Prelude to Darkness - anyone tried it?

[Anonymous]

big issues

Hey Mat,

I just downloaded the most recent version to see your progress...

I think the art, plot and dialogues are great, but there's a bunch of technical issuesthat you guys should fix before you release the final version.

1) Stuttering while panning the camera. When I look around with the camera I get a lot of chugging and stalling compared to games like Sacrifice that display huge landscapes. I don't quite get why this is. I have a decent machine too.

2) User Interface is cluttered and unwieldy. Almost looks like half the stuff was tacked on at the last minute. 'Close' buttons should definitely be more distinct and visible.

3) The way characters move is pretty jumpy... they don't move smoothly, and sometimes NPCs will flash by at impossible speeds. Very unpleasant to look at. Then again, it's pretty funny to see a fat farmer hurl himself at lighting speed from the inn to his home.

4) I don't like using the ground squares to perform selection... I find it very clunky.

5) Overall I find the stability of the game is poor. I get save game lockups and a crash every now and then.


If you guys can patch up the technical end by more testing and bugfixing, the game will be pretty decent. Are you the only programmer? Perhaps another programmer and a full time tester might help.

 

[Rosh]

Re: big issues

Hey Mat,

I just downloaded the most recent version to see your progress...

I think the art, plot and dialogues are great, but there's a bunch of technical issuesthat you guys should fix before you release the final version.

Quite good that they are still working on it. I really hope it doesn't become an Interplay-like release, with a couple of cursory patches. I do see a LOT more potential with this game, if certain things in particular were addressed.

1) Stuttering while panning the camera. When I look around with the camera I get a lot of chugging and stalling compared to games like Sacrifice that display huge landscapes. I don't quite get why this is. I have a decent machine too.

Possibly related to why FOT scrolls like crap?

2) User Interface is cluttered and unwieldy. Almost looks like half the stuff was tacked on at the last minute. 'Close' buttons should definitely be more distinct and visible.

I couldn't agree more. While I was a bit acidic in my initial post aboutthe interface, interface design is one of my pet peeves. Here is the elaboration of my earlier point:

1. The dark blue filter layer might be a simple idea for night time. However, it makes the interface nearly impossible to see. Not god at all. Try putting the blue night layer behind the interface panel(s).

2. Camera controls in the interface should be axed. They take far too long to fiddle around with the mouse. Lose this in favor of keyboard controls (easily displayed in a simple help page map of the keyboard, or customizable keys) in the keypad, or the usual arrow pad and Insert/Home/PgUp; Delete/End/PgDn rows for the camera controls.

3. Along with the last point, use the space freed up by the camera controls to display combat data (armor rating, time units left, etc.), or numeric data of the currently selected character that may benefit them in the roam.

4. Some text seems to cut off in weapon descriptions (or they just ended without a period). I think the guardian's sword is one example, I'll go check in a bit. But if scrolling capability were added to the text boxes, that would add more to the game and solve 90% of the problems with the help system. You could have a summary page for the most often used help screens that had it all outlined, with specific pages for more detailed help if needed. A back function in the help system would be muchly appreciated.

5. The Esc key seems to either randomly work for closing out windows, or not at all. The point where it's most critical, in the game options menu, seems to be missing.

3) The way characters move is pretty jumpy... they don't move smoothly, and sometimes NPCs will flash by at impossible speeds. Very unpleasant to look at. Then again, it's pretty funny to see a fat farmer hurl himself at lighting speed from the inn to his home.

Amusing, but really improbable. Holding down the Alt key shouldn't be required for this. I think that the NPCs could move at 1/2 speed for walking, and then at the current speed for running. I was very surprised seeing a quite pregnant woman moving faster or as fast as my characters.

4) I don't like using the ground squares to perform selection... I find it very clunky.

Though it is a bit consistent for NPCs, it makes getting items on elevated areas something of a pain, especially with the viewpoint changing. You need to guess where the item really is located.

