Game Date?

[Kingston]

And to scare torrenters away seed your own version full of viruses.

 

[Fryjar]

Are fully pictured special encounters that are soley handled via dialogue screens one of the things you consider ...?

 

[The Public Enemy]

100% done and playable

another 6 months or another year

what

The amount of vapor in the air is getting intolerable and I am choking on my own tongue as I write.

 

[Vault Dweller]

100% done and playable

another 6 months or another year

what

The amount of vapor in the air is getting intolerable and I am choking on my own tongue as I write.

Selective quoting FTW? The second comment (the "6 months to a year" stuff) was made in regard to Gothic 3, to illustrate my point about playble games that aren't ready to be released. Anyway, if someone feels that AoD is vaporware that will never get finished/released, well, I'm sure that I would have felt exactly the same way too, so I won't try to argue and convince you otherwise. So, uh, yeah, it's vaporware.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Are fully pictured special encounters that are soley handled via dialogue screens one of the things you consider ...?

No. Mostly because we don't have a good artist who's good enough to draw such pictures [of the acceptable quality]. It's not a must-have feature though.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

I can post a list of things I want to fix, if someone's interested and, perhaps, would like to help.

Sure! I'd love a list. Not that I could personally help though; I may be a developer myself, but I serve only as a consultant/adviser on realism in combat sims (Operation Flashpoint, Armed Assault, etc). I can't code for shit, or do textures or anything like that.

But I am curious.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Well, one thing that always bugged me was the complete and utter lack of anything resembling art direction. I underestimated this aspect, which is probably the biggest mistake I've made developing AoD. We have visually interesting locations like the towers, the Petra-inspired location, the temple, some tombs and underground places, but the towns look... I don't even know what word I'm looking for. Generic? Uninspiring? Boring?

Somehow they don't look like towns, but like a loose collection of buildings. At least in the Spiderweb games the towns are way too abstract for someone to say "wait-a-minute! That doesn't look like a proper town at all" (I'm too lazy to take screenshots right now, but I think we have a town shot on the website, so take a look). Anyway, we decided to throw away the town maps and start basically from scratch, splitting each town map into districts and spending more attention/time on each district, doing it right this time.

So, for this particular task I need an artist who can create a visually distinctive style for each town and district. For example, I'm still looking for someone to design the slums - a maze-like area avoided even by guards. It's a mini-town, basically, with its own lord and its own laws.

Plan of the area
Some inspiration
One of the things that we need - building design (doesn't have to be as pretty though)
A concept of the area by one of the talented Codexers who, sadly, didn't have time to continue his work

So, going back to the original "is it done or not" question, we can either say that the towns are fine as they are now and just forget about it or we actually redesign them as outlined above.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

I agree that it'd be better to take more time to create a greater experience. I find that the moderate or even little changes you can make, however minor they can seem individually, really add to the game as a whole. It's the little unique details that I sometimes remember from a game (which sets it apart from other games which all have the usual -- even if great -- mechanics but nothing exclusive of their own), that sometimes make me want to replay that game. Of course the other extreme is to concentrate too much on these little details and forget about the bigger picture (something which I think you can see in modern games a lot*). I think it's good to leave this kind of stuff to the last.

*take Oblivion: lots of 'cool features' but pretty shallow gameplay at the end of the day. It's like they got too carried away with FaceGen, SpeedTree, dung erosion and all that crap, instead of concentrating on developing a decent 'basic' gameplay for an RPG.

Edit: obviously I'm not talking about taking time to add such features in the game (FaceGen, etc, even if I don't think they can be added to the game anyway). I know what you mean by the changes you want to make.

Though I also know how you can get 'burned out' after a point, so hang on (if you ever feel that way)... heh.

 

[The Public Enemy]

Selective quoting FTW?

Yes.

I don't think any of the potential buyers could loose interest over time, and if they do then they probably wouldn't have buyed it in the first place. So I was kidding. It's up to me to stop checking every week. I always end up reading all the other bullshit on the other boards too, bad habbit that. Real waste of time.

 

[Zomg]

I thought the old method of having generic art design in game locations plus great "establishing art" splash screens was a very good compromise. I thought of the buildings and other areas as destylized pure game spaces but I still had the higher fidelity space in my head from the splash art.

 

[Elhoim]

but the towns look... I don't even know what word I'm looking for. Generic? Uninspiring? Boring? Somehow they don't look like towns, but like a loose collection of buildings.

Looking at the one in the website, they don´t seem "organic" enough. When designing a town you have to make its whole history, starting from its fundation and evolving it until the point where the game takes place. You should make several "towns" concepts showing its evolution trough time, and then start making it.

