Game News Depth of Peril demo is out!

[speeler]

I'm not motivated to do anything here. Like, at all. I started off with a fighter and the cheap starting hatchet, and none of the mobs did much damage. I didn't even talk to anybody, just went out and started clubbing baddies, and all of a sudden Eat Shit becomes the strongest covenant.

The first area is very easy, especially since you have a bunch of the other covenants that are running around that area right at the beginning.

At the very beginning you are likely to become the strongest covenant when you kill a few things which gives you experience and influence with the town. It shouldn't stay that easy to remain the strongest covenant though.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

i for now just got it installed with WINE under Linux, and it seems to work ok so far at 1400x1050 fullscreen, everything maxed out, except antialising (i have no AA mode available in game)

i'll try to actually play the game later

 

[Higher Game]

I'm a sucker for "simulation" type games that take immersion and realism perhaps a bit too seriously (STALKER, Space Rangers, etc). I'll probably enjoy this one. Well, perhaps after 2 years and half a dozen patches.

 

[mathboy]

I have to disagree with most posters here when I say that this seems to be a really great game!

Maybe my expectations were lowered from reading the first posts in this thread, maybe you've made a great game, I don't know.

It isn't very role playing heavy, but Action RPGs usually aren't, so I'm not disappointed. The gameplay is similar to that of Sacred, the fighting works pretty much the same way, and the quests are similar, some are very seemingly random generated simple Fed-Ex quests, and some seem a little less random generated. Since it isn't a dialogue heave game, I have to say the dialogue were good for what it's supposed to do in the game.

The graphics were good, not great, but a bit more than what I expect from an indie developer. And the animations looked good, though I don't know if there are only one kind of power attack animation (that is used for every powerful attack) or if there are many. They looked kind of similar and I was way too immersed in the epic battles to inspect them closely.

The only two complaints I have is that the character part of the inventory (were you equip your things) is on top of the character. This makes it very hard to pick up things with the inventory open to compare items. I don't know if it was like that when I started playing the demo, because I didn't notice till later. But I might have missed it in the beginning as I didn't have to choose what to pick up very often before I got the better items.

The second if more of a question, is your inventory supposed to be that small? It fills up really quickly, and I didn't manage to give things to my companion (I didn't really try either).

About the dark dungeons, I never went down there, I figured it'd be better to just kill the other factions, and since I played on easy, it wasn't too hard. But I think that it being dark isn't too bad, if you add torches for the character to carry around in one hand (making it impossible to use a shield or two handed weapon down there), and make the torches light up a larger area (of course. I don't know if this already exists because I never looked for a torch/went down in the dungeons).

 

[speeler]

I have to disagree with most posters here when I say that this seems to be a really great game!

Maybe my expectations were lowered from reading the first posts in this thread, maybe you've made a great game, I don't know.

Cool, I'm hoping we made a great game

The graphics were good, not great, but a bit more than what I expect from an indie developer. And the animations looked good, though I don't know if there are only one kind of power attack animation (that is used for every powerful attack) or if there are many. They looked kind of similar and I was way too immersed in the epic battles to inspect them closely.

For the most part each skill has it's own animation.

The only two complaints I have is that the character part of the inventory (were you equip your things) is on top of the character. This makes it very hard to pick up things with the inventory open to compare items.

Yeah, this is definitely an oversight on my part. I will fix this before we release the full game.

The second if more of a question, is your inventory supposed to be that small? It fills up really quickly, and I didn't manage to give things to my companion (I didn't really try either).

The inventory really should only be small at the beginning. You will find larger and larger bags throughout the game so after a while your carrying space will be much larger and your stashes can be huge.

 

[YourConscience]

I think this game needs to be longer. I mean, it's kinda disappointing to have just those other covenants to kill and then there's nothing left. Perhaps something as simple as a dynamic emergence of new covenents somewhere else is needed. They emerge with +-2 levels of your level and begin amassing armies or something.

