Game News Call of Saregnar gameplay video

[thesheeep]

Because there's not much else to look forward to.

Maybe that's reason to find another hobby instead of being satisfied with scraps.

What scraps?
More good games out there than ever before, including more games in a retro style, mods and overhauls of classics, etc.

The number of indie projects taking "forever" to get anywhere is so large that you still end up with lots of releases to look forward to - unless you have crazy specific tastes.
I really don't see the issue.

In times past, you HAD to get excited and look forward to the handful of good games that would release in year, there really was nothing else to do.
But now? I could win in a lottery, never work again, prolong my life with dark magic and there still would not be enough time to play everything I have an interest in.

If you are miserable about the state of gaming at this time, you really just WANT to be miserable. Which is 90% of the Codex, I know

 

[Tyranicon]

Because there's not much else to look forward to.

Maybe that's reason to find another hobby instead of being satisfied with scraps.

What scraps?
More good games out there than ever before, including more games in a retro style, mods and overhauls of classics, etc.

The number of indie projects taking "forever" to get anywhere is so large that you still end up with lots of releases to look forward to - unless you have crazy specific tastes.
I really don't see the issue.

In times past, you HAD to get excited and look forward to the handful of good games that would release in year, there really was nothing else to do.
But now? I could win in a lottery, never work again, prolong my life with dark magic and there still would not be enough time to play everything I have an interest in.

If you are miserable about the state of gaming at this time, you really just WANT to be miserable. Which is 90% of the Codex, I know

I want to agree with this, but at the same time I can count the number of good (by my admittedly hyper snob criteria) games that are released every single year on probably one hand.

A reasonable man would think that more games = more of them will be good.

This has not proven to be true. For example, I will ctrl+v my comparison of games made in 1999 and 2022 made in the JA3 thread:

The atmosphere two decades ago was more conducive to creativity in gamedev circles. Devs were still exploring new technology, new gameplay mechanics, new ways of telling stories. And let's be honest, they were way more talented and driven than the current crop.

Just look at the absolutely legendary line up of games that came out in 1999 alongside JA2:

And this is just an unfiltered list of games google brought up, with many, many more great titles below.

Now look at 2022:

 

[Berekän]

All that bullshit from 2022 is from big studios, the industry has been corrupted to the core there, so yeah, you're not going to find much of value, you need to look at passion projects made by small groups of autists living off roots scavenged from the forest.

 

[CyberWhale]

GOG is very interested in getting the game on their store, so that should be no problem. I much prefer GOG myself over Steam. GOG doesn't do demos AFAIK, though.

GOG has both DEMOs and Early Access (In Development).

 

[Rincewind]

Because there's not much else to look forward to.

Maybe that's reason to find another hobby instead of being satisfied with scraps.

Maybe you do whatever you want and I do the same. I'm much more interested in older pre-2000 games anyway, so I'm happy if anything newschool comes along every 2-3 year.

 

[Rincewind]

If you are miserable about the state of gaming at this time, you really just WANT to be miserable. Which is 90% of the Codex, I know

Yeah, I never understood this either...

 

[thesheeep]

Because there's not much else to look forward to.

Maybe that's reason to find another hobby instead of being satisfied with scraps.

What scraps?
More good games out there than ever before, including more games in a retro style, mods and overhauls of classics, etc.

The number of indie projects taking "forever" to get anywhere is so large that you still end up with lots of releases to look forward to - unless you have crazy specific tastes.
I really don't see the issue.

In times past, you HAD to get excited and look forward to the handful of good games that would release in year, there really was nothing else to do.
But now? I could win in a lottery, never work again, prolong my life with dark magic and there still would not be enough time to play everything I have an interest in.

If you are miserable about the state of gaming at this time, you really just WANT to be miserable. Which is 90% of the Codex, I know

I want to agree with this, but at the same time I can count the number of good (by my admittedly hyper snob criteria) games that are released every single year on probably one hand.

A reasonable man would think that more games = more of them will be good.

This has not proven to be true. For example, I will ctrl+v my comparison of games made in 1999 and 2022 made in the JA3 thread:

The atmosphere two decades ago was more conducive to creativity in gamedev circles. Devs were still exploring new technology, new gameplay mechanics, new ways of telling stories. And let's be honest, they were way more talented and driven than the current crop.