For example, the website one has "square" sectors, with different building styles, that were supposed to be added as time went on. Those sector should have been circular, with the oldest part in the middle of the town, and the newer ones spreading out from it.

 

[Lord Chambers]

If Fallout is the inspiration to a lot of what Age of Decadence is, I'd say that you're setting the bar much to high out of what you expect from a city. Avoiding annoying the player is probably the most important design decision. Incorporating the city's history and development is considerably farther down the ladder.

Shrouded Hills, Tarant, and Quintarra had much more realistic and immersive designs than Junktown, The Hub, or the Necropolis. I can also tell you that the Codex has never seen Arcanum's towns pointed out as one of it's high points, or even remembered as a contributor to it's greatness.

This isn't to discourage developing quality towns and a consistent setting, but I do mean to put city design in perspective.

 

[Vault Dweller]

If Fallout is the inspiration to a lot of what Age of Decadence is, I'd say that you're setting the bar much to high out of what you expect from a city.

It's not. I merely expect town locations to be visually interesting. At the moment they aren't.

 

[Dementia Praecox]

OK, town design/general art direction is one thing, but what other specific things do you want to improve/expand on before release? I think more of a prioritized list, and not necessarily as detailed as your point above about towns . Elevating your specific focus points might open the eyes of some inspired fella who thought you had just that thing he can help with covered. If you list them all you could multi task the various things when/if interest arise. Obviously you are multitasking within the team, I'm thinking more in terms of external help. On the forum there you've focused on one thing at the time (e.g. interface, writing, concept art)

Edit instead of double post: I'd like to add that if you get response from several artists but they are unable to make all art/design, an idea could be to assign them to different parts of the game, and have them do one thing each. That way you'd not only get more distinct style to the game, you could use their different styles to make the towns differ to each other, and have different flavors. This applies to concept art too, assign them different npcs-archetypes and different types of events. As long as you give them some guidelines and a color palette, their differing styles could add flavor and depth.

 

[Fez]

My two cents:

Is that first example meant to be a proper in-game town? There is no sensible layout in it or zoning for areas. This happens even in Roman age towns. And the whole area seems to be perfectly closed in by walls of houses for some strange reason. How do people get in and out? Is the town trapped in some sort of tube? It looks wrong to me.

If you look at a map or part of a real town there are things you take for granted or as common sense. There are clear roads in and out with planning, else how are people going to get to the main buildings and areas like the markets with goods and carts? The roads get bigger and smaller to suit the needs for traffic (and also with wealth). A market without clear roads from the city gates is a market that will either fail or be in chaos. Is this a market for the poor only? Otherwise I don't understand why it is situated with slum housing build practically on top of it. The merchants would be wealthier and would not want the scum getting so close, same for most of the wealthier types who would not be happy about having to go into the worst and most dangerous part of town to go to one of the most important parts of it for daily life.

There should be distinct classes of buildings for different strata of society, with the poorest in cramped poorly built housing or even slums with narrow alleys you could barely get a handcart down and little light (dangerous due to the ease of mugging) and richest with wider roads that can easily take patrols (safer for the honest citizen but nowhere to hide if you are a criminal) and drawn carts on each side, guttering to keep the place clean, gardens and elaborate and comfortable housing.

That kind of thing woud give each area more of a flavor to suit it. It also means you can have more fun making it interesting and putting in more variation and details.

 

[Vault Dweller]

OK, town design/general art direction is one thing, but what other specific things do you want to improve/expand on before release?

Combat system is another thing that we are tweaking at the moment. I was fighting a guard the other day and the bastard kept disarming me (once every 3-4 turns). On one hand it's a cool thing as we've succeeded in creating different combat styles/professions, but I think that the disarming thing and all the other traits are a bit overpowering. It's certainly cool when your opponent does something more interesting than reducing your HPs, but if he disarms/knocks you down/cripple/etc you on every other strike then it's a bit too much.

The last and final element is quests. I'm replacing/rewriting some quests that didn't fit into the guilds storylines as much as I wanted to. I can give some examples later, if someone wants me to.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

We always want you to, VD, you know that. Well, as long as you keep the spoiler count low


I am glad you take your time to troubleshoot and polish.

 

[hiciacit]

I am glad you take your time to troubleshoot and polish.

Yep. Don't rush it, man, we're patient.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I dunno, sounds like you're being a little excessive with the perfectionism. The perfect is the enemy of the good and all that. This is probably the point where an asshole producer who kicks the product out of the door before you think it's ready would actually come in handy.

I can guarantee you could spend another decade on the game and still not be totally satisfied with everything. If you've got a good game already, I'd rather you spend all that effort on another one than second-guessing yourself. When you've got a finished product and then start rewriting things because you think it could be better, that kinda gives me a warning signal.

