KickStarter Solasta Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[udm]

A 5e game that feels like an actual D&D pnp-to-PC conversion. Absolute

 

[Lacrymas]

Like BG3, you mean.

 

[polo]

So Demo consensus here is incline?

 

[Abu Antar]

So Demo consensus here is incline?

Incline with some needed pilishing touches, imo.

 

[Lacrymas]

So Demo consensus here is incline?

Basically, yes, but everything besides combat needs massive improvement. Including graphics. I don't care about voice acting, it's serviceable, I'd rather have them ham it up so I can have fun while they talk instead of having to wait for them to cleanly say their lines in a microphone, but that's just me.

 

[Elex]

So Demo consensus here is incline?

No, it’s vertical.

 

[NJClaw]

So Demo consensus here is incline?

5/10 not enough spiders
- Tarantulos-Eduardo-Sanchez

2/10 not enough Larian
- Ontopoly

0/10 where are my fucking monks I'm going to hurt you
- Pink Eye

 

[ERYFKRAD]

So Demo consensus here is incline?

5/10 not enough spiders
- Tarantulos-Eduardo-Sanchez

2/10 not enough Larian
- Ontopoly

0/10 where are my fucking monks I'm going to hurt you
- Pink Eye

Sorcery/10 barbarian dlc when
- ERYFKRAD

 

[Darth Canoli]

3/10
Too many useless gimmicks reducing the useful/mandatory features budget (Good UI, decent camera, good character development design, good dungeon design, non-linear dungeons and maps, fast animations, skippable cut-scenes, enemies diversity, combat difficulty)

They might release a decent game if they work long enough.

 

[Lacrymas]

Character development is 5E basically, so yeah. I'm more salty they are focusing on bullshit like voice acting and graphics they can't pull off rather than implementing more classes. Even these 6 could've been more interesting ones. I would've included Cleric, Bard, Warlock, Druid, Rogue, and Barbarian, instead of the yawn-fest the selection is now. Also multi-classing. We'll see how the dungeon design is going to be like, but this one was indeed one long corridor.

 

[Myzzrym]

Hey folks,

Dropping by since.... forever as I was just super busy with Steam and previews and such to answer a few things I've seen here.

1. The UI

I can confirm that this is the art direction we're going for with the UI. I know, I know - a lot of you feel like it's ugly, doesn't fit the overall theme, makes the game look like a mobile app - and you're not necessarily wrong. That's the issue with art direction, people have different opinions and tastes - outside RPG Codex we've had plenty of players telling us they appreciated how lean and easy on the eye the UI was.

We gave a more detailed answer during our stream, but yea you probably don't want to sift through 2h of video so I'll explain it here: The idea was to have the player focus on the actual game and less on the UI, which is why we wanted the UI to be less intrusive (hence the transparency, not using textures like stone or wood, etc etc), the main purpose being functionality. It's just two different schools of thoughts, and I don't think anyone is right or wrong here. But yea I get where you're coming from.


2. lol y u add voice acting over more classes

Well my good man / woman / nonbinary individual, it's as if you were asking me why our artists aren't implementing new spells - because those are different jobs. Making a game is more than just having a budget and saying "Oh well let's put 90% in gameplay 10% in art" or something - you have time and team to take into consideration. Even if were to spend less on voice acting, it wouldn't necessarily mean that we could add more classes if we want to hold our schedule. You can't just hire talented people out of thin air - not to mention that your office may not even be large enough to add more people to the team.

This is where the difference lies between huge war machines like Ubisoft, where I worked before, on project where you can quickly ramp up from a few hundreds to almost a thousand by calling upon different studios, moving existing resources around and hiring a TON of interns and freshly graduated individuals for limited amount of time - and a small studio of experts, who can't just justify adding an "extra pair of hands" for a few months and booting him out afterwards.

Alright that's for the operational side. On the other hand we also want to have voice acting in-game for many reasons - trying to appeal to more people than just D&D hardcore fans, make the game more accessible, etc etc... One of the reason is also simply that our Creative Director wants it. You might be wondering "uh wot" and yea - sometimes that justifies it! You have to remember that this is a guy who left his previous company to work alone on a prototype - a dream of his since he started playing D&D some 30+ years ago. This game is his baby, he built it from scratch, he put an insane amount of time and money as well as taking a huge risk (compared to his much safer position at Amplitude). He has a vision for his game, one that we need to respect - even if we don't always agree on everything. And it's not like he is some kind of tyrant either - in fact, he's usually very reasonable if we bring up disagreements on some aspects of the games. But among the pillars of his vision of Solasta is a fully voiced experience, so that's not going anywhere (and we firmly stand behind it as a team).


3. Too much jumping around and shit + Camera is garbo

That's a fair point, the demo level (Telema) was made not only for players to try out the game, but also for us to test out a few things - which is why you have a lot of climbing and jumping around, which you won't have in EVERY level ALL THE TIME in the final game of course (flat plains did not vanish from existence after the Cataclysm). This is also why the camera is suffering so much - outside the camera still needing to be improved, it's also the level design that is very constraining. We tried to have very high walls in the level which makes the camera bump everywhere, several layers overlapping each other which makes splitting the party a headache for the camera, etc etc... So yea, we know how to proceed from there in our final game.


4. Cutscenes look weird (character placement and all)

We didn't spend any time reworking those cutscenes, so yea they all date from last year. Cutscenes in our final game have been worked on a lot more to have better angles, dynamic shots, etc etc.


