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AoD demo discussion.

Black

Arcane
Joined
May 8, 2007
Messages
1,872,563
Being the genius that I am I found what causes the crashes when I try to load a save.
Game crashes because the save was "unnamed". Named saves load just fine.
Also, on the looting screen if you select "take all" it should close automatically.

-Is heavier armor worth it if you are investing heavily in the dodge skill?
Jesus Christ Andhaira!!
 

Wirdschowerdn

Ph.D. in World Saving
Patron
Joined
Nov 30, 2003
Messages
34,403
Location
Clogging the Multiverse with a Crowbar
Char creation looks very solid. The interface art is beauitiful, the ingame graphics not as bad as I thought.
But the demo crashes on me once I wanna talk to the first character. I'm playing with OpenGL (it didn't even start with D3D after the loading screen).

I'm running Win7 32-bit with a Radeon 4870.
 

Nicolai

DUMBFUCK
Joined
Mar 8, 2003
Messages
3,219
Location
Yonder
Not the best of demos, hope the full game doesn't have a whole lot of combat.
 

Tails

Arbiter
Joined
Nov 25, 2007
Messages
1,674
I have serious with game, it freezes on random enemy turn. Earlier everything was fine.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Spellcaster said:
The game feels good. Very good. What's with the criticism about the camera? I'm using arrow keys plus ctrl+edge of the screen to rotate it, and I can't see any problem at all.

Overall, with a great plot and a more polished final product, I can't see how AoD could be worst than KotC. Oh and that's one of the best implementations of grid and turn based combat on "3D" I've seen. It feels more natural than I had thought.

Also, VD give my compliments to the guy who did the tracks available in the demo. I like it a lot.
Thanks. The music was done by the same guy who did King's Bounty music.
 

Dnny

Educated
Joined
Oct 12, 2009
Messages
470
The camera is as annoying as it was in NWN2, probably even more so because it seems that its rotation can be "blocked" by buildings that, instead of fading away, physically block your camera until you zoom out even more, I foresee a very RSI-inducing game. Also, god, the fonts. Even at 1280x800 it's unreadable. Was this game designed to be run at 640x480 ? just say so and disable the higher resolution, make it honest like the oldies.
As for the game itself, the demo doesn't tell much. Yeah, the combat is good, that is, for a RPG, not on JA2 level though so it better be a great RPG all around and not rely on combat alone.
 

Fat Dragon

Arbiter
Joined
May 24, 2007
Messages
3,499
Location
local brothel
Camera is mostly fine for me. Only improvement I can think of for it is an option to center and lock it above your pc, so it sticks with you while moving about the town. Hope Iron Tower crew at least considers adding it.
 

fastpunk

Arbiter
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
Messages
1,798
Location
under the sun
I agree with Fat Dragon, locking camera on the main char would be great. It would improve the camera a lot imho.
 

ghostdog

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Dec 31, 2007
Messages
11,076
Fat Dragon said:
... an option to center and lock it on your pc, so it follows him while moving about the town. Hope Iron Tower crew at least considers adding it.

This, and also allow wasd control for movement outside combat. VD , since you like DA, learn from it's camera settings/movement and don't do the same mistakes as NWN2. Also make any object/building that obstructs the camera turn transparent. As it is, while you try to rotate the camera it always gets stuck behind something and loses focus of the player.

As fas as the combat goes , it was quite good. Maybe some balancing is needed. Spears seem a bit overpowered and it looks like it's always better to invest more in dexterity than strength.
 

Fat Dragon

Arbiter
Joined
May 24, 2007
Messages
3,499
Location
local brothel
I think the camera feels quite solid as is when you have the camera pulled out. But when you're zoomed in close it feels a bit cumbersome (imo) and a lock-on would help improve it.
 

LazyD

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
700
I was playing it fine for a while.. Then I made a new char and it crashes with the guy you talk with to fight.

I like the combat.. gfx aren't anything special which doesnt bother me. Music is nice..

wish it wouldn't crash all the time tho..
 

Fat Dragon

Arbiter
Joined
May 24, 2007
Messages
3,499
Location
local brothel
LazyD said:
I was playing it fine for a while.. Then I made a new char and it crashes with the guy you talk with to fight.
Stand at least two tiles away from him when talking too him. Works 100% of the time then, he only crashes if you get close.
 

Melcar

Arcane
Joined
Oct 20, 2008
Messages
35,205
Location
Merida, again
Instead of crashes like you guys are experiencing, in-game sound dies for me. Also when talking to the arena master. I can hear a loud "pop" and all sound in the game goes mute. Must be a strange interaction with WINE that is causing the different behavior.

Edit: Can we merge all AoD threads? Or maybe have of one the AoD subforum for technical issues and one on RPG Discussion to discuss the demo itself.
 

LazyD

Liturgist
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
700
Fat Dragon said:
LazyD said:
I was playing it fine for a while.. Then I made a new char and it crashes with the guy you talk with to fight.
Stand at least two tiles away from him when talking too him. Works 100% of the time then, he only crashes if you get close.

Thanks I'll give that a try.
 

