is pushed to the very limits of its
capabilites, strange things won't happen. 

>3) I have a boat set in one town that I cannot edit. Regardless of how I change
>the settings, it stays there and stays non-property. How can I reset or work
>around this, without just leaving it? This one really bugs me. 

Probably, if you restart the scenario, the changes will take place, but, once
the scenario is begun and the boat is placed, later changes in the scenario
itself won't affect the adventure already taking place. 

>4) I still am getting problems with graphics in playing one town:
>"no room for graphic" in the small scrolling window, or once "Blades will show
>some terrain as cave floor." I don't know if the first is a problem, but the
>second definitely is. This used to happen when I had 16 megs of Ram and win 3.1.
>Why still? What's the main thing to avoid doing to cause this in designing a
>town? I really don't think I have overdone it. Is it the VARIETY of terrain? should I
>eliminate some terrains entirely, or limit myself to a certain # of terrains? I
>just need a general idea or guidelines. What's the limiting factor? 

Blades can only hold and keep track of like 130 icons at once. System memory is not a factor.

###
>It's a simple town-to-town stairway. And i've actually made it work. But the
>problem has spread, viruslike. This is what I did: 

>Town 100 was crashing at every leave-town call, including town boundary.
>I exported it to a dummy scenario. It tested fine. Then I moved 100 to town 25
>in the scenario itself. It works fine. I deleted town 100 and re-created it as
>another town. Again, it did not allow exits (including relocate party, which
>didn't crash it but rather did nothing.). I created more towns and shifted the
>new 100 to 127, abandoning 100 for good. Now both 100 and 127 don't work. I
>even shifted 127 to the dummy (it worked) and back. No go. 

>I can handle treating 100 as a "bad slot," but is every new town i create now
>going to be a failure? I have considered starting a new scenario and copying
>terrain, monster, etc. info over by hand, but that is a last resort. It seems
>to me that if I repaired it once I should be able to do it again. And deletion
>should clean any error out. The question is: is the corruption in the scenario,
>the slots, the specials, or the game? My evidence argues for the slots
>themselves--so then why doesn't deletion work? 

>I realize my glitches are a pain in the ass, but I appreciate whatever suggestions you have.

>Dave Stockhoff

>SpiderWeb Software wrote:

>>>Briefly, I have a town that is set up to connect with two other towns by two
>>>stairways. I'm noticing that though
>>>a party can enter the town from either of the other towns, when it tries to
>>>use a stairway back to either of those towns, the game crashes (gpf). This
>>>does not happen and has never happened in any other situation. 

>>I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to do here, but it's possible that
>>it's something that isn't possible in the engine. 

>>- Jeff Vogel
>>Spiderweb Software, Inc.
>>http://www.spidweb.com

###
[Follow up email exchange for last question]

>Ahah! That explains a lot, and yes i can probably do that. Part of the reason i
>have so many towns is that I have a system for numbering them (above ground vs.
>below) that will allow me to fill in "unused" slots, which most are. I'd guess
>99 is the ceiling. Too bad . . . .

>Thank you. However . . .

>Another problem that has just cropped up a few minutes ago (probably related) is
>that I created town 128 and 129, and assigned those numbers to two town icons.
>but the numbers that it retains are (get this) -128 and -127, respectively. Both
>a digit substitution AND a negative sign! 127 and below work OK, however (at
>least as far as getting it to remember the right number. Haven't playtested them
>yet). That sounds to me like some kind of trouble handling three digits for certain functions.

>So if anyone else has this problem, i guess just tell them limit stairways and
>relocates to 1-99, keep 100-127 out in the open, villages etc., and don't go over 127.

>Dave

>SpiderWeb Software wrote:

>>Areas town 100 and above are sort of an unexplroed area in Blades.
>>I don't think anyone has ever created a scneario that large before.
>>It is possible that there's a bug when you get up that far. If it's
>>possible to get by without using stairways in the highest numbered
>>towns, it might be a good idea.

>>Also, I'd back up your scenario often, just in case more problems appear ... 

>>- Jeff Vogel
>>Spiderweb Software, Inc.
>>http://www.spidweb.com

###
>I am trying to create a science fiction BOE scenario. This will require
>>me to re-write most of the items. However I would like to know how to
>>work out how much damage a weapon is going to do. 

This should be explained in the chapter on items. 

>I also need to know how much damage the different rays and the breath
>weapons do, and the ranges for weapons and rays would be nice. 

