Game News Caveman demo released

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Caveman

Searching for another shareware CRPG? One that isn't your typical fantasy faire? Well, there's now a <a href="http://rocklandsoftware.com/download.htm">50MB demo available</a> for <A href="http://rocklandsoftware.com/">Rocklan Software</a>'s prehistoric simulation/CRPG, dubbed simply as <a href="http://rocklandsoftware.com/caveman.htm">Caveman</a>. Here's a bit about it:
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<blockquote>CAVEMAN features in-depth modeling and simulation found in hardcore role playing games, flight simulators, and wargames. At the core of the game is a system of relational databases of types of skills, objects, weapons, ammunition, animals, actions, terrain, armor, etc. The game tracks player stats, skills (experience), interests, relations with clanmembers, relations with cavepersons you encounter, relations with the gods, items carried, and more. The game tracks every caveperson you encounter. If you encounter the same caveman tomorrow, they will remember you, which may be a good thing, or it may not!</blockquote>
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I personally like the <i>take over a cave and make it your home</i> feature.
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[protobob]

Intiguing. I'm gonna have to try this out.

I dunno if you folks recall, but once I posted a message about how I'd like to see an rpg that focuses on survival, well, this looks like it might fit the bill. Will try it out tonight.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

It's interesting to check out, just to see the model behind the thing.. But the interface is pure crap. I don't think I've ever seen a worse interface on a game, ever.

 

[Raymondo]

Are they a new company or somethong their game seems a bit basic?

 

[snoek]

The concept seems superb
I'll have to try it out

 

[Psilon]

The interface is even worse than you said, Saint. I could barely read that hideous font, and the tutorial was useless. It lasted ten minutes on my hard drive.

 

[Vault Dweller]

What Psilon said. I could not handle the interface. When SP said it was crap, I thought, common, how bad could it be? Turned out it could be really bad and then some.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The sad thing is, there seems to be a lot of stuff in the background, the model for the game, that is pretty nifty.. But that interface is just ludicriously bad. Things that would actually make this worth buying would be:

• Better font. It's very, very hard to read, and looks like shit.
• Lose the FPS combat. Honestly, it's not fun at all, and it doesn't work for the game. They should at least ditch it in favor of an isometric view, and I'd argue turn based as well.
• Pointless 3D models. It seems the only reason there is a 3D model of the cave man is so you can switch to player view and watch your caveman do his thing. It feels more like filler for a text based simulation than anything productive. It gets really annoying with the I'm tired! stuff and the I'm thirsty stuff, too.
• Horrible, horrible menu system. Ditch it. Replace it with a radial menu or some other system that definitely isn't what's used in the game. What would be even better is hiding options that aren't currently available to the player, since there's a huge ass list of things to select, which are hard to read, and most of them you can't do. Why let them clutter things up until they're available for the player?
• A less crippled demo. Honestly, the demo is pointless since it doesn't show me hardly anything of the game other than how irritating the interface is. The underlying model of the game looks pretty nice, but all I can see is how frustrating it is to do anything in the game.
• Free roaming would be nice. This ties in with the pointless 3D model stuff, but allow me to move my caveman around. It's just annoying to have to select every little thing from a menu when I could just right click on a berry bush, select Gather, and my caveman would walk up to it and start picking berries. Allow me to click to move the caveman around in an isometric viewpoint as well, which would be much better than dealing with what looks like a bunch of 3D backdrops and a model that just is pointless.

It really seems sad that this game has a lot of stuff behind the scenes going on, but the controls and interface utterly cripple the work done on the game's model.

 

[protobob]

The interface is, er, different. I'll give it this much, it replaces the tedium of walking around a huge are via fps with the tedium of drilling down through screens of menu items.

I'm interested enough in the game to deal with the interface...it's pretty bad though.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Godfather of fuck - I didn't think the graphics (interface, models, first person mode!!111111) would be so freaking awful, but they are.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no graphics whore, and I do think the concept is nifty ... but Jesus Christ, they need to do something about that.

