Thursday is finally here.

[CappenVarra]

Just finished a quick Loremaster run, it was fun - now I have to reload at a few decisions and see what'll change. There is definite C&C at work here, color me impressed. And then on to other classes...

I also have a horribly low Perception (RL), and missed that giant Center Camera button at first, but found it once I returned to the computer after a break; thanks hiver and sea for the hint!

Vault Dweller, I don't know if you have some more appropriate bug collector, for now I'll just post here:

1) text sizing issue (1280 x 800 resolution):

2) invalid single quote char (not in the font file?):

 

[Crooked Bee]

I've also just finished a Loremaster run. Loved it. Will try to post some detailed impressions over the weekend.

 

[felipepepe]

Actually, someone should really make a fake trailer out of this.

I swear, the only reason I'm not stopping my work to do a quick trailer like this NOW is because my workstation is a filthy mac, so I can't play the game & capture some footage. Wait for it this weekend.

 

[Pelvis Knot]

Contrary to a lot of Codexers, I enjoyed the writing a lot. It has a refreshing brevity to it, even the stylized lore accounts avoid the overwrought purple prose most games use in similar contexts. It also manages to be succinct without descending into Bethesda-esque "Fight the good fight with your voice" simplicity. I think the reason it works so well for me, is that it fits the setting so well, and I'm a major immersionfag with a huge boner for thematic consistency in games. Which I honestly think is AoD's biggest strength, it's very cohesive, everything makes sense in context, the unforgiving combat included.

I agree the writing is fine, but one thing that broke my immersion was too much of contemporary american phrases - one specific example I remember is in the dialogue with the guard who is not letting some refugees in - the "We are not running a charity here" bit.

 

[hiver]

Just had a very small... glitch.
I tried going to raider and ruins locations, failed both and got my dodge increased at raider camp (that was funny).
Then i went back to report to Delar and failed all persuasion and other checks too (my crappy drifter "build") but then i got the option to go talk about it with Cado since i kinda joined the thieves previously. (beam me to it scotty)

Well, i fail everything there too and turn to leave.
When i stepped closer to the door the screen blacks out - goes back with me turned around and plays out the basic introduction to thieves that you get when you go there the first time on your own two feet - which i did not do previously, instead always being teleported there.

And then when i try to leave same thing happens but this time i watch an envoy from Merchants doing some deal, which is one of the regular things that should have happened, i guess.

 

[circ]

Ok gaize, I'm gonna try assassin again. Going to do the 5 str uh 8 dex 5 con 8 agi 10 int 4 chr build. Something like that. What gets the skill points? Pers/streetw? Or dodge/block evenly?

I want to beat the shit out of that first bodyguard but was unable to last night. Pointers?
First round I go into inventory, equip knife and hood and shield. That hood actually makes me look cool. I tried a bunch of attacks the first tries, whirlwind is useless shit unless you're surrounded by several npcs I'm guessing. Power attack missed like a motherfucker. Flurry worked and then didn't do much. But flurry did stat down something?
So, open with flurry, spam power or normal until he's dead?

EDIT: well shit. I put points into persuasion (41) and rest into streetwise, like 30, and I didn't get to fight him at all. He just went, ok, let's split the shit dawg. Also, perception 9, dex 7 seems to give you a hand crossbow. Maybe the reverse would have given me the net. Oh well.

Also VD, I went with 720p resolution this time, didn't really do that much for text legibility, bit blurry now. Anyway, character creation screen now had the selection boxes completely screwed up. Trying to hit the + for for example perception, I had to almost hit the - for intelligence. It was nowhere near the hit box.

 

[eric__s]

It depends on what stats you have, but the assassin sometimes starts with a net that you can throw at the bodyguard which makes him really easy to hit.

