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AoD character - light fighter

RGE

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 18, 2004
Messages
773
Location
Karlstad, Sweden
You mean that you'd get such bonuses without the armour, right? The bare torso combined with other armour would indicate a certain skill, right? :?

It doesn't make much sense that warriors would dress as gladiators rather than armour themselves for maxiumum effectiveness, but if it looks cool in the game, I'm for it. Entertain me, gladiators! :twisted:
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Human Shield said:
So do you get reputation and intimidation bonuses with the armor? What other point is there to have a bare torso?
Mobility mostly. In a game with APs, even point counts. Let's say that your Dex gives you 9AP, you use a short sword (3AP for Fast Attack), you get 3 attacks. You put on something that reduces your AP and your lose your advantage.

Of course, there are nets (see the screen) that may reduce your enthusiasm, but that's a different story.
 
Joined
Nov 5, 2002
Messages
2,443
Location
The Lone Star State
I'm kinda with the others. If he's wearing a suit of scrap metal, cool, that's an economical way to go and all, but it's not necessarily equivalent to a guy who can splurge on his own set of customized light armor that protects vital areas without sacrificing mobility too much. If the guy's just wearing mishmash light armor because he's too poor to get anything else, that's cool. If he's really worried about mobility rather than price, I'd think along the lines of others that armor should be placed where it's most vital, like the chest, hands, and forearms. Weight can be scrimped on elsewhere, and leaving all the joints bare maintains good mobility. Gladiator armor was more about putting on a good show than maximizing your own chances for survival. Pageantry vs. warfare, like the other end of the spectrum where the most elaborate head to toe plate you see in museums was used strictly for parades rather than warfare, since it was too impractical.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
We've added shields (there were no visible shields in the 2D version due to the animation limit), take a look:

link
 

Whipporowill

Erudite
Joined
May 18, 2003
Messages
2,961
Location
59°19'03"N 018°02'15"E
Spacemoose said:
Awesomo. Around when will we be able to purchase this fine product?

The only thing we can be certain of - is that it will be available before Grimoire...

Oh, and I'll second that awesome part. You guys should really get your act together and get that web page if you want some actual sales later on - just do it! I mean, you have a lot of stuff to show about now... time to start building that hype... :lol:
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
Spacemoose said:
Awesomo. Around when will we be able to purchase this fine product?
When it's ready seems to be the best answer at this point. If I were to guess, it would be summer 2006. Turns out everyone on my team is a closet graphics whore, and now that we can do 3D they want to go nuts and do all kinda wacky things that are giving me heart attacks.

Anyway, my apologies for any delays, especially to those who were expecting a 2D version this year. However, what we have looks pretty good and some of the things are amazing. I love the new animations - very cool stuff, we are going to show them soon.

Whipporowill said:
Oh, and I'll second that awesome part. You guys should really get your act together and get that web page if you want some actual sales later on - just do it! I mean, you have a lot of stuff to show about now... time to start building that hype..
What are these web pages you speak of? Another crazy invention you kids came up with?

Anyway, according to a marketing survey, a project that starts with a website never gets finished because the website gives the team a false sense of actually accomplishing something and it goes downhill from there. (See that Omega Project website that NMA is having fun with). True mastars of teh game craft (like EvoG and the amazing Project Phoenix) need no stinking websites, so I shall follow their example.

Seriously though, it's coming (which doesn't imply that I started working on it). I need a combat screen - coming soon, working on the grid; and a few post-apocalyptic looking urban areas - work in progress (our 2D design was much simplier). Once we have them, we'll do the site and start spamming the net with "play this awsome gaem plz!!!"
 

Jora

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2003
Messages
1,115
Location
Finland
Wonderful. The game gets delayed for more than half a year because of cool animations that will redefine our AoD experience. What other RPG coming in 2006 will have as revolutionary graphics as AoD? NWN 2? Seems unlikely at this point. Gothic 3? I don't think so.
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
The game gets delayed because only a handful of people was interested in the 2D version. As one well known developer told me "I saw it before in its 2D incarnation and kind of wrote it off, but the new 3d look is really quite good". That's why.

I'm not sure how much new animations would add to your AoD experience, but there is a difference between the Geneforge combat, for example, and the Fallout combat. I'm not a graphics whore, and I didn't want to lose time by switching but I had to. Once we did, a significant delay was inevitable. Anyway, like I said, my apologies.
 

Tintin

Arbiter
Joined
Jun 28, 2005
Messages
1,480
Jora said:
Wonderful. The game gets delayed for more than half a year because of cool animations that will redefine our AoD experience. What other RPG coming in 2006 will have as revolutionary graphics as AoD? NWN 2? Seems unlikely at this point. Gothic 3? I don't think so.

Looks like AoD is getting the Oblivion treatment here....
 

Jora

Arcane
Joined
Mar 14, 2003
Messages
1,115
Location
Finland
So there's no additional delay resulting from your group wanting to make fancier and fancier animations and your estimation of an early 2006 release was just a miscalculation?
 

Vault Dweller

Commissar, Red Star Studio
Developer
Joined
Jan 7, 2003
Messages
28,024
No. My team wants to do a lot of fancy things, but we actually do less than 50% of what's suggested and what they are capable of. The point is that we switched to 3D for a reason, and going with the same stuff we had before, but in 3D, solves nothing. One weapon per group, one attack animation, etc - that's not enough and wouldn't work. So, now we have all 25 weapons modelled, we have 7 attacks per weapon group: fast attack, power attack, whirlwind, etc. That's what's taking time.

Also, before a town was a typical Spiderweb-like collection of rectangular building boxes and green patches. We are improving that as well.

Lastly, switching to a new, not very well documented engine takes time. A lot of time. Did you really expect us to change an engine and finish everything in 3 weeks?
 

Human Shield

Augur
Joined
Sep 7, 2003
Messages
2,027
Location
VA, USA
You need to release a demo. Get the idea and gameplay out there.

Release an arena combat mode. And people will test and help balance everything.

After you have the weapon models and animations, slap together a simple arena and release a demo. Don't be a bitch and sit on it for monthes.
 

Psilon

Erudite
Joined
Feb 15, 2003
Messages
2,018
Location
Codex retirement
The other reason to put out a tech demo, especially if you're using TSE and not TGE (I don't remember if you are), is hardware compatibility. I speak from experience when I say that debugging weird OpenGL problems on obscure (or ATI) graphics cards is an exercise in frustration. We lost a week's productivity this summer because the ATI Linux drivers start choking if you call glEnable(GL_LINE_SMOOTH) when doing shaders.
 

RGE

Liturgist
Joined
Jul 18, 2004
Messages
773
Location
Karlstad, Sweden
Vault Dweller said:
As one well known developer told me "I saw it before in its 2D incarnation and kind of wrote it off, but the new 3d look is really quite good". That's why.
That sums me up pretty well, except that I'm not a well known developer. For me there's kind of an 'uncanny valley' between simple icons and good looking graphics. The more you show the better it has to look, and the 2D version I saw a glimpse of showed a lot, and it didn't look pretty.

The only thing I've got an issue with now is the skin that's still too orange.
 

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