5) Overall I find the stability of the game is poor. I get save game lockups and a crash every now and then.

No crashes, but I find a few wonderful hard lock-ups, once when going INTO the save menu. What base is the game from? It appears to be D3D, and everyone knows how good Microsoft APIs are. :D

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: big issues

Quite good that they are still working on it. I really hope it doesn't become an Interplay-like release, with a couple of cursory patches. I do see a LOT more potential with this game, if certain things in particular were addressed.

I agree. This game stinks to high heaven with potential greatness. I think the combat system is one of the best combat systems I've ever seen, rivalling Fallout's system.

2. Camera controls in the interface should be axed. They take far too long to fiddle around with the mouse. Lose this in favor of keyboard controls (easily displayed in a simple help page map of the keyboard, or customizable keys) in the keypad, or the usual arrow pad and Insert/Home/PgUp; Delete/End/PgDn rows for the camera controls.

Transparency would be nice for trees and things that are hiding the players and other combatants. Perhaps some kind of additional highlighting for bad guys as well, such as a red glow. That way, you wouldn't have to pan the camera as much.

3. Along with the last point, use the space freed up by the camera controls to display combat data (armor rating, time units left, etc.), or numeric data of the currently selected character that may benefit them in the roam.

That would be nice, actually. More information on who's turn it is with battle stats would be very handy if there were space freed up for it.

Amusing, but really improbable. Holding down the Alt key shouldn't be required for this. I think that the NPCs could move at 1/2 speed for walking, and then at the current speed for running. I was very surprised seeing a quite pregnant woman moving faster or as fast as my characters.

Actually, rather than just hard locking it, perhaps a movement speed slider in the options so you can adjust how fast things move, but the default should be 1/4 to 1/2 as fast as they are now.

Though it is a bit consistent for NPCs, it makes getting items on elevated areas something of a pain, especially with the viewpoint changing. You need to guess where the item really is located.

Alt does a good job of this, though.

No crashes, but I find a few wonderful hard lock-ups, once when going INTO the save menu. What base is the game from? It appears to be D3D, and everyone knows how good Microsoft APIs are. :D

It's DirectX 5, which is why my sound cuts out while playing it occationally.

 

[thathmew]

replies to issues

1) Stuttering while panning the camera. When I look around with the camera I get a lot of chugging and stalling compared to games like Sacrifice that display huge landscapes. I don't quite get why this is. I have a decent machine too.

yeah, this is a problem and I'm working on it, it's simply because it has to page chunks of the map in and out of memory and it's doing too much of it at once instead of spreading it over several frames. But I should have this down for the first patch.

2) User Interface is cluttered and unwieldy. Almost looks like half the stuff was tacked on at the last minute. 'Close' buttons should definitely be more distinct and visible.

Say more that some of the placeholders still haven't gotten upgraded or polished. <sigh> There's generally some contrast and distinction issues with the whole wood-grain concept. It has the right feel, but it's apparent it's not working as effectively as it should and getting in the way of the game, not enabling it. I'm going to try some revisions of it soon, possibly very major ones.

1. The dark blue filter layer might be a simple idea for night time. However, it makes the interface nearly impossible to see. Not good at all. Try putting the blue night layer behind the interface panel(s).

yes this one of the things I kinda forgot about once I got used to it, it's a function of lighting and contrasts, there's no layer, the lighting is actually changing. It not just a function of a layer unfortunately, but it should be relatively easily fixable. I'm assume you mean things like selection boxes and hitpoint indicators and such? The actual "panels" never get overlayed, if they seem to change lighting levels it's due to tricks of the eye and contrasts as mentioned previously which need work.