 

[aries202]

I have played this demo. And I have to say that I find it very enjoyable Although I think it would be better if the diplomacy phase was moved to when you're in town. It's kind of annoying getting ready to slaugther a big bad monster...only to have this interrupt by the knocking hand icon. At rpgwatch, Steven Peeler has been kind enough also to answer some of our questions about this case. In your inventory, you have a teleport stone, in your house (on the left) there are two trunks (stashes?) that will hold your loot.

Is there any way to make the game height's more -ahem- heigher ? I often find it difficult to view the whole area, especially in town. The visuals are fine - at least for me. Lucikily, the bloom effects seem to have been toned down a bit, or lot in the game Very nice By bags, do you mean something like the small bag I found that hold up till 4 items? Or do you mean that we will find bigger bagpacks? Or possibly both ?

The quests in this game range form the usual fed-ex quest over the kill this monster to escort this person to so and so or rescue this person. The quests are thus varied and interesting. Gameplay getting quests is easy to understand and acces - even if you just started the game. Oh, and I like the idea of doing all the explaining on how the game wotks in the in-game tutorial. Still, it would be nice to have some sort of readme.txt or manual.

 

[speeler]

I think this game needs to be longer. I mean, it's kinda disappointing to have just those other covenants to kill and then there's nothing left. Perhaps something as simple as a dynamic emergence of new covenents somewhere else is needed. They emerge with +-2 levels of your level and begin amassing armies or something.

Longer? After you kill the other covenants off, you can start a new game with your same character. At higher levels the games do tend to get a bit longer anyways.

I have played this demo. And I have to say that I find it very enjoyable Although I think it would be better if the diplomacy phase was moved to when you're in town. It's kind of annoying getting ready to slaugther a big bad monster...only to have this interrupt by the knocking hand icon.

I probably should have mentioned this in the other thread, but you can ignore the other covenants for a while without any penalty. I think they will generally wait up to 15 minutes, but I'm not positive off hand.

At rpgwatch, Steven Peeler has been kind enough also to answer some of our questions about this case.

Yeah, I'm trying to answer questions here, over on RPGWatch, and on our own forums.

Is there any way to make the game height's more -ahem- heigher ? I often find it difficult to view the whole area, especially in town.

Well if you haven't touched the zoom option you can zoom farther out by using a mouse wheel or using the zoom slider in the options. If you are already using the zoom you can technically zoom farther out but it's not really officially supported by changing the zoom value in the user.cfg or console to 1.5 or 1.6 but you might start getting some graphics glitches.

By bags, do you mean something like the small bag I found that hold up till 4 items? Or do you mean that we will find bigger bagpacks? Or possibly both ?

Both. At the very beginning you will only find 4 slot bags so your inventory will be relatively small but as you progress through the game you will find new types of bags that are larger. The largest bags you can find have 16 slots each. I believe in the demo the largest bags you are likely to find are 6 slots.

 

[cutterjohn]

i for now just got it installed with WINE under Linux, and it seems to work ok so far at 1400x1050 fullscreen, everything maxed out, except antialising (i have no AA mode available in game)

i'll try to actually play the game later

So. How did it hold up under actual play?

(We should start an RPGs that actually run under wine thread or something...)

 

[aries202]

I just played some on of the demo for this game. And the game really grows on you the longer, you play. I still think it is pretty annoying to have to a knocking sound when you're about to slash a monster or at the merchant's. Will it be technically possible to have these messages reserved for when you're in twon, and doing nothing?

I also turned on bloom and turned the screen resolution up a bit. It looks nice - but not to nice, though. And by that I mean the bloom effects are well tempered and used in moderation so they add to the game's visual surroundings, bringing out the best in the game.

 

[YourConscience]

I think this game needs to be longer. I mean, it's kinda disappointing to have just those other covenants to kill and then there's nothing left. Perhaps something as simple as a dynamic emergence of new covenents somewhere else is needed. They emerge with +-2 levels of your level and begin amassing armies or something.

Longer? After you kill the other covenants off, you can start a new game with your same character. At higher levels the games do tend to get a bit longer anyways.

