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Avernum 5 Early, Early Notes


Spidweb

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Actually after playing A1 today movement isn't too bad.. I can't remember A4 load/save system.

 

But basically A1 > A3 > A2 > A4

 

I didn't like the Vahnhati anyways...

 

But please keep A1 Map with roaming monsters and A1 revival system... those are most important.

 

How about new graphics too, i know A4 was an improvement but it's been almost 5 games with little difference...

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I like being able to click where I want to go. It allowed me to travel across the map at record speeds, since it navigates you aroung obstacles automatically. I love that. I can't imagine traversing a forest or swamp without that ability, even though I did it all the time in the older Avernums. I would really miss it if it were gone now.

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Quote:
Originally written by jamesmcm:
Bring back secret passages.
Hear hear! I think we're the minority, though.
Quote:
Bring back A1 revival system.

In A1-A3 I reloaded whenever anyone died. In A4 I actually dealt with the problem I think A4 wins there.
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Bring back world/party map.

Amen.
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Make Vahnati a playable race.

Jeff has already said he won't. They're meant to be mysterious and powerful, not playable. I don't really think the vahnatai match the other three races well enough to work anyway.
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Keep A4 movement system, instead of tile-by-tile when in towns.

As long as we can move tile by tile with the keyboard, I'm happy.
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Quicksave/Quickload.

How about saving and loading individual files instead of Geneforge/A4-style save slots? I thought that was a step back.
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Remove cave slimes.

Remove irritating combat grinds. But not chitrachs, because they actually make sense except for being in one of the more densely populated and civilized areas of Avernum.

—Alorael, who thinks roaming monsters are okay but not essential in all outdoor sections. Roaming and appearing bands of monsters as in the Exiles would be nice, though. Sometimes you shouldn't be able to kill one monster, leave, and come back to very slowly clear an area.
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—Alorael, who thinks... sometimes you shouldn't be able to kill one monster, leave, and come back to very slowly clear an area.
I actually liked that there were almost no repawnable monsters. I made me feel like I could, you know, complete the game... completely. In one game where I successfully picked up every item in the entire world, the only flaw in my plan was those respawning slimes that sometimes dropped bones or trash. This is probably just the OCD part of me talking.
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It's the non-respawning that never made sense to me. If you've killed all the nephilim in the fort, then there aren't suddenly going to be more. Fine. But if you run in, kill the guards by the gate and maybe depopulate a barracks, then flee to buy some more potions, wouldn't the nephilim post more guards?

 

—Alorael, who at least knows how the Empire is so successful in its genocidal policies. They just tell adventurers that it's a quest and have them go at it. They go at it very thoroughly, apparently.

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A slow rate of restocking makes sense. It means that you have to hold something back in reserve when going through a "cleared" area in case you get attacked. In Avernum 4, I could wander through a cleared route with 1 health and fear nothing usually.

 

I like the older game save system because you can place all your saved games in one place and not have to shift them for updated versions.

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Quote:
Originally written by Randomizer:
A slow rate of restocking makes sense. It means that you have to hold something back in reserve when going through a "cleared" area in case you get attacked.
That is what we in the industry call a royal pain in the backside. Clearing out a bandit lair and getting killed by a random nephil on the way back to town is neither dramatic nor fun. Nor is having to clear out that same lair again every time you want to go through it. I'm in favour of atomic dungeons; you do everything in one sweep, then it's done and stays done.
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There is one feature that the GF/Avernum 4 save game dialog desperately needs. A way to delete more than one character of the save description at a time. Or, at a bare minimum, the ability to hold down delete instead of having to press it once discretely for each character.

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It really should just be a standard save without slots. Call the file whatever you want and put it wherever you want.

 

New races don't add much to a system that ignores race as much as Avernum, and there aren't any more races that make any sense. That goes for both PC races and NPC-only races.

 

I agree that getting killed by that absurdly spawned lone guy with a sword is no fun, and the nuke and loot approach to dungeoneering is wonderful. Making dungeons gain more defenders if you leave would encourage that style of grand butchery rather than picking off monsters one by one.

 

—Alorael, who acknowledges that it would in fact encourage compulsive picking off of the same monster over and over until it no longer gave any experience. And that's fine too; it promotes a variety of gaming styles!

