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KickStarter Queen's Wish: The Conqueror - the Jeff Vogel Kickstarter

Self-Ejected

Sacred82

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don't hesitate to point me to a different RPG from 1993 with better animations and character models shitheads

Ultima 7, cretin.

:lol:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NlVKcpUDm1k

try again dipshit.

And never mind the framerate, it doesn't look better just because it's faster

Calling tiny hand-drawn sprites "models" says everything about your competence.

And nobody cares about "art quality" in Dark Sun. It uses the same perspective. Sufficit.

character models motherfucker. The term has meanings beside its appliance in computer graphics u no.

People aren't just arguing about perspective, it's that it looks like shit in this case. You can make it look not like shit, or you can make it look like Vogel.
 

Gord

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7,049
Regarding the discussion about graphics I'm repeating myself, but I feel Jeff Vogel's games would gain tremendously from some enhanced lighting, i.e. more and enhanced light/shadow mechanics and such.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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It's tricky because the best art was in games that have a somewhat different visual style -- Betrayal at Krondor, QFGIV, Ishar 2 were all 1993, all look better. I love Dark Sun's art though, and it probably was the best of that kind of third-person, tiled style.
 

Grauken

Gourd vibes only
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Always thought Betrayal at Krondor looked ugly, the others in the list were good though
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
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Exploration and character portraits are awful, but the mocapped combat sprites are top notch for the era.
 

mondblut

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try again dipshit.

If you can't tell a difference between excellent pixel art and a shapeless blob of blurry yellow and brown pixels that look like they were downscaled to 20x10 from something larger, I rest my case.
 
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Sacred82

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try again dipshit.

If you can't tell a difference between excellent pixel art and a shapeless blob of blurry yellow and brown pixels that look like they were downscaled to 20x10 from something larger, I rest my case.

Vogel's character sprites with their two different stances are excellent.

:avatard:

In some of the newer games, I think you can see their feet move, not that it doesn't look horrible.

I'll grant that in Dark Sun characters never change visually, you can't even see their weapons. But they have good hit animations. Blurry yellow, brown and red kinda goes with their visualization of the setting, and I'd say it captures the spirit of the books well, but that's probably because muh childhood.
 

mondblut

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Vogel's character sprites with their two different stances are excellent.

Vogel worked on Ultima 7?

I'll grant that in Dark Sun characters never change visually, you can't even see their weapons. But they have good hit animations. Blurry yellow, brown and red kinda goes with their visualization of the setting, and I'd say it captures the spirit of the books well, but that's probably because muh childhood.

Look, we all agree here that Exile were the best games Vogel did, and everything after went steadily down the shitter. But claiming those new game's screenshots look worse than his previous lego isometry is taking it too far. One even appears to feature an AOE explosion, ffs.
 
Unwanted

Bladeract

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At times I wish the "I'm old, I'm tired, give me money" thing with Vogel was just memery.

After reading the blog post, yeah, it's Avadon redux. Not worthy of money or time.

Pity. I hoped maybe for a good story or two out of Vogel, but he's so old and tired and art assets are so expensive in a world with Bulgarian artists out there for pennies.

Remember MCA is only slightly younger than this guy :lol:

Aside from the fact he has shit on 'hard core' rpg fans a million times now, it's obvious the guy's only ambition is to milk the same small group of people by making the same game over and over.

Even if he is so old and tired, you can hire writers like MCA and 50,000 asian artists to help out with the kind of money he is pulling in. That would almost CERTAINLY improve the end product result enough to pay for their cost many times over. If you aim for BG level quality just look how easily black geyser funded. If you had an established name to go along with the improved art quality then you could probably reach inXile levels of funding. Just don't hire colin mccuck and the other dolts who worked on numanuma and you are good to go.
 
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Sacred82

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Vogel's character sprites with their two different stances are excellent.

Vogel worked on Ultima 7?

If we're talking Ultima, the environments are great, but the characters?

I'll grant that in Dark Sun characters never change visually, you can't even see their weapons. But they have good hit animations. Blurry yellow, brown and red kinda goes with their visualization of the setting, and I'd say it captures the spirit of the books well, but that's probably because muh childhood.

Look, we all agree here that Exile were the best games Vogel did, and everything after went steadily down the shitter. But claiming those new game's screenshots look worse than his previous lego isometry is taking it too far. One even appears to feature an AOE explosion, ffs.

they're probably not worse by Vogel standards, but that wasn't what I was arguing

anyways, who pays for this shit? And why? Haven't you seen it all before? (self-defeating point on the Kodex I know xDDDDDDDDDDDDDD)
 

mondblut

Arcane
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Ingrija
Legend, Warriors of Legend (a completely unrelated game, despite the name). I love Dark Sun, but character sprites aren't its strong suit.

That particular perspective unlocks all the graphical potential of early 90s sidescrollers like Golden Axe, which looked gorgeous for the time. The fact that SSI used it to populate Dark Sun with sprites only marginally better than those in Goldbox games is downright shameful.
 

Zombra

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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Even if he is so old and tired, you can hire writers like MCA and 50,000 asian artists to help out with the kind of money he is pulling in.
Maybe, but he's not going to build the game with 100% of the kickstarter funds, nor should you assume that he has to. If he pulls in a million dollars but only spends 30,000 on production, good for him. Dude wants to retire.
 
