KickStarter Knights of the Chalice 2 Thread - Augury of Chaos

[rojay]

is the inventory clunky or am I drunk already ? I have troubles drawing equipmen in the inventoty slots

You might be drunk, we can't know, but you are also correct. It seems that the areas you need to drag an item to or click aren't identical (or are smaller) than the buttons you see on screen. I just have to do it slightly more precisely that in most other programs.

The part of the item you are moving that registers in the game is the top left corner. So drag the top left corner into the inventory slot/another character's portrait, etc. and release the mouse button. The item will be moved/transferred.

 

[anvi]

Yeah those castle gate battles took me ages. And a lot of crashes, although the update fixed a lot. They are seriously epic battles though, never seen anything like it any other games.

Spoiler

The good news is those 2 battles are probably the hardest and the remaining fights aren't as bad. Although there are still several more battles and the finale is pretty tough. It was really testing my efficiency with rests and stuff. If you want more spoilerish, there is another dragon fight once you get into the castle, he was chilling out at the back of the castle courtyard and comes active when you get close and he summons lots of allies. Then there's a 3 small but hard fights at the back wall of the castle, and they are pretty close together so you gotta be careful to get them 1 by 1. Then there's another tough fight in a building, close quarters, v interesting. You get a campfire as a reward! And then the final building has 2 or 3 fights and the finale is tough. There may be 1 more random battle I forgot but that's mostly it.

 

[PorkaMorka]

Another one filtered by the tokens lol

I have no idea why people dislike them, the tokens have incredible visual clarity, makes the battlefield easy to read.

Tokens are lazy and insulting, because at the same cost in dollars and computing resources you could have had rectangular tiles showing the full body of the character or monster.

My favorite kind of video game art is 2d low resolution tiles with either no animation or one attack frame only, as found in the Gold Box games or Dominions III. But I find tokens extremely off-putting.

The key difference is that traditional square tiles actually show a representation of the character, even if it's a borderline stick figure. That gives your imagination something to work with, you aren't just making stuff up.

Each FRUA sprite tells you a lot about a character, even though it only has a limited number of pixels to work with.

Some of them aren't even very aesthetically pleasing, but they still convey a huge amount of information about a character. This guy's a knight, this one's a barbarian, cocky swarthoid, fighter cleric, archer, stronk woman, light armor swordsman, thief, black robed man of mystery with a sword, cleric, evil cleric, white wizard, red wizard, black wizard, dwarf, hobbit fighter, hobbit thief, blah blah blah.

This gives you a starting point, some information to build your understanding of the character on. The developer and the artist are stimulating your imagination with their art, they aren't forcing you to imagine everything from an undefined starting point.

There are a lot less complaints about the art in competing D&D game Low Magic Age, even though it's kind of uninspired and sourced from some pre-done asset pack. Even though it uses static tile images without animations. Because it still represents the characters and monsters like a normal video game does, while KOTC2 just gives you some prosper fantasy clip art head floating in a circle.

 

[Serus]

I think the FRUA or other low res 2d is ok but those are'n tokens and would look out of place in the game. Which means that you are not criticising the tokens in game specifically but the whole decision of making the game in a boardgame/p&p style. Whatever you may think of gold box/frua graphics - they are going for different aesthetics than KotC2. In other words, you think that this aesthetic cannot work for a computer game at all. I'm not so sure.

The problem is not with the chosen style itself but, in my opinion, with the execution. Average or worse quality and inconsistent - even within the token set. Big monsters are shown with full boy, most other stuff only portraits. Some are looking better other worse. Everything looking strangely as being made in lower resolution than the levels.

TL;DR: Tokens are not pretty but, in theory, they could be.

 

[Darth Canoli]

There are a lot less complaints about the art in competing D&D game Low Magic Age, even though it's kind of uninspired and sourced from some pre-done asset pack. Even though it uses static tile images without animations. Because it still represents the characters and monsters like a normal video game does, while KOTC2 just gives you some prosper fantasy clip art head floating in a circle.

And?
Have you played the game?
On a scale from 0 to 1000, Low Magic Age Encounter design rating is -2 000 000.
Dungeon exploration is also terrible.
Quest are generic fetch quests outside of the main story, which wasn't really interesting either last time I played.

You dislike the art, fine, enjoy LMA then...

