Interview Feargus Urquhart interview at HomeLAN Fed

[ljw1004]

PST and Ultima7 had realtime and yet were good!

 

[Jarinor]

PS:T is the best third person isometric RPG around though. Besides, it HAD to use real time. With the Infinity Engine there is no other way. Never played Ultima 7, but wasn't the Ultima Series (like Morrowind) from the first person perspective?

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

The name of that RPG is Morrowind.

So let not abadon all hope .

Then again, one of the chief complaints about Morrowind is the combat in the game.

PS:T is the best third person isometric RPG around though. Besides, it HAD to use real time. With the Infinity Engine there is no other way.

I dunno, I still say Fallout and Geneforge are much better than PS:T. PS:T's combat was pretty much why I lost interest in the game towards the end, too.

You're right about it being forced in to real time by the engine though. At least, that's what Black Isle has said numerous times, the Infinity Engine can't do turn based without rewriting a hell of a lot of the spell system and combat system.

Never played Ultima 7, but wasn't the Ultima Series (like Morrowind) from the first person perspective?

Nope, just the Underworld series were first person.

 

[ecliptic]

The name of that RPG is Morrowind.

One can't forget the Ultima Underworld series. Mmm.. delicious Underworld.

Many summers back, a solid week of my life was consumed in that game. Few games got me as immersed in the environment as that one did. For brief amazing moments it was as though I really was wondering around this failed attempt at utopia when I walked through the decrepit dining hall that one must have been so grand, the graves of the gargoyles etc.

I really lived it, and the somber mood of the game made me somber, and it was both a sad thing and an amazing thing.

 

[Rosh]

Nope, just the Underworld series were first person.

Not quite correct.

Up until and including Ultima 4, the dungeons were done in a first person view. None of the Gameboy Ultima games were with a FP view. Everything else was mainly in tile-based roam up until Ultima 7, and then a "free roam" after that..

The reason why Ultima 7 was good despite a real-time combat was mainly because it was very well done, and it didn't have the non-interactive aspect of the Infinity Engine. That's what Fear-Gut MacD'hurrrquart keeps going for, especially when he'd verbally fellate the Inbred Engine. In addition, the world structure of Ultima 7 was MASTERFULLY done. Everyone had scheduals that they would do, they had a speech tree of sorts in topics that I do prefer over strict speech trees. The thing about it is that both could be combined, especially if you had a way to toggle deceptive intent, honest intent, and a keyword/phrase to use.

 

[Briosafreak]

http://forums.interplay.com/viewtopic.p ... 79&start=0

http://forums.interplay.com/viewtopic.php?t=13315

 

[Rosh]

ShadowPutz is still proving their head should best be used as a Mack truck's hood ornament. Damn, that brand of stupid is annoying.

Keyboard Controls:

Toggle Show Far Moves
Speed NPC Movement
Slow NPC Movement

Problem solved, and it would even solve the "fifty rats takes too long" problem for the most part, except the only way to solve that problem worth a damn is to not put inconsequential enemies in a location where the player has no possiblity of being hurt and in such a number to just be irritating.

Yet, I do believe ShadowPaladin isn't a developer, has a habit of even surpassing the brand of stupid that some developers and common fans share, and therefore falls into the "armchair chucklehead" definition. Let's also add on that the twit missed a SHITLOAD more about JA2 that set it apart from X-COM:

Interesting that. The only real difference between Xcom and JA2 is that the JA2 "characters" had an individual portrait and voice overs for specific situations.

Is that really all it takes to go from Tactical/Strategy game to RPG?

I cant recall if Xcom actually had a character that was "you". But I always used to name my first marine after myself anyway.

There's a lot more to it, but ShadowPutz would require upgrading their brain to Cro-Magnum 2.0 in order to see it.

Then danien again amazes all by quoting something and forgot to add a reply to it. This is no different from his "normal" posting style.

However, neither of them have anything on the sheer level of Arkansas level of inbred idiocy that Jandau has.

