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Geneforge

fantadomat

Arcane
Edgy Vatnik Wumao
Joined
Jun 2, 2017
Messages
37,517
Location
Bulgaria
When playing Spiderweb games I just put the Schubert Complete Symphonies looping in the background. Somehow it's a perfect fit for me.
Nah prefer Tchaikovsky.
 

Konjad

Patron
Joined
Nov 3, 2007
Messages
5,178
Location
Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
I played through the first Geneforge recently. It has fairly interesting setting, intriguing story, true open world (basically no quests you *have to* do, but plenty of major plot points and tasks), interesting factions and enjoyable exploration... but all overshadowed by inane amounts of trash mobs you have to go through in 90% of areas every few meters to the point it's infuriating and kills the joy. Especially considering that the combat is extremely shallow. Challenging encounters are important in such games, but if the fighting system itself is so simplistic, superficial and boring they can't carry the game on their own.

There are also bugs that seem to have never been fixed - nothing game breaking but rather hilarious. Such as you enter a faction's town and a text event appears in which angry villagers put down their weapons and let you in, but after you click "OK" in-game they attack you anyway (which removed an option to side with one of the factions for me). Or when you meet a guy who doesn't speak your language so you both can't communicate, but if you attack him then suddenly he starts talking aplenty in your language and continues to throughout the fight.

I don't think I will ever bother with the next 4 entries in the series.
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,383
Location
Goblin Lair
I finished Avadon a couple days ago and decided to go back to Geneforge 1. It's never clicked with me before, but I have really started to get into it. Great concept, writing is good, graphics are better than Avadon or Queen's Wish... just gotta install the following graphics mod to replace the slime green interface and some of the more questionable color choices:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/geneforge-1-graphics-enhancement/images

I've got it running and looking pretty good now. I followed these instructions to get it running in a window:
https://spiderwebforums.ipbhost.com...-geneforge-1-4-in-a-window-in-ten-easy-steps/

(This also resolved all the weird little issues I had with Geneforge before, such as a slow mouse cursor, a long pause when bringing up the menu, etc.)

Then, I use the Lossless Scaling application (available on Steam, doesn't require Steam to run) to scale it to full screen. Geneforge runs at a fixed resolution of 800x600, so I can't scale it up evenly to my native resolution (1920x1080). However, the latest version of Lossless Scaling includes a "Sharp Bilinear" option that I guess scales the image unevenly to your native resolution and applies light interpolation, resulting in a sharp image that fills the screen (only slightly blurrier than an integer scale). Looks great!

It felt right to go with a Shaper for this. I normally don't care for games focused on summoning/collecting monsters, but this is pretty cool. Eight hours in, I've mostly kept with the same band of four creations, though I have been upgrading their stats as I level up.
 
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Lord_Potato

Arcane
Glory to Ukraine
Joined
Nov 24, 2017
Messages
10,800
Location
Free City of Warsaw
Geneforge games are great for playing at your workplace. You lose nothing (and save lots of sanity) by turning off the shitty sounds, it's turn-based and runs on every toaster. So if you have your own room and noone can look over your shoulder - you're set and ready to go on an adventure!
 

newtmonkey

Arcane
Joined
Aug 22, 2013
Messages
1,383
Location
Goblin Lair
I completed this last night. It's been some time since I've been so addicted to a game, but it was hard to put this game down. Except for some very minor annoyances (mines, too much combat), I enjoyed it from start to finish for the 40 hours it took to complete it. I was very impressed with how open-ended the game is, both in exploration and story.

I rarely replay RPGs, but I could definitely see myself replaying this a couple years from now with a different class and making different choices throughout the game.
 

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