 

[Carrion]

I've played the demo some more and I feel I've had to rely a bit too much on trial and error. I pretty much agree with what sea said on the last page. Although the combat system might very well turn out to be the best single-character TB combat system I've played, I don't feel like I have had a lot of choice when it comes to the tactics. I've got my ass kicked many times already but I've survived all of those encounters without changing my tactics one bit, just waiting for those lucky rolls that have eventually come after a few retries. It might be because my "diplomatic assassin" character isn't the most optimal build for combat, but since you can't really affect your positioning (or, in some cases, even your equipped weapon) in any way and moving during combat eats away AP like crazy, all of the encounters so far have basically come down to just calculating which attacks do the most damage per round. There is some interesting equipment like that net you can throw on enemies to reduce their combat skills for a couple of rounds, but the enemies kept killing me just as much even when entangled so I just whacked them to death with a sword. I'll have to experiment with targeted attacks a bit more, but apart from one instance where I managed to instantly kill an enemy with a "headshot", I haven't seen a lot of difference between them and regular attacks except that they cost tons of action points. Maybe I should put more points in the critical hit thing or something.

Preparation and skill point distribution before combat seems to be much more important than what you actually do in the fights, because with shitty equipment you're pretty much doomed, no matter what you do. That is of course entirely acceptable and I felt it was entirely right that my dumbass character got completely slaughtered for bringing a dagger into a sword fight. Still, because the combat situations and the skill checks can be somewhat unpredictable, the game kind of encourages you to save up your skill points and money and only use them when you know what to do with them (in other words, when you run into a really tough encounter or a skill check you can't pass). Like I said earlier, I'd prefer it if there was a more creative way to make use of your skills instead of having to just hope that you've put enough points in the right ones to be able to complete a quest.

 

[Infinitron]

the game kind of encourages you to save up your skill points and money and only use them when you know what to do with them

Yeah, I did that with Praxis Points in DX:HR at the beginning of the game (before I got everything you need in the game, which wasn't long).

What I think though is that many game designers assume players won't be smart/meta enough to do that - that they'll generally spend points on instinct as soon as they get them, or follow some idealized character build they have planned out from the start.

 

[CappenVarra]

It didn't crash that much during testing (i.e. on the testers' machines). It never crashes on mine, for example.

Could be Fraps, or even alt+tabbing. I'm taking screenshots so that could be part of it.

I can confirm the same thing happens on my machine - every N reloads results in a CTD. And I'm only taking screenshots when I find a bug. I'm not really informed about Torque debugging, but if there is some method of capturing the error details, I'll do it.

And while we're on the subject of bugs, here's one which combines the two I mentioned:

Now excuse me while I replay the demo 7 times

 

[Curunír]

After reloading the game about 3-5 times, it almost always crashes during the load screen (usually when it's displaying the "C:\aod\aod.exe" message). This is very frustrating when combined with all the ways you can fail. Not sure if it's just me but it's definitely quite constant - I've probably had 20 or 30 crashes in the span of about 4 hours of gameplay so far.

Same problem here.

PS: Just killed the six (or seven?) bandits in the camp after the about 30th try at it. Awesome, I felt unstoppable...
That is... until I went to the tower five minutes later and got butchered. Hardcore game.

 

[Excidium]

Man, all those red names on the character screen are kinda irritating. I'd prefer if it just used numbers to show the penalities, maybe something more clear and elegant like showing what's modifying the skill score on mouse-over.

 

[empi]

I'm sorry KKKodex, I really wanted to like this, the new age (harhar) of RPGs. It just didn't do it for me, got to the end of first playthrough and really don't want to go through it again. Gl with it all, though

 

[Kaol]

The combat is really bad at the start i hope it improves

 

[Curunír]

The combat is really bad at the start i hope it improves

I find it surprisingly fun and deep, considering you only control one character. Party would obviously be better for combat purposes, but single character is better for roleplaying purposes / replay value, which seems to be AoD's forte.

 

[eric__s]

The thing about crashing is that it never unloads itself from your memory. Open up the task manager after it's crashed 4 or 5 times and you'll have a ton of instances running at once. I think part of the reason is that the game doesn't stop when you open the main menu. Try loading a game while you're in a battle and you'll hear guys fighting until it's about 1/3rd done loading.

