Interview Age of Decadence - Defining RPGs Once Again

[BethesdaLove]

ITZ

Vince

We are not. I've explained that point many times but few people get it. "Release when it's playable!" and "Release when it's absolutely perfect!" are two extremes. We are in the middle.

Just think of games like Gothic 3, Arcanum , KOTOR 2. How much better they would have been if they spent another 6 months to a year in development. Since we are an indie studio, our equivalent of "6 months" is at least a year.

FLIP-FLOP!!!

 

[Vault Dweller]

Flip-flop? Arcanum is one of the best role-playing games - that's pretty much a fact - but a lot of other things could have been better. Arcanum with a Fallout-like combat system would have been amazing.

 

[St. Toxic]

Bla bla bla flip-flop flip-flop.

Yes, flip-flop, bla bla bla, flip-flop flippity-floppity bla bla.

I'm not sure why you jumped to this conclusion.

I went by what you had written exclusively, thinking that you were talking about a keyword-based system set-up much like the average chatter-bot application, where responses and inputs would automatically be more dynamic than the average flag-based dialogue system.

After seeing the screenshot, I can now correct my assessment and my argument against such a system. Well, not against really, or argument, because it's in all practical ways the same thing as the linear, pre-determined flag-based counterpart, only with a different set of cosmetics. It's the same groundwork, with a different design scheme, so all in all it's just down to preference, and I see no reason to debate over personal likes and dislikes.

I'm not a big fan of the "Ask about 'topic'" routine for the same reason I dislike puzzles that encompass trying to find the right book in a hall full of bookcases; if the hint is lost on you, for whatever reason, you're left with grinding, until you hit upon the right one randomly. There's no reason to include 40 odd keywords applicable to every NPC in the game, if they're able to intelligently adress only 5 of these each. I do not feel rage when I can't ask the weaponsmith if he sells any armor, or if the deaf man heard anything strange last night -- unless I'm playing a low-int character, in which case these particular variations can easily be attributed to the more popular dialogue system with little amount of fuss. And if you do have 40 individual answers, to each of the 40 keywords possible, why would I want no more than 40 things to say throughout the whole game, when I could just as easily have 40 appropriately attributed lines of dialogue, with 40 appropriate answers for every NPC?

The groundwork, as mentioned, for both systems is the same. Wether you're making three choices asking a guy for the nearest exit, or one, the result is no different. Only, in one instance the player makes the adjustments for what's being said (in a premeditated and unnatural way, in my opinion), and in the other the game (hopefully) alters the line to something appropriate to your character without extra input from the player. Tone, intent etc can be added to both. Smalltalk options dito. Ultimately it's not about system, but content, and it's always a "the more the better" situation on that front.

Were we talking about a dynamic, flagless system of dialogue, it would be a different matter alltogether. Infinitely more interesting, for one.

Honestly though, the coercion aspects are separate entirely from what is said so the high int. character could still get a better then average result without needing it tee'ed up for the player.

"Where is
>teh mens rooum?"
"Oh lordy lord you're one talented motherfucker. Would you like to know a sekrit?"
"Tell me
>Aboot cabbages."
"You're too smart for that. Let me instead tell you about the big evil monster's plans to dominate the world. This knowledge will help you along the way."

 

[Davaris]

They are a financial success, but they have contributed nothing to the culture of gaming.

Why do you lie?

They made fucking Terminator: Future Shock.

Yeah I stuffed up there. All I can see now is Todd's F3 and Obliv, as their recent "work" has overshadowed anything good they did in the past. Also Bethesda today isn't the same company it was back then. All the good people that made those games, are long gone. I'll call them Bethesda-Todd from now on.

>Daggerfall has the most interesting character creation system to date.

Daggerfall while a technical achievement, is dead boring in my opinion.

>Where's Waldo game.

 

[Claw]

"While I'm very fond of full dialogue trees, I believe that the keyword system is the foundation of any evolution of RPG dialogue systems.

Was that Daggerfall? I might have to try it after all. What about Arena? I tried playing Arena since it's (legally) free, but I couldn't get past the starting dungeon. I just had no motivation, and wasn't thrilled by the combat.

They made fucking Terminator: Future Shock.

That was a long time ago.

Also, did Future Shock get the recognition it deserved when it came out? I don't know, I bought it on a gaming fair for 5 bucks. The olderst trace of Bethesda I know is an article about how Diablo is much better than SkyNet.