The range is usually 8. The damage is generally around 1-8 per ability level. 

>Also, is it safe to modify the creatures summoned by specific
>spells(summon spirit/demon/host)?

Should be.

###


>I don't know whether this qualifies as a Scenario Editor bug or not, but I
>thought it worth mentioning, as it confounded me for some time. It seems
>that you can't call the 'If-Then' node Type 135:Terrain this type? (Town)
>directly from a dialogue response. For instance, you can't get a different
>simple dialogue response to a question depending upon the state of
>a given location's terrain. For instance, you can't simply have a prisoner
>character respond to a question depending upon whether his door has been
>unlocked or not. Apparently, a 'One-Shot Special' node type
>must be called up first, and the node Type 135 called in response to the
>player's response to a 'One Shot' dialogue.

This really should work. I can't imagine why it wouldn't work this way, but
I'll put a warning about it on the web site.

###

>I'm creating a scenario, and when I create an encounter with the One-time
>Place Town Enc. node, for some reason 3 creatures named "Empty" are
>appearing in the encounter! I didn't place them there, that's for sure.
>They have no points or stats, and appear as the "Dwarf w/ an ax" default
>icon.
>
>At first I thought it was because one of the monsters I was placing in the
>encounter was the last monster on the monster list (the last one I
>created). But I created an additional monster after that one to test this,
>and I'm still getting the Emptys!
>
>I've seen these in other scenarios created by other people as well, BTW.
>
>Anyone have any suggestions on how to get rid of these pesks?

This sounds like, somehow, a little bit of the data in your scenario has
become corrupted. A possible workaround is to call a special node upon
entering elimiting all monsters of type Empty. I've never heard of
anyone else having this problem.

###

>1)  Is there a way to make a town/dungeon that the Magic Map spell will
>not work for?  I have a couple of mazes that would be much better
>without that info.

No.

>2)  I also have a special item that I can't figure out how to get it to
>work.  It's a magic dust that controls a character in the game.  It will
>only work on one character (you must be in that town #).  That character
>then takes you to another town (Stairway).  However, when the special
>item is used, it gives the correct messages, but won't move the party. 
>I didn't think this was dialog, but it seems to be the same problem.  Is
>there a way to move the party to a new town by using a special item?

I don't think that will work.

>3)  Last one.  Stuff Done?  It always seems to do the opposite of what I
>expect.  For example:   A NPC gives the party info in a dialog that sets
>SDF (1,5) to 1.   Later, when a special called is Stuff Done?  it checks
>SDF (1,5).  I get the wrong special if the party doesn't have that
>info.  They seemingly don't need to talk to that person.  Do all SDF's
>start at 0?

Yes.

###

>How can I let more than nine charakters talk in a new town?

You put the characters in a different town, and place a character what
their personality number in the original town.

>And why horses or boats do not appear in the terrain?

They appear in the game itself.

###

I have been asked why I haven't made Blades open source, allowing other
people to modify it. A few reasons:

i. There is no way to fully prevent privacy, since this would involve
making the registered version available for download.
ii. There would be no way to synchronize the Mac and Windows versions. This
may be a small issue for you, but it is extremely important to me.
iii. It would interfers with my making Exile available for license to
others at a later date, which is a possibility.
iv. It would be a mess when I needed to upgrades Blades myself.
v. It would inevitably get tech support and question E-mail sent back to me
(user modifications always do this), picking away at my nonexistant free
time.

###

A very helpful E-mail ...

Spiderweb Software,
    The page mentions that if you have a scenario design trick, send it in.
    Well, I don't know if this qualifies as a "trick," but here's a 
suggestion:  Scenario builders, make sure your 
shopkeepers/trainers/healers/mayors/etc. cannot leave the building they're 
in.  It's very annoying to have to close doors behind you lest they wander 
out where you can't find them.  This can be done by making "monster blocker" 
floors in the three squares in front of a door, or extending a counter to 
span the whole room.
    Also, something else that's a bit annoying:  Always assume that the 
player will be smarter than you think he/she is, and don't give such gigantic 
rewards for easy-to-find "secret areas."  One example of this is finding a 
huge supply cache of alchemy ingredients (including three mandrakes) for 
walking into a room in an easy-to-beat dungeon, and only getting the 
resistance similar to half a dozen goblins and a goblin leader.  Or getting 
Demonslayer for killing three Fire Lizards.
    And last, if you're stuck on what else to put in a town, then go back 
through Exile I, II, and III!!  Jeff's created wonderful towns, so walk in 
and see what kind of things they have, spacing between buildings, size of 
rooms, etc.  It can really help if you think a building looks awkward.
    That's all from me, put 'em up if you want, mostly I was just venting my 
frustrations due to a few scenarios that had these problems (other than the 
last, which was my own that I'd thought others might benefit from).

