Tool

As soon as avernum stopped being based on Exile titles, it seemed to get way less epic feeling. The scale is much smaller. I'm probably more casual about 'completeness' than maybe some of you, but I feel less compelled to explore. I think its the lack of the outdoor map, which before would break up the narrative. Now, as a casual player, I feel more compelled to resolve the story. There's never that breathing room effect of going out into the 'big world' and looking around. And you obviously just don't feel like you've covered as much ground.

I've noticed these games look worse and worse time goes on. The environments are really ugly in Avernum, but whatever cause the characters looked awesome. But then the Poser thing in Avernum 4 and now Avernmum 5 is a terrible tradeoff, exchanging static but good looking sprites that reflected lots of your equiptment configurations, for bad animation and really ugly pictures. I really have a fondness for the series going back since I was 8 years old, or I wouldn't care

What kicked ass about Avernum was all of the sprite art, until Avernum 4 which replaced it all with really lame poser renders that limited the scope of what could be put in the game. The animations that approach enabled was not even close to a good compromise I think, compared to neat looking sprites that reflected what kind of weapon and armor you had and everything.

Quote: Originally written by Tyranicus: I've found that, in many cases where the graphics do change, I prefer the old ones. I'll take the yellow goblins over the red ones any day, and the coins in BoA just look like metallic lumps. I also preferred the wolves from Nethergate and the old chairs. The few new graphics added later just don't seem to fit. I agree. I liked Exile's tileset the most, and the Avernum Trilogy's character art was awesome.

Quote: Originally written by Mikami Aufeya: Quote: Originally written by :Slash:: Hell, my party at the end of A2 could probably take on their whole empire and come out mostly in one piece, if you threw them a dozen invulnerbility potions or so. An Avernum mod of a Dynasty Warriors game would rock. Speaking of mainstream video games and Spiderweb, if Jeff Vogel could write and design an Elder Scrolls engine Exile/Avernum game I would be in freaking heaven! That's my biggest video game fantasy; The Elder Scrolls immersion with Jeff Vogels awesome storytelling.

Quote: Originally written by Localized Unreality Distortion: I don't think it's possible to leave without the orb, but I can't remember why I think that. I do know that I've never gotten everything set up for departure before grabbing the Orb of Thralni. —Alorael, only just realized what the absence of the Orb of Thralni in A4 means: there are now no artifacts present in every E/A game. Demonslayer comes closest, but it's only in A3, not E3, and only for a cameo. Demonslayer was in Exile III.

I'm an animation student, hand drawn and traditional stuff. I have to say Avernum 3's graphics were far better, and I'd rather have no animation, and just pose to pose, than these terrible animations in A4. A3 had all these graphics for different situations, if they were wearing armor, using a pole weapon, sword, mace, oh it was beautiful, even if it wasn't moving. Ideally you could go back to that and animate those. That'd be totally awesome, and look alot better. I know you could do an energy building trick to get them to be able to snap from pose to pose with minimal drawings, if you wanted to go that route again. It may or may not look better than no in between drawings. Poser was originally made for painters and illustrators, so they could pose figures quickly and easily for reference in their paintings and illustrations. As such, I assume Poser has absolutely no real rendering options, merely because Poser things I've seen always have terrible surfacing. It wasn't really created at it's inception for professional final output, though it's quite popular among hobbyists. Perhaps it's the hobbyists lack of mental ray(if Poser even has that?) expertise that's the reason for bad surfacing, and not Poser itself. It's a really sad trend, I think, of small time developers using cheap, low end 3D graphics instead of charming pixel art. I wish I could 'intern' and make Jeff much better, principled animations for free(student's want work experience and credits desperately), but I can only animate(not rig, not model, not surface) in Maya. I doubt I could integrate into Jeff's Poser workflow even if knew how to use it. I sure can't move to Seattle(that's where he is right?) . The pixel art way would have been possible but it'd take some learning of how to move from pencil art to pixel art. That was just a dumb fantasy of mine anyways; I've played Jeff's games since I was 8 years old and oh, wouldn't that be awesome? I really play Exile/Avernum for the writing and the story, though. These are minor complaints.

He's not going to incorporate a whole lot of animation because he's not an animator. You can't just do it if you suddenly feel like it. And I doubt he's going to hire one because it's too expensive. We're a greedy bunch of jerks.