Danny the Fool

Originally Posted By: Juan Carlo Whereas in Avadon/EFTP it seems like when the lights are on everything is one color, whereas when the lights are off everything is just one shade of grey. That's what it would be like in the real world. We can see differences in brightness long after we stop seeing colour. But I think the game just darkens everything, with a transparent black overlay. Realistically it would desaturate the view, but not reduce brightness as much when there's still some light left (such as from faintly glowing mushrooms), because our eyes would adapt to the darkness and we'd effectively just perceive less colour. Quote: You don't even really need to use light sources in Avadon/EFTP as everything is perfectly, uniformly, visible--even in the dark. That's largely a function of your brightness setting.

Originally Posted By: Illegal Furniture By even including genetics in some hazy sense as a plot element, Geneforge is already dabbling more in real science than many space operas do (Star Wars is the most famous offender, but far from the only one). It's not necessarily the real science. Star Wars has no grounding in science at all. I don't mind if it's real or not; that's the difference between sci-fi and hard sci-fi. But there should be something that resembles science in some way and is still recognizable as science. Some people define science fiction as something that includes lots of advanced technology. On first glance, Star Wars does have that. On second look, though, none of it is explained in any way, which leaves it indistinguishable from magic. There's even some outright magic in the force until some joker decided to make more movies. ;-) Some people define science fiction as something that explores a possible future. However, even then, the events described in Star Wars happen "a long time ago". So it's either epic high fantasy, or it's a fairytale, but not science fiction. ;-) Geneforge, though, is described (on its web site) as a "fantasy role-playing game" in which you play a member of one of the "most powerful magical guilds". There is no grounding in science or the scientific method. Quote: Regarding the remakes: as a few people on this thread have said, I've been playing SW games for a while now. I appreciate the shiny new interface, and like I said I had fun playing it, but the fact that AEftP's plot is almost identical to A1's, which is almost identical to E1's, makes it lose some of its luster for me. Okay, no plot twists, that's true. That only one aspect for me. I'm happy that I can play Avernum on a modern tablet computer so I'm willing to accept that I know the overall story. I play most RPGs more than once anyway. ----- Originally Posted By: ShieTar Could you do me a favor and point me into the direction of those ten other games that I could buy? Because Wizardry 8 came in 2001, Icewind Dale 2 came 2002, Temple of Elemental Evil cam 2003, and since then there have been no strategic party based RPG released by any major company (for the PC). Dragon Age O, A, 2, Mass Effect 1, 2, 3, the newer Fallouts were all strategic party-based RPGs by major companies. You can't control the entire party fully, but the same is true of Avadon. There were some titles by smaller companies, such as Drakensang and its sequel. You also missed some older titles such as Arcanum and some more polarizing ones like NWN 1 and 2. Now had you asked about something similar to classic, open, party-based CRPGs that would be more like Wasteland than like Fallout, and so on, that would be considerably harder. However, Avadon doesn't belong in this category either. Quote: To my current knowledge, the Spiderweb games have been the only relevant contribution to the sub-genre over the last decade. I'm not aware of many recent *indie* RPGs. The Eschalon games have a similar look and feel but they're not party based. I never claimed I could buy tons of indie RPGs, though. I don't care who makes my games as long as they're good and I have no preference for indie developers.

I always thought of Geneforge as pure fantasy. Which is, ultimately, why I didn't like it. I actually prefer sci-fi over fantasy but Geneforge is just more of the same old fantasy, with some words that sound familiar from science but are used to describe magic. (I still bought all five of them, I just didn't enjoy playing them much...) I liked Avadon more because it's at least honest about being fantasy. Unfortunately it has the same mechanics as any other random RPG I can buy today. Maybe they're all on to something and this is why they sell so well. I wouldn't use the same words as the OP ("Avadon is not the new series that Spiderweb needs") because clearly, if it makes money, that's what the company needs. But it's definitely not the kind of game that I was hoping for. If I was hoping for the kind of game that Avadon is then it would have been really easy to just go and buy that kind of game, ten times over. The only thing I couldn't have done was buy it for iPad, which is why I ended up buying Avadon on all three originally announced platforms: To vote with my wallet for games that are developed for iPad as well. Of course, I completely disagree about the whole "no more remakes" thing. I think the new Avernum remake is one of the best RPGs I've played. I'll put up with more Avadons if it means there's enough money for more Avernum remakes, at least until Avernum 2 and 3 have been re-made

Originally Posted By: Kinsume I recall reading on another thread how it'd be easier to improve graphics if polys were used instead of sprites. I read that comment and I don't agree with it... it's just wishful thinking by someone who likes 3D games.

Originally Posted By: Kinsume However that isn't really as useful in Torment where killing speed is what really matters. Well, the game is not balanced for torment... Of course you could also argue that you're taking some of the torment out of torment by choosing characters that work very well on that difficulty.