###

>How can I let more than nine charakters talk in a new town?

You put the characters in a different town, and place a character what
their personality number in the original town.

>And why horses or boats do not appear in the terrain?

They appear in the game itself.

###

>Came across this in a scenario I am polishing up.  I have a time counter
>which slowly drains the party of HP and spell points.  The goal is to have
>the counter exactly offset the rate at which these are normally recovered
>(or at least to get close.)
>
>When I first set up the game I had two counters going (various reasons),
>each firing every 150 turns, for an average of 1/75 turns.  This worked for
>my chars (Mac sys 7.5.5).  In beta testing, all the beta testers have
>complained that they are drained way fast.  I have upped it to 1/150 and
>1/200.  The chars on my machine now recover points given time, while on
>another machine (powermac G3, sys 8.5) still lose rapidly.  This is true
>even when we play the same chars in the same location in the game (i.e. my
>beta tester was nice enough to send me the file to play with.)
>
>Is there an OS link to the counting rates?  Do you know why this might be
>happening?  Can you advise as to the right drain rate to accomplish my goal?

No, no, and around once every 40 turns. This is very weird behavior, perhaps
related to some baroque incompatability between Blades and some implementations
of some versions of some operating systems. This is really weird behavior.
Someone's copy of Blades might be damaged.

Brett Bixler comments ...

I've no idea why this is happening to you, Ben. It's almost as if the speed
of the system was interfering with what should be a turn-based counter. In
other words, the speed of the machine shouldn't make any difference. 100
turns is 100 turns.

In a related matter, I've noticed that counters I set sometimes seem as if
they are not firing on a set interval. For example, if I set a global timer
to fire every 100 moves, it seems like sometimes it fires at 80-85 moves,
other times at 120-140 moves. I've never extensively tested this, because
this is OK for what I'm doing.

Brett Bixler

Response:

This would explain the situation. It is possible that there's a glitch which
sometimes causes scenario counters to skip a beat occasionally. It is also
possible that some upload of Blades somewhere has a corruption which has
changed this code. I think that my basic source code is correct here.

###

>1) When I went to change a town name from "17:" to "17: Castle Quarter" the
>editor repeatedly would save the file and then crash. Subsequent openings led
>to crashes (general faults). When I finally tried just "Castle Quarter" on an
>older saved version (thank god) nothing went wrong. How could this be? Is the
>editor perhaps sensitive to saving blocks of

Q: A few Blades of Exile Scenario Editor questions that I can't find in the
docs anywhere...
    What does the error message "Special Item out of range" mean? I
mean, what operation is it trying to perform that it can't? I get this
when I try to take a special item from the characters.

A: You used a negative number or a too high number to refer to a special item
somewhere.

Q: What is the deal with the Magic Store talking node? It's not in the
docs. I've tested it out to see what it does, but I'm just wondering if
there's some reason it's not listed in Section 11 under Buying Talking
Nodes between Special Item Shop and Reveal Town Location.

A: It sells randomly generated items.

Q:Also, as far as I can tell, store #2 has the same item being sold twice.
Was this intentional? What was the purpose?

A: Maybe an error.

Q: My Scenario Editor is version 1.0.4, but my Blades is version 1.0.2.
I got them at the same time. Are they both the latest versions and
compatible? I've been getting some strange bugs, switching the text of
generic levers and weird things like that, so I'm just wondering.

A: The scenario editor is its own program and so it gets its own version 
number. The editor has gotten updated more times then the Blades program
itself (the one used to play the scenarios). They should be compatible. 
However errors like that are very strange and cause for concern.

Q:    Lastly, I'm the only person I know who plays Blades, so beta testing
my scenarios will be impossible unless I can find someone on the
Internet who would be willing to do this for me. Do you know where I
could look?

A: Hmm. I'm not sure. Go to the web site listed on our Scenario Workshop
page, the one that does scenario design contests now. 
They might have a list of contacts for things like that. Also try visiting 
the other Blades websites listed on our Related Pages page (there are 
quite a few), they might have contacts as well.