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Interview The Roots Interviewed at FileFront

Sol Invictus

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Oct 19, 2002
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Pax Romana
Tags: Roots, The; Tannhauser Gate

Tannhauser Gate, the developers of the upcoming CRPG, The Roots, has been given an <a href=http://articles.filefront.com/The_Roots_Interview/;424;;;/article.html>interview</a> at FileFront. Here's a little mouth stuffing:
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<blockquote>Q: The press release for The Roots describes it as turn-based, real-time combat. Could you explain exactly what that means, and how one game can be both?
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A: I admit the description can be misleading but let me try to explain the combat system in The Roots. Combat is no doubt among the most vital game elements. Battle system in The Roots is a mixture of a turn-based board game and a real-time action one. There are no conventional turns, for each character has its own initiative regeneration speed, and his/her “turn” is independent.
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And so, while the combat system in The Roots should be described as ‘turn-based’ it carries a few unique elements, which make the game more similar to the real-time or even tactical games. Namely, there are turns when certain characters take action, but the player is given additional control over each of the party members – it is possible to decide for example on the place characters will take after executing the attack.
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In addition to that, the initiative being one of the elements that describes any player character contributes to the tactical aspect of the combat. The initiative factor allowed for reengineering the classical turn based combat into a unique system which gives players more control and encourages taking a more tactical approach to battles.</blockquote>
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Translation: It's basically a real time game with a timer on the attack.
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Now, how difficult was that to say? There's nothing particularly turn-based about this game, so the only reason I can think of mentioning something like this is to talk about some non-existent 'innovation'. Would the timer on the Frozen Orb spell in Diablo 2 count as 'turn-based', too?
 

aboyd

Liturgist
Joined
Oct 28, 2004
Messages
843
Location
USA
He's an idiot?

I think the people behind The Roots might just be idiots who don't even understand the genre. But I don't mean that as an attack, I mean that as a possibly real explanation for the interview. Another possibility is that they are so completely foreign -- both in language and culture -- that they cannot properly convey even the most rudimentary concept. I couldn't tell what kind of English skills Piotr had, but his name hints that he's probably not a native speaker.

In any case, his explanations of turn-based real-time combat are horribly stated. According to him, it's turn-based, but the innovation is that you can decide on the action for each character. Um, yeah? That's new? In all the party-based RPGs I've played (except NWN, which I don't really think qualifies as party-based anyway), all of them allowed me to control each character during combat. His "innovation" is like saying he just invented the world's oldest profession. It's nonsensical.

Similar complaints from me about his "initiative" comment. The genre was born from D&D, which had rolls for initiative. Nearly every D&D CRPG I can think of implemented it in some fashion.

Perhaps they really haven't played anything in the genre and do not realize they are reinventing the wheel. I only hope that their blind, stumbling reimplimentation of a generic RPG goes well, because I miss party-based games. Then again, if their party-based game ends up like NWN (it has the same limit of 2 NPCs in the party), I'll take a pass.
 

Dhruin

Liturgist
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Aug 15, 2003
Messages
758
Actually, I have spoken to Piotr Krzywonosiuk about this (briefly) and while I didn't fully understand the responses, I got the impression the publisher was driving this. My best guess is because they are trying to appeal in part to Final Fantasy players (?).
 

o-dawg

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Nov 18, 2004
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Location
Great White North
I'm with Dhruin (not really, that would be weird). It sounds to me like a Final Fantasy-type system. I forget what Square called it, but it acts as a TB system, but instead of one side taking a turn, then the other, each character and enemy gets their own turn counter, which fills up based on their own speed/initiative. So it's possible, for example, for a fast character to get 2 or 3 turns before a slow character gets one. And the amount the counter gets reset after your turn depends on the type of attack used.

It's not a bad system. It's still TB, not RT. It's a little different from the I-go, you-go system most TB games use but I found it to work roughly the same in the end.

Disclaimer: I have no idea if this is true for The Roots, but it's what I thought after deceiphering the statement as best as I could.
 

RGE

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Jul 18, 2004
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Karlstad, Sweden
That sounds pretty much equivalent to realtime where the game is paused whenever the player can take an action, and then each action takes a certain amount of time depending on how fast the character is and how long time the action would normally take to perform. Which is what I want to see in just about any CRPG. Especially if the autopausing could be replaced by a queued action to turn the game into realtime whenever the player already knows what to do.

But I really couldn't tell what exactly the guy meant when he tried to explain how the system worked, though considering how difficult it is to explain mixes of turnbased and realtime I'm not surprised.
 

Reklar

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Jun 22, 2004
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Port Orchard, WA, USA
The combat system they're describing sounds similar to what they used in Septerra Core, which was okay to begin with since it was something relatively new to me (never been much of a console person), but it got really old later in the game. The game itself was pretty fun and the story wasn't bad considering it's anime theme (Monolith is about the only US developer I can think of who's done them), but overall the combat hurt it more than helped it. I guess I'm too much of a turn-based cRPG fan to really be dedicated to the genre anymore. :?

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
I remember that game. The combat in Septerra Core did get old after a while. It's a shame as it was not a bad game otherwise. I don't think many people played it though. It'd have probably sold a lot better on the consoles.
 

Reklar

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Jun 22, 2004
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Port Orchard, WA, USA
Undoubtably it would have, but I don't think Monolith has ever released a console game. I could be wrong about this since I'm not exactly a Monolith archivist, but they have released some good games over the years, with Shogo: Mobile Armored Division being my favorite. Maybe one of these days I'll try and visit their office since it's only about an hour from where I live. :D

-Reklar
(a Fallout/RPG fan)
 

Fez

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2004
Messages
7,954
One hour away and you've never been bothered to pay a visit? You must be a hardcore fan. They probably would have done a lot better with their games on console, as much as I might want more games published for the PC.
 

Elwro

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Joined
Dec 29, 2002
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Krakow, Poland
Divinity: Original Sin Wasteland 2
Re: He's an idiot?

aboyd said:
I couldn't tell what kind of English skills Piotr had, but his name hints that he's probably not a native speaker.
Eh... "Piotr" is Polish for "Peter". And "Krzywonosiuk"... is roughly "Curved Nose".

Another wannabe Polish developer?
 

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