I'll call them Bethesda-Todd from now on.

May I suggest a slight aesthetic improvement? Bethes-Todd.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

I think Volourn single handily spread the misconception that TOEE did horribly.

 

[POOPERSCOOPER]

If that isn't cut content, I don't know what is.

Here's a comparison, if you have trouble grasping the concept.

Sprite mirroring ON:

Sprite mirroring OFF:

Are you being deliberately dense? It's really fucking easy to see why normal people don't give a fuck about the obviously minor differences between those graphics.

And who gives a fuck about cut content? If you knew they'd cut an area as big as Sigil from PS:T, would you consider it a worse game?

Same here, I don't really see any of the two options better than the other. If you had asked me which one had looked better I would have even said the one with sprite mirroring on. I was expecting some huge amazing difference, I guess that is why Drog or whatever that guys name never really promoted that comparision pictures.

 

[Volourn]

"I think Volourn single handily spread the misconception that TOEE did horribly."

nah. the fact it did horribly is what spread the actual conception. It's why nobody outside of the Codexian/D&D part of the net even discusses it ever. It's why it has no expansions, or sequels. It's why Troika no longer in business because no publisher wants to fuckin' hire them. If TOEE was such a financial success of epic proportions that moronic VD wnats us to believe, publishers would have been bashing Troika's door to give them development gigs. LMAO

 

[Tigranes]

I think Volourn's sensitive, fragile soul was crushed by the closing of Troika, and this anger is the only way he can maintain his sanity.

 

[Davaris]

If that isn't cut content, I don't know what is.

Here's a comparison, if you have trouble grasping the concept.

Sprite mirroring ON:

Sprite mirroring OFF:

Are you being deliberately dense? It's really fucking easy to see why normal people don't give a fuck about the obviously minor differences between those graphics.

And who gives a fuck about cut content? If you knew they'd cut an area as big as Sigil from PS:T, would you consider it a worse game?

Same here, I don't really see any of the two options better than the other. If you had asked me which one had looked better I would have even said the one with sprite mirroring on. I was expecting some huge amazing difference, I guess that is why Drog or whatever that guys name never really promoted that comparision pictures.

If I am correctly understanding what you guys are talking about, it is not a good example to demonstrate sprite mirroring. If the character had a dagger in its hand the difference would be obvious.

 

[Murk]

Even in that case, its usually a small price to pay if the result is you can run the game smoothly on a system that barely meets minimum requirements (or doesn't in some fields).

Is it cool that Drog restored that? Sure. Did it make it a better game? Hardly. The other actually game stopping bugs were much more relevant.

 

[Double Ogre]

You people are fucking dense.

In IE games* sprite mirroring can be switched off if you have a good enough PC, but for whatever reason Troika decided to butcher 40% of animations without giving players a chance to get them back. This gives me a feeling that they probably didn't care much about their game.

* PS:T is an exception, since the extra frames are actually cut out from the game, so it crashes if you turn sprite mirroring off in the .ini file.

 

[FeelTheRads]

but for whatever reason Troika decided to butcher 40% of animations without giving players a chance to get them back. This gives me a feeling that they probably didn't care much about their game.

Actually, they did gave a chance to get them back since they've left them in the game, rather than removing them, no? Also, maybe they didn't had the time to include an option to turn them on or off at the last moment.

Whatever the case may be, it's still clear that no sane person would care about your sprite mirroring. Yes, it's nicer to have all the frames, but important or even that noticeable? No. A proof of Troika not caring about the game? Imbecilic.

 

[Volourn]

Have to agree. What a lame thing to whine about unless you some anal retentive graphics artiste. And, if that's the case, get the fuck over yerself.

 

[Double Ogre]

Whatever the case may be, it's still clear that no sane person would care about your sprite mirroring. Yes, it's nicer to have all the frames, but important or even that noticeable? No. A proof of Troika not caring about the game? Imbecilic.

Alright sure, let's just put stick figures in place of character sprites. I mean who cares about such things as character art anyway?

Jeez, man, it's 40% of all character art, including all races and monsters. And without an engine hack, these extra frames are nothing but garbage. Why were they even shipped with the game? I'll tell you why, they didn't care about their game that much, at least in the final part of development. They just threw it all together and shipped that load of crap. I went through all the resources, and there were a lot of things that were inactive due to negligence/bugs. Some content was just thrown in, without being tested at least once, e.g. they wrote a script and never bothered to check it in-game and of course it never worked.

