Game News Arx Fatalis Patch and Source Code Released

[Tolknaz]

As far as i can tell Stephen Russell does Fallan Orbiplanax (the guy who gets killed in the beginning) and some other voices here and there, but not the main character.

 

[denizsi]

There is much to be said about the magic system of Arx Fatalis, however, simply because it's the best magic system ever seen in a CPRG

LOL. MS Paint mini games are teh best things evah! And breaking spells down into functional components automatically makes it the best magic system evah! Oh no, nothing is any different or more interesting than your typical magic system whatsoever. It still is all the same old spells just with a mini game twist! Then why? Because, umm... well, typically, you just click to insta-cast and here, you play MS Paint mini game to cast a spell, so yeah, it's teh best evah!

I nominate lock-picking minigame in Oblivion to be the best lockpicking mechanic ever, since it's basically the same shit.

 

[SimpleComplexity]

"because it's the best magic system ever seen in a CPRG"

Because you haven't seen much cRPG's to begin with.

Roffles!

 

[Tolknaz]

The magic system was certainly more interesting than your run of the mill "choose x spells at levelup" and "click an icon to cast" system. In my opinion it was brought down by two things though:
1. The number of precast slots should have depended on your characters stats.
2. The drawing itself was way too sensitive. Given the relatively low number of runes you could draw (including the hidden ones) it should have been a bit more forgiving (maybe even dependant on stats again).

 

[denizsi]

Please do explain what exactly makes the AF magic system more interesting than "choose x spells at levelup" and "click an icon to cast" system, which is far from being the norm to begin with.

On a second thought, unless you can spin the gimmicky MS-Paint mini game in a new light, don't bother; I don't care. Tributes and references are terribly overrated. Giving a nod to Ultima games by imitating a poor system isn't virtuous by any means. Barring some theoretical virtue of the mini-game itself by which it can stand on its own, the only difference between casting spells with one click and playing the MS-Paint mini-game is the amount of bullshit you put between the player and his or her character. No amount of arguing will change that. See my Oblivion lock picking reference again.

On top of that, even the way Wizard spells work in DnD, or at least in DnD cRPGS, is more interesting, involving and a tactical process. There's the search for scrolls / teacher, there's the transcription process which can fail depending on your stats and the memorisation about which you have to be careful because you won't have some mana bullshit to back up on. And I'm normally one to quite dislike the DnD way of magic. Another offense with the MSPaint mini-game is its ridiculous reliance on manual dexterity and that the faster you can draw the runes, faster you can cast spells, which brings us to the ultimate point about that terrible implementation:

The only saving "grace" (if you could call it that) of the MS-Paint mini game is that the game is first person and real time so that, every now and then, consoltards can have visceral! excitement running away from spiders and whatnot while trying to get the gestures right in panic. Oh how exciting! Somebody tell me how this doesn't reek of consolitis. Yes, you heard it right. It's as consoletard as it gets. And the the audacity to call it "the best", in RPGs no less.

Please, leave The Codex now and don't fucking come back unless you have an epiphany.

 

[SCO]

Incredible butthurt.

 

[Eyeball]

Try playing a mage and getting past the aforementioned "one-shotting demon boss in small room." You will know, then, why having to both memorise and draw sequences of figures with the mouse while simultaneously jumping and running over and around obstacles to avoid getting your ass raped by the demon is challenging and FUN.

And I don't believe it was "too sensitive." It just took practice. Come the end of the game, I was able to spam the spells I'd used the most during the game at the enemies with barely a pause - which makes sense, even from an RPG point of view. You GET BETTER at casting magic towards the end of the game, but due to player practise rather than just having slightly higher skill level in Cast Magic Missile.

Being able to draw the runes under pressure is the real skill challenge in this game, such as in the demon boss fight. If you find it too difficult, practise more.

 

[denizsi]

Let's say I'm; what's your excuse? Braindead?

Try playing a mage and getting past the aforementioned "one-shotting demon boss in small room." You will know, then, why having to both memorise and draw sequences of figures with the mouse while simultaneously jumping and running over and around obstacles to avoid getting your ass raped by the demon is challenging and FUN.

And I don't believe it was "too sensitive." It just took practice. Come the end of the game, I was able to spam the spells I'd used the most during the game at the enemies with barely a pause - which makes sense, even from an RPG point of view. You GET BETTER at casting magic towards the end of the game, but due to player practise rather than just having slightly higher skill level in Cast Magic Missile.

Being able to draw the runes under pressure is the real skill challenge in this game, such as in the demon boss fight. If you find it too difficult, practise more.

Exactly. As I said, it could be fun in a very consoletard way for some people, I guess. But it doesn't have the least resemblance to RP of G nor any depth to itself. It's a borderline shitty console game.

In fact, there are very few reasons to call the game a RPG, some of it associated to nostalgia and typical fantasy associations taken for granted with the setting, eg. swords and sorcery, goblins, trolls. If the setting was an uninspired modern day with firearms, half the people calling it an RPG would argue against it. Luckily, it's a good game as a whole.

