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Avernum V


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(Sniff, sniff.) Is something burning? :p

 

By Retlaw May:

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As someone mentioned earlier, a weakness of the Avernum series is that the ncp's don't seem to react to much in their conversations. I would like to see ncp's react to what they have heard of your deeds.
True, but making responsive NPCs requires a lot of work. The simplest way is to add either one line or another based on the current state of an SDF, and even this takes time if you have to do it for every single NPC. It's similar to the way Kel made the dialog different depending on the size and race of your party in Bahs; it's a nice touch, but probably far too much work for the payoff. To bad dialog doesn't run under the Infinite State Machine model. :p

 

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Insulting the moderator staff is highly frowned upon and is dealt with swiftly.
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So if someone insults someone who's not a moderator, nothing happens?
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No, it's just slightly frowned upon and the response takes more time.
Excellent: as long as I don't insult Kelandon, Delicious Vlish, and Alorael on this forum, I'm relatively safe from fallout.

 

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IF I EVER BECOME AN EVIL OVERLORD:

Prison guards will have their own cantina featuring a wide variety of tasty treats that will deliver snacks to the guards while on duty. The guards will also be informed that accepting food or drink from any other source will result in execution.

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Originally by Dintiradan:

 

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Excellent: as long as I don't insult Kelandon, Delicious Vlish, and Alorael on this forum, I'm relatively safe from fallout.
It's never wise to insult *i or Drakefyre either, you namby-pamby, ineffective excuse for an evil overlord! You couldn't even put your helmet on straight if instructions weren't written down in your Evil Overlord Guidebook! Snaga! :p

 

Dikiyoba doesn't mind characters that don't respond to much, as long as most characters are interesting. Meeting individuals living away from settlements and "outside" was a nice feature of A4.

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Originally written by Dintiradan:
It's similar to the way Kel made the dialog different depending on the size and race of your party in Bahs; it's a nice touch, but probably far too much work for the payoff.
This, by the way, is made much easier by the fact that "you" can be singular or plural. I told Jeff that I'd do the same thing in A4 if I were him, but he said that it was too much work. He really wouldn't have had to change more than a handful of bits of code, though.

Adding and removing strings is really nice for responding to different events already having occurred in the world, though, and making a scenario/game slightly more linear makes this much easier, too.
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Originally written by Semisubpar:
Everything is fine now, but a looming cataclysm threatens destruction! The only problem with the plot is that if all goes well, nothing exciting happens. There's a reason heroes show up when things look darkest.

—Alorael, who wouldn't mind a cataclysm returning Avernum to its hardscrabble roots, though. Avernum was better when steel was rare. (Better for players. Not so very nice for inhabitants.)
If a cataclysm is prevented, bad things will still happen. A lot of people will want to leave Avernum. Valorim will have trouble absorbing the new arrivals. There could be accidents with the portal. There'll also be speculations and theories about unnatural causes of the the cataclysm. Lots of people are going to think that the Vahnatai were behind it. The Anama may take advantage of the situation by telling people that such events are caused by ramapant use of magic. Both Avernum and the Empire may be forced to spend massive amounts of resources to solve the problem, limiting their ability to respond against other threats, such as bandits, chitrach investations, those random undead attacks that pop up out of nowhere, etc. Plus the solution to the problem may not even be permanent.
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I was a little tired at the time or I would have logged back on and completed my comment on ncp. The next line would have been:

 

Characterized by poor spelling and being hard to understand because of it.

 

I spend a lot of time going back and editing out typos. If you know how slow a typist I am you understand why I hate having to read them in other people's posts.

 

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While we're on the attack, "noobie" isn't a word. Newbie or noob, you n00b.

Actually in you Google "noobie" you will find it is used as a word and is considered interchangeable with "newbie" in meaning. There are also a few websites that use it.
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Originally written by Vicheron:
If a cataclysm is prevented, bad things will still happen. A lot of people will want to leave Avernum. Valorim will have trouble absorbing the new arrivals. There could be accidents with the portal. There'll also be speculations and theories about unnatural causes of the the cataclysm. Lots of people are going to think that the Vahnatai were behind it. The Anama may take advantage of the situation by telling people that such events are caused by ramapant use of magic. Both Avernum and the Empire may be forced to spend massive amounts of resources to solve the problem, limiting their ability to respond against other threats, such as bandits, chitrach investations, those random undead attacks that pop up out of nowhere, etc. Plus the solution to the problem may not even be permanent.
Well, I don't want to understate the amount of grief we all have after a cataclism breakes through on Earth. But here we are discussing an interesting plot for an epic game and its continuation. May be it is time to have some rest from overevil disasters. But writing history we always concentrate on global events: wars, revolutions, falls and rises of imperia, etc. In a hundred years a cataclism like tsunami in Thailand won't count as a good plot for a movie or a book known worldwide.
Please, don't think I'm too cyniñ about it. I hate when people die, fight or somehow else show their foolishness.