I admit I don't express myself clearly enough often. I meant that the gameplay is too straightforward currently: Just find a way to kill the other covenants and game over. Yes, you can start another game, but then it's the same over again.

Instead it could have some twists. For example, if you attacked covenant nr 2 first (you're the agressor), upon sucessfully killing him you might get a mysterious message that someone has sworn revenge upon you. The game then materializes a hidden conenant somewhere completely else who then works his way up secretely only to attack you at some unsuspecting point. I gather this feature would actually be fairly simple to implement.

Another idea is to set up traps for the other covenants by making it possible to generate fake quests such as "Go to dungeon X and kill 20 rats for 5000 crystals". If a covenant falls for it and goes to that dungeon he should find that dragon I hired to take care of the covenant. Whether he sees through the fakiness of that quest should depend on his stealth and/or diplomatic skill or whatever else suits you.

A more elaborate idea for a sequel or somesuch would be to have a kind of territorial war going on with covenants in *other* towns. Gameplay would be similar to currently where you kill of groups of critters in territory x and then newly invest money to hire a bosscritter friendly to you who then dwells there and slowly builds up an own army to defend itself. It would be cool to revisit such places and provide hired critters with more money, better items and other such stuff.

Edit: This would also give purpose to thief characters, because they could successfully infiltrate into that enemy town and either steal something from their loot, set up fake quests or just assassinate some important henchman or the smith (who is then unavailable for two days or something)

 

[Nedrah]

So, I played around with resolutions, all settings and everything I could thing off apart from installing another driver, as my current one works beautifully for everything I want to play (other than obvious problem cases like PS:T or FO1). I still get the invisible mouse cursor issue and the game remains mostly unplayable. Unless I remain the only person with that problem I think it'd be worthwhile to look for a solution, given the basic information I supplied earlier.

 

[speeler]

i for now just got it installed with WINE under Linux, and it seems to work ok so far at 1400x1050 fullscreen, everything maxed out, except antialising (i have no AA mode available in game)

i'll try to actually play the game later

I'm also interested to know how well it works under WINE/Linux.

Will it be technically possible to have these messages reserved for when you're in twon, and doing nothing?

I'll have to think about this and see if there is a way to do this without screwing the player.

I admit I don't express myself clearly enough often. I meant that the gameplay is too straightforward currently: Just find a way to kill the other covenants and game over. Yes, you can start another game, but then it's the same over again. ...

Ah, ok now I understand. It is a little more complex than just kill everyone since you can form different treaties with people that changes a lot like mutual protection pacts and alliances. You can also start rumors about the other covenants to try to subtly sabotage their influence with the town. I agree we can push this further and your ideas are pretty cool. However, it's probably too late to add stuff like that for this first release.

So, I played around with resolutions, all settings and everything I could thing off apart from installing another driver, as my current one works beautifully for everything I want to play (other than obvious problem cases like PS:T or FO1). I still get the invisible mouse cursor issue and the game remains mostly unplayable. Unless I remain the only person with that problem I think it'd be worthwhile to look for a solution, given the basic information I supplied earlier.

I'll definitely look into the problem. There probably is one other option that you might not have tried out (since it's really in the wrong spot). Try turning off the hardware cursor which is in the game options. This will at least probably get rid of the flickering of the mouse cursor.

 

[Nedrah]

That worked like a charm.
There are no more grahpical problems present in my games. No idea how a messed up mouse cursor influenced the whole screen to that degree, though. Thanks for the help, maybe it would be a good idea to move the hardware cursor options and add some advice about how changing the option may help with gfx corruption.

 

[speeler]

That worked like a charm.
There are no more grahpical problems present in my games. No idea how a messed up mouse cursor influenced the whole screen to that degree, though. Thanks for the help, maybe it would be a good idea to move the hardware cursor options and add some advice about how changing the option may help with gfx corruption.

Cool, I'm glad that actually fixed everything. Yeah, I'm going to move the hardware cursor option over to the graphics options and add a little more text that it might fix flickering/gfx corruption issues.