 

[Jasede]

Don't listen, take your time. I've waited six years for a decent RPG, I can wait another one or two. (The last good RPG was Wizardry 8. No, Jeff Vogel's games aren't better. Choke on dicks, fanboys.)

 

[Hazelnut]

I have to agree with Snails on this VD... (I started writing a hurried post last night before going to the pub, but I was sounding like a complete asshole, so I canned it)

It's probably a good time to actually think about how much difference redesigning the town layouts will make to people who might buy the game. If it's not gonna get better review scores or sell more copies or make any difference to the core gameplay then you should leave it alone, but take it forward as experience learned to your next game. The combat balancing on the other hand... don't skimp there, that will make a difference to gameplay.

On a less objective level, personally I don't care whether the town layouts look realistic or not. As long as the people & quests are interesting and the layout can be logically 'mapped' in my head so as I'm not getting horribly lost all the time then that's perfect to me.

I'm not sure if you're falling into the trap of 'perfectionism' or possibly a little rattled by PB's fate after G3's state when it was released...

 

[Vault Dweller]

I have to agree with Snails on this VD... (I started writing a hurried post last night before going to the pub, but I was sounding like a complete asshole, so I canned it)

Well, it's the Codex and most people here, including me, sound like complete assholes, so don't worry about it and don't can it next time.

It's probably a good time to actually think about how much difference redesigning the town layouts will make to people who might buy the game.

Huge difference. Take Planescape, replace all the locations with "Spiderweb in 3D" stuff and see what happens.

If it's not gonna get better review scores...

Couldn't care less. Honestly.

... or sell more copies...

Probably not.

I'm not sure if you're falling into the trap of 'perfectionism' or possibly a little rattled by PB's fate after G3's state when it was released...

Well, it's a lesson to be learned, no?

Overall, I want to make the best possible game I can [vs. "hey, I made a game and it works" or "not bad for the first game"]. I must confess that I don't understand the "ship something out now and do better next time" logic. I think that's the reason why so many games suck these days.

When you've got a finished product and then start rewriting things because you think it could be better, that kinda gives me a warning signal.

Understandable and there is a good chance that you are right. Then, of course, there is a good chance that I'm right too, and using my table analogy, there is a big difference between a "finished product" and a good product.

 

[MountainWest]

In my experience - hey, we've all started writing/finished a novel or two, dreaming of a careless life - the thing that lies furthest into the danger zone upon a rewrite is the humour. For me it's goes something like this:

1. Writing it: "Ahaha, that's the funniest shit I've ever seen. I'm a comedic genious!! *Slaps self on back*.

2) Reading it the next day: Hehe, that's funny.

3) Reading it again: Heh, it's okay.

4) And again: Meh.

5) And finally: *Wipes sweat from forehead* "Shit! What the hell was I thinking. That's not even remotley funny. Thank you, oh fucking lucky star, for letting me see the error I was about to make in letting others evaluate this crap. *Erasing*."


EDIT: Why the hell did I post this in this thread... I must have mixed it up with another. Alright kids, nothing to see here. Move along.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

In my experience - hey, we've all started writing/finished a novel or two, dreaming of a careless life - the thing that lies furthest into the danger zone upon a rewrite is the humour. For me it's goes something like this:

1. Writing it: "Ahaha, that's the funniest shit I've ever seen. I'm a comedic genious!! *Slaps self on back*.

2) Reading it the next day: Hehe, that's funny.

3) Reading it again: Heh, it's okay.

4) And again: Meh.

5) And finally: *Wipes sweat from forehead* "Shit! What the hell was I thinking. That's not even remotley funny. Thank you, oh fucking lucky star, for letting me see the error I was about to make in letting others evaluate this crap. *Erasing*."


EDIT: Why the hell did I post this in this thread... I must have mixed it up with another. Alright kids, nothing to see here. Move along.

Yeah, pretty much. I've noticed what few creative works I've done tended to be better received if I just pump it out in a fit of inspiration and let it go than if I obsess over it and pore over every detail. You guys have been with this for 3 years, know it backwards and forwards, and probably don't have the same perspective as a gamer. What you now think is hideous others probably won't notice or might even enjoy. It's scary finally letting go and letting other people be the judge of your work but that was kinda the end goal anyway, right?

 

[Vault Dweller]

You guys have been with this for 3 years, know it backwards and forwards, and probably don't have the same perspective as a gamer. What you now think is hideous others probably won't notice or might even enjoy. It's scary finally letting go and letting other people be the judge of your work but that was kinda the end goal anyway, right?

We have people (my PnP buddies) who play the game a bit giving us feedback on quests, combat, builds, etc. That helps, obviously.