2. Camera controls in the interface should be axed. They take far too long to fiddle around with the mouse. Lose this in favor of keyboard controls (easily displayed in a simple help page map of the keyboard, or customizable keys) in the keypad, or the usual arrow pad and Insert/Home/PgUp; Delete/End/PgDn rows for the camera controls.

um, the mouse can rotate the camera on screen at the edges by clicking and draggin and the numpad _does_ rotate the camera. Now there's been at least one other machine which the numpad doesn't register for some reason. I'll work on getting it customizeable. I hardly ever use the controls on the interface bar I use the keyboard mostly for camera rotations. The interface bar items were more added as an after thought and because a few testers requested them. They should be listed under main screen -> controls -> keyboard commands. And yes the help organization does need work.

3. Along with the last point, use the space freed up by the camera controls to display combat data (armor rating, time units left, etc.), or numeric data of the currently selected character that may benefit them in the roam.

That's a good idea, use it for a mouse-over area. I'm working on getting more mouseovers in place, but there are other priorities right now I think.

4. Some text seems to cut off in weapon descriptions (or they just ended without a period). I think the guardian's sword is one example, I'll go check in a bit. But if scrolling capability were added to the text boxes, that would add more to the game and solve 90% of the problems with the help system. You could have a summary page for the most often used help screens that had it all outlined, with specific pages for more detailed help if needed. A back function in the help system would be muchly appreciated.

yes, I should have the back button in place for the first patch. And scrolling is in place for the text boxes, if it's not working that's yet another bug I'll look at. I think that some of it may be that the scrollbar looks too much like the basic window outline. I can fix that easily.

5. The Esc key seems to either randomly work for closing out windows, or not at all. The point where it's most critical, in the game options menu, seems to be missing.

ach. missed that one. I'll have to just got through and check those individually again.

3) The way characters move is pretty jumpy... they don't move smoothly, and sometimes NPCs will flash by at impossible speeds. Very unpleasant to look at. Then again, it's pretty funny to see a fat farmer hurl himself at lighting speed from the inn to his home.

Amusing, but really improbable. Holding down the Alt key shouldn't be required for this. I think that the NPCs could move at 1/2 speed for walking, and then at the current speed for running. I was very surprised seeing a quite pregnant woman moving faster or as fast as my characters.

I'm going to slow general NPC movement down and I'm working on the PC "jumpiness." slowdown should be relatively easy, the jumpiness may not be.

4) I don't like using the ground squares to perform selection... I find it very clunky.

Though it is a bit consistent for NPCs, it makes getting items on elevated areas something of a pain, especially with the viewpoint changing. You need to guess where the item really is located.

this was actually a direct result of testing, we tried it with full body selection, just ground, and even cubic area selection, and we found that the ground select worked best. I'm thinking about making this a toggle-able option so people can choose their own favorite.

5) Overall I find the stability of the game is poor. I get save game lockups and a crash every now and then.

No crashes, but I find a few wonderful hard lock-ups, once when going INTO the save menu. What base is the game from? It appears to be D3D, and everyone knows how good Microsoft APIs are.

This is by far the most frustrating for me. On my three varied machines I have to develop and test on I get a crash or lock _maybe_ once every 4-6 hours, but I can see that other people are not having the same experiences and worse they seem to be fairly random, folks can't seem reproduce them consistently or get me savegames which can. I'd love to hear specific circumstances and hardware information from anyone getting crashes. It is D3D 7.0, but doesn't really take advantage of hardware t&l for instance.

On one final note I am the only programmer, but I don't see any way to change that at this point. <sigh>

Thanks for the comments and critiques,
-mat

 

[Rosh]

Re: replies to issues

1. The dark blue filter layer might be a simple idea for night time. However, it makes the interface nearly impossible to see. Not good at all. Try putting the blue night layer behind the interface panel(s).

yes this one of the things I kinda forgot about once I got used to it, it's a function of lighting and contrasts, there's no layer, the lighting is actually changing. It not just a function of a layer unfortunately, but it should be relatively easily fixable. I'm assume you mean things like selection boxes and hitpoint indicators and such? The actual "panels" never get overlayed, if they seem to change lighting levels it's due to tricks of the eye and contrasts as mentioned previously which need work.

