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Is this game ever gonna come out?

xedoc gpr

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Sep 26, 2006
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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.
 

obediah

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Jan 31, 2005
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Rasputin said:
So if all content is done, so is there a hope that all tweaking would be done by around mid-2011?

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.

I'll pay an extra $20 for a CE with a history of the problems they spent solving. The good stuff - like deciding how long potential customers would be willing to wait to download the shareware file over a modem, interface tests, OS compatibility, etc... Another $20 to get some old builds "AS IS' to look through.
 

User was nabbed fit

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How many terrorists need to be blown away before I get my hands on this? I'm back again and it's STILL not done. Duke Nukem Forever, on the other hand, IS MAKING PROGRESS111!
 

relootz

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There was a time when one would have laughed at the idea of Duke Nukem Fornever being released before AoD but now..

:/
 

Crooked Bee

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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.
:lol:
 

Lennie

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Dec 20, 2010
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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.
 
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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.

Now it seems that folks have adopted the more sensible position of putting AoD to one side until it's released, judging games by a combination of how they compare to the rest of the stuff that's recently released (for those of us who have already played all the oldies many times through), while still legitimately complaining that things have either not progressed, or gone backwards, since the late 90s.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
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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.
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?
 

Serious_Business

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Vault Dweller said:
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.
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?

Me. Also, I hope you realise after 7 years that the Codex basically criticize with imaginary game design ideals in mind, because this is what idealistic people do. You might have gotten away from that because you are a pragmatic guy and know the cold realities of game design, but I feel like the point of "putting back the "role" in rpg" kind of statement of the old Codex was an appeal to the kind of C&C-centric design that Fallout initiated ; promises that the market never quite managed to pick up. It was only an initiation - even Fallout is a meager example of "what could be" in terms of "roleplaying". I'm seeing AoD as an expansion on those game design ideals, free from all the crap that Bioware and co introduced to make rpgs "modern" and easy to make, based on bad linear storytelling. You can't escape this, it's AoD's main selling point.

Glad to see you're back and not dead faggot, merry christmas
 

Ermm

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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.

Really? Well, even though much content in a game is good, even sometimes enough is enough. Better polish what needs to be polished.
 

denizsi

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They will release videos and screenshots with updated graphics day -1 but release the game with older graphics and that will be the first DLC.
 

Jora

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Mar 14, 2003
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Finland
Here's the latest from the ITS board:

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.
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.

It's best just to relax and direct your immediate attention elsewhere, to other games, films, novels, TV shows, TV movies, and comics. Even though AoD is the product I'm most looking forward to, after 6 years I've begun to take it easy. :)
 

Cassidy

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Sep 9, 2007
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Vault City
To the question raised by the OP: yes.

Seriously. After so much effort that can be seen put over such a project like Age of Decadence, suddenly giving up is not something most people would do. If DNF did stick to a single engine(the original Quake 2 engine's project) and a tightly-knit development team, it would've come out.

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.

And well, Duke Nukem Forever didn't even have a combat demo and now the supposedly ongoing consolified dumbed down new project over it will feature cover system and regenerating health. It'll be as close to the original design as Fallout 3 is to Van Buren, so I already forgot it due to how unfun, dull and annoying the core of game mechanics of sticky cover shooters are to me. Chances are, because DNF will have to be redone from scratch for the consoletards, that AoD will be released first after 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

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
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.
Pretty much.

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".
We have the source code and the engine is stable. Garage Games going out of business wouldn't affect us at all.
 

Elhoim

Iron Tower Studio
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Vault Dweller said:
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".
We have the source code and the engine is stable. Garage Games going out of business wouldn't affect us at all.

Plus it's not going out of business for now. Update on the situation, for those who are curious:

http://www.torquepowered.com/community/blogs/view/20687
 

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