Game News AoD demo released

[hal900x]

Crossbow combat seems one-dimensional without the attack styles. The counter to this, given in the readme, is weapon selection. But at least in the demo, the crossbow selection at the vendor is pretty limited so it's impossible to know. EDIT: I found the additional crossbows, had expected any new ones added to be grouped with the existing xbows, not the case. And it doesn't really jive anyway, because you'd have to access your inventory at a high AP cost if you wanted to make use of that variety in combat.

I kind of agree with Mortmal, at least with the crossbow. A called shot to the arms: your % to hit goes down significantly and your AP cost doubles (2+2). This for a potential net loss of 2AP on your opponent (you spend 2 AP extra for the called shot, they spend 4AP to access inventory and re-arm). Not much incentive to try unless it's a guaranteed hit. Might make more sense with a melee weapon, assuming your chance to hit is greater with a close-range melee weapon, assuming equal weapon skill. But then that really underlines my point about the crossbow being simplistic. Called shot to the legs until you hit, regular shot, kite, repeat.

Is there any info on what the armor and weapon upgrades do? The stats look to be the same whether they are upgraded or not...is there some hidden benefit to descriptors such as "lightened"?

Is there (will there be) any way to determine how the opponent is armored other than a visual assessment? Visuals don't always seem to match the actual DR.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Very falloutish combat mode , but theres a few things that seems unbalanced to me, for exemple you can target limbs and disarm on a hit but the enenemy reequip without much AP penalty next round as it seems to me , so no point risking to miss a strike and its better to chain smaller AP attacks.

It takes 4AP to re-equip a weapon, which is quite a lot (basically one attack less). Also, you can use it to retreat without being interrupted because the enemy doesn't have a weapon equipped. We've spent a long time tweaking the system and I can assure you that if some weapon/attack/build seems weak or useless, it's only because you haven't figured out how to use it to your advantage yet.

Another thing that seems unbalanced to me is dodge, if i put all my skill points in it hardly anything hit me in a fight, so its a low cost build , you dont have to buy expensive armor...

Yet it would take only 2-3 hits to kill you. Keep in mind that this is a combat demo where skill points are plentiful. Maxing Dodge in the full game would be much, much harder.

The biggest issue with this demo was tthe corrupted save, its happens all the time and i wasnt able to see fights past the guy in armor with lance.

Sorry about that. We're fixing it right now.

 

[hal900x]

you can use it to retreat without being interrupted because the enemy doesn't have a weapon equipped.

This point is moot with a ranged weapon though, since you cannot fire point-blank.

Hey, what's the secondary stat (box) on weapon skills about? It is always zero with xbow, but raising xbow stat seems to increase it for both Bow and Thrown.

 

[JarlFrank]

I think savegames don't work if you don't name them. My first save was just unnamed and the game crashed when loading it. If I name them, they work perfectly.

 

[Vault Dweller]

you can use it to retreat without being interrupted because the enemy doesn't have a weapon equipped.

This point is moot with a ranged weapon though, since you cannot fire point-blank.

Different weapons call for different tactics. A ranger's first priority is to keep the distance.

Hey, what's the secondary stat (box) on weapon skills about? It is always zero with xbow, but raising xbow stat seems to increase it for both Bow and Thrown.

Synergy. Raising a ranged (or a melee skill) gives you a bonus to other skills in the group - 40% of the difference.

 

[Murk]

Very eagerly looking forward to trying this tonight - downloaded it last night but didn't have time before work to test it out. Judging from the preliminary survival guide it seems like I'll be spending a few hours on it trying the various builds.

The crafting system, from what screenshots I remember, looked very similar to Arcanum's. This is a good thing.

Why is Thursday so far away? ;(

 

[Melcar]

Another thing that seems unbalanced to me is dodge, if i put all my skill points in it hardly anything hit me in a fight, so its a low cost build , you dont have to buy expensive armor, just cloth dagger and dodge and you do much better than a fully armored warrior.That skill seems considerably more usefull than block, not only you have to buy an expensive shield but it break very easy, and you have to spend AP to replace it...

Yeah, seriously. You can do the first few matches naked:

TITS!!!