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I'd honestly like to see humans get some sort of actual bonus... given how often people have proven the total superiority of nephil and slith PCs. And while nephils and sliths are definitely more of a known entity by the time A4's plot gets rolling, there was basically no difference in how NPCs treats a party with them as opposed to one without them.

 

And I agree with Alo about the save files. I'm guessing that it's mostly an issue with how the engine itself is coded, though... so I'm more than happy to leave it to JV.

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Quote:
Originally written by Upon a fallen pillar walking:
I agree that getting killed by that absurdly spawned lone guy with a sword is no fun, and the nuke and loot approach to dungeoneering is wonderful. Making dungeons gain more defenders if you leave would encourage that style of grand butchery rather than picking off monsters one by one.
I'm inclined to agree, although I didn't exactly mean "atomic" in that sense of the word. :p
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Exile, with its ever respawning dungeons, encouraged going in and killing everything in one trip. The only reasons to go back was for easy experience or you missed getting an item.

 

Avernum made it possible for hit and run raids where you kill a little bit every time unless you were forced into a route with no retreat. Avernum 4 meant you didn't lose the loot after a battle outdoors anymore.

 

If someone died the only problem was you couldn't get to their items until they came back. No more hard choices about reloading from a really difficult fight. No more picking up their pile of items either.

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I have to agree - I too miss the outdoors (and the secret passages; my groups were professional headbangers, no wall left untouched)

 

But mainly I miss the outdoors.

 

Exile / Avernum had this grande feeling. With the new system we still move several "screens" between the settlements but instead of a location being a tiny fraction of a screen (being enlarged after entering) it now takes up a whole screen (or more). Which lets the distances shrink to nothing.

 

The movement time (in reality) has remained the same, but going to the next city should be a farer than just walking through a couple of city lengths of wilderness...

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Quote:
Originally written by CharonX:
The movement time (in reality) has remained the same, but going to the next city should be a farer than just walking through a couple of city lengths of wilderness...
Or, in some cases, no city lengths of wilderness.

I wasn't really that attached to the outdoors screen. I realled liked the seamlessness in Avernum 4. The only problem was that since the world had been designed with the outdoors system in mind, some cities were too close together for the seamless world to work. That shouldn't be a problem if most of Avernum 5 takes place in new caves.
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Some more notes on Avernum 5.

 

i. Heights are in. I just got the first set of hill graphics.

 

ii. The world system (i.e. one seamless world) will, however, remain unchanged. Though Avernum 5's terrain is designed to better take advantage of it. I am, however, going to work on the graphics to try to create a clearer visual distinction between outdoors and dungeons.

 

iii. I was very, VERY happy with how death worked in Avernum 4. No changes.

 

iv. Dungeons will respawn monsters more. Outdoors, about the same rate.

 

v. The plot for Avernum V is very intricate and involved. I think it's quite cool, and I'm kind of looking forward to writing it.

 

vi. Work on more PC icons has started. There will be 2 more each of nephil, slith, and human, at least, and we'll work from there.

 

vii. Many improvements from Geneforge 4 will be in the game. Nicer fonts. Better AP system. Better graphics and spell effects. I will mercilessly purge all actual Geneforge elements, though. (No spawners. No pylons. Period. I will, however, keep the roamer icon as a clawbug, though, because I think it looks cool.)

 

viii. I plan to include full keyboard support. You'll be able to target and do talking with the keyboard.

 

- Jeff Vogel

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Yes! Especially happy about 1, 5, and 8; probably 7 as well after I try the G4 demo.

 

The only thing the seamless world is missing is continuous loading of nearby sectors. I don't remember what the term is; it's not the frustrum, but the loading of the area outside of the player's view. Be a lot harder to implement, though.

 

--------------------

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Sounds good but I want to see how it works.

 

Could you have more contrast between monsters and floor color. Black rats on almost black dungeon floor is hard to see without repeated use of the tab key when they are partially concealed by a nearby wall. In Avernum 4 the worst area was the lower level of the Haunted Mine north of Fort Draco. I found the two bodies by accident and always had trouble with at least one rat.

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Sounds great! You know, I think the lack of outdoors wouldn't have bothered me at all if it were entirely new areas. It was the strangeness of having Silvar and Cotra ony a few city-sizes apart that made Avernum feel cramped. A game area that was technically the same size but that was supposed to represent a smaller area would have been fine.

