Avadon Developer Diary #3

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: VCH

I think he meant that you will need to drop certain characters and pick others up at different times to complete missions. I'm pretty sure he mentioned in a blog post that you will not have access to all 4 classes at any one time.

Originally Posted By: Jeff Vogel

Three party members. Four classes. Thus, you will always have to do without at least one of the classes. Also, sometimes the characters will be off doing their own business, so you will have to play someone else. Because of this, you will need to shift your tactics occasionally.

[Spidweb]

I wanted to respond to the complaints about limits for what character classes can be made male or female. (Since some are unhappy about playing certain classes as males and some are unhappy about playing some classes as females.)

 

Since I started writing these games in 1994, I have taken great pains to make sure that each of my games, as much as possible, allow for a variety of genders and races in the characters you play. That hasn't changed.

 

However, our situation with Avadon is much the same as with all other game developers: We need to release the game before money runs out. All creature graphics are being done fresh for Avadon, a hugely tricky, time-consuming, and expensive job. And PC graphics are the most difficult and expensive of all. Each PC requires a multitude of icons.

 

We simply didn't have time to do more PC graphics. We will still be working very hard just to get everything else done in time. So we decided to split the PCs up the way we did.

 

Letting the player choose any PC graphic for any class won't work because the weapons for each icons are dependent on the class. Allowing this choice would result in a ton of confusion and bug reports ("Why does my sword look like a wand?"). We will consider alternate ways to allow this, like graphic-altering cheat codes. That might be doable.

 

On the bright side, if Avadon does well enough to justify Avadon 2, we should have the time and resources to spend a few months making the next set of 4 PC icons. I really hope this can happen.

 

Thank you for your understanding. We've never made it a secret that we are a small company with limited resources, doing the best we can to make a sort of game the game industry doesn't provide.

 

- Jeff Vogel

[Arch-Mage Solberg]

Originally Posted By: Spidweb

Thank you for your understanding. We've never made it a secret that we are a small company with limited resources, doing the best we can to make a sort of game the game industry doesn't provide.

- Jeff Vogel

No thank you for providing us with such amazinly awsome games!

Post #454

[Arronax]

Originally Posted By: Tirien, Master of Bacon

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

I'm not so sure about the characters having personalities. It means less control over their actions.

So basically you want the party system from Avernum/Exile, since the entire party obviously is in agreement about everything, given that no one complains when you cast quickfire in a town or go on a murderous rampage.

(That was always fun though)

Heh, you know i never thought of it that way. I think it's a cool idea to have PCs with actual personalities for a change, it'll be kinda like the beginning of... G2? or was it G3? Anyway, the one with greta and alwan.

[Dikiyoba]

G3 is the one with Greta and Alwan as joinable PCs.

 

Dikiyoba.

[Acky]

Quote:

Letting the player choose any PC graphic for any class won't work because the weapons for each icons are dependent on the class. Allowing this choice would result in a ton of confusion and bug reports ("Why does my sword look like a wand?"). We will consider alternate ways to allow this, like graphic-altering cheat codes. That might be doable.

Ahh, fair enough. Didn't consider that side of it.

[Spidweb]

The four joinable character in Avadon are like Greta and Alwan, but much more so. They have lots of dialogue, banter, issues, etc. I'm enjoying writing them.

 

- Jeff Vogel

[RCCCL]

Originally Posted By: Spidweb

The four joinable character in Avadon are like Greta and Alwan, but much more so. They have lots of dialogue, banter, issues, etc. I'm enjoying writing them.

 

This should be very awesome then!

[Student of Trinity]

Yeah, Greta and Alwan are one of the reasons I was and am a staunch defender of G3. There was something unique about that: part story, part Greek chorus; but a bit different because they were also helping you fight through this adventure game.

 

Of course, Alwan also sucked, at least on the harder difficulty settings. He ran away so often; it was impossible to protect him enough. Whereas Greta's standoff tactics made it possible to keep her in the game, shooting at things for you. This probably went a long way towards making the rebel side more attractive in G3, which it probably shouldn't have been, logically.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: CRISIS on INFINITE SLARTIES

Those of us who hold Exile, Nethergate, and Geneforge to be shining examples are also likely to prefer most of the games from that first half of SW history, to the games from the latter half.

Really? No appreciation for G4 or G5, or for A5 or A6? All of them seem to have gotten fine receptions from the crotchety old guard.

—Alorael, who again doesn't follow. New series were only begun in the first seven years of Spiderweb, but they were all good. You can say that Spiderweb only created good new series in its first half, but that's misuse of statistics. There have been new engine mods quite recently, and there hasn't been much whining about them. Except for the preference for Exile over Avernum and missing the pre-A4 maps, it's sounded like people generally appreciate all the incremental improvements.

[Slawbug]

No -- what I'm saying is that the data is ambiguous. New series and old vs new games are two of many conflating factors.

 

I agree that people appreciate the incremental improvements, but that doesn't stop some of them from preferring the older games, at the same time.

[Wulfhen]

From the sounds of it, the extra party members will be along the lines of those in Baldur's Gate/Baldur's Gate 2. Individual banters, banters with each other, specific quests, etc while you retain complete control over them.

 

Or that might be wishful thinking on my part. <3 BG2 party interaction.

[Tirien]

Well you didnt actually have COMPLETE control over them. If you did something they really didnt agree with, they would sometimes leave the party, or attack you, ect. Basically if you had a party where everyone was good except for your character, it was a bad idea to go on killing sprees and be evil.

[Arch-Mage Solberg]

Originally Posted By: Spidweb

The four joinable character in Avadon are like Greta and Alwan, but much more so. They have lots of dialogue, banter, issues, etc. I'm enjoying writing them.

- Jeff Vogel

I've played a few games where the way the character deals with you can depend on how you treat them and where you are. I haven't played many games outside Spiderweb Software besides Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind GOY and a little bit of Diablo 2. I know Morrowind had a few characters like that.

[Thaluikhain]

I suppose the obvious question regarding fixed genderss is "how hard will it be for players to customise their own?". Lots of fun in Exile, probably be much harder here, but people will still give it a go if they can.

[Wulfhen]

Originally Posted By: Tirien, Master of Bacon

Well you didnt actually have COMPLETE control over them. If you did something they really didnt agree with, they would sometimes leave the party, or attack you, ect. Basically if you had a party where everyone was good except for your character, it was a bad idea to go on killing sprees and be evil.

True, though I was more referring to the fact you could control them in combat instead of being AI-driven, and the fact when they leveled up you made the choices.

[Unplayable Playable Character]

So assuming there's one join-able for each of the classes, is the character we pick going to be the join-able character of that character of that class? Such as, if I play a Warrior Blademaster, will I be the same character that joins my party if I played a Sorceress? I'm leaning towards no on this, but it doesn't hurt to ask.

 

And if not, then does the join-able of my class simply disappear/is somehow written out of the story, or can they join my party as well? Or perhaps they're around but they don't join my party because they don't need to.

 

Ah, speculation.

[Slawbug]

Probably the latter. Nethergate had sets of joinable NPCs: one warrior and one magic-user who would join the Romans, and one warrior and one magic-user who would join the Celts. Both sets were always present, the wrong set just wouldn't give you the time of day.