By the way, are you a backer?
Because if you're not, you better shut your trap since Pierre never hid 2D animated sprites with the new extended bestiary was too expensive.

Anyway, the only way to fix it is to make a big donation, thanks in advance.

 

[Serus]

There are a lot less complaints about the art in competing D&D game Low Magic Age, even though it's kind of uninspired and sourced from some pre-done asset pack. Even though it uses static tile images without animations. Because it still represents the characters and monsters like a normal video game does, while KOTC2 just gives you some prosper fantasy clip art head floating in a circle.

And?
Have you played the game?
On a scale from 0 to 1000, Low Magic Age Encounter design rating is -2 000 000.
Dungeon exploration is also terrible.
Quest are generic fetch quests outside of the main story, which wasn't really interesting either last time I played.

You dislike the art, fine, enjoy LMA then...

By the way, are you a backer?
Because if you're not, you better shut your trap since Pierre never hid 2D animated sprites with the new extended bestiary was too expensive.

Anyway, the only way to fix it is to make a big donation, thanks in advance.

Darth are you going mental now?
"You can't criticise something because a different thing is worse in another product". What?
"You can only praise a game unless you are a backer". I seems that a customer that paid for a product cannot criticise it. It is an exclusive for backers only now!

<double Picard>.

 

[Darth Canoli]

Darth are you going mental now?
"You can't criticise something because a different thing is worse in another product". What?
"You can only praise a game unless you are a backer". I seems that a customer that paid for a product cannot criticise it. It is an exclusive for backers only now!

<double Picard>.

It's not the first time I see mentions of LMA, there are a few in Gog/Steam reviews.
At the very least, if you want to make comparisons, compare the game to something of equal quality.
LMA dungeons and encounter design is garbage, everything else is mediocre at best.

As for the backer thing, the only way to fix the art is money.
There were 2 kickstarter goals to get 2D sprites animated in 2 and 4 directions.
None of which were reached.

 

[Efe]

he made a release on steam = money
he could have made more with better and consistent art whether its token or sprites.

 

[Grunker]

graphic whores itt make me sick

tokens are the true pnp experience

only possible improvement is if all tokens were black marker text on white background with coffee or coke brown stains to emulate your friends' vain attempts at personalizing the designator for their warrior pc on your beige wax battlemat used for any and all encounters in your moms basement

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The tokens are gaudy. Not a graphics whore, just don't like 'em.

Goes back to playing ZapM in ASCII mode.

 

[JarlFrank]

LMA dungeons and encounter design is

non-existent because it's procedural.

Proc gen white knights are gonna rate my post with agenda, but deep down you all know it to be true.

 

[Desiderius]

RE: Ugly tokens

If enough codexers postulate for a joint effort, we could generate a token pack using D&D bestiaries to replace all the uggos bundled with the game while keeping a consistent look. Since it won't be a commercial release, and it'll be adjoined to no one's name, we don't have to worry about its legal status.

There's one token pack on the Nexus that gives you enough appealing/distinctive tokens to play the game fine. I'm just too lazy to remove all the garbage Pierre included with the game so have to keep scrolling thru. There are even a few decent ones there.

 

[PorkaMorka]

And?
Have you played the game?
On a scale from 0 to 1000, Low Magic Age Encounter design rating is -2 000 000.
Dungeon exploration is also terrible.
Quest are generic fetch quests outside of the main story, which wasn't really interesting either last time I played.

You dislike the art, fine, enjoy LMA then...

By the way, are you a backer?
Because if you're not, you better shut your trap since Pierre never hid 2D animated sprites with the new extended bestiary was too expensive.

Anyway, the only way to fix it is to make a big donation, thanks in advance.

I'm a past customer of KOTC1 and a potential purchaser of this game, but so far I haven't bought it because I disagree with almost every design decision he made between KOTC1 and KOTC2.

It's not my intent to clog this thread and I largely stayed out of it after the price point was announced, since I'm waiting for a sale, however Jarl asked why people didn't like tokens so I felt it was appropriate to respond.

Low Magic Age is Chinese shovelware that originally cost under $5. I don't like it, although I might have gotten $5 worth of half-hearted "fun" out of it. If you want to call that fun. I never claimed that it was overall better than KOTC2.

I simply pointed out that has better looking (or at least more market acceptable) graphics and a better looking interface, despite the fact that tokens and tiles are basically the same level of technology, despite the fact that it's at least partially from asset packs.