 

[protobob]

I don't think they should change the perspective or anything that drastic. I think they are trying to mimic the appearance of a documentary. A side view of a man walking across a landscape, as the sun rises and falls, looks like something out of 'Walking with Cavemen' or some other documentary.

I can't really comment on the the FPS combat. My only experience with it has been me running from two large animals as they casually ran me down and killed me. So I havn't actually tried to fight yet, grin.

If they want to do the menus thing, atleast work out some way that they can be context sensitive. Only show me options that I can actually perform at the time. That would do a lot to help keep down menu clutter.

Changing the font to something more readable, and ditching that 'stone background' from the font would do a great deal of good for the visual appearance of the game. As it is the text looks blocky and sloppily laid out.

Another thing, in some places one line of text will pop up superimposed over the game screen (I can still see the caveman) and I can click on the text and it goes away. Other times, a single pline of text will pop up, along with some random picture in the background, and if I click on the line of text I get a horrible buzzing sound and instead I have to move my cursor up to the top right corner and click 'done.' Why? It's inconsistent and annoying.

 

[Psilon]

Seconded on all counts, Exitium. I like Geneforge and NetHack, but the graphics in Caveman are atrocious.

 

[Azael]

OK, downloaded the game and my first impression was the bad installer, or rather the lack of an installer. Then I loaded up the game and almost fell over laughing at the poor graphics and crappy models (just what the hell was that thing with the big arms supposed to be, scary or hilarious?) and tried to actually playing the game before quitting in frustration of the horrid interface.

 

[protobob]

You guys are spoiled. Just imagine it is 1985, suddenly those graphics are cutting edge, grin.

 

[Psilon]

If it were 1985, I'd be playing Infocom text adventures instead. Long live the Babel fish.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I don't think they should change the perspective or anything that drastic. I think they are trying to mimic the appearance of a documentary. A side view of a man walking across a landscape, as the sun rises and falls, looks like something out of 'Walking with Cavemen' or some other documentary.

Maybe if there were more frames of animation or something, it might be interesting like that. However, as far as I can see, it's only a handful of animations used over and over again.

Overall, though, it just doesn't feel like I'm doing much but fighting with the interface. I'm giving my caveman orders via a kludgy, hard to use and hard to read interface and he either fails or doesn't. If he fails, it's back to the horrid interface again.

If you used a 3/4 isometric view, most of what you have to deal with the interface for could be eleminated with a right click menu, which is much better than what it's got.. Right click on a tree, get options to gather wood, increase woodlore, make tools, etc. For most things you have to do, that'd decrease the amount of things the user has to do for the basics. Right click and select the option versus hit the action button, select gather, then select wood - and you'd still keep the player on the same screen with the caveman rather than all that screenflipping.

I can't really comment on the the FPS combat. My only experience with it has been me running from two large animals as they casually ran me down and killed me. So I havn't actually tried to fight yet, grin.

Here's another problem with it. You spend every other action in third person, monkey-man view, right? Then in combat, it goes straight to first person shooter view. Am I ordering the monkeyman around or am I the monkeyman?

It just feels like the authors spent a long time working on the background mechanics model for the game, how everything works and so on, and then decided to shove it in the quickest possible thing they could code up and released that, which ultimately fails the time spent making the game mechanics model.

 

[protobob]

Saint, sure if you give the game a standard rpg front end, it would be a better game.

I just tried to give a few practical suggestions. Things they might actually do. If you look at their other games, they all seem to use the same engine.

As far as the contradictory 3rd person and 1st person view, I noticed that myself. Not very good design. Having to rely on my twitch skills in this game annoys me. True, my twitch skills are rather highly honed, if I do say so myself, but it is out of place, like you said.

Whats most annoying to me is the concept for the game just has me hooked. The idea of being a humanoid in the depths of forgotten time just really grabs me. But the interface...a frustrating experience, all in all.