 

[CappenVarra]

The thing about crashing is that it never unloads itself from your memory. Open up the task manager after it's crashed 4 or 5 times and you'll have a ton of instances running at once. I think part of the reason is that the game doesn't stop when you open the main menu. Try loading a game while you're in a battle and you'll hear guys fighting until it's about 1/3rd done loading.

Good catch - I checked and I have 3 instances of AoD.exe running, so you're on to something here...

 

[circ]

I'm really trying to enjoy this, putting aside some interface issues, squinting for the text etc. But it's not doing it for me. I must not be the intended audience.

There's no exploration to speak of. This isn't really helped by teleporto(tm), or lack of You are here pointer, or a more detailed map.
There aren't any situations where you can, that I've noticed, put your skills to use using something like hand/eye coordination. You get a textbox and a choice to use sneak for example, and you either succeed or fail and then get a short text snippet to the next choose your adventure chapter.
This skill check system seems to apply to just about everything. This makes me wonder what the point of a 3D engine was, when this could have been accomplished with an Inform interpreter hack and some movies.
NPCs generally have one paragraph of speech, which usually goes like so: Worthless cretin, do a job for me to get money/reputation (with a 50/50 chance of the mob wanting to fuck you over which can lead to combat)
You can avoid these pointless and 90% of the time unwinnable combat encounters by simply saying; bite me. What's the point? So and so tried to fuck you over, but you said no.
Combat is uninspiring. It seems to largely be the same system as seen in Fallout 1 and 2, but it's just dull. Even in somewhat larger areas, NPCs will immediately close the distance, making ranged combat useless, unless you get off a crippling strike to their legs which has an extremely small chance of landing. After that they will pound the shit out of you with massive numbers, although you will probably be pulp earlier because they usually come with ranged backup.
Quests have multiple solutions, but it all seems to follow the same formula - use skill1 or skill2, or go get/buy item and/or use skill3.

Is this really what Fallout was like? Read a paragraph of text. Press 1, 2 or 3, get teleported, press 1, 2 or 3. Read a paragraph of text. Press 1, 2 or 3.

 

[Kaol]

The combat is really bad at the start i hope it improves

I find it surprisingly fun and deep, considering you only control one character. Party would obviously be better for combat purposes, but single character is better for roleplaying purposes / replay value, which seems to be AoD's forte.

Maybe i'm doing something wrong but it seems to depend way too much on dice rolls with little chance for tactics

 

[Quetzacoatl]

What kind of turn based game doesn't have a party? Kaol's post doesn't reassure me at all.

 

[Curunír]

Maybe i'm doing something wrong but it seems to depend way too much on dice rolls with little chance for tactics

Granted, chance plays a rather high factor in combats, which is amplified by the circumstance that you only have one character, and the game is more for the like of players who do not mind a "few" reloads (at least for combat builds). I don't, but others probably do.

 

[empi]

I don't mind reloading if it's so I can try another strategy. I do mind reloading just so I get some favorable dice rolls, while doing the exact same thing.

 

[Vault Dweller]

You can avoid these pointless and 90% of the time unwinnable combat encounters by simply saying; bite me. What's the point? So and so tried to fuck you over, but you said no.

 

[Tigranes]

AOD is built for reloads, yeah, due to the fact that you have no magic, special abilities or consumables (at least at the start - even FO had stimpacks), and it's single character. It does make fights bleaker, desperate, and geared towards attrition, survival and grim resolve, though. You do feel like the dude in a fucked up world getting through rather than some high-flying artiste.

I would love it if it gave you a small party, say, 3 characters, but that would have requried a much more varied character system and all sorts of changes to the game, so I accept it's outside scope. Can't wait to get back home and try more characters.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The combat is really bad at the start i hope it improves

I find it surprisingly fun and deep, considering you only control one character. Party would obviously be better for combat purposes, but single character is better for roleplaying purposes / replay value, which seems to be AoD's forte.

Maybe i'm doing something wrong but it seems to depend way too much on dice rolls with little chance for tactics

You're doing something wrong. The combat system provides plenty of tools (tested and proven over the last 2 years) to even the odds. Naturally, you can reload until you get better rolls, if you have enough patience, but that's hardly the best or most effective strategy.