 

[Davaris]

You people are fucking dense.

In IE games* sprite mirroring can be switched off if you have a good enough PC, but for whatever reason Troika decided to butcher 40% of animations without giving players a chance to get them back. This gives me a feeling that they probably didn't care much about their game.

* PS:T is an exception, since the extra frames are actually cut out from the game, so it crashes if you turn sprite mirroring off in the .ini file.

Still not a good enough example. Turn the mirroring on and then rotate the character in all directions taking photos of each one and they will see the implications.

Joe Krow:
If I am understanding you correctly, you are talking about turning dialogue into a mini game, where the player can talk to creatures to get the things they want and the creatures can talk to each other, as well as the player to get the things they want. The only downside is a certain amount of abstraction of the dialogue would be required.

 

[FeelTheRads]

The implication is that a character will not look the same when facing left or right (eg. his weapon, etc. will stay in the same hand). Big fucking deal. I'm actually surprised they rendered all those frames... they are THAT unimportant.

 

[Davaris]

The implication is that a character will not look the same when facing left or right (eg. his weapon, etc. will stay in the same hand). Big fucking deal. I'm actually surprised they rendered all those frames... they are THAT unimportant.

>actually surprised they rendered all those frames.

Exactly. They rendered all those extra frames and a programmer forgot to write the couple of lines of code that was supposed to use them. I'm surprised they didn't release a patch for it.

 

[Double Ogre]

Exactly. They rendered all those extra frames and a programmer forgot to write the couple of lines of code that was supposed to use them. I'm surprised they didn't release a patch for it.

I'm pretty sure that nobody here is listening to me.

The game was using full frames originally. In the last few months of development they decided to introduce sprite mirroring because lower end PCs of the time couldn't handle the game (that's what Tim Cain said anyway). So sprite mirroring was added to the engine, without an option to switch it off. But frames themselves were never removed, so that's why we got 200Mb of garbage in the release version.

200Mb of inactive content? Now try to find another game that had this much.

 

[Davaris]

>But frames themselves were never removed, so that's why we got 200Mb of garbage in the release version.

All you need is one of those clever Russians to make a patch and those extra frames would be available. Then again, they may have given up doing the full render cycle part way through the development process, so some creatures are full render and other creatures are half. In which case patching it would be useless.

 

[Pastel]

Guys, this is how good trolling is done. Congratulations, Mr. Ogre.

 

[Kingston]

Back in 2001 200 megabytes was a considerable amount of space. You have to admit it is retarded to put 200 megs on your HD that do _absolutely nothing_.

 

[Gragt]

I like unused contents, makes for a nice surprise when a modder releases a patch that enables it. It's like getting a free surprise expansion for a game you love and I wish more devs would do that.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Exactly. They rendered all those extra frames and a programmer forgot to write the couple of lines of code that was supposed to use them. I'm surprised they didn't release a patch for it.

I'm pretty sure that nobody here is listening to me.

The game was using full frames originally. In the last few months of development they decided to introduce sprite mirroring because lower end PCs of the time couldn't handle the game (that's what Tim Cain said anyway). So sprite mirroring was added to the engine, without an option to switch it off. But frames themselves were never removed, so that's why we got 200Mb of garbage in the release version.

200Mb of inactive content? Now try to find another game that had this much.

We've heard you the first time. Unfortunately, nobody really cares about 200MB worth of inactive sprites, especially since the mirrored ones look much better.

Jeez, man, it's 40% of all character art, including all races and monsters. And without an engine hack, these extra frames are nothing but garbage. Why were they even shipped with the game? I'll tell you why, they didn't care about their game that much, at least in the final part of development. They just threw it all together and shipped that load of crap.

Now you are just being stupid.

 

[Vault Dweller]

nah. the fact it did horribly is what spread the actual conception. It's why nobody outside of the Codexian/D&D part of the net even discusses it ever.

Yeah, I'm surprised myself why nobody outside of people who are interested in DnD is talking about a DnD game.

It's why it has no expansions, or sequels.

Atari has stated several times that the NWN franchise is their main DnD cash cow and that they don't want to make other single player DnD games because they would compete with the NWN games and reduce sales. Duh.

If TOEE was such a financial success of epic proportions that moronic VD wnats us to believe, publishers would have been bashing Troika's door to give them development gigs. LMAO

I've never claimed that it was an epic financial success. My only point was that the game did ok and wasn't a financial failure.