My mistake (and it helps to have someone else check out such things). I went back and checked it, but during the night it made the interface look a bit illegible in some ways. Perhaps if there was a woodgrain with a metal edging, this would benefit the panel for both day and nighttime. Something to set the controls apart and a bit more noticable.

2. Camera controls in the interface should be axed. They take far too long to fiddle around with the mouse. Lose this in favor of keyboard controls (easily displayed in a simple help page map of the keyboard, or customizable keys) in the keypad, or the usual arrow pad and Insert/Home/PgUp; Delete/End/PgDn rows for the camera controls.

um, the mouse can rotate the camera on screen at the edges by clicking and draggin and the numpad _does_ rotate the camera. Now there's been at least one other machine which the numpad doesn't register for some reason. I'll work on getting it customizeable. I hardly ever use the controls on the interface bar I use the keyboard mostly for camera rotations. The interface bar items were more added as an after thought and because a few testers requested them. They should be listed under main screen -> controls -> keyboard commands. And yes the help organization does need work.

Let me clarify. The camer controls in the panel should be axed, or at least made a bit more legible. They don't do much else from the keyboard controls, and that space could be used for other things. Or if they are left in, a thin addition for pertinent data to be displayed. The aforementioned HP, armor, AP, etc.

3. Along with the last point, use the space freed up by the camera controls to display combat data (armor rating, time units left, etc.), or numeric data of the currently selected character that may benefit them in the roam.

That's a good idea, use it for a mouse-over area. I'm working on getting more mouseovers in place, but there are other priorities right now I think.

Sounds good.

On one final note I am the only programmer, but I don't see any way to change that at this point. <sigh>

Thanks for the comments and critiques,
-mat

Hey, we'll try to post out helpful things and other bugs, comments, etc. to help out and help along, and possibly try to nail that hard-lock crash problem. Though, that seems to be an MS problem if anything, it's common to other DirectWrecks games.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: replies to issues

It is D3D 7.0, but doesn't really take advantage of hardware t&l for instance.

Ahhhh.. You might want to update your page on the requirements then, Mat. It says "DirectX 5.0" on there.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I'd have to take a look, but I think when I got freezes, it would sometimes say "Failure to draw chunks". That or something like it. Also, when I got problems during loading, I'd sometimes see the colors get dark and lines of purple radiating out from a point in the upper-left corner, lighting I'm guessing.

I can't really speak to play balance since I haven't seen most of the game, but really it would also be nice for non-combat skills to get raised when they get used. Pickpocket was my biggest frustration in this regard, though I wouldn't have minded magic going up, too, even if it was very slowly. I imagine some skills would see infrequent enough use that they would still need experience to boost them much. Of course if all raising skills does is give you stat bonuses, maybe it is okay, but that's not really that intuitive so maybe you could explain the system a little clearer in the documenation.

 

[thathmew]

I just took a look at the skill improvement code and there is indeed a bug that is preventing the improvement of non-combat skills. They improve in a slightly different way (although magic should basically be the same), but I'll definitely get that fixed in the first patch.

The failure to drank chunks is slightly illuminating. I'm guessing I'm not cleaning up some texuring things that are building up or overlapping in the wrong places, also indicated by the pink/purple lines. Hopefully I'll be able to make some progress on it soon.

-mat

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Hey Mat, can you tell us what all will be fixed in the first patch? I know that's not the most fun question for a programmer to see, but I was just curious if you could provide some details on the subect.

 

[thathmew]

patch info

Here's my plan right now for the first patch. I want to stress this is not %100 definite, but I think it will all get done. Some already is as noted

In no particular order:

1) Up damage for flame spells -- done
2) Up healing from mother's kiss/breath -- done
3) Make enemies next to characters with missile weapons interfere with firing
4) Adding a small event to arrival at Kellen
5) Slow down NPC's outside combat
6) back or <previous topic> for help system -- done
7) Make magic and non-combat skills improve with use
8) Smooth out scrolling
9) Improve contrast for window borders and buttons

My tenative schedule is to have a beta patch available before Thanksgiving.

