Exactly. If I wanted to do a 1st Edition AD&D game, this is what I would want to use. It has everything I need an then some.caars wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2019 7:40 pm Since it's been quite a while, I actually downloaded and installed the current version just to play around with it. It is greatly improved over when I was playing with it two or three years ago (I also bought a 'Gold Box pack' on the cheap with FRUA in it); I'll probably mess with it in more depth - I've wanted to just create an online AD&D 1st edition 'campaign' just for nostalgic purposes.
I'm more into dungeon crawlers. Mainly Wizardry. Bane of the Cosmic Forge was a game that just sucked me in. Even though I hated how they changed spells and what not, it had me immersed. The conditions it added, like itching skin, made it even more dangerous for play. I played that game quite a few times, restarting, before I actually beat it.But it does confirm what I was remembering - it's much easier to make a game with BT Builder (and BT Builder is much easier to 'customize' into something that differs markedly from it's 'roots'), while Dungeon Craft has, in a sense, more potential to make something substantially more complex (but with less deviation from the system it is based on).
I thought the spell durations were fixed? I've been making my own using the xml file. I will admit, I do find it irritating that BTBuilder doesn't just tick time, instead only changing time when you move. I don't remember BT games being like that.Incidentally, the main thing I'm waiting on in BT Builder is the fix to spell durations (i.e. the fact that they are relative to when you last left the guild - I've just made all out of combat spells have *really* long durations to compensate), monster saves (at the moment only a roll of 20 - at least according to dulsi - results in a successful save; my conditional is because I have yet to see a monster actually make a save to anything ever when testing my modules - something I only started to see post ver 3.17 - so I have to take on faith they've just been absurdly unlucky so far), and paralysis (a spell that applies paralysis literally tries to apply the condition once per round of its duration, and once applied paralysis is permanent, essentially making it a death spell for all practical purposes - at least according to the BTCS manual the original intent was for the duration to actually be the duration of the effect and to 'restore movement' once the spell expired; but I honestly have no idea if it ever worked the way it was supposed to even in BTCS). Still, I'm currently on level 3 of 5 in the last dungeon in the current module I'm working on (and I've already got a sequel to that one fully outlines once I'm finished). The "released" one (based on my random dungeon generator) is much more fleshed out in the first five of the eleven levels it has - it's been fully playable, but didn't really have any story at all - just dungeon levels with monsters and traps to explore. So playing it is essentially like playing a the first Wizardry. Only harder. And Wizardry was hard. So I should probably do something about that...
I haven't really tested spell effects either, but I should probably start. Since I'm starting over from scratch, I reset everything and I'll be redoing all the spells again.
And yes, Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord was VERY unforgiving. It's part of the reason I loved that game so much. Was always disappointed that my characters would never transfer from Wiz 1 to BT, but I did get some interesting characters, with a few bonus items I didn't have before, when I used boot disks instead of character disks. I used to try and find characters on any game disk I had, just to see if I got anything good. Kinda like when I used to play Monster Rancher on my old PS1/2.