Thanks for speaking up about the problem and telling us that this fixed everything btw.

 

[Jeff Graw]

Nice job and fun game.

I do agree with what other people have been saying, that while the game starts ok, it seems like it could get repetitive really quickly.

User created content might give replayability a shot in the arm.

Oh, and this game is practically -screaming- for multiplayer!

If the game can be bought via paypal I will definitely buy it when the full release comes out.

 

[denizsi]

Whenever I start playing, sound goes into a loop of short rapid repeats, creating a very disturbing noise. Interestingly, it only depends on the master volume. If both sound and music are turned off, the noise will still be there with master on.

 

[speeler]

Whenever I start playing, sound goes into a loop of short rapid repeats, creating a very disturbing noise. Interestingly, it only depends on the master volume. If both sound and music are turned off, the noise will still be there with master on.

That's kind of strange. What kind of sound card do you have?

 

[denizsi]

SB Live! Value.

 

[speeler]

That's even more strange considering I have a SB Live in one of my machines. You don't have really old drivers do you?

 

[Licaon_Kter]

@speeler: i did not get a chance to test the gameplay, but afaiks it works ok: DoP in WINE video (no sound capture sorry, yet sound worked ok in game)
the clip is recorded at 15fps, 1/2 of screen resolution 'cause the recorded movie got big pretty fast (that 5min clip was 2.03Gb before encoding :D), also the Hardware Mouse Cursor was disabled cause the cursor would not be recorded on video if enabled.
the video was recorded with Yukon

OS specs:
Zenwalk 32bit distro (based on Slackware)
kernel 2.6.22.3-ck1
GCC 4.1.2
XFCE 4.4.1
nVidia Linux Driver v100.14.11
WINE 0.9.43 with these Direct3D registry keys:
OffscreenRenderingMode = pbuffer
PixelShaderMode = enabled
UseGLSL = enabled
VideoMemorySize = 512
also using sound backend = ALSA

hardware specs:
AMD Athlon64 3500+ 2200MHz
ASRock 939Dual-SATA2
2x512 Kingmax DDR400
ASUS 7600GS TOP-Silent 512Mb
Creative AudigyLS

 

[denizsi]

I don't know. I'm using the latest official drivers, which must be about 3 years old by now. I don't know if it's related but I just noticed that when I play midi files, playback is full of parasites (edit: this is not the right word. i can't remember the right word. ), which weren't there before and I know it's not the files, as my cellphone plays them right.

 

[AnalogKid]

I played through a couple of times (one mage, one fighter) and I enjoyed it quite a bit. I'll spend the rest of this post nitpicking like a good beta-tester... (but don't take it to mean I disliked the game!)

- Most important: the game didn't freeze when in conversation or character screens, or shopping, or negotiating, or anything. You specifically mentioned it did, but it doesn't. I never shopped or bought anything as a result. Suck.

- Mages seem W.E.A.K. weak weak weak! I know ... early demo ... low levels ... maybe bad skill choices ... whatever. But I got to a point where at level 7 I literally couldn't even damage another covenant's lifestone because my physical attack wouldn't hit often enough, and my spells sucked down my mana so fast that when I waited for it to recharge, the lifestone would recover before I could continue. I had put all points int INT, btw.

- My companion wouldn't attack the lifestone when I was a mage. As a fighter, my henchie joined in. Don't know what happened there...

- Please, for the love of your favorite god, please change the mouse buttons so attack and move aren't the same. I can't tell you how many times I missed a fast baddie and ended up charging into a pack or running around a guy while I was getting hacked instead of attacking him.

- Please let mouse-over target a monster for spellcasting. It took me a long time to figure out that I needed to click to target, then I could hot-key-cast a spell. After I figured it out, it was just incredibly inconvenient. I really wanted to just mouse-over and have the hot-key act as a "click" to acquire the target and start casting.