Cheers,
-mat

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: patch info

1) Up damage for flame spells -- done

Sweet. Have you figured out why flame spells didn't work on humans and such in my game? If you need it, I kept a save game from that party that I could email you.

2) Up healing from mother's kiss/breath -- done

Excellent. I think I'm healing 11 points now with a 23 Gifts skill, which is still pretty weak. At that skill, it really has little impact on combat, since most monsters can hit for that much. When someone is unconcious, and you cast it on them, they're knocked back down before the round is played out typically.

3) Make enemies next to characters with missile weapons interfere with firing

Attacks of Opportunity?

5) Slow down NPC's outside combat

This won't slow down the player party, will it?

6) back or <previous topic> for help system -- done

Excellent!

7) Make magic and non-combat skills improve with use

Hell, I wouldn't mind a patch with just this. :D

8) Smooth out scrolling

Once this is done, will the resolution option be put back in?

9) Improve contrast for window borders and buttons

Very good as well. Along those notes, any chance of higher polycount models and high res textures at some point? Kind of like what BattleZone did with their Large Assets patch?

My tenative schedule is to have a beta patch available before Thanksgiving.

Can't wait.

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Nice. I'm getting tempted to register and just suffer through the reboots. :D

 

[thathmew]

textures and polygon improvements

Yes, I would definitely like to patch in higher poly characters and higher resolution textures for at least the terrain at some point in the future. But I can't guarantee those will happen. Travis, our artist, is swamped with other things right now and he'd be key for getting higher poly models in, unfortunately it's not a simple process that I can easily get outside folks involved in because of how the armor/clothing texturing and linkages for weapons and shields and helms and such works. Improving the terrain texturing I'll probably do on my own at some point, I don't need him for that.
But I do have hope for it all, I mean at some point we'll be doing higher poly models for other games regardless I hope. <grin>

-mat

 

[Anonymous]

Favrorite quests, etc.

After working on the story/design end for so long I'm really curious about a couple of things, mainly: which quests do people like the best and what the favorite starting parties are.

Has anyone solved the missing child quest?

Does anybody use thaumaturgists?

What are people most interested in seeing/finding out in the full version?

Sorry to shotgun you'all with the random questions, but like I said I'm super curious and all of your feedback is very valuable to us. To that end, if anyone has any questions/concerns regarding quest solving, chargen, playbalancing, etc. I'd be happy to throw my 2 cents in. Thanks for your time.

CP

 

[Walks with the Snails]

I liked the pregnant girl quest. It was nice that you had to take your own initiative at several points and there was more than one way to do it. Definitely not your typical fed-ex quest. Avoiding spoilers, I thought the one with your contact was nice, too.

I'm actually thinking about trying a thaumaturgist next. I'm a bit curious how it would be, but I wanted to see the traditional magic first.

I tried some other party I don't remember out at first, just to get a feel, but I liked my farmer, merchant, and acolyte the best. Combat skills go up pretty quickly, so the bodyguard and guardian don't keep their edge over the farmer in combat for long, and he'll eventually be a hair better. Really I think the guardian could use a little boost, he doesn't seem as good as the bodyguard or farmer and is also harder to qualify for. If magic and non-combat skills go up with use in the next patch, I think I might try a farmer, merchant, and thaumaturgist next.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

I think I may have found another bug, or at very least, something that could use better implimentation.

I was trying to teach one of my characters some archery. I bought 40 wooden arrows and put them in her quiver slot. She fired once, and I was out of ammo. Now, did she fire 40 arrows at once or what?

After that, I had to hand load in one arrow at a time, which is a royal pain in the butt to do. If you can fire multiple arrows at once(I hope this is a bug, really), couldn't there be a reload option in the right click menu for attacks?