5. y characters so ugly?

Tbh we're not very happy with most faces either, so we're going to take a look at them again.


Uhhh that's pretty much it, if you have other remarks just drop them here I read the forum from time to time. Anyway, as always I appreciate the feedback - and don't hesitate to ask if you have other questions about game development in general, it's always interesting to talk about it.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Hey folks,

Dropping by since.... forever as I was just super busy with Steam and previews and such to answer a few things I've seen here.

Barbarian dlc when

 

[Myzzrym]

lel TLDR. We'll talk DLC after we finished releasing the game, we don't want to start making promises before delivering the product :p

 

[Robber Baron]

Uhhh that's pretty much it, if you have other remarks just drop them here I read the forum from time to time. Anyway, as always I appreciate the feedback - and don't hesitate to ask if you have other questions about game development in general, it's always interesting to talk about it.

Thank you for a detailed explanation. You can ignore this question but I'll ask anyway - will you be taking BG3s EA release and final release dates(when its known) into consideration when deciding on your own release date?

 

[Darth Canoli]

Well, at least, now we know this project is leaning toward a mediocre cRPG for console gamers.

 

[Myzzrym]

Yea of course. We love BG3 and we think that there are room for both Solasta and BG3 (otherwise indie gaming wouldn't exist), but going head to head with their release date isn't planned x)

 

[Robber Baron]

On your kickstarter page you state that "We're discussing on adding several other languages", any possible developments on that front since the release of the demo?

 

[Lacrymas]

Even if were to spend less on voice acting, it wouldn't necessarily mean that we could add more classes if we want to hold our schedule

Aren't you self-publishing/indie? What schedule do you have to hold yourselves to? If you spend less on voice acting, that means you can have extra months to implement at least one more class. You don't have to hire new people. Isn't the point of crowd funding the ability to weigh your priorities within the budget you've managed to collect? Less people getting paid -> more time for the ones who do get paid. I suppose if voice acting is ridiculously cheap and you have the budget for it, but not the budget for a few extra months (however long it takes for a class) of development you can make that argument. I'd more respect a "we do it because we think it will have more mainstream appeal" response tbh, but that's provided I neither know your budget nor how much voice acting costs.

RE: UI - I don't know what troglodytes you've been speaking to, but the UI detracts from the focus on the battlefield because it's so out of place. It bothers the eye constantly. You can still have the same buttons and the same layout with a more aesthetically fitting UI. This one is like a filter on top of the screen, I can't find the words to describe how abominable it is. This isn't a matter of "lel art is subjective". I also wouldn't say it's the height of functionality if that is the entire argument, but that's more subjective.

 

[Myzzrym]

Languages: Nothing new yet here, FR / DE confirmed.

Self publishing: It's not that simple. Let's say we take a few extra months to add more classes - OK, what about everyone else? We still have to pay the artists, the project manager, the writers, the office... Ok then, let's add some more other stuff to keep them occupied! Oh wait that generates more bugs - and more interdependency because nothing in game development is completely isolated. So we add some extra time again to fix those. You'll be draining your budget even more by doing that - making a video game is walking on a thin rope.

UI: I'm not going to continue talking about the UI, I already gave our side of the story so any further discussion is just going to be us going in circles. I know it's frustrating for some of you, but that's how it is.

 

[Lacrymas]

Ah, yes, we, the unreasonable ("some of you"), can't see the light of the magnificently functional UI, while most people (the reasonable and normal) are converts from day 1.

 

[Myzzrym]

I wouldn't say that. It's more like "we can't make everyone happy, so we have to choose one direction and stick to it". It doesn't have anything to do with being reasonable, more with us having to make a choice.

 

[Darkzone]

Languages: Nothing new yet here, FR / DE confirmed.

Self publishing: It's not that simple. Let's say we take a few extra months to add more classes - OK, what about everyone else? We still have to pay the artists, the project manager, the writers, the office... Ok then, let's add some more other stuff to keep them occupied! Oh wait that generates more bugs - and more interdependency because nothing in game development is completely isolated. So we add some extra time again to fix those. You'll be draining your budget even more by doing that - making a video game is walking on a thin rope.

Then what is up with the youtube advertisement for the Demo? Shouldn't you only put it up if you are puting Solasta on Steam EA?

 

[Robber Baron]

I wasn't able to google this information, are you planning a GOG release? Simultaneous or later after Steam?

 

[Lacrymas]

I wouldn't say that. It's more like "we can't make everyone happy, so we have to choose one direction and stick to it". It doesn't have anything to do with being reasonable, more with us having to make a choice.

Here's the thing, though, and what actually makes it frustrating as you put it. You seem to be making quite a lot of specific choices for a lot of things (voice acting, action cameras, weird flashy spell animations, mobile UI), which leads us (let's say the more devoted to this field of entertainment) to make specific conclusions. Like for example, that we aren't the target audience, and so when we aren't the target audience someone else (someone specific) is. I interpret that as a misplaced attempt at mainstreamization or shooting far above your budget level. It feels like trying to emulate D:OS2 and PoE2 while having the fraction of their budget. Experience shows us that that ends up making nobody happy. This is why I'm particularly salty.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

5. y characters so ugly?
Tbh we're not very happy with most faces either, so we're going to take a look at them again.

Not just the faces, the fighter's armor looks like he just ran through a hardware store with a big magnet. :D

But I like what you're doing in general, even if I disagree on the inclusion of crapscenes and voice acting like others here.