KickStarter Shroud of the Avatar - Lord British's Not-Ultima Online 2

[Delterius]

Those cultural rituals better involve item placement puzzles and bread making.

 

[Metro]

Yeah those are some real heavy hitters...

 

[Infinitron]

Impressions from the SOTA dev forum:

 

[Infinitron]

Parser-based dialogue: http://ultimacodex.com/2013/06/shroud-of-the-avatar-hangout-of-the-avatar-june-14-2013/

The discussion this time around concerned a couple of systems in Shroud of the Avatar that should be of interest to Ultima fans: its conversation system, and the way in which its NPCs interact with and remember player-characters.

Significantly, what Lord British and the Portalarium team are aiming to do with Shroud of the Avatar’s conversation system is take several steps away from modern, menu-driven RPG conversation system conventions. Instead, they plan to implement a system wherein players must type responses and questions into a field, which the game will then parse for keywords that NPCs will respond to. NPCs will have generic details to talk about (Name? Job? Bye!), in addition to quest-related information to give out.

As well, NPCs will form memories and opinions of player-characters, which will in turn spread to other NPCs naturally. In essence, the player will begin to develop reputations in different towns and areas of the game, for good or for ill.

A handful of other topics come up for discussion in the video, so I’d encourage you all to give it a watch and take note of any other interesting details therein. But these two were far and away the key elements of last week’s discussion.

More oldschool than Wasteland 2!

 

[felipepepe]

 

[Vicar]

This thing is like a LARPer dream come true.

 

[Delterius]

Impressions from the SOTA dev forum:

So, Sergorn Drakael = Jaesun?

 

[Infinitron]

So, Sergorn Drakael = Jaesun?

Nah, the portrait is just a coincidence. Sergorn is French.

 

[Infinitron]

http://ultimacodex.com/2013/07/shroud-of-the-avatar-three-month-demo-narrated-by-richard-garriot/

 

[Spectacle]

That looks pretty nice actually, way better than what they showed in the kickstarter pitch.

 

[Lancehead]

That doesn't look bad, especially if you can play without ever having to interact with other players. Although, I'm not sure how open the wilderness areas are from that video.

 

[MicoSelva]

Looks a bit like Gothic / Risen. Since these games were partially inspired by Ultima series, not very surprising.

 

[Metro]

D1P

 

[Gambler738]

Is Lord British a 'LARP'er' but this places derogatory definition of it? I'm on the fence about this project, and I'm not going to make any assumptions about Garriot's actual finances even though he managed to pay to be the first private citizen in space, but this latest video is....interesting I think?

 

[Fens]

what stuck with me from the videos: if they group you with people you already know, you'll keep on running into the same retards over and over again... like ned ryerson from groundhog day

the parser thing sounds good in theory, but what it will boil down to is "hello, i'm the barman for this lovely town. how may i help you today ?" "rumours" "oh well, i have heard there is a nasty disease spreading among the local boars" "boars" "i believe getting rid of five of them in the nearby forest will increase your reputation among the townsfolk" "forest" "it's just outside town, take the north gate and go west from there" *player ran out before the sentence was even finished*

also: imagine 20 people standing around that barman and him twitching from one to the next, while they all ask the same shit over and over again... or them just standing there like frozen in time, until the player found the usable text in the wiki

even though he managed to pay to be the first private citizen in space

he wasn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Tito

 

[Drakron]

There is also something called "guess the verb" that plagued text adventures were if you didnt know what the exact word it was looking for, you were stuck.

 

[Gambler738]

even though he managed to pay to be the first private citizen in space

he wasn't: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Tito

 

[Zep Zepo]

That parser is some fake ass bullshit. Who in their ever lovin' larpin' mind is going to type in "I'VE BEEN MAKING CHAIRS! I GOT THIRSTY!"

Also does that tavern double as a wind tunnel after hours? The (stupid looking) half cape was blowing around like a tornado was approaching.

I'VE BEEN BAKING BREAD!
That's nice...
I'VE BEEN KILLING SPIDERS!
That's nice...
I CHOPPED DOWN A TREE!
That's nice...
WTF MAN!
I don't understand...
IT'S WINDY IN HERE, LOOK AT MY CAPE FLUTTER ABOUT!
I don't understand...
(an hour later..)
I'VE BEEN MAKING CHAIRS!
Ahh, let me tell you about a dungeon nearby...

Zep--

 

[Delterius]

Is Lord British a 'LARP'er' but this places derogatory definition of it?

As a matter of fact, some would say that Garriot has reached the Larper singularity. He doesn't sound any worse than Oblivion fans, though.

Who in their ever lovin' larpin' mind is going to type in "I'VE BEEN MAKING CHAIRS! I GOT THIRSTY!"

Not the most larpy thing I've ever seen.

 

[Gambler738]

I'm going to completely write this off, I mean, some of it reminds me of Gothic a little bit in the video. But is this Garriot's Phantom Menace? Is he late period George Lucas now? Whats happened to him...if its going to be basically "Larderdarderdar Irm an Adverturer, I make chairs, I drink beer, and thats okay! Lemme tell you about it" then what the hell happened to Lord British?! Or has he just been this way for a while now...

 

[buzz]

Gothic was more or less an Ultima successor. I also felt like this "larp"-friendly attitude of Gariott was always there. World interactivity was more or less his thing.

 

[Gambler738]

I mean to type "I'm not going to completely write this off. I'll give it a chance if/when it comes out as long as I don't have to part with too much of my cash, I say this realizing I may very well regret this statement after having a miserable experiencewith SoTA

 

[Stainless Veteran]

Shroud Of The Avatar Solicits Players For Game Assets
[...] Richard Garriott and his merry band of Garriettes are clearly aware of this, which is why they’ve decided to directly ask fans to make art for Ultima spiritual successor Shroud of the Avatar. They’ve even provided custom tools with which to do it and the promise of a rather hefty payday - if fans’ completed submissions get accepted, that is.

The Dungeon Kit (demonstrated above) is now available to backers who pledged $400 or more, and it allows users to both make their own assets and use (presumably for a fee) Shroud of the Avatar assets in their own projects. Executive producer Dallas Snell explained:

“Our first game assets for crowdsharing is the Dungeon Kit used for the prototype we demonstrated during the RoosterTeeth eXpo earlier this month.”

“We’re making history this month by being one of the first (if not the first) game developer/publishers to make game assets available to other developers for use in their own games, before the release of our own game. We believe that by pre-releasing game assets for other creator/developers to use we will increase our own game’s success, while helping our fellow developers at the same time.

”

[src]

 

[tuluse]

Pay $400 to work on the game

 

[Zep Zepo]

My God, It's Full of StarsDicks!

Zep--