Just look at the absolutely legendary line up of games that came out in 1999 alongside JA2:

And this is just an unfiltered list of games google brought up, with many, many more great titles below.

Now look at 2022:

Quite frankly, you just need to take your nostalgia goggles off.

Off your supposedly great list from 99, only these games can actually be considered timelessly good and not just "good for their time", meaning you'd still consider them good if they were released today (graphics notwithstanding) and there are not many similar games released regularly that match the quality:
AoE 2, SS2, EQ, HoMM3, PS:T

And 99 was a famously strong year.

All the rest is either standard FPS ware, action adventures, arcade games, platformers or others that have been surpassed long since and very regularly, too or have regularly released games that are very similar and just as good if not better.

There's also stuff like Pro Skater which is indeed very good and fairly unique, but skate hype is dead so that's hardly a fair comparison - nowadays there are other games focusing on other sports that are good (I bet, don't really care about sports in neither real life nor gaming so I wouldn't know for certain).
I'm not saying those old games are bad, and they were certainly very good or great for their time, but if you think most of these games do not have modern equivalents released that aren't as good if not much better, we just go back to the point of people wanting to be miserable.

The 2022 list is irrelevant as it doesn't even list 1% of games released that year. Nor actually exclusively well received games.
Elden Ring and Saints Row in the same list. Come on
You are comparing a list of good-to-great 99 games with a list of "mostly crap with a few good-to-great" from 2022. I hope I don't need to point out how absurd that is. Talk about picking statistics you need to produce results that you want, eh?
Wanna compare with a list of 85%+ Steam ratings from 2022, even excluding "casual" games? You couldn't even fit that list anywhere...

You can't really compare AAA only, either.
AAA nowadays is mostly shit, yes, but AAA back then was at best comparable with medium-to-small game devs nowadays, with a completely different target audience.
Apples and oranges.

 

[mondblut]

Tags: Call of Saregnar; In The Keep

An extended gameplay video showcasing the coziness of Call of Saregnar was released yesterday.

Blanket up and watch it below.

​

There's no release date yet but it looks like it's shaping up nicely.

Watching him drag items around manually was almost painful. Hello, we have invented double click and "take all" button since 1993!

 

[thesheeep]

Tags: Call of Saregnar; In The Keep

An extended gameplay video showcasing the coziness of Call of Saregnar was released yesterday.

Watching him drag items around manually was almost painful. Hello, we have invented double click and "take all" button since 1993!

Just thinking about how much time I'd spend dragging items around during development would make me implement QoL features like that immediately

 

[Tyranicon]

You are comparing a list of good-to-great 99 games with a list of "mostly crap with a few good-to-great" from 2022. I hope I don't need to point out how absurd that is. Talk about picking statistics you need to produce results that you want, eh?
Wanna compare with a list of 85%+ Steam ratings from 2022, even excluding "casual" games? You couldn't even fit that list anywhere...

You can't really compare AAA only, either.
AAA nowadays is mostly shit, yes, but AAA back then was at best comparable with medium-to-small game devs nowadays, with a completely different target audience.
Apples and oranges.

Like I said, both lists were randomly curated google offerings, not something I pick and chose.

As an indie dev, I want to believe that good things are coming out of the indie spaces especially as my own game came out in 2022, but I can't really name all that many good indies released last year.

Of the ones I played personally, I count Vampire Survivors (which is good, but basically a flash game), and King Arthur as good. I'm forgetting some, but two indies out of thousands.

I'm not trying to be argumentative. If you have good indies, list them and I'll check them out.

 

[PrK]

Tags: Call of Saregnar; In The Keep

An extended gameplay video showcasing the coziness of Call of Saregnar was released yesterday.

Watching him drag items around manually was almost painful. Hello, we have invented double click and "take all" button since 1993!

Just thinking about how much time I'd spend dragging items around during development would make me implement QoL features like that immediately

This is probably a result of thinking that since BaK didn't need it, CoS doesn't either. The problem in that thought though is that BaK didn't need it because of the way the UI was designed, the portraits are big and just bellow the items. Whereas in CoS the portraits are small and far away, making that same process annoying. There are solutions to this, like revamping the looting screen or adding shortcut/duplicate portraits in the current looting box to ease up the process of distributing it, etc.