Originally Posted By: Randomizer Bolt of Fire has a cleave chance at 2nd level. No need for a sword. That would explain it, of course Quote: If you are facing a monster that you can't hit easily like sliths early in the game then using a shield makes sense. Yeah, that's why I suggested to use shields universally until you can dual wield efficiently, instead of making dedicated characters for each style.

Mages and priests become very powerful in the late game so if you want to do more damage eventually, that's a good choice. Melee fighters are very good for crowd control (ironically) and they also do decent damage against single targets. You don't really need to differentiate between meatshields and dual wielding fighters, especially not on normal. IMHO, shields don't give enough of a boost to defense to outweigh the lost damage from not dual wielding. Just use shields until you can dual wield swords efficiently on all melee characters. Archers are okay but how much they're worth to you depends on your playing style, they don't offer as much in the way of playing tactically as melee fighters and magic users do. Note that none of this means you can't play anything you want. This game is playable on the highest difficulty with only one character. It's not that it's so easy that you can just run into any encounter and beat it with a few clicks but you can definitely make a lot of things work if you try. Also, give your mages broadswords because cleave seems to apply to fireballs

There's an old blog post about pricing on different channels. http://jeff-vogel.blogspot.de/2011/10/why-all-our-games-are-now-cheaper.html

Wait, they have redstone, but no huge city-sized 4 bit computers?

It's a true remake in that it's the same story, more or less the same world, and so on, but (partially) re-designed, with new combat/character progress mechanics, and running on a new engine. The graphics are the same style as you wrote (that applies to all spiderweb games from the last 10 years or so), but they're not identical. Why don't you go and try the demo that you can download from here?

I pre-ordered Legend of Grimrock on GOG a while ago, it never occurred to me that they'd compete. Entirely different genre...

There are two encounters in the Aranea cave where it's hard to pull away single enemies. But having a full party doesn't mean you have to rush them all in and it doesn't mean you can't try to kill one Aranea and then make an escape. Use summons to help your escape, they will slow down enemies that try to pass them and will also make some of them attack your summoned creature instead of running after you. Then heal up outside and come back to a fight that is hopefully slightly easier. The hardest encounter in the cave is the one near the back end which you need to get past in order to complete the main task in the cave. If you find that you can't beat it, it's possible to run past it in combat mode if you can battle frenzy your party.

Originally Posted By: HOUSE of S Yeah, but there are other elements of reality that aren't present, either. Why is this one suddenly king? Because it is a feature that was removed, I guess? It was a very useful feature... I guess useless ones don't get as many complaints when they go missing

Originally Posted By: Randomizer I don't know if the iPad version retains that the monster highlights when you move your finger over it when targeting. Yes, you can drag your finger around and it'll highlight enemies. You have to lift it and tap again to actually attack after dragging, which does leave some room for mistakes.

I have the original iPad. My impression is that Avernum performance is slightly better than Avadon due to the game mechanical differences. You can also turn off smooth movement and play it like back in the old days with tile-based movement, which incidentally removes one performance bottleneck.

\o/ *click buy*

Don't worry, web site still says Windows/iPad in April IIRC I saw April 12 for the Windows version in some interview, not sure right now where that was, though... I'm waiting for the iPad version myself, I already bought it for Mac but I prefer playing games away from my desk...

So rewarding someone for managing to do something difficult is now punishing everybody else for not being able to do it? Hasn't that always been the case in video games, with or without achievements? Isn't that half of the entire reason we play them, that it feels rewarding if we manage to pull it off?

Many Spiderweb games as well as Eschalon use graphics from royalty free collections such as Reiner's Tilesets. If some things look awfully similar, that might be one reason...

I liked the caves because the setting was unique. Once it was aboveground it started looking more and more like any other fantasy RPG.

Originally Posted By: Deukalion You are right on the money, my friend. Just as there are many tasteless fools on Steam, there are also many of us who eat up the old-school style games. You can tell that from the amount of exposure GoG is getting on the Steam forums... good on Valve for letting people advertise GoG there too btw.

There is no option to turn on cloud sync for Avadon, so maybe it doesn't use cloud saves. I haven't tested it. Maybe it's just sneaky about it. The save files themselves are compatible between all three platforms as far as I know.

In game, hit escape to bring up the menu, go into game settings, and set "game area size" to "whole window".

Quote: you cant change the market, you have to play the game to win it With the words of a popular AAA title, "we can pick the game, but we cannot change the rules". And I think that is exactly what the louder members of this community are fearing: That Jeff is chosing a different game. (NB: You have the history of indie games slightly wrong; the current craze is nothing compared to the old days where there was hardly anything but indie games.) I'm in another camp. I've played top-down RPGs in monochrome over twenty years ago, I've played roguelikes in text mode (and still do), but I also like some more recent modern games. I often wonder whether people who complain about a new game being dumbed down have something specific in mind that they've been playing for a long time, and are just reluctant to embrace change - somewhat similar to me thinking the 16 year old girls on the tram are dumbed down compared to my wife ;-).

Great, I needed a third copy of Avadon like I... oh wait only EUR 6,29? Well, in that case... Also looking forward to Avernum on iPad