Jeff's New Game

[jecowa]

I really like that in the Spiderweb Software games you can move your characters around during battle (unlike dragon warrior or final fantasy for example, where battle is just a menu). I also like that there are no random battles (in that you can see the enemies on screen before you fight them). This puts Spiderweb Software way ahead of other games. Combat is much more interesting in his games.

 

I've only played Avernum 2 so far, but one thing I have trouble with in Avernum is determining the distance or elevation of tiles when there is lots of variation in the elevation of adjacent tiles. I think it would be cool if the new game was in 3D (instead of isometric or whatever), and players could rotate the camera to get a better view or see behind things. And also characters could be able to go underneath other characters, like with one standing on top of a bridge and one standing underneath the bridge. And maybe standing at different elevations could effect things, like higher elevations could give archers a farther shooting range for example, but standing at lower elevations would hurt their arrow-shooting range. Maybe there could even be flying monsters that melee characters would have trouble with. Maybe throwing a rock at someone could do more damage if you are standing on a ledge above them or even melee would do more damage if standing on a ledge above the enemy standing below.

[Alorael at Large]

Jeff has hinted at 3D for future games, but that was some time ago and we have no idea if he intends to stick with that.

 

—Alorael, who would rather have isometric and pretty, if limited, graphics rather than blocky polygons in true 3D. The cost to switch from static sprites to something acceptably three dimensional is probably prohibitive. Or it could be 3D with sprites, but that's very 90's.

[jecowa]

3D with sprites would be AWSUM!!!!!

 

Is it possible that he is making the characters and doodads in 3D and converts them to sprites for his games. The characters and doodads in Avernum 6 look kind of like they were made in 3D to me.

Avernum 6 screenshot

 

In screen shot the shelves look pretty 3D and so do the characters. But then those buckets of water look like we are seeing them from a different perspective than the shelves and desks.

[cfgauss]

I really don't think a 3d game would work at all... not on the kind of budget he uses, not with the number of people who he employs, and not with his specific skills...

 

I think going away from the trying-to-be-realistic 3d way, and moving more towards a stylized art style would be much better.

 

I mean, compare the trying-to-be-realistic stuff in Avernum 6 or Geneforge with their more stylized fantasy stuff. One is pretty clearly better looking than the other.

 

Not to mention since he never ever changes graphics, we could end up being stuck with a low-poly weird looking shaper graphic for the next 10 years of his games...

 

And more stylized 2d graphics would age *much* better. For example, you can find graphics like that in games made 15 years ago that still look great today, but I dare you to find a still-great-looking 3D game from 1995!

 

Edit:

Compare, for example:

Monkey Island 3 (1997)

 

Monkey Island 4 (2000)

 

Which looks nicer?

 

Now, obviously there was a team of professional artists involved, yeah, but remember--there was a team of artists on both! But the one from 3 years earlier still looks less dated today. (And the nice parts of the second one are sprites, not 3D, so they still had to have an artist who could draw nice looking 2D stuff.)

 

Not to mention there's a large increase in technical sophistication in getting a 3D engine to work nicely, and to have art assets work together to make things that look anywhere reasonable, from playing with 2D sprites! (As anyone who's tried doing serious modding with any 3D engine knows, or who's tried to write a basic 3D engine.)