 

—Alorael, who now has to keep hoping that A5 will take place primarily somewhere new. Remaking Avernum proper has to be getting boring by now!

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The chitrach icon was, thank god, replaced with a new one someone on the boards designed in the later (I want to say 1.02, but I think I'm making that number up) releases of A4. Chitrachs were bad enough without looking like clawbugs.

 

Hallelujah to a number of Jeff's comments, especially the one about no pylons. And I agree with Alorael about the seamless world. If it's a new area, it wouldn't be so bad; the caves of Exile simply weren't designed for those kind of maps and don't lend themselves to them well. To pick one example from the games, Upper Exile would work okay, I think.

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Upper Avernum wouldn't work that well either. However a series of caves where we don't have pre-existing expectations about scale would be fine for a seamless world.

 

I know most of you hated them, but I liked the multi-level Honeycomb. That would be quite believable for a new area type.

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Quote:
Slarty:
And I agree with Alorael about the seamless world. If it's a new area, it wouldn't be so bad; the caves of Exile simply weren't designed for those kind of maps and don't lend themselves to them well.
I totally said that before Alorael. Or are you just afraid to say you agreed with something Emperor Tullegolar said?

Pylons: I'm glad there won't be an army of them anywhere. I probably wouldn't have minded one or two guarding some kind of mysterious vahnatai treasure, though.

Elevation: I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person out there who is thinking "Elevations are coming back? Damn it!"

Honeycomb: I think the Avernum 5 honeycomb was the most accurate representation of a cave in the whole series. In real life, caves aren't all on the same plane like Avernum is, they go up and down and all around and whatnot.

Personal Note: Still no official word saying Rentar is dead. I am, of course, not saying she should be a major character, but I still want her to be alive and with a cameo! I still love you, Rentar!
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Quote:
Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar:
Elevation: I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person out there who is thinking "Elevations are coming back? Damn it!"
One proviso: elevation is a fine thing as long as the way things are displayed is tweaked so that being behind a hill doesn't mean you can't see a damn thing around you.
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Moving to a new area, and with a fresh plot, should work well with the new engine. I think a fair number of A4's limitations came, directly or indirectly, from using an engine that had received a lot of development through the Geneforge series, to pick up a plot and setting that were leftover from the old engine. A lot of things kind of got modulated into a weird key, so to speak. Not just the scale; even the heavy emphasis on combat was, I think, a matter of a suddenly much-upgraded combat engine burning a hole in the pocket of the plot.

 

But in fact I really liked A4, doubtless because I was almost entirely new to Avernum when I played it, so I'm really looking forward to A5. Adding height would be the coolest factor, I think. And then maybe that can be translated over to G5 when its turn comes.

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Quote:
Originally written by Thuryl:
Quote:
Originally written by Me:
Elevation: I'm pretty sure there isn't a single person out there who is thinking "Elevations are coming back? Damn it!"
One proviso: elevation is a fine thing as long as the way things are displayed is tweaked so that being behind a hill doesn't mean you can't see a damn thing around you.
I should have known Thuryl would find a way to complain.
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Quote:
Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar:
Honeycomb: I think the Avernum 5 honeycomb was the most accurate representation of a cave in the whole series. In real life, caves aren't all on the same plane like Avernum is, they go up and down and all around and whatnot.
No -- the most accurate representation of caves was back in Exile and Exile II, when the combination of frequent written descriptions with undetailed gaphics meant you had to use your imagination.

Anyway, like Thuryl and Randomizer, I grew up on those old school dungeon crawlers, but I never liked that element of them. Regular 2-D mazes are one thing, but including lots of ups and downs just turns navigation into a headache without actually making it any more interesting. It's just taxing.

I mean, who truly enjoyed the 32 x 32 x 10 labyrinths of the old Wizardry games?
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The most accurate representation of a cave wouldn't consist entirely of huge galleries. Most of the time you'd be on your hands and knees in damp muck. That's fun in person and not so much fun as a game.

 

—Alorael, who liked the old Honeycomb's plethora of secret passages. He thought the new Honeycomb was okay, but it's really not that hard to navigate. Making it have even more levels, none of which have any sensible relationship to each other, would truly make it a Honeycomb to be remembered and feared. Then again, the Brigand's Madhouse wasn't all that popular.