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Sacred82

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Even if he is so old and tired, you can hire writers like MCA and 50,000 asian artists to help out with the kind of money he is pulling in.
Maybe, but he's not going to build the game with 100% of the kickstarter funds, nor should you assume that he has to. If he pulls in a million dollars but only spends 30,000 on production, good for him. Dude wants to retire.

And maybe his kids need new cars and go to college. That's what kickstarting a game is all about after all.

:slamdunk:
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
At times I wish the "I'm old, I'm tired, give me money" thing with Vogel was just memery.

After reading the blog post, yeah, it's Avadon redux. Not worthy of money or time.

Pity. I hoped maybe for a good story or two out of Vogel, but he's so old and tired and art assets are so expensive in a world with Bulgarian artists out there for pennies.

Remember MCA is only slightly younger than this guy :lol:

Aside from the fact he has shit on 'hard core' rpg fans a million times now, it's obvious the guy's only ambition is to milk the same small group of people by making the same game over and over.

Even if he is so old and tired, you can hire writers like MCA and 50,000 asian artists to help out with the kind of money he is pulling in. That would almost CERTAINLY improve the end product result enough to pay for their cost many times over. If you aim for BG level quality just look how easily black geyser funded. If you had an established name to go along with the improved art quality then you could probably reach inXile levels of funding. Just don't hire colin mccuck and the other dolts who worked on numanuma and you are good to go.

Yeah exactly, the feeling I always had with Vogel's games was that they were interesting but missing something (not having any music in it at all just made it feel lacking, always have to play some other soundtrack in the background), and I always felt like Vogel's games could be really, really great and successful if he put in some more money into improving the production values.

Investing once into getting good-looking art assets and then using these assets for the next 5 games would pay off really quickly. But whenever he improved graphics, it was only marginal, and the end result still looked kinda like blended puke.

With the kind of money he regularly pulls in, investing in a genuine graphical upgrade and some decent music wouldn't be an issue at all.

I really, really don't understand Vogel.
 

V_K

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One even appears to feature an AOE explosion, ffs.
It's not an explosion, it's the usual fire rain-type spell (or whatever it's called in Vogel's games).
But claiming those new game's screenshots look worse than his previous lego isometry is taking it too far
Thing is, while some of the sprites aren't bad per se (although generic as fuck), it's the way it's put together that is off-putting - inconsistent perspective, paper-thin walls, poorly synced animations etc. For all their graphical shortcomings his previous games had much more coherence.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
With the kind of money he regularly pulls in, investing in a genuine graphical upgrade and some decent music wouldn't be an issue at all. I really, really don't understand Vogel.
It seems pretty obvious to me. The guy likes making games on his own, and he's been perfectly successful at it. "But why not hire a bunch of people and start a development studio and have to deal with project management and hiring and firing and meetings and taking responsibility for other people's mistakes and giving up creative control and and and"
 

JarlFrank

I like Thief THIS much
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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
With the kind of money he regularly pulls in, investing in a genuine graphical upgrade and some decent music wouldn't be an issue at all. I really, really don't understand Vogel.
It seems pretty obvious to me. The guy likes making games on his own, and he's been perfectly successful at it. "But why not hire a bunch of people and start a development studio and have to deal with project management and hiring and firing and meetings and taking responsibility for other people's mistakes and giving up creative control and and and"

You can just pay some external dude to cough up some graphical assets and use them in your game.

Which is... you know... exactly what Vogel is doing.

He's not making these assets himself. Nor the theme music that appears in the intro of his games.

He just doesn't bother actually commissioning high quality artwork, or a full soundtrack, which would be the exact same kind of thing.
 

Zombra

An iron rock in the river of blood and evil
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Make the Codex Great Again! RPG Wokedex Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Serpent in the Staglands Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 BattleTech Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
You can just pay some external dude to cough up some graphical assets and use them in your game.
Which is... you know... exactly what Vogel is doing.
He's not making these assets himself. Nor the theme music that appears in the intro of his games.
He just doesn't bother actually commissioning high quality artwork, or a full soundtrack, which would be the exact same kind of thing.
Hm, fair enough. If it's a question of buying crap assets vs. buying good ones, I concede buying good ones would be better.
 

fantadomat

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With the kind of money he regularly pulls in, investing in a genuine graphical upgrade and some decent music wouldn't be an issue at all. I really, really don't understand Vogel.
It seems pretty obvious to me. The guy likes making games on his own, and he's been perfectly successful at it. "But why not hire a bunch of people and start a development studio and have to deal with project management and hiring and firing and meetings and taking responsibility for other people's mistakes and giving up creative control and and and"

You can just pay some external dude to cough up some graphical assets and use them in your game.

Which is... you know... exactly what Vogel is doing.

He's not making these assets himself. Nor the theme music that appears in the intro of his games.

He just doesn't bother actually commissioning high quality artwork, or a full soundtrack, which would be the exact same kind of thing.
I have no idea if he is making the assets or buying them online. Maybe they are made by his friend/wife/apprentice. To me his whole studio looks like a close circle of friends and family. For old company it makes sense to keep up to known sources and not searching for new ones. It is "Why change it if it is not broken?" mentality.

For me personally the ugliness is part of his trade mark and games's charm.
 

Drowed

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Even his last downgraded game looks way better. I mean, what the fuck, dumbing down the gameplay wasn't enough for him, did he need to do that with the game's art as well?

I just can't understand why. The look was perhaps one of the only redeeming qualities in Avadon. What's left now?


ss_377ba1282fe8438e6f4a857325750dfc5f13a4e7.1920x1080.jpg
 

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