 

[mondblut]

This is probably a result of thinking that since BaK didn't need it, CoS doesn't either.

In times that passed since BaK, we have discovered that "drag and drop" was not, in fact, a convenient interface scheme. Especially when you have to do it 30 times per minute. Especially after the resolution of the screen you have to drag it across has quintupled.

In fact, in hindsight we realized that the "entirely mouse-driven interface" was a big mistake as a whole.

 

[Rhuantavan]

Believe it or not, that “loot all” button has been on my todo for a couple of years now. There are simply more pressing issues to fix.

 

[Rincewind]

This is probably a result of thinking that since BaK didn't need it, CoS doesn't either.

In times that passed since BaK, we have discovered that "drag and drop" was not, in fact, a convenient interface scheme. Especially when you have to do it 30 times per minute. Especially after the resolution of the screen you have to drag it across has quintupled.

In fact, in hindsight we realized that the "entirely mouse-driven interface" was a big mistake as a whole.

The mouse-driven inventory never bothered me in BaK, to be honest, neither in EoB, nor in Grimrock. I found the constant need to micro-manage weapons a lot more annoying (as in having to repair them).

Although I used the keyboard exclusively for movement in all these games. What I don't like is when I'm forced to use the mouse for movement by having to click on the arrows, like in the Amiga version of Elvira (maybe the PC port is the same, have to check).

 

[tindrli]

this is great. seems that it could be a missing piece in my gaming chilhood. i wonder whats the main story. reminds me so much of might and magic in a good way

 

[thesheeep]

Believe it or not, that “loot all” button has been on my todo for a couple of years now. There are simply more pressing issues to fix.

Out of sheer curiosity:
How do you determine which TODO to work on next?

Personally I prefer having a list of tasks that all need to be done (and another one for should-haves and a last one for nice-to-haves) for each milestone.
And then I just go through those must-haves in any order I feel like - if 100 tasks have to be done anyway, it doesn't really matter in which order I tackle them (unless there are dependencies, of course). That approach helps with motivation, at least for me.

One thing I learned in the last 15 years of doing development is that this must/should/nice-to-have separation is extremely useful, but one should not fall into the trap of only using pure functionality to assign importance to a task.
Although I don't work on games right now, I don't see why this wouldn't apply to all kinds of software development.
In games, it is easy to think that QoL features would be should-haves or nice-to-haves - after all, the game technically functions without them. But the truth is that people will quickly put away or just straight refuse to touch a game that doesn't offer features they expect (again, same for any software).

Which brings me to another topic (that you probably answered already, but can't find it right now): Please tell me you can speed up combat. I'm not saying it looks too slow right now - I'm saying that no matter how fast it looks by default, I'll want it faster eventually

 

[Rhuantavan]

How do you determine which TODO to work on next?

Personally I prefer having a list of tasks that all need to be done (and another one for should-haves and a last one for nice-to-haves) for each milestone.
And then I just go through those must-haves in any order I feel like - if 100 tasks have to be done anyway, it doesn't really matter in which order I tackle them (unless there are dependencies, of course). That approach helps with motivation, at least for me.

One thing I learned in the last 15 years of doing development is that this must/should/nice-to-have separation is extremely useful, but one should not fall into the trap of only using pure functionality to assign importance to a task.
Although I don't work on games right now, I don't see why this wouldn't apply to all kinds of software development.
In games, it is easy to think that QoL features would be should-haves or nice-to-haves - after all, the game technically functions without them. But the truth is that people will quickly put away or just straight refuse to touch a game that doesn't offer features they expect (again, same for any software).

Which brings me to another topic (that you probably answered already, but can't find it right now): Please tell me you can speed up combat. I'm not saying it looks too slow right now - I'm saying that no matter how fast it looks by default, I'll want it faster eventually

I have all of the tasks prioritized in Jira. Generally, I run them by priority, but I slip the odd one in to keep development interesting. The odd task is usually different from what I've been working on recently, so for example, if I've been stuck in code for a long time, I take some task from the writing or art pile. I would have gone suicidal a long time ago if I had kept a strict order all of the time.