 

[Walks with the Snails]

Oh yeah, that reminds me, I noticed when a character has a stack of identical equippable items (like 3 ironwood shields), the extras mysteriously vanish when you pick up the stack and try to equip it. May be the same problem mentioned previously.

 

[Anonymous]

Inventory Bugs

I'm seeing these inventory/equipment bugs too. From previous experience with the game, inventory bugs were common. You'd lose duplicates or things like that.

As for the quests I like pretty much everything apart from the 'find the missing boy' quest. Given the problems with scrolling and the inability to see large sections of terrain, it's a bit irritating to do a 'wander in the wild' type quest. The rest of the kellen quests are great... I like the focus on believable problems/issues, instead of the 'find the magic orb' stuff.

Where did your bug report stuff go, by the way? I remember you used to have a link from the home page to a page where you could submit bugs?
I'm kind of surprised to see that this edition is labelled 1.0. Quite frankly, it's still shaky and the UI needs work.

As for the graphics, I don't think it's so important to have great graphics in an RPG. I'd rather have a solid game that runs well and has an interesting story and missions. I'd spend time fixing the bugs rather than adding new models or textures. Just my opinion.

I agree about teh guardian background too. If they're trained soldiers they should have a bit of an edge.

 

[Rosh]

Sounds good, Mat, and we're waiting to check on how it works out.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: Inventory Bugs

I'm seeing these inventory/equipment bugs too. From previous experience with the game, inventory bugs were common. You'd lose duplicates or things like that.

That could definitely stand to be fixed. If you drag all of an item, say shields, to the shield slot, it should just equip one and move the rest back to the inventory.

For arrows, it would be nice if it did the above, and also reloaded for you after you fired. A good scheme would be to reload with the arrow of the type you have in the quiver, if none of that type is left, go with the next lower type. For example, if no more steel tipped arrows existed, and you had wooden arrows, it would reload with wooden and give you a message about it in the text box.

As for the quests I like pretty much everything apart from the 'find the missing boy' quest. Given the problems with scrolling and the inability to see large sections of terrain, it's a bit irritating to do a 'wander in the wild' type quest. The rest of the kellen quests are great... I like the focus on believable problems/issues, instead of the 'find the magic orb' stuff.

Wonder in the wild is bad. They should at least have a path or something leading to him or have someone give a clue/map location to where he is. Something like talking to one of the kids and having the kid mention that would be ideal.

As for the graphics, I don't think it's so important to have great graphics in an RPG. I'd rather have a solid game that runs well and has an interesting story and missions. I'd spend time fixing the bugs rather than adding new models or textures. Just my opinion.

Well, the brunt of that work is the work of people who aren't fixing bugs, i.e. the artists.

I agree about teh guardian background too. If they're trained soldiers they should have a bit of an edge.

16 STR, 16 DEX, 18 SPD, 14 END makes a hell of a Guardian.

 

[Anonymous]

interesting conversation

great review, and it's really interesting to see what sorts of things you guys had to decide for a game like this. I'm a pretty amateur game programmer - never worked on anything this big before - what's it like starting a company and actually DOING it? Also curious how your big ideas changed over time - It looks like you must have kept some of them - the game (at least what I've seen so far) has some great things going for it.

cheers,

barnabe

 

[Anonymous]

Re: Inventory Bugs

Well, the brunt of that work is the work of people who aren't fixing bugs, i.e. the artists.

True. Very true. You got me.

But if you have a limited budget and payroll, best to put emphasis on the bugfixing. (ie: hire an experienced programmer).

The art has a lot of character though. The low poly counts really don't affect me, because the art works so well at evoking a sense of richness, even if that richness isn't represented at incredibly high resolution. ( Kellen is pretty bare compared to the other towns though.)

To tell you the truth, I honestly prefer prelude's character texturing to NWN. I find NWN's textures to be visually unappealing, blurred and not very striking. Prelude doesn't use high resolution textures but what they have works very well in terms of visual clarity. I can always tell what I'm looking at and what it's wearing.