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HHGtG: Ermarian - mostly harmless. Beware of adventurers. They steal, calling it a good deed for the sake of ... whatever they are questing for.
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Just start with a minor disaster that traps a remote village from the rest of Avernum. Your party was "volunteered" to find a new route back to the main cave system. You have a base and can explore through different levels. Give lots of false routes and side trips that take you away from the desired route.

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Quote:
Originally written by Randomizer:
Just start with a minor disaster that traps a remote village from the rest of Avernum. Your party was "volunteered" to find a new route back to the main cave system. You have a base and can explore through different levels. Give lots of false routes and side trips that take you away from the desired route.
Cliche, isn't it? For about 99% the beginning of Avernum 2, but that might work.
I think I got it right, A5 is already being plotted. So I'm not sure we should make proposals for "the start", "the end" and "the place".
So details may be those, which count right now.
I'd like beer in Avernum to posess some antimagic traits, like anti-terror and anti-mindcontrol smile

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HHGtG: Avernum: Making deals with undead don't mention anything concrened to Ephesos wink . They hate him. They really do. Don't know why.
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Quote:
Originally written by Vicheron:
If a cataclysm is prevented, bad things will still happen. A lot of people will want to leave Avernum. Valorim will have trouble absorbing the new arrivals. There could be accidents with the portal. There'll also be speculations and theories about unnatural causes of the the cataclysm. Lots of people are going to think that the Vahnatai were behind it. The Anama may take advantage of the situation by telling people that such events are caused by ramapant use of magic. Both Avernum and the Empire may be forced to spend massive amounts of resources to solve the problem, limiting their ability to respond against other threats, such as bandits, chitrach investations, those random undead attacks that pop up out of nowhere, etc. Plus the solution to the problem may not even be permanent.
If a cataclysm is prevented and bad things happen, they are unexciting because they are out of the control of the party and because the game is cataclysm prevention, not post-prevented-cataclysm cleanup.

Blaming the vahnatai for another disaster is a good way to cause mass disgust on these boards.

—Alorael, who didn't realize NPCs were protractors. Contractors, perhaps? (See generic crypt in Truffle Days.)
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What I would like to see in A5 (which is probably a few years away) are some places with autogenerated wandering creatures, where I could build up on exp.

 

The way I play games, I like to max out my stats as much as possible. I am about 1/3rd of the way through A4 right now, and I think it is cool how creatures stay dead after you kill them, but it would be nice to have some places where monsters lived and would come back. There could be a Chieftin or a breeder creature or something that you could kill that would end the spawning of the creatures in the area, but it would be nice to be able to walk around and level up.

 

My 2 cents.

 

This is such an awesome game, by the way- much more fun than most of the stuff on my PS2.

 

Dave

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Please don't double post. You can add information with the "Edit" button.

 

Importing characters would be a problem because each game starts you at level 1 and builds up. The game would be trivial if you started with a character who could tear through everything.

 

—Alorael, who wouldn't mind some areas that didn't just become entirely depopulated with ease. On the other hand, because monsters stop giving you experience once your level is too high, more monsters generally wouldn't result in higher levels.

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Originally written by Xenodave:
There could be a Chieftain or a breeder creature.
Did you mean "and" instead of "or"? I hope that in A5 we won't see so detailed "reason" of the growth of creature populaton. Only if it is slime, breeding by dividing the slime from the pot (or whatever there was in A3). smile
And am I the only one who thinks that beer is repulsing terror and any mind control from outside of one's mind?
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>>Importing characters would be a problem because each game starts you at level 1 and builds up. The game would be trivial if you started with a character who could tear through everything.<<

-Thou Shalt

 

TS- I disagree. I love powering up and blowing everything away when I play RPGs. But I know that some people like started up from level 1. In addition to letting people skip the powering up aspect of a future game, importing characters from other games would also making it more likely future game buyers go back and buy previous titles, and would be a reward repeat customers. EA does this all the time in their PS2 games. you can import teams from previous titles to new ones, and you get bonuses starting new games if you have saved files from other EA games on the same saved game card. They are not the only company that does this. Its a smart idea.