 

[Cassidy]

Some notes on game balance:

First, I notice the same balance problem with the "JHP" vs. "AP" rounds that Fallout had when going with a crossbow, high critical skill build: the armor piercing arrows are only useful because they'll do more than 0 damage in aimed shots against the leg and in regular shots, but, as all crossbows except the repeating one are more about maximizing damage than rate of fire, when using "aimed shot: torso", barbed missiles almost always do more damage than armor piercing ones.

Not that the AP missiles are worthless, and at least there are situations where they'll deal more damage than the barbed and regular ones(differently from Fallout), but I've ended using almost exclusively barbed ammunitions, and only a few AP ones.

Second, the oatmeal sword+shield is really inferior to double-handed weapons, and blocking isn't really that good of a skill. I know that blocking was made to fit with a low Action Points, tough character build equipped with the heaviest possible armor, but when considering that a low AP build would benefit from weapons that deal greater amount of damage per hit, of which most are two-handed weapon, this may have to be checked. However, the heaviest armors really make a PC more difficult to kill, on the other hand.

Finally, the AI is quite decent, but rarely uses aimed shots against the head, making of most of the helmets but the most basic ones without attack penalties of questionable utility. I'm not sure if it's possible to make the AI prioritize aimed shots to the head if the PC wears no or very light/weak helmets.

On the good things, unlike in Fallout, I never found myself resorting to the same type of attack (eyeshot) because it was better than everything else, and although some attack types are useful only for specific circumstances, I've found an use for most of them, and the lighter, faster hitting weapons could actually be needed together with the heavier, slower ones in the full game, with the former being used when facing lightly armored enemies and the later when facing heavily armored ones.

Now, just as a question on something I'm unsure about: are the unspent Action Points of a turn added to the Armor Class like in Fallout?

 

[Vault Dweller]

Some notes on game balance:

First, I notice the same balance problem with the "JHP" vs. "AP" rounds ... when using "aimed shot: torso", barbed missiles almost always do more damage than armor piercing ones.

Not that the AP missiles are worthless, and at least there are situations where they'll deal more damage than the barbed and regular ones....

Well, if AP ammo isn't worthless and is more useful than barbed in certain situations, then we aren't talking about a balance issue, but about your personal preference.

Second, the oatmeal sword+shield is really inferior to double-handed weapons, and blocking isn't really that good of a skill.

Read how many people prefer Blocking and think that it's much better than Dodge. Look at how many "Blockers" beat the demo. It's far from an inferior skill and definitely isn't "not that good".

Finally, the AI is quite decent, but rarely uses aimed shots against the head, making of most of the helmets but the most basic ones without attack penalties of questionable utility. I'm not sure if it's possible to make the AI prioritize aimed shots to the head if the PC wears no or very light/weak helmets.

Play without a helmet after the first 5 fights and you'll end up dead very quickly. High skill NPCs do check if you're wearing a helmet.

Now, just as a question on something I'm unsure about: are the unspent Action Points of a turn added to the Armor Class like in Fallout?

No.

 

[Elhoim]

Some notes on game balance:

First, I notice the same balance problem with the "JHP" vs. "AP" rounds ... when using "aimed shot: torso", barbed missiles almost always do more damage than armor piercing ones.

Not that the AP missiles are worthless, and at least there are situations where they'll deal more damage than the barbed and regular ones....

Well, if AP ammo isn't worthless and is more useful than barbed in certain situations, then we aren't talking about a balance issue, but about your personal preference.

Also you are forgetting that piercing missiles have a THC bonus against shields. That makes them very useful. As a matter of fact, I used them all the time...

 

[Rhett Butler]

Awesome, this is a nice surprise! Does anyone know if the demo works with Wine? I don't have a Windows install at the moment. No big deal if it doesn't, I will just add a Windows partition.

 

[toro]

The demo is unstable on Win7. I tried a couple of things, but I could only kill the first opponent before a crash. Pros: nice skills set, nice weapons, a lot of combat choices, cons: outdated models, stupid camera, some popups are needed for items. My personal opinion is that demo shows good potential for the final product, but right now it needs a lot of polishing.
@VD: Thank you and good luck with this project.

 

[kenney bounces]

Hey VD,

Is there a sticky on the bug list somewhere? Here's mine.

1) Running before the combat begins sometimes results in an infinite loop.

2) Talking to the arena master results in crashes quite often.

3) Had one save game bug. Can't load it. (saved this while in the arena).

 

[Melcar]

Awesome, this is a nice surprise! Does anyone know if the demo works with Wine? I don't have a Windows install at the moment. No big deal if it doesn't, I will just add a Windows partition.