The developer didn't necessarily spend more, he just made better decisions on how to piece together his product in order to create a more market acceptable look at $5 price point. KOTC2 is firmly in the Jeff Vogel territory of a game that is unnecessarily ugly. The same technology level and resources could have been used to create a significantly less ugly game if different decisions were made.

This is relevant to the commercial success of the game and the potential size of the future module making community.

 

[Desiderius]

he made a release on steam = money
he could have made more with better and consistent art whether its token or sprites.

He's bad at that shit.

Instead of biting his ankles help a brother out.

https://medium.com/@robert.f.willia...a-precedent-in-the-employment-of-9f8548657045

 

[Serus]

LMA dungeons and encounter design is QUOTE]

non-existent because it's procedural.

Proc gen white knights are gonna rate my post with agenda, but deep down you all know it to be true.

This is simply logically wrong. Procedural != completely random - and has to be for the design to be non-existent. An example: most would agree that enemy composition is part of encounter design, right? Well, composition is certainly not completely random in any game with procedural elements that i know of. There are possible composition of enemies, which enemies can go with others, often in what numbers and proportions, how they are positioned (archers in the back) etc... And those parameters are decided consciously by the developers. Ergo, without a doubt, it's design. You may say that it is a simplistic design but you can't say it is non existent. In addition an alghoritm made by a competent designer can give better rresult than hand made encounter by a bad designer or one without time or lazy.

 

[Desiderius]

And?
Have you played the game?
On a scale from 0 to 1000, Low Magic Age Encounter design rating is -2 000 000.
Dungeon exploration is also terrible.
Quest are generic fetch quests outside of the main story, which wasn't really interesting either last time I played.

You dislike the art, fine, enjoy LMA then...

By the way, are you a backer?
Because if you're not, you better shut your trap since Pierre never hid 2D animated sprites with the new extended bestiary was too expensive.

Anyway, the only way to fix it is to make a big donation, thanks in advance.

I'm a past customer of KOTC1 and a potential purchaser of this game, but so far I haven't bought it because I disagree with almost every design decision he made between KOTC1 and KOTC2.

It's not my intent to clog this thread and I largely stayed out of it after the price point was announced, since I'm waiting for a sale, however Jarl asked why people didn't like tokens so I felt it was appropriate to respond.

Low Magic Age is Chinese shovelware that originally cost under $5. I don't like it, although I might have gotten $5 worth of half-hearted "fun" out of it. If you want to call that fun. I never claimed that it was overall better than KOTC2.

I simply pointed out that has better looking (or at least more market acceptable) graphics and a better looking interface, despite the fact that tokens and tiles are basically the same level of technology, despite the fact that it's at least partially from asset packs.

The developer didn't necessarily spend more, he just made better decisions on how to piece together his product in order to create a more market acceptable look at $5 price point. KOTC2 is firmly in the Jeff Vogel territory of a game that is unnecessarily ugly. The same technology level and resources could have been used to create a significantly less ugly game if different decisions were made.

This is relevant to the commercial success of the game and the potential size of the future module making community.

Oh for fuck sake. You can be more than a mere customer and if that's all you settle for your life will suck.

The art is crappy because Pierre is autistic. And it's ridiculously cheap for the kind of game it is. It's not meant to be something you toy around with for a weekend and then drop. It's meant to be Gold Box which would be $200 or whatever in today's dollars, and it's better than Gold Box.

 

[Mortmal]

I am glad desiderius's medecine is kicking in, he's now stable enough and seems to genuinely get pleasure from a turn based game. Yes not one of those real time game require "LEET SKILLZZZ". There's even 4-5 posts from him without screenshots, the therapist did wonder.

 

[AdamReith]

At first KOTC 1 was unbearably ugly to me, now I think it's beautiful.

I am expecting a similar journey with KOTC2 but it certainly is a significant step up in ugliness in exchange for a rise in readability.

 

[Tweed]

I didn't think I was going to like the tokens, but they look much better in action. Unfortunately too many normies are going to be turned off by the visuals.

 

[Koolz]

I love Tokens. There so flexible. You can make your own for all the creatures and characters and immerse yourself into the game world.

I was able to find pleasing Tokens for all my characters in the pool of tokens the game offers.