- Think about auto-switching spell targets if the original target dies. I would start an area-effect spell (chain lighting), my henchie would kill my target before the timer was up, and I would lose the spell instead of casting it anyway to start the chain effect. This could be considered "proper", and I won't cry too much if that's how you really want it, but it's frustrating and the game would be better if you could complete your spell at a new target (auto-acquired when when the old one died). Alternatively, make the spell timer "cool down" instead of "warm up". I think this would be a bigger divergence from your intended design, though.

- I never had any problems slaughtering the other covenants (except with my mage, for whom it was impossible). No-one ever ganged up on me or came to anyone's defense. I never died during the attacks, just running back to heal when necessary. I ignored all "knocking" and didn't suffer any consequences. Maybe the covenant AI is affected by difficulty settings?

- I hope there will be a full documentation of the skill effects and max skill levels in the final game. I hate having to plan a character ahead (so as to not waste points) without even knowing what some skills do (some tool-tip descriptions don't say, and max levels aren't listed). Either give us ALL the info, or let us re-arrange skill points once we learn that something doesn't act like we imagined it would.

Overall, good stuff Steven. I've been swamped at work for months, but I took a night to check out the demo and I wanted to keep playing when I went to bed at 4AM. At least for the first day, it was engaging. In general I'd like to see more depth to the strategy aspect, and more ease of use and intuitive interface for the action aspect. That's all. Just make a better game, bitch!

 

[speeler]

- Most important: the game didn't freeze when in conversation or character screens, or shopping, or negotiating, or anything. You specifically mentioned it did, but it doesn't. I never shopped or bought anything as a result. Suck.

It should pause on the character screen and when you are talking to the other covenants at least. It does not normally pause when you are shopping, but you can always manually pause the game (pause or P buttons).

- Please, for the love of your favorite god, please change the mouse buttons so attack and move aren't the same. I can't tell you how many times I missed a fast baddie and ended up charging into a pack or running around a guy while I was getting hacked instead of attacking him.

Depending on which class you are playing at the time, right clicking on the enemies might help out a lot. Right click just selects them, so no movement or anything.

- I never had any problems slaughtering the other covenants (except with my mage, for whom it was impossible). No-one ever ganged up on me or came to anyone's defense. I never died during the attacks, just running back to heal when necessary. I ignored all "knocking" and didn't suffer any consequences. Maybe the covenant AI is affected by difficulty settings?

Yes, the covenants are effected by the difficulty setting. There is also a lot of randomness in this so you might have been getting lucky that they didn't attack you or help out.

- I hope there will be a full documentation of the skill effects and max skill levels in the final game. I hate having to plan a character ahead (so as to not waste points) without even knowing what some skills do (some tool-tip descriptions don't say, and max levels aren't listed). Either give us ALL the info, or let us re-arrange skill points once we learn that something doesn't act like we imagined it would.

If a skill has a max skill level it is stated in the highlight text, but most skills don't have a max. We have improved a bunch of the skills text since the demo. Any skill descriptions that you specifically remember not being very good?

I'll look into all of the other things you mentioned. Thanks for the feedback.

 

[AnalogKid]

It should pause on the character screen and when you are talking to the other covenants at least. It does not normally pause when you are shopping, but you can always manually pause the game (pause or P buttons).

You're right, this is how it behaved, I just didn't notice it pausing on the char or skills screen. I still think it should automatically pause when talking to NPCs, though...

Depending on which class you are playing at the time, right clicking on the enemies might help out a lot. Right click just selects them, so no movement or anything.

Yeah, that particularly helps with spellcasters, but my worst problems were as a warrior when I would attack-click and watch my guy run over to the monster, then just stand there and get whacked instead of attacking because I actually mis-clicked and only moved.

BTW, I noticed that once my warrior was attacking, he would auto-switch and keep attacking after my 1st target died. Maybe that was just a default response to getting hit, but if it was actually auto-switching targets, that should be easy to apply to mage/priests in the process of spellcasting...

Yes, the covenants are effected by the difficulty setting. There is also a lot of randomness in this so you might have been getting lucky that they didn't attack you or help out.