And you're right about QoL features. I have been guilty of not giving them more attention, especially those that are relatively quick to implement. Oftentimes though, such features turn out to be all but simple and quick, so I put them on the back burner. One such thing that I have been delaying because I know it's going to be a PITA is alternate font switching, so you can opt for a more readable, non-pixelated font for the dialogs and the rest of the UI.

As for speeding up combat, that's been brought up several times already, so I'll just push it a bit higher on the list, especially since I think it'll be quite easy to implement.

 

[Rincewind]

And then I just go through those must-haves in any order I feel like - if 100 tasks have to be done anyway, it doesn't really matter in which order I tackle them (unless there are dependencies, of course). That approach helps with motivation, at least for me.

One thing I learned in the last 15 years of doing development is that this must/should/nice-to-have separation is extremely useful, but one should not fall into the trap of only using pure functionality to assign importance to a task.

Although I don't work on games, I'm doing the exact same approach in my other projects. Otherwise there's either total chaos, or I'm forcing myself doing shit and it just doesn't feel good... if it stops being a hobby and feels like work, what's the point?

 

[thesheeep]

One such thing that I have been delaying because I know it's going to be a PITA is alternate font switching, so you can opt for a more readable, non-pixelated font for the dialogs and the rest of the UI.

From all the game projects I have worked on, there is one consistent nightmare topic to work on:
UI. Layouting, fonts, different resolutions, add localization for extra twists (have fun with fonts going right-to-left ). It's all such an excruciating mess to work with - no wonder more and more devs opt for just using HTML+JS to make their game UI.

especially since I think it'll be quite easy to implement.

Famous last words

 

[MF]

Believe it or not, that “loot all” button has been on my todo for a couple of years now. There are simply more pressing issues to fix.

No group inventory except for money and keys, right? Having the 'loot all' button distribute to characters where possible and have an actual fail state might be its own kind of annoying. I like how BaK's brand of inventory tetris made it so that if you wanted to carry a suit of armor instead of wearing it you'd have to consider just how the character would be doing that.

 

[Rhuantavan]

No group inventory except for money and keys, right? Having the 'loot all' button distribute to characters where possible and have an actual fail state might be its own kind of annoying. I like how BaK's brand of inventory tetris made it so that if you wanted to carry a suit of armor instead of wearing it you'd have to consider just how the character would be doing that.

Right now, it's like BaK with money and keys: a group inventory.
I already have this failsafe system for dragging single items into inventories, so it's just a matter of scaling that up to multiples. I'll probably just dumbly start distributing items to the leftmost character if/until his inventory is full and then move to the next character. Having smartly distributed items would probably confuse the player in the sense of, "Where did that item go/What was it I looted again?". Having new items marked in the inventory is another thing I considered to have as a consequence of the "loot all" mechanic.

 

[PrK]

I'll probably just dumbly start distributing items to the leftmost character if/until his inventory is full and then move to the next character. Having smartly distributed items would probably confuse the player in the sense of, "Where did that item go/What was it I looted again?". Having new items marked in the inventory is another thing I considered to have as a consequence of the "loot all" mechanic.

Yeah, dumb distribution left>right is a solution, but just postpones the task of inventory managment for later.
Would an alternative to a "loot all" button like this:

Spoiler

as a compromise be harder to implement? (Or just have both?)

 

[Rhuantavan]

Yeah, dumb distribution left>right is a solution, but just postpones the task of inventory managment for later.
Would an alternative to a "loot all" button like this:

Spoiler

as a compromise be harder to implement? (Or just have both?)

Not a bad idea. I'll think about it.

 

[mondblut]

Would an alternative to a "loot all" button like this:

Spoiler

as a compromise be harder to implement? (Or just have both?)

Click on a portrait once to select the recipient, then doubleclick items to make them go to him. Select another portrait when you want items to go to him instead. TAB to cycle selected recipient, too, and 1,2,3 etc to select. Drag and drop is cancer.

 

[Alter Sack]

Feels great, but why does every character look like a neckbeard virgin?

It's specifically designed for the majority of the rpgcodex crowd so that they can identify better with it.