The Drunken Lizard Pub

I think it's safe to say that Avadon will have walking animations, based on part of a screenshot of the game. If you look closely at this character, you can see the legs in a walking position that seems very unlikely to be the standing frame. I'm not certain, but for me this pretty much confirms that Avadon will have the Geneforge movement system. Although I can't quite figure out why there is a grid when you enter combat mode... IIRC, Geneforge didn't have that.

Riggon wrote:I think it's safe to say that Avadon will have walking animations, based on part of a screenshot of the game. If you look closely at this character, you can see the legs in a walking position that seems very unlikely to be the standing frame. I'm not certain, but for me this pretty much confirms that Avadon will have the Geneforge movement system. Although I can't quite figure out why there is a grid when you enter combat mode... IIRC, Geneforge didn't have that.

The grid looks to be there as a combat assist to show how far your character can move in a turn. Note the green squares showing where you can move vs. the red ones that are out of range. That would be my best guess anyway.

Like the fool I usually am, lol...I allowed myself to possess very high expectations of Avadon. You know...Avernum was all wrapped up and I figured what Jeff was going to hit us with next was going to really blow our minds via a brand-spanking new series.

Someone refered to the first game in this new series as "Avernum 7."

heh-heh...Ah well...in for a penny, in for a pound, meaning...I've purchased the others...might as get into this new Avernum, er...Avadon, too.

Rush.

Rush wrote:Like the fool I usually am, lol...I allowed myself to possess very high expectations of Avadon. You know...Avernum was all wrapped up and I figured what Jeff was going to hit us with next was going to really blow our minds via a brand-spanking new series.

Yes! That's exactly what I was thinking... and hoping for. I'd thought this was going to be a major turning point for Jeff and Spiderweb games.

But at the very least it's nice to see walking animations, like in Geneforge.

...Hopefully there'll be an option, like Eschalon has, to turn on or off the grid system.

Evnissyen, what do you think? Will there will be a Avadon Editor in the future for creating user-made scenarios? Might be cool. Did you try out the Avernum Editor at all? I tried, had fun with it, but I'm not skilled in programming.

Rush.

I don't know . . . I know it's been talked about, about Jeff implementing a Swords of Avernum -type game where players could create their own adventures... haven't heard any word on it, though, in regard to this game. (But then: I haven't been on the Spiderweb forums in ages, or been reading Jeff's [relatively] new blog, so I wouldn't actually know.)

Randomizer could tell you.

Myself, I've never used game editors to make my own [free] adventures with the given system, I don't really feel any attraction to it.

The only sort of Spiderweb 'game editor' I've used was the character editor the last two Avernums where I felt compelled to manipulate the stats because the skill-access-within-skill-access system (where you had to put in # points into X to get to put points into Y, then had to put # points into Y to get access to Z), just frustrated me.

For anyone not familiar with the series: The only way to get skill like, say, Riposte or Lethal Blow or Resistance, was to augment a couple others in sequence or else two or three at a time, to different levels for each -- not all the prerequisites being useful, so that with some of these skills, if you did it honestly you'd have to aim for that one special skill or so from the very beginning and even then you'd only be able to get them opened up very close to the end of the game.

Of course, there were magic items which augmented these skills for you artificially, but you couldn't open them up and hike them up at level-gain until all the prerequisites were satisfied.

I hope the new game fixes this.

Avadon will probably have some sort of character editor similar to Avernum 6, but there hasn't been any mention.

A Blades type editor where you can create your own map and scenarios to play is probably unlikely. The tools are all there because Jeff Vogel uses them to create the game, but they have to be tested and documented to actually sell or include them with the game. I have read lots of complaints that the documentation for Blades of Avernum wasn't that great and long lists of bugs that never got fixed.

The main problem is that there isn't as large a market for the editor as a product. There were never the sales for Blades of Avernum to justify doing it again for Geneforge. Even with all the free scenarios available for Blades there isn't that big a customer base.

Blades of Avernum. Right. Not Swords of Avernum.

Stupid me.

This must be the Summer of my Stupidity.

Or maybe I'm getting old. Can't remember things I should be remembering.

Somebody kill me?

In my defense: don't have the game, never interested me. The idea of making adventures using the graphics and interface of A1-A3? No thanks, man.

Evnissyen wrote:The idea of making adventures using the graphics and interface of A1-A3? No thanks, man.

Jeff said in his latest interview that he's going to update the first Avernum trilogy to the A6 engine and graphics (and he's going to add and fix some things throughout the entire game). That will be great, because even I can't take a whole lot of the A1-A3 engine. Although he very probably won't update Blades of Avernum, since it almost certainly wouldn't be worth the effort... although I'd love it if he did it anyway.

jeff mentiones he'll be using skill trees in avadon so i guess that's a start right

Latest blog (this last week) says the game will be class based instead of skill based as the others were. You will have your character and get 2 others in the game to run around with, be 4 classes so one will not be available unless you send one off on a separate errand. Nice picture of the 4 classes and figures. This is the 3rd blog about the game and process. I'm keeping an eye on this one.

Avadon beta testing starts in October with Mac version release scheduled for February. Windows version will probably be 3 to 4 months after the Mac release.

Randomizer wrote:Avadon beta testing starts in October with Mac version release scheduled for February. Windows version will probably be 3 to 4 months after the Mac release.

I have to hand it to Jeff...I don't know how he can possibly put out new games so quickly. If this were just a sequel, that'd be one thing. But a full-blown new game? Jeff must be more machine than man...

Jeff Vogel has put out a request for Mac version beta testers. Information is available here:
http://www.spiderwebsoftware.com/testing/beta_test.html
He always needs new testers to balance out the insane min-max die hard gamers left over from previous game testing.

Randomizer wrote: He always needs new testers to balance out the insane min-max die hard gamers left over from previous game testing.

Insane min-max die hards hey? Good thing BW doesn't have to deal with that sort of thing around here.

*will... maintain... straight... face...*