CRPGAddict

[JarlFrank]

People who turn the music off in their games aren't people you should associate with.

But yes, one of the coolest things is how some of those old developers come out of the woodwork to post comments on their own games, and how they developed them. Makes the blog even more valuable as a resource for game archaeology than it already is.

 

[Grauken]

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.hk/2018/05/silvern-castle-won-with-summary-and.html

Silvern Castle sounds pretty awesome. Also freeware

 

[octavius]

It's quite good, but severely let down by very poor level design.
So a good part of what makes a good blobber is missing from the game. Unfortunately the Gimlet system has no rating for level design, so Silvern Castle ended up with the same score as the IMO superior Wizardry 1.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

It's quite good, but severely let down by very poor level design.
So a good part of what makes a good blobber is missing from the game. Unfortunately the Gimlet system has no rating for level design, so Silvern Castle ended up with the same score as the IMO superior Wizardry 1.

The Gimlet system is poorly made for judging CRPGs. But then, that's inevitable, as it's based on Baldur's Gate.

 

[Grauken]

It's quite good, but severely let down by very poor level design.
So a good part of what makes a good blobber is missing from the game. Unfortunately the Gimlet system has no rating for level design, so Silvern Castle ended up with the same score as the IMO superior Wizardry 1.

A shame. I wonder if Chester has a good handle on level design anyway, he doesn't strike me much as a fan of blobbers, even if he has appreciated some in the past

 

[Mustawd]

IIRC, he actually enjoys the mapping.

 

[Grauken]

Yeah, but that's not exactly the same

If anything, I like aweigh's massive text dumps about dungeon design, not sure which thread, but that was some good stuff

For me, one of the most basic, distinctive differences in how dungeons are designed is whether some guy just clicked it all together in a tool or whether he played it actually through in the game and designed rooms based on how much you can see of them in the 3d perspective.

I think a lot of the shareware dungeon crawler suffered from that, the maps looked kinda cool from above, but when you actually played the game they felt drab and unimpressive. Stuff like lighting and how many spaces you see around you, how well you can remember the architecture when moving around, the individual corridor features, all that is different based on perspective, and you have to play to feel that difference. And that's just the basic stuff, when you add different kind of zones or traps, verticality (though sadly not used in a lot of crawlers), it becomes a different ballgame

 

[Deuce Traveler]

aweigh for Silvern comments.

Quest for Glory 3 was also just beaten by crpgaddict. I really enjoyed the QfG series, but I found this one to be the most forgettable, and he seems to have been a bit disappointed, too.

 

[Grauken]

I could never get into QfG, I just don't like adventures, played some Lucas Arts ones as a kid, but never liked the genre and developed an aversion to it

 

[V_K]

Quest for Glory 3 was also just beaten by crpgaddict. I really enjoyed the QfG series, but I found this one to be the most forgettable, and he seems to have been a bit disappointed, too.

I never really understood people dissing QfG3. Granted, the first and forth games are better, but personally I disliked the timed events of QfG2 much worse - if you're any good, you'll be spending too much of the game with nothing to do.

 

[CryptRat]

I think I liked QfG 3 more than 2 (which I still enjoyed a lot), I thought 3 had a more satisfying compact open world where you put things together to finally reach the ending parts while in QfG2 there are those parts where you have to wait for the next event which is an approach I didn't like ; and although I didn't particularly liked the story of 3 (the endings parts with the monkeys are sort of cool) I still consider the setting of 3 as the most original of the bunch. 3 also has a proper mage duel although the one in Heroine's quest is undoubtly even better.

 

[Jasede]

I also liked 3 a lot but I am bound to be biased, it was my first. I think 2 has the nicest EGA graphics I have ever seen. I could never get into 4, even though it's everyone's favorite. 5 I cannot tolerate for more than a few seconds, which is sad - I loved the demo-version, but the actual game doesn't do it for me.

 

[Whisper]

Who of you, guys, is trolling crpgaddict in comments in latest post?

http://crpgaddict.blogspot.ru/2018/05/quest-for-glory-iii-won.html#comment-form

VBMay 15, 2018 at 7:57 AM
I can't wait for 2040 when you get round to playing POE2 : Deadfire. I can't think of a single element of the GIMLET it doesn't smash out the park.
(first comment, but I've now read every post on the blog, kutgw)

 

[Grauken]

Do we know how old he is, 2040 could be a reach

 

[groundhog]

Do we know how old he is, 2040 could be a reach

His blog says he's in his early 40's, so hopefully he will still be going in 2040.

 

[octavius]

He'll be spending his golden years playing Beamdog's "enhanced" versions of the PoE games.

 

[JarlFrank]

All I'm waiting for is for him to go insane after playing the 50th shit-tier Russian-made Diablo clone.

 

[abnaxus]

I'm sure his wife's son will continue his legacy.

 

[Sceptic]

I wonder if Chester has a good handle on level design anyway, he doesn't strike me much as a fan of blobbers, even if he has appreciated some in the past

He has absolutely no handle on it. Aside from the obvious (it's completely not represented in his scoring system) he never mentions it or makes a note of it when playing games that are famous for it, and disliked to the point of quitting them games that are defined pretty much by their level design (BT2 being the most obvious one, but Wiz4 is unforgivable). The blobbers he liked, he seems to have liked for their other aspects. He seems to enjoy mapping as a "switch off" activity (see Fate) rather than mapping challenges a la Bard's Tale.

 

[:Flash:]

JarlFrank gave him a list of games from the same developer (Motelsoft) and he started with the first:
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/05/game-289-seven-horrors-1988.html

This is really fascinating. I had never heard of this developer before. Neither in the Codex, nor in the real world. I'm from Germany, I read computer game magazines back in the day, and here's a developer that put out 20 RPGs between 1988 and 2006 (and still exists), and nobody ever heard about it.

 

[MRY]

"Seven Horror's" -- clearly a Barkley 2 inspiration.

 

[Dreed]

JarlFrank gave him a list of games from the same developer (Motelsoft) and he started with the first:
http://crpgaddict.blogspot.com/2018/05/game-289-seven-horrors-1988.html

This is really fascinating. I had never heard of this developer before. Neither in the Codex, nor in the real world. I'm from Germany, I read computer game magazines back in the day, and here's a developer that put out 20 RPGs between 1988 and 2006 (and still exists), and nobody ever heard about it.

Jarl first mentioned those games with some pictures in this great thread: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/really-obscure-rpgs.119370/page-14#post-5626475

 

[CryptRat]

I skimmed through its introduction about Wizard's Lair I : The trial (available here) and the game looks promising with 8 character party creation, a decent amount of races, classes, skills and spells, exploration and hard combat. I'll probably give the game a try at some point.

 

[newtmonkey]

CryptRat
MAJOR BROFIST FOR YOU DUDE

"Wizard's Lair" is a game I played back in the day, downloaded it off a local BBS and was intrigued by it (even printed out the manual on my dot matrix!!!!), but never got anyway in it. Always wanted to go back and take another look, but could never remember the name. Thanks to you posting the screenshots here, I remember it now. Thank you so much dude!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[octavius]

I tried Wizard's Lair a bit, but I just can't overcome the ASCII graphics.

And one of my pet peeves is large, almost empty town maps when a menu town would work just as well.

It felt like a mix of Rogue and Phantasie. I wish it has Phantasie's graphics, though.