Editorial Jeff Vogel on Dodging Forum Flamewars

[Lightknight]

A turn-based life simulation game doesn’t sound like a top hit, nor does a politics game with a complex charting system of icons as a GUI. Nor does a space battle game where you can’t control anything. They all seemed to work for me.

All his games seem shit to me, dont know what he's talking about...

Speaking of, I recommend developers make their shit vastly customizable and then leave balancing to the community.

As if. I told DoomRL guy many times to fucking change the color of several characters, like the ammo that depending on your monitor will be exactly the same color, or the down stairs that you have to search for a couple of minutes. Worst case - just make it customizable and put all the prefs in the ini file, how hard is that ? 5 minutes to skim the code and another two minutes to remember the hex color codes ? But noooo...

 

[forgotmypasswordagain]

Don't let this interview make you think he's a pussy, though -- if you ever said the kind of shit you post about him to Jeff Vogel's face, in REAL LIFE, he would crack your coccyx with a single mighty head-butt. You'd be all fucked up.

 

[OminousBlueDot]

...change the color of several characters, like the ammo that depending on your monitor will be exactly the same color...

Wasn't his reluctance to change based on the libraries he used to program the game, forcing the most basic of DOS color palettes on the game?

 

[Fowyr]

He butchered blessing pools, one or two skills (potions available was calculated as function of herbology and alchemy or some shit), woad, food, items was avernumized (i.e. no more magic lockpicks) and so on. Several encounters what was centered around the food lost any sense.
You may play remake, it was not cardinally changed from original, but I liked original more.

 

[Krash]

Devs should go the Tarn Adams (of dwarf fortress) way and implement anything forum dwellers ask for, no matter how stupid - provided they donate enough money.

Ehm hasn't he done this exactly once, and only for new animals to be added (not even mytical stuff)

Not to say that this isn't a good idea though.

 

[shihonage]

Don't let this interview make you think he's a pussy, though -- if you ever said the kind of shit you post about him to Jeff Vogel's face, in REAL LIFE, he would crack your coccyx with a single mighty head-butt. You'd be all fucked up.

It's true, programmers have unusually large craniums.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Historical fantasy isn't necessarily better than regular fantasy.

It's very difficult for your fantasy game to be historical enough to please people who actually know the history of the place in the game.

For example, if someone is a big ancient Rome buff and they see the Romans using historically inaccurate gear for the time period, and the whole thing just comes off as an ignorant caricature of Rome, then they're not going to be happy.

On the other hand, it may seem a little boring to fans of standard fantasy who aren't interested in history.

And a historical setting is likely to be more limited than a standard fantasy setting, in terms of classes, races, equipment, magic, monsters, places to visit, things your characters can do.

I'm not going to say historical fantasy can't work, but I think it's a lot harder to pull off.

Age of Decadence may have the right idea - it's not historical fantasy, but it's inspired by a time period.

 

[Yeesh]

Devs should go the Tarn Adams (of dwarf fortress) way and implement anything forum dwellers ask for, no matter how stupid - provided they donate enough money.

Ehm hasn't he done this exactly once, and only for new animals to be added (not even mytical stuff)

Not to say that this isn't a good idea though.

That's the Tarn Adams way, is it? I thought that was practiced a bit closer to home...

But seriously, god stop bitching about it. Animals, who cares? I mean really. Brotha gotta eat.

 

[SkeleTony]

Historical fantasy is a LOT harder to pull off because the developer is constrained by history and whatever mythology he is fusing in there. In a 'fantasy fantasy' game you could, theoretically at least, walk around a corner and be beset by a fucking Snozzwoggler or some shit. Your party could be made of of goblins, trolls, minotaurs, aliens...whatever the fuck the developer wants.

But in, for example, a mythological Rome setting, you are pretty much stuck with humans of a few types/classes/builds and while they may run into a Dragon or a ghost or some shit there won't be any real surprises there. Magic in general will be low key compared to standard fantasy as well(No 'Necromancers' guilds and shit like that). Not that that is a bad thing necessarily but it goes to the appeal to the general audience.

 

[shihonage]

You can also hit the "trolly historical" genre. See Xena and Hercules TV series...

 

[Lightknight]

Wasn't his reluctance to change based on the libraries he used to program the game, forcing the most basic of DOS color palettes on the game?

DoomRL never was for DOS. And even if that was so, DoomRL barely even uses 16 colors. What, does Kornel specifically developed his Valkyrie library (and supposedly still adding to it) to support only 12-colors palettes ? Are you serious ?

 

[DwarvenFood]

Well I must say , Jeff either never visited this forum, or he did visit it and based his rant on his findings