 

>>Did you mean "and" instead of "or"? I hope that in A5 we won't see so detailed "reason" of the growth of creature populaton.<<

 

-Ford Prefect

 

I mean "or". It would depend on ths situation- if you had a cave full of goblines, they could keep showing up on repeat visits until their "chieftin" was killed. Slimes or lizards or other creatures could have a "slime mother" or "Lizard Queen" in the same way; once the specific creature was killed, the monsters would no longer show up in that area, but if the player liked being able to kill more creatures to buff up, they could stick around a certian area and get exp without having to move forward in the game. If the creatures annoyed another player who did not like having creatures in areas they had already killed, they could just kill the mother/queen/chieftin etc and the creatures would no longer show up.

 

Mr. Vogel, is a very creative guy and could probably come up with all kinds of interesting features for the new game, these are two that I would enjoy. Obviously, A4 is already pretty sweet. These are just ideas to throw out there.

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Originally written by Xenodave:
EA does this all the time in their PS2 games.
What games do you mean?

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Slimes or lizards or other creatures could have a "slime mother" or "Lizard Queen" in the same way
As for the slime, you should play A3 to see how they breed. And as for lizards... I misread it at firs and thought you insult sliths. But then I got the idea. I think there should be some hack and slash in every cave, but not an endless. May be it should be repopulated some time later, but not while you fighting through it. That will come out more realistic.
Anyway, this is RPG game, not an arcade FPS.

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Mr. Vogel, is a very creative guy and could probably come up with all kinds of interesting features for the new game, these are two that I would enjoy. Obviously, A4 is already pretty sweet. These are just ideas to throw out there.
Don't throw your ideas. Just put them here. smile
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>>He probably means EA's sports games. Though it's hard to tell, because of the other 2.1 million EA games.

And there are many people who would disagree with you on A4 being "sweet".

<<

 

You get bonuses in the first metal of honor game for PS2 [the saving private ryan one] if there were other EA saves on your memory card. I haven't played that many other EA games. My brother in law is a college football nut, and he showed me the feature with bringing players and teams from old EA games to the latest new one.

 

As for RPG...

 

I've played several RPGs, and A4 is the only one that *doesn't* have "random" monster fights in one form or another. [including having to leave an area and coming back and all the monsters are back.] Personally, I like that ability to gain the exp and power up without being forced on to the next part of the game.

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I only know many sport games by EA. That makes sense, when you transfer your team from one trace/field/country to another, changing the game. Not suitable for RPG though. Simply because the time, when the events take place in A1-A2-A3-A4 are separated by quite a long period so you can't have one team, capable to fight both in A1 and in A4. May be only mages. I don't know how much time shall pass from A4 to A5. But we are talking for common case, so apparently it will be again 10-20 years, or even more, which I prefer.

I didn't quite get what you mean by "random monster fights" in any form. I thought that you encounter rather random monsters, so the fights usually differ. And if you mean refighting in the same cave until monsters stop respawing (a small local plague in every cave), I think I should vote for that. That will be interesting. It was pretty a tedium to wander in A1-A3 after you've killed all the monsters available. smile

 

P.S. Hey, that was 99-th for me. My first century of posts. Hope not all was spam.

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In the late '80s, Might and Magic II allowed for transfering Might and Magic I characters into the game. But they stripped out all the items so you didn't have much to show except higher levels. You still had to gain equipment and all the new special skills. Also they added extra player classes that you could only get from the start.

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Originally written by Randomizer:
In the late '80s, Might and Magic II allowed for transfering Might and Magic I characters into the game. But they stripped out all the items so you didn't have much to show except higher levels. You still had to gain equipment and all the new special skills. Also they added extra player classes that you could only get from the start.
Mind you, the extra classes (Ninjas and Barbarians) both kinda sucked, since Ninjas were missing one very useful advantage Robbers had (the ability to accompany other characters on their Plus quests), and Barbarians were just Knights with a poorer equipment selection.

And experience levels only carried over up to level 7 -- any characters above level 7 were dropped back to level 7.
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Although I think importing characters in Avernum would be an awful idea, it is pretty common among Avernum's closest relatives in the RPG family. Besides Might and Magic, this was a feature of the Wizardry series (cited by Jeff as a major influence) and the AD&D Gold Box games. I want to say the Bard's Tale also did this, but I can't remember.

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The AD&D Gold Box games were another special case, though -- if you created new characters in any game after the first in the series, they were actually generated at a higher level than level 1, in order to achieve parity with imported characters. If an import feature is going to work, it can't just naively import characters from the previous game at full strength while generating new characters at level 1; that's an obvious recipe for an unbalanced game.

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Since Jeff tweaks each games spells, skills, etc., it would be to start each game fresh and not be unbalanced with a high level character that is missing something or has spells that are not used in the next game.

 

Besides if you need a boost that badly wait until there is a character editor or trainer to change your character.

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