Good news from the Avernum front. The game is done. It has been passing smoothly through beta testing. It should be out for the Macintosh before the end of November.

A lot of work recently has been on balancing the late game. A lot of people had trouble with the difficulty of Avernum 5. I've been working hard to make sure that when you're playing on Normal difficulty you don't need to be super-skilled to just get through the storyline. Of course, if you want a challenge, Hard and Torment difficulties are available.

Also, if you want things to be really easy, the character editor and cheat codes are still in there.

Almost all of the graphics in the game have been redone. I'm putting the final touches on the completely refreshed item graphics.

The game is, as is traditional, enormous. There is a LOT of stuff to do, and the main storyline alone is full of excitement and incident. And be careful about who who help. Your actions can result in drastically different futures for the world of Avernum.

Today, I am putting together the final version of the application and sending it to testers. Then, barring disasters, I'll start on the million different bizness things I need to do to finish a game. I hope to have more screenshots up very soon.

So keep an eye on the main Avernum 6 page:

http://www.avernum.com/avernum6/index.html

Onward to victory!

- Jeff Vogel

As soon as you have a firm date I'll put on my calendar "Buy A6". Unfortunately I was just informed that I have to work over the holidays (ugh), so I'll be just a wee bit delayed in enjoying it.

I'm sure this has been discussed elsewhere, but what is the next RPG series now that Avernum is complete?

Yay! Can't wait till it gets released for Windows.

Also, yay for more screenshots!

Thanks for touching base with us Jeff. Now if you only made your games for windows first....

Huzzah!!!

Jeff hasn't said what it's about except that he is using information from beta testing Avernum 6 to make a better game engine.

I hope you don't make Normal too easy. I always play on normal under the assumption that normal is the mode that designers intend their games to played in. Am I wrong to assume that normal is the intended mode?

Also what exactly is the difference between Normal, Hard, and Torment?

vch: for some normal is too hard and for some even torment is easy.

differences are damage you do and take and monsters hps and resistances and some other things.

game is better to be long since its final chapter.

Jeff applies a multiplier to monster health, damage, and a few other things to differentiate the difficulty levels. Basically on torment the monsters have 4 times their health.

Jeff is planning to make there be some real differences in the harder playing levels, but I'm adopting a wait and see attitude on whether they make a real difference.

Woo! Can't wait for A6. Glad it'll be out so soon, too. Rock on.



It's actually easier to port a game from Mac to Windows than vice versa. Hence he saves time and money by doing it this way.

Yay!! Everyone loves early releases.

Right when I needed to get some real work done...
Hooray! I see a bright future full of poor little tormented characters. We may think they die a lot, but they'll never know just how many times we reload. This is going to be a really great game, and I am overjoyed by this early release!

Excellent news. Looking forward to enjoying A6 soon... just as soon as the PC version is done

Are we expecting a late December or early January release for the Windows version?

it might be closer to feb than jan.

Maybe even March. Remember there were lots of problems with Geneforge 5 running on Windows systems and there is now a new operating system to test too.

Darn. It just gets worse and worse for us Windows people.

Patience is a virtue.

I usually wait about a year after the initial release before I buy the game, just to make sure most of the bugs are worked out when I order the CD.

I find it extra ironic that Jeff said they were finished early

1st quarter is safe to expect windows-version and at 2nd quarter gets worst bugs somewhat fixed and 3rd quarter game should be fully fixed.

But what about the 4th quarter?

This is a good plan when buying computer hardware or operating system software, but really Spiderweb games rarely have bugs that are so bad as to warrant waiting a year before buying the game. I don't think you need to deny yourself the enjoyment for that long.

True enough, but when I buy the games, I prefer not to have to download a patch shortly after the CD arrives; such was the case when I bought A1, BoA, and one of the Geneforge games. However, I still download and play the demo versions to get a feel for the games.

you check if 2nd trilogy-cd is available.

Yay, more screenshots!

Nice! The new world map looks... ok. Better and more useful than the A5 map, but still not as useful as it could be, since it looks like there's still going to be no "fog of war"-ish device.

it would be great if the mini map had another color to differentiate terrain that had been seen and that which had NOT been seen.... sometimes when im around confusing caves it kills me (figuratively) when i cant tell what has and has not been explored

How do you know that's not what you are seeing? Who claimed that this is the map you start with? I'm curious.

Well, it's labeled in two places as the world map and that's how the world map was used in A4 and A5.

wow it even includes the northern isles and blackchasm keep. (and is that hrikis's tower?) but why isn't new hartson anywhere on the map?
And it looks like someone sank shanker's tower, there's a hole in the middle of the biggest island in the northern isles