Yes it does, and apparently from many of the reports so far, better than on Windows.

 

[hal900x]

Here's a few bugs from me. Is there a link to a bug report somewheres?

Here's mine:

1.) Gold bug: you can purchase a small number of arrows and be charged little or nothing for it. So I was able to repeatedly buy 9 of each type of meteor arrows for a couple of gold each. Then I sold them all back for thousands, repeat until rich. The number you need to stay under in order to get the deal seems to vary. I expect the program is looking for a specific integer.

2.) I didn't get the description text for the final arena fight. Arena master just asks if I am ready or not, as if it was my second visit to him for that fight.

3.) All 3 of my savegames got corrupted at the very end. So I only saw one possible ending. Guess I'll have to play all the way thru again..damn!

All in all, pretty fun. What I said about the relatively one-dimensionality of Crossbow combat still stands though. If I tried it again I'd probably make a hybrid of some sort.

 

[forgotmypasswordagain]

Crashed, and fucked up the gamma settings of my PC.

 

[hal900x]

blah blah called shot to the arms

you can use it to retreat without being interrupted because the enemy doesn't have a weapon equipped.

This point is moot with a ranged weapon though, since you cannot fire point-blank.

Different weapons call for different tactics. A ranger's first priority is to keep the distance.

I was making reference to this earlier point:

A called shot to the arms: your % to hit goes down significantly and ... a potential net loss of 2AP on your opponent (you spend 2 AP extra for the called shot, they spend 4AP to access inventory and re-arm). Not much incentive to try unless it's a guaranteed hit.

So yeah, an archer keeps distance, I agree. I was just agreeing with the earlier point made that a called shot to the arms isn't very useful for ranged attackers. My gripe was actually specific to xbows. Not that they aren't effective. Just kinda boring. They already have no attack styles, which I admit is "realistic", and then you realize that one of the called shots is somewhat pointless...seems like they need a little something. Like a reduced AP to switch weapons maybe. That way the weapon variety would have more ooomph. I did try keeping a variety of xbows on hand, but that was only useful in one fight when I was being disarmed constantly, and had to open up the pack anyway.

 

[sportforredneck]

Downloading now. Here's hoping I can get an erection.

 

[ElectricOtter]

Just tried it. Combat seems decent enough, but I ran into some really fucking weird bugs. First, most people in the starting area won't talk. Second, when fighting, sometimes my character attacks himself. I would have had a screenshot, but MSpaint doesn't like AoD, apparently. Anyway, this makes some battles extremely fucking hard. Please fix.

As for the combat itself, well, it was okay. Some things just bugged me, like the fact that two-handed spears could only target the space two squares in the desired direction, and most weapons can't attack diagonally. It has a lot of potential, though.

Also, try to make it crash less. Seriously, it's damn annoying.

EDIT: The music is also p. awesome. Really captures the feel of the game.

 

[Melcar]

NPCs (except for the arena master and the weapon merchant) don't talk in my game either. Guess all the other NPCs are just there as filler.
Spears are fine I think. Those long spears take some room to maneuver, so not being able to use them against opponents right next to you makes a bit of sense. Although it is a pain in the ass, but a high dodge skill ensures that you can back up safely while in combat.

 

[Elhoim]

To everyone who is affected by the dialogue crash, here is a hotfix for you:

http://rapidshare.com/files/326359202/a ... er_fix.rar

 

[ElectricOtter]

To everyone who is affected by the dialogue crash, here is a hotfix for you:

http://rapidshare.com/files/326359202/a ... er_fix.rar

Much thanks.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I keep hitting myself in fights. Why is this? The enemy does this as well. I can have a 95% to hit, etc, etc, and still hit myself with a power attack.

 

[Serious_Business]

Restart the game.

It happens when you reload your game too much

 

[hal900x]

Sword n board is a motherfucker. I suspect if you are going with a defensive tank build, you need to invest HEAVILY into block. I have >100 block and it almost never repels a hit. Getting pwnt by numerous opponents that I steamrolled when I tried the crossbow build. Gonna try going full defense and see what happens. I already have the heaviest armor + shield available.

The readme does warn it may not be the best idea. Anyone have good luck with a classic build like this?

Edit: what's with the "use on" text in the off-hand attack button? Is there something that needs to be done with the shield besides hold it passively?