 

[Tolknaz]

Action in arpg: oh the horror!

 

[hoverdog]

Incredible butthurt.

 

[Unkillable Cat]

A third minor irritation is that the voice acting sucks dick, but as it's a French game later translated, that's excusable.

As a whole, sure the voice acting was a disappointment. It was brought down by a few really wooden sounding actors, including the guy who did the main character. All of it certainly didn't suck though, goblins were pretty amusing and Stephen Russell did a respectable job too. If anything the voice acting:
1. Lacked coherent vision.
2. Had too few actors.
3. Certain actors did indeed suck.

The guy who spoke for the Captain of the Guard (Morgan?) gets my vote as one of the most horrific crimes against voices ever.

But I recalled the Sisters coming out alright. Especially once I realised what language they were speaking...

 

[denizsi]

Action in arpg: oh the horror!

It's ok son, you don't have to say it out loud. I already know. You're my bitch.

 

[Eyeball]

A third minor irritation is that the voice acting sucks dick, but as it's a French game later translated, that's excusable.

As a whole, sure the voice acting was a disappointment. It was brought down by a few really wooden sounding actors, including the guy who did the main character. All of it certainly didn't suck though, goblins were pretty amusing and Stephen Russell did a respectable job too. If anything the voice acting:
1. Lacked coherent vision.
2. Had too few actors.
3. Certain actors did indeed suck.

The guy who spoke for the Captain of the Guard (Morgan?) gets my vote as one of the most horrific crimes against voices ever.

But I recalled the Sisters coming out alright. Especially once I realised what language they were speaking...

My personal favourite was the troll. While the normal "big dumb troll" voice wasn't bad, the dialogue of the unimportant generic trolls included the phrase "roar."

Not "graaaaargh!" or any other kind of phonetic sound, but saying the word "roar."

 

[Sceptic]

My personal favourite was the troll. While the normal "big dumb troll" voice wasn't bad, the dialogue of the unimportant generic trolls included the phrase "roar."

Not "graaaaargh!" or any other kind of phonetic sound, but saying the word "roar."

Trolling at its finest

 

[deuxhero]

2. The drawing itself was way too sensitive. Given the relatively low number of runes you could draw (including the hidden ones) it should have been a bit more forgiving (maybe even dependant on stats again).

Aye. The demo showed that far too well for my taste, haveing me wait till any source ports or what not show up before buying, as it's not THAT intresting.

IMO the easiest fix would be to make it based on connecting "points" instead of free hand. Would be way more accurate then.

 

[Eyeball]

This guy's not having any problems casting spells: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LueGiUasvFk

I was just as good at the end of the game I played. I liked that - showed you'd actually gotten better at the game while playing it instead of just having a higher level.

It doesn't need a "fix", people just need to get to know the system. It's easy once you get the hang of it.

 

[SCO]

First project i found:
http://code.google.com/p/arx-liberis/
Misspellings on front page don't inspire confidence.

 

[Sceptic]

On a more serious note, while I thought the rune system was interesting and, on paper, a welcome change from the usual, implementation leaves a lot to be desired. It's not about "getting to know the system", it's about it being waaaaaaaaaaay too sensitive. Or, more accurately, way too inconsistent in its sensitivity. Sometimes I'd get a rune completely off and it would still register correctly, sometimes I'd do 2 in a row that are, as far as the eye can tell, exactly identical, yet the game would not register the second, and sometimes it'd even register as a completely different rune... none of this would've been a big problem if the game didn't practically require you to be playing a full mage once you meet the Ylsides.

It's still a good game and the closest thing to UW3 that we'll ever see.

 

[mvBarracuda]

The guys make quite great progress, porting the code.

There is now an Arx Fatalis sourcecode port wiki: http://arx.parpg.net

If you want to meet the different involved devs, the best starting point is the IRC channel of the project: http://arx.parpg.net/IRC_channel

 

[SCO]

The project that seems to be moving the fastest doesn't seem to be listed there under the projects page:
https://github.com/lubosz/ArxFatalis/commits/master

4 devs, know how to use git, use branches to do tasks, appear to commit only complete patches, good discipline. This one has a future.

 

[mvBarracuda]

The VCS repos are listed here SCO:
http://arx.parpg.net/Version_control_repositories

 

[ecliptic]

Too bad the code's not a bit less tightly coupled. Guess that's what happens when you're under the gun, timewise.

 

[mvBarracuda]

Could you elaborate on that ecliptic?

 

[deuxhero]

When playing Dark Messiah my hybrid quickly ran out of hotkeys to make use of the variety of spells he could use. A gesture based system (but again, make it "connect points" based) would free them up

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Dang it doesn't work on my m11x w/win 7 64-bit. I remember it worked on my old computer with a Radeon card and win 7 but I don't have a desktop anymore for now.

Seems like it's the NVidia drivers fucking things up. I followed all the help I could find to get it to work.

Or perhaps I should just install XP for the odd game that doesn't work...