Fear-Gut, filled with marketing tripe, still has this that has me surprised even he would say it.

"there will most likely be a real-time combat mode. I know there are people out there that feel this ruins Fallout, but I think they will be surprised as to how well it works once they play it"

Like your old favorite, the Inbred Engine? I distinctly remember Fear-Gut sucking it off quite noisily on the T-A.com forums. So far, all BIS has proved in any capacity is that they can MODIFY an engine somewhat.

 

[HanoverF]

someone asked why they should be interested in Lionheart since Away Team was so awful

Well that really is a loaded question, like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

 

[Jed]

Also, Feargus seems to hear what he wants to hear. When someone says, "It sucks to have to fight rats in power armor using turn based so late in the game where they can't hurt you.", he hears, "Turn based sucks". Instead, he should probably hear, "Don't ever put gobs of pissant monsters in late game areas because it sucks." or "Where the hell is the autocombat option for encounters I can't possibly lose?"

Y'know, and maybe this should be another thread, but the one other thing besides this type of situation that is one of the failings of TB is the other extreme, when one wants to run from combat. I was playing PtD last night and I'm in the catacombs at the monastery happily hacking away at Dwellers, but eventually a few more came into the melee than I had anticipated, but since I had offed quite a few already, I didn't just want to reload. So I began the excruciating process of running away in TB mode. It took a full fifteen minutes, which wasn't really all that cool, or in the end, worth not reloading. I wish there could be, like the auto-combat for cake battles Prov mentions here, an auto-flee option. Maybe it could be based on certain PC stats, or maybe it would come at a cost like a very small XP penalty, or maybe it would temporarily lower a relevant stat such as morale, wisdom, or constitution for a period of time to balance the feature.

What do you guys think of such an idea? Has it been done before? How could it be balanced? Or do you guys even ever try to run from combat in TB games?

Some thoughts,
Jed

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Well that really is a loaded question, like "Have you stopped beating your wife?"

The big difference is that most people already know that Away Team was awful. If you put a put a well known wife beater on the stand and ask him that, the obviously bad answer would be the same in both cases, "I like beating my wife." or "I liked Away Team."

Both of those answers basically don't aknowledge those situations as being problems. That's why the scenario where you say what you've learned from the negative allows you to turn it in to a positive.

The person who gave me that question was obviously looking for a "What have you learned" type answer or a "Why should I buy this when your track record is so bad."

I wish there could be, like the auto-combat for cake battles Prov mentions here, an auto-flee option. Maybe it could be based on certain PC stats, or maybe it would come at a cost like a very small XP penalty, or maybe it would temporarily lower a relevant stat such as morale, wisdom, or constitution for a period of time to balance the feature.

Fleeing options used to also be in the older turn based games as well.

In the older games, they used to offer a lot more in terms of making turn based better that developers seem to have lost sight of these days, and that would be the auto-combat and the fleeing options.

The best way of doing this is the abstract method where a successful flee attempt just moves the players out of range of combat sighting. When all of them do that option successfully, combat stops. Otherwise you're stuck with outrunning them in turn based.

Outrunning in turn based is acceptable in games like Fallout, where you control one guy. However, it's a headache when you have to outrun based on a party movement system.

 

[Deathy]

Avernum handled the running away part pretty nicely.
All I had to do is keep my finger on the key for the direction I was running in.

 

[Jed]

The thing about it is that both could be combined, especially if you had a way to toggle deceptive intent, honest intent, and a keyword/phrase to use.

That actually sounds like a truly awesome idea, choosing the PC's intent toward an NPC; has anyone done anything like that before? Would be just the kinda of antidote to the IE-style dialogue that has become so standard of late...

J

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Up until and including Ultima 4, the dungeons were done in a first person view.

That's one of the things I don't miss about the old school CRPGs, actually. :D

 

[Spazmo]

Yeah. Those dungeons are reason #1 I never actually finished Ultima IV. You mean... I have to make my own map? Blasphemy!

