xedoc gpr
Scholar
- Joined
- Sep 26, 2006
- Messages
- 496
Serious_Business said:Well, at some point he'll stop noticing problems
Game designers never stop noticing problems. However, the good ones still manage to actually release their games.
Serious_Business said:Well, at some point he'll stop noticing problems
Rasputin said:So if all content is done, so is there a hope that all tweaking would be done by around mid-2011?
No, the successful ones. Which are not necessarily the good ones as well.the good ones still manage to actually release their games
obediah said:The quests will be fixed by Q3 2011. But then the art assets will be 2-5 years old. And the 16:10 interface will need to be replaced with a 16:9 interface. They'll find a great flip-block-tri-poly filter that looks great but is only available in a new version of Torque. The upgrade will take 3-12 months longer than anticipated, and during that time VD will be making some quest fixes and those will need to be polished. Then time for high resolution displays, a new Windows version and maybe XBOX 720, which will unlock the 5 year stagnation in graphics making AoD look uglier than ever.
And when has this ever happened? Who has ever compared games to AoD and criticized them because they weren't as good as an unreleased game?Azrael the cat said:At least the delay is bringing some sanity back to the Codex's perception of games. Yes, crpgs are still in a downhill spiral, but there was a period when folks would undermine their own (legitimate) criticisms by holding up every game to the standard of the non-existent AoD that they have in their head. Aside from being an impossible standard for any game, even most of the golden era games, to live up to, it was placing AoD on an unhealthy pedestal that the real game couldn't hope to meet.
Vault Dweller said:And when has this ever happened? Who has ever compared games to AoD and criticized them because they weren't as good as an unreleased game?Azrael the cat said:At least the delay is bringing some sanity back to the Codex's perception of games. Yes, crpgs are still in a downhill spiral, but there was a period when folks would undermine their own (legitimate) criticisms by holding up every game to the standard of the non-existent AoD that they have in their head. Aside from being an impossible standard for any game, even most of the golden era games, to live up to, it was placing AoD on an unhealthy pedestal that the real game couldn't hope to meet.
Lennie said:I thought all content was done? But now I read that you're adding an entire new questline for Teron. How can all content be done if you're just starting to write completely new quests?
It sounded like the demo would be coming out before the end of the year or atleast within a few months, but I guess it won't be anytime soon.
Vince said:We are in the final stages.
He basically just told us nothing.Anyway, we're getting close and the game WILL be released.
I think the "no comments" attitude regarding the release is a wise one. If they miss the date, the words will only be ued against them. Besides, at this point (6 years since the initial "I'm making a game" announcement) people should have something else to look forward to as well. I've been waiting for George R. R. Martin to finish A Dance with Dragons, Wolf Mittag to finish Darghul and Mark Smylie to continue his Artesia comic book series, among other things. However, lots of other good books and games have been released during the long wait that have kept me relatively happy.Vault Dweller said:If you're reading the situation as "they sit around wondering what else to add", you're reading it wrong. The final stages means that it's the final pass... well, let me explain in a different way:
About five years ago I wrote the story, quests, and dialogues. Since it was my first attempt at both creative writing and quest design, they predictably sucked. Well, they probably were better than "kill x monsters" or "save the world from the ever restless ancient evil", but not by much.
The beauty of writing "kill x monsters" quests is that they take about 5 min to write and a few hours at most to implement. When the message is "kill x monsters" you don't have to worry about the quality of writing and story-telling because the message is simple and the "story" is a simple candy-wrapper.
However, once you abandon the beautiful simplicity of monsters killing and world saving and set your sights on a Real Story (TM) with Like Characters and Stuff, things get a bit more complicated. You have to deliver. If you have the nerve to serve your patrons walls of fucking text, the text has better be worth reading. I'd take "kill x monsters" over a long and boring story I don't give a shit about.
So, the first iteration wasn't good. It was the first draft of a story with the extra complexity of containing not one but several stories (based on your actions). Sure, some parts were good, but some failed to engage the player and some were too restrictive because I was clinging to some story elements I liked and it took me awhile to learn how to write good flexible stories.
We could have released what we had but I'm glad we didn't. I'm pretty sure that most of you want to play a good game, not a flawed game that merely shows the potential. Either way you would have had to wait for years for a game you'd actually want to play and re-play.
Anyway, for a long time we kept doing the iterations (of everything, including the quests and storylines), hoping that the next iteration would get us where we wanted to be. It took years, which isn't that surprising considering that both quality games and quality books take years to "mature".
When we had everything more or less in place, we started working on the aforementioned final pass where the quests and storylines are locked in place but the individual aspects are getting tweaked (see Oscar's post about the vignette's improvements). What Oscar's doing - eliminating the weak spots in the design and flow - is probably the most important aspect and I'm glad that he has the passion to want to do things right, even if it involves forcing me to do better. I'm grateful for his honesty.
Pretty much.Cassidy said:Vault Dweller would never "Sorry guys but after investing thousands of hours in this project I decided to give up". I can see someone giving up at the early design stages when there is absolutely nothing implemented yet, but the further a project gets developed, the less likely it is for it to be cancelled. What has delayed AoD is the fact it is being done as a part-time project mostly, followed by its design goals in regards to branching quests, multiple approaches to solve things, elements that are inevitably time-intensive.
We have the source code and the engine is stable. Garage Games going out of business wouldn't affect us at all.I just hope that those rumors about Torque going broke are not real and that, if they are, this will not mean AoD suddenly having a "adaptation to a new engine".
Vault Dweller said:We have the source code and the engine is stable. Garage Games going out of business wouldn't affect us at all.I just hope that those rumors about Torque going broke are not real and that, if they are, this will not mean AoD suddenly having a "adaptation to a new engine".