Zero sum should release an interview with the artist ... i'd be interested to hear how long it took to do all the artwork and to lay in all the cities.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Re: Inventory Bugs

True. Very true. You got me.

But if you have a limited budget and payroll, best to put emphasis on the bugfixing. (ie: hire an experienced programmer).

Well, if you have an artist on the payroll that's just twiddling his thumbs while CP and Mat are working on fixing quests and the codebase..

Actually, I'm not sure they have a payroll, since the artist is doing "other things" right now, though.

The art has a lot of character though. The low poly counts really don't affect me, because the art works so well at evoking a sense of richness, even if that richness isn't represented at incredibly high resolution. ( Kellen is pretty bare compared to the other towns though.)

Well, the main reason I ask is because I've showed the game to a lot of people, and the first thing I hear from a lot of them is, "Wow, those graphics look old." or something similar. I don't mind the graphics much at all, but some people.. Well.. It's hard to get them to try something when there's been so much emphasis on Graphics = Quality.

I agree though, the bugs and quests should get a spruce up first.

To tell you the truth, I honestly prefer prelude's character texturing to NWN. I find NWN's textures to be visually unappealing, blurred and not very striking. Prelude doesn't use high resolution textures but what they have works very well in terms of visual clarity. I can always tell what I'm looking at and what it's wearing.

I think adding high res texture support would go a long way, frankly. I'm not sure how hard it is to add with D3D though. Once the implimention is done though, the textures can gradually be replaced.

Zero sum should release an interview with the artist ... i'd be interested to hear how long it took to do all the artwork and to lay in all the cities.

I'm willing if they're willing.

 

[CP]

Re: Inventory Bugs

I'm willing if they're willing.

I think our artist Travis has been following this for a while now. I can't imagine that he'd be opposed to an interview. If you want to Proverbius, feel free to email him at travis@zero-sum.com and it shouldn't take him long to respond. If the rest of you have q's that you'd like to make sure Travis is asked, if it's alright with Proverbius, you should probably post them here.

Keep in mind, Travis is responsible for nearly all of the art except for the portraits. He did do several NPC portraits, but the large bulk of unique PC and NPC portraits -- there are over 200 of them -- were done by Tom Forget. Tom also helped with a lot of concept art. They are both incredible artists who performed miracles with what we had to give them which... please believe me... wasn't much.

How do people feel about the portraits? Are there any particular favorites or, for that matter, particularly disliked?

CP
Creative Designer, Zero Sum

 

[CP]

Re: interesting conversation

great review, and it's really interesting to see what sorts of things you guys had to decide for a game like this. I'm a pretty amateur game programmer - never worked on anything this big before - what's it like starting a company and actually DOING it? Also curious how your big ideas changed over time - It looks like you must have kept some of them - the game (at least what I've seen so far) has some great things going for it.

Jeez. I could go on about this forever. I'll try not to.

Short synopsis: I started working at Acclaim when I was 14 as one of the lead testers for the original Mortal Kombat and NBA Jam (and several more forgettable ones -- Krusty's Funhouse, Spiderman and the Sinister Six, etc.) I worked there till I was an assistant producer at 19.

Working for the big company is fun, but needless to say you don't have much freedom. Having to work on games that you don't like also really sucks when you care about your work.

Anyway, I changed my major to entrepreneurship so that I could raise the money to start Zero Sum and develop the games I would want to play. It was one of the best decisions of my life. I've had the chance to work with very talanted people to create something that I'm proud of in the medium I love.

We had huge plans in the beginning. When we first started we thought that we knew everything and could make 3 games a year w/ just the 6 of us

Needless to say we had to scale back and focus on one product that got the most out of our core competancies.

Phew... Hope I didn't bore anyone, but there's my long answer to his short question.


CP McBee
Creative Designer, Zero Sum