Fat Dragon

Arbiter
Joined
May 24, 2007
Messages
3,499
Location
local brothel
Melcar said:
Instead of crashes like you guys are experiencing, in-game sound dies for me. Also when talking to the arena master. I can hear a loud "pop" and all sound in the game goes mute. Must be a strange interaction with WINE that is causing the different behavior.
Haven't had much problems with the sounds, they just die out a bit the farther the camera is pulled back. I did experience the same sound glitch with both the arena guy and the shopkeeper though, and I'm not using Wine either. It only lasts for a few seconds though, and then sound returns so it's nothing game breaking.
 

St. Toxic

Arcane
Joined
Jun 9, 2006
Messages
9,098
Location
Yemen / India
Vault Dweller said:
No idea. You tell me.

It's about as bad as any rt "select&forget" combat system that I've had the displeasure to encounter; possibly worse as rt systems often make up for lack of tactics with an abundance of case specific skills and abilities.

In AoD you just grind away at your priority target with little incentive to do anything else, until either he's dead or you're dead. What's the point of having a tb combat system, if you're not going to use it for anything? Just implant a system of auto-combat and be done with it.

Here's a typical AoD combat crossroad:

screenshot23400016.jpg


My choices here are retreat, two single attacks or Whirlwind area attack.

-Retreat kills me, because I'm leaving their area of control, meaning I get attacked 2-3 times before I'm allowed to take a step back -- and besides, why would I want to retreat anyway? Range, at least in this combat demo, is useless. You can't effectively keep an area of control even with a longer range weapon, such as a spear, and Vince made sure everybody has a bow or some throwing knives as a back-up weapon, so sniping is no go and essentially the same boring shit as mele. Using your dexterity to maintain distance between you and your foe while you lunge at them with quick attacks using daggers and whatnot does not work all that well against an armoured opponent, much less three angry buttfuckers.

-Whirlwind has a greater chance of failure than just single attacks, and from what I've noticed it does pretty crappy splash damage anyhow. Does it draw from a damage pool and then divide it up or something? In any case, if I did Whirlwind in this situation, 1 guy would block it, one guy would dodge it and one guy would get hit for 8 hp, 6 hp being absorbed by armour. Then one or two would counter-attack me.

-I'll just keep attacking the guy with the axe and take hits from all three until a winner is decided. The only question is why the game doesn't just simulate that process for me, since any input I have as a player would be completely wasted.

Suggestion: Bigger distinctions between weapon classes. Bigger penalty on switching weapons during combat. Different set of AP rules for movement. Field of vision impacting combat. Shield bashing and other forms of active defence. AP requirement for counter-attacks. Just sit around for an hour and think up ways of making 1-man tb combat tactical, and I'm sure you'll find the basis for a better combat system in your own way.
 

PorkaMorka

Arcane
Joined
Feb 19, 2008
Messages
5,090
Builds other than daggers + blocking are a lot worse.

Daggers seem like by far the best weapon, and blocking seems to be by far better than dodging.

Ultimately though, daggers are the key, I found that even a dagger dodger (with majority of points in dodge to get 300 by end game) was probably better than a blocker from the other weapons. I was able to finish the optional fight with the dagger dodger, although I had to reload a couple times to get there, due to Dellar critting me for 27+. Switched him between silk armor and Butcher's armor, depending if there are sword enemies or not.

351g8oz.jpg


Being able to do still do good damage spamming 1-2 ap fast attack is a huge bonus over the other builds, which have their damage significantly nerfed by opponents in heavy armor, and have 3 ap fast attacks.

- heavy armor and shield swords seemed much worse than dagger, although perhaps you need to invest in critical strike to gain the benefit of the sword special? I never saw it go off and died on Ordu when it took me forever to kill the swordsman. I do find sword enemies to be super annoying vs dodging builds however, (due to their crit bonus and dodge's low crit resistance) so I guess there is a niche for swords.

- heavy armor and shield axeman - decent but lacked damage vs heavy armor - only cleaved two shields ever - Better than swords, despite shield cleaving doing virtually nothing. Died on Triarii, due to lack of damage to finish the enemy axeman quickly. Very annoying as enemies though.

- heavy armor and shield, maceman - tons of mace procs - almost died to the crossbowman (who is normally a joke) as I kept knocking him out of melee range... mace procs a liability here. Low damage again, took so long to beat the ordu that the bowman ran out of ammo and had to melee... couldn't kill triarii axeman fast enough, and died due to chain shield cleaves

Dodge is much more luck based than blocking, I had a dodge guy with 45 hp get crit twice in a row for 20 hp each time.

Overall, the engine is good, the pace is good, but the mechanics are a bit wonky and not balanced, and there isn't much in the way of tactics, it's just an autoattack fest, results based on how you built your guy and a little bit of luck.

Positioning is just not particularly relevant in this game, with no party, and no flanking or terrain bonuses, you pretty much just cautiously move up to the enemy and spam your best attack, occasionally you can get a tiny advantage from manipulating the group AI so that you can get extra swings on the most dangerous enemy (usually a mace or axeman) when you close for melee combat.
 

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