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 ### Subject: Re: Blades Quirks Cc: b l a d e s@ spiderwebsoftware . com (Note spaces added to thwart spammers. Remove spaces for valid email address.) >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. ###