What I need to see though is more depth then what is already there. Deeper Characters and their stories, and lore. There is reactivity but there could be so much more. I don't think the developer should be done with the game.

The battle are like nothing I have experienced before in a game! It's pretty insane!

I have more fun playing this then When I played "Wrath of the Wrongness!"

Music sucks, I turn it off of course. Music directing, poor Sound stage, Poor voices in ensemble on sound stage, lack of compression pushing accents on Main beats and structure of Rhythm, bla bla bla...
"Still even with my criticism I have to say I am happy for the upcoming composers being able to get there music in a project. It's a tough world out there."



I support this guy I am impressed it's one person and his wife. That's really impressive!

He is obviously very intelligent. I am total geek I stare at Stats and Inventory going over Gear.

Reminds me of Dnd Long ago when Conan the Barbarian would Play in the Background back then Things were hard core they were Awesome! Playboy Magazine existed Movies were all just "Better!"

Conan the Barbarian was Horns on Steroids! You had to compose as Thematic development there was no Braaaahhhhhhmmmm

 

[Lim-Dûl]

How is it that the first game looks better than the second game, and the second game, released in 2022, looks worse than games from the 90s? Stop coping and accept the reality that the tokens look terrible.

 

[AdamReith]

How is it that the first game looks better than the second game, and the second game, released in 2022, looks worse than games from the 90s? Stop coping and accept the reality that the tokens look terrible.

All it has to compete with is Goldbox. i.e. Game&Watch level graphics.

 

[Achiman]

I just finished the game, mainly because I got covid on saturday and have to stay in my house an play vidya games.
Anyway, one of the hardest, most unfair rage inducing, uninstalled then immediately reinstalled turn based game I've come across.
I finished the game with my party at level 19, which from what I can tell is slightly underlevelled.
Not sure if it's intended, but spellcasters are godly in this whereas the warrior type classes really (while being helpful and necessary) seem just like meat shields or for mopping up what hasn't been destroyed by the AOE shitshow.

On one hand Pierre is a magnificent bastard for making such challenging turn based combat with hand crafted set pieces that seem impossible until something clicks, you learn, or you get a bit of rngesus.

On the other he's designed a game that is a normie repellant and I doubt will be anywhere nearly as commercially successful as it could have been if he just allowed some more tilting of the scales to the player side.
I convinced my old cheese to buy the game this weekend and after a brief conversation with him on steam today, he's basically getting absolutely raped in the tutorial.
He is not a dnd style of game player typically but has played many turn based games and strategy games.

With a game that is so overwhelming in what you can do (and how the game can fuck you in oh so many ways) some concession to the player in difficulty modification would help Pierre fund KOTC 3.

 

[Desiderius]

I just finished the game, mainly because I got covid on saturday and have to stay in my house an play vidya games.
Anyway, one of the hardest, most unfair rage inducing, uninstalled then immediately reinstalled turn based game I've come across.
I finished the game with my party at level 19, which from what I can tell is slightly underlevelled.
Not sure if it's intended, but spellcasters are godly in this whereas the warrior type classes really (while being helpful and necessary) seem just like meat shields or for mopping up what hasn't been destroyed by the AOE shitshow.

On one hand Pierre is a magnificent bastard for making such challenging turn based combat with hand crafted set pieces that seem impossible until something clicks, you learn, or you get a bit of rngesus.

On the other he's designed a game that is a normie repellant and I doubt will be anywhere nearly as commercially successful as it could have been if he just allowed some more tilting of the scales to the player side.
I convinced my old cheese to buy the game this weekend and after a brief conversation with him on steam today, he's basically getting absolutely raped in the tutorial.
He is not a dnd style of game player typically but has played many turn based games and strategy games.

With a game that is so overwhelming in what you can do (and how the game can fuck you in oh so many ways) some concession to the player in difficulty modification would help Pierre fund KOTC 3.

Normal difficulty is already insanely juiced compared to the original game or even Enchanter (what I’m playing now). The whole point is the joy of the aha! moments. I really don’t get the incessant drive to deprive new players of them and the idea it will be the key to commercial success instead of the main reason contemporary games struggle.

Give people some credit, even those who haven’t discovered the fun of figuring things out for themselves yet.

 

[anvi]

How does the max stats option and the free level up change the game later on? Is it still hard? Because the start of the game seems super easy with those options.