 

[Jarinor]

While that does sound cool, I'm sure it is annoying. Although, if it was done right (not that I'm saying I'd know how to do it) I'm sure it would work well.

 

[triCritical]

That's one of the things I don't miss about the old school CRPGs, actually. :D

I actually miss the suspense. I miss the chance to enter a dungeon and possibly never get out. I remember I used to go into dungeons with limited equipment and I always had to ration myself to make sure I would have enough crap to get out. Random encounters were a bitch. I also remember getting really friggin lost. Oh well, maybe its just nostalgia.

 

[Spazmo]

You can still get really fucking lost in Morrowind. Ah, so much time spent looking at signposts, then looking at the map that came with the game, and then looking at the in-game world map, and then looking around at my surrounings a bit, and then going "Where the fuck...?"

 

[SexExitium]

 

[Sol Invictus]

The only good aspect of the combat in PST were the cranium rats who would cast spells at you if they got together in a group. The larger the group, the more powerful the spells. It's possibly one of the best refinements I've seen done to the Infinity Engine. The rest of the combat was, however, crap.

 

[Kizmiaz]

Yeah. Those dungeons are reason #1 I never actually finished Ultima IV. You mean... I have to make my own map? Blasphemy!

What, just load up with gridded paper, pencils and erasers. Hmm, was Ultima Underworld the first game with auto-mapping?

 

[Jarinor]

Well, I didn't think PS:T's combat was that bad, and I played it through twice. It was definitely playable though, just irritating at times at the length certain spells took to cast.

 

[ljw1004]

For me, the realtime in PST is what put the "role" back into its RPG -- i.e. it was a role to play, a developing story, not a combat-simulator. If it had been TB, then combat would have occupied a much larger % of user playtime -- so much that the game would have become a combat-simulator, I think. Geneforge suffered from having too large a % of playtime being involved in combat. (unless you managed to play it through as a thief - I found that too difficult first time through, though.)

 

[Psilon]

What, just load up with gridded paper, pencils and erasers. Hmm, was Ultima Underworld the first game with auto-mapping?

I think one of the (text) Zork games did it first. Beyond Zork, maybe? Adventure games, graphical and text, used to train one's mapping skills quite efficiently. If you didn't keep your little graph-paper map, you quickly found yourself in an unpleasant (and frequently fatal) situation.

 

[Crazy Tuvok]

What, just load up with gridded paper, pencils and erasers. Hmm, was Ultima Underworld the first game with auto-mapping?

I think one of the (text) Zork games did it first. Beyond Zork, maybe? Adventure games, graphical and text, used to train one's mapping skills quite efficiently. If you didn't keep your little graph-paper map, you quickly found yourself in an unpleasant (and frequently fatal) situation.

ughh. the dreaded days of self map keeping. all the nostalgia in the world doesn't make me long for those days, despite how great some of the games were back then.
all hail the in game map!
same goes for journals. unfortunately not all designers have gotten the point and I still find that many games I play I still need to keep a notebook handy.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

What, just load up with gridded paper, pencils and erasers. Hmm, was Ultima Underworld the first game with auto-mapping?

Dungeon Master had it, I believe.

or me, the realtime in PST is what put the "role" back into its RPG -- i.e. it was a role to play, a developing story, not a combat-simulator. If it had been TB, then combat would have occupied a much larger % of user playtime -- so much that the game would have become a combat-simulator, I think. Geneforge suffered from having too large a % of playtime being involved in combat. (unless you managed to play it through as a thief - I found that too difficult first time through, though.)

Well, two things about that.. PST allowed you to do a bit of role playing, but the story was largely enforced on you. For example, no matter what class you pick or whether you're good or evil or stupid or smart, you've still got to go through Area A to get to Area B, through Area B to get to Area C, find Item X that lets you do Event U, and so on.

As for Geneforge, it's setting implies a bit of combat, since you basically have a research island that's been left alone for 200 years with creations left on there. Think Michael Crihton's Westworld or Jurassic Park combined, and that's what Sucia is.