I cranked it up and it was better, but I found a cheesy exploit for which you might want to improve the AI. It's easier to defend than raid because you get all 5 henchmen PLUS 4 hired monster guards. So I would raid a patsy, playing possum and waiting for a 3rd covenant to seize the "opportunity" to raid me. Then I'd cancel the raid, and clean up with all 10 of my guys (including me) on the 4-5 raiders at my home. They would keep suiciding, though, until about 25% lifestone health, at which point they would finally stop. Then I'd raid them and finish them off before anyone else could do anything. It just seemed like it took too long for the 3rd covenant to figure out that their "sneak" attack wasn't sneaky enough. Maybe if the patsy joined in and also raided my home, then it would be a bit more interesting. Maybe the raiders should do what I do and focus on the hired monsters first, since they don't resurrect... (at least at tougher difficulties?)

If a skill has a max skill level it is stated in the highlight text, but most skills don't have a max. We have improved a bunch of the skills text since the demo. Any skill descriptions that you specifically remember not being very good?

lots of stuff like "deep wound" or something, that mentions it does extra damage over time, but how much? For how long? Is it really worth spending 4 points to get 10% extra chance of that happening? I don't have any fucking clue. Same with "leaches x power", wtf is power? Other stuff like that.

Also, you can't plan for the future without seeing the future level effects, just seeing what the next level does is not enough. Example: One of my skills added 6% for first level, then 12% (total) for 2nd level, but then only 17% (total) for 3rd level. It looks like that's not a skill that I would want to keep investing in because it'll be less and less useful and by level 60+ it's probably useless. So I would never want to waste any points in it in the first place. But I would never know that without wasting the points to find out! Since there's no way to save, try and see what a skill does, and then re-load to before the skill points were spent, I'm just screwed. I know DII did it this way, too, but that's one of the few things DII did horribly! The web community saved that game as far as providing the real information players need, but I'm sad to predict that DoP probably won't get the same kind of following. I'm not saying the info should be in-game, but a good manual or reference info on the website would really make me _enjoy_ swallowing your hot man-meat, instead of just doing it because I'm bored.

Oh! And having an "accept skill point allocation" button would be a godsend. It's extremely easy to accidentally click the wrong skill, and no way (not even alt-tab, kill, re-load) to undo a simple mistake like that.

Speaking of alt-tab, I get horrible graphics corruption when I do that, and since "alt" for show items is right next to the windows key, it happens occasionally.

Thanks for the feedback.

No prob. Like I (briefly) mentioned, I like the game a lot, and especially the strategy idea, I'm just bitching because maybe you'll be able to do something with all this and improve the game. I don't think for a second that everything will be magically changed to be like I want, but I hope at least _something_ is useful.

Shit, this is long, but I have another little beef that I thought about while playing yesterday night. There's extremely little reason to play a mage. Imgaine a classic mage-warrior tandem. The warrior takes the heat while the mage nukes everyone. If I'm the warrior, I can hire a mage with 4 good spells. Plus I get ALL my euquipment slots and all my skills to make myself as badass as possible (particularly, hard to hit and full of life). If I'm a mage, though, I wouldn't focus on more than 4 spells anyway, my meatshield can only use 3 pieces of equipment, and I haven't seen much cloth armor stuff that would really help my mage be more effective at casting spells (being more armored as a mage is pointless because you'll never be armored enough). So by doing it that way, I'm just screwing my team out of 6 or so pieces of loot that could have been helping us. Since getting loot and being strong are big parts of the game, it seems like this is just dumb. Best fix: let NPCs have all the same inventory slots that characters do. Alternate fix: make mages not suck so much.

Final comment on game design... It seems like Priests are really interesting, but get screwed more than any other class as far as being spread thin. They need str to do more damage, dex to survive and hit things, vit to survive, int for crits (could skip this), and spirit to cast spells! By comparison, warriors need 3 attributes (str, dex, vit), mages need 2 (int, vit), and rogues look to need the same 3 as warriors (haven't played one yet, not sure). It just seems like it'll be much harder to be a "good" Priest than other classes. I obviously don't have a clue how the later parts of the game work out, though, so I may be way off base...