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Originally by Alorael:

 

Quote:
Most of the time you'd be on your hands and knees in damp muck. That's fun in person and not so much fun as a game.
Really? The caves I am most familiar with usually involve scrambling up or down piles of wet or icy rocks while keeping my head low with a flickering flashlight.

 

Flashlights and headlamps often fail in Dikiyoba's hands. No one is yet sure why.

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Quote:
Originally written by Emperor Tullegolar:
In Dynasty Warriors V, there were some levels in which the mini-map would not appear to make things more confusing for the player. It was most effective. That would be an interesting element that Jeff could add.
Nethergate had mazes in which the automap was unavailable, and so did the Exile series. Most of the time they were a nuisance; the Hedge Prison was pretty much the worst part of Nethergate.
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The trick to get around no automap was to use the cursor to shift the screen around. I like the mapping in Wizardry. In the original Might and Magic game I made dozens of colored maps for the outdoor areas and dungeons. Those were much worse than anything in Spiderweb Games.

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Quote:
Originally written by Cryptozoology:
Nethergate had mazes in which the automap was unavailable, and so did the Exile series. Most of the time they were a nuisance; the Hedge Prison was pretty much the worst part of Nethergate.
How could I forget the hedge maze?!? I don't remember that happening in Exile, though. Maybe it's been too long. Either way, I'm suprised to see you calling such a thing a "nuisance." I'd expect that kind of talk from me, but your the sick freak that likes to challenge himself to playing Geneforge without magic or creations.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Get rid of herb lore and arcane lore. Unless there continues to be advantages for ever higher levels.

 

They make you want to wait for the walkthrough to know how to optimally play for the game same with trainers.

 

What was really fun in Avernum 4 was doing all the stages out of order. You could totally skip entire areas.

 

Less small encounters. More epic battles.

 

More stealing, stealth. Murder of innocent civilians.

 

Basically what I would want is lots of towns to steal and talk and do stealth missions.

 

One epic battle per area. No millions of chitrachs!

 

I want to be able to buy a house to store all the quest items and recipe ingredients.

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I want arrows back. The ability to mix-and-match different arrows and bows was nice. You could really do it sort of like the thorn batons in Geneforge. Heck, you could even include occasionally reloading your quiver.

 

Also, how about superweapons for fighters, ones that make up the deficit between melee and missile/spell users. You could have them so that they didn't do much physical damage, but did a plethora of damage in fire/ice/acid/poison/etc. Or maybe have some sort innate ability built-into them that takes affect every swing (radiates an element, doing damage to all nearby creatures, etc.), making them generally more effective. Or just build them so that they have very high level bonuses but do a low base damage, making them very powerful in the hands of one trained to use those weapons, but otherwise useless when used by anyone else.

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I think the thing I liked most about Avernum 4 was that there were lots of unique bosses. I love named enemies, there should be lots of them in future games. Expecially ones that don't have a quest that goes with them, like that one nephil with the spear early in the game. Sort of like optional bosses, and they can drop special items. That would be cool.

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Just a minor point, but what exactly is an "epic" battle? Epic has become a term of general overuse without any specific meaning anymore. I, for one, consider the small band of heroes triumphing over the endless insectile hordes fairly epic.

 

Do you want more battles against fewer but more powerful enemies, or plot-related battles, or what?

 

—Alorael, who can't say he really enjoyed the chitrachs. That was mostly because they chew through any party that isn't painfully optimized by the time they reach the Eastern Gallery and the way they parry and riposte so much that combat is a headache. The concept of fighting a huge swarm of fairly minor but relentless enemies worked just fine.

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Originally by Nioca:

 

Quote:
I want arrows back. The ability to mix-and-match different arrows and bows was nice. You could really do it sort of like the thorn batons in Geneforge. Heck, you could even include occasionally reloading your quiver.
Except that each kind of thorn only loads into one kind of baton.

 

To be honest, the only thing Dikiyoba wants from A5 at the moment is for it to run on Dikiyoba's computer with minimal hassle.

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Quote:
Originally written by Dikiyoba:
To be honest, the only thing Dikiyoba wants from A5 at the moment is for it to run on Dikiyoba's computer with minimal hassle.
Apply for beta testing since Jeff is really interested in getting the games to run on all the systems before general release.
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