Sunday, April 20, 2008

Regular(ish) update

(from the forums)
Progress still a little slow due to that pesky thing called real life. But I've been finishing off some interiors, working on the basics for a new area, and working on some more cutscenes to punctuate the action. I've also had a chance to playthrough some of the quests more - and it's shown that I'm going to need help with the balance for one thing. On the whole it's hanging together fine, but some encounters are a bit too tough, so I'll look into that. Quick question - as a player would you prefer unrestricted resting, or restricted resting in specific locations, opr restricted resting with plot-relevant 'force rests' - e.g. just prior to big plot relevant battles, the party will be fully rested and spells restored?


A trip to the sauna



Evangelical posturing from one of the Miltia battle clerics


The trouble with mercenaries


Pushing an NPC for information


Swedish massages in the cells


Base of the mage's tower


Riddle me this


Colour coordinating your interior


And finally, name that plane


8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Awesome release of screen shots Wyrin!! Really looking forward to play :)

Just wish they opened up full screen so I can read the text better hehe

Liso

EC said...

These are some world-class screenies. The best one of yours I've seen so far. Very nice job on the indoor lighting especially. I'd love to know your settings.

That nova-like background effect in the plane's shots is also something else. How did you achieve that?

Re resting: As a player, I prefer to be able to rest at any time. Restricted resting can be very frustrating and hurt gameplay for me, especially when safe rest zones are far away, or not even in the same area. Wandering monsters can make me think twice about resting, and they can be fun, except when the probability they'll pop up is practically 100%. I'm not too sure about force resting since I've never played a mod with it, but I'm thinking this might hurt suspension of disbelief for me.

Going the positive encouragement route, instead of the penalty based way, to control resting is a nice way to go IMO, like H&C does IIRC by granting XP bonus for not resting just anywhere. Those who want to take up the challenge can, and those who don't aren't unduly penalized. If H&C had forced the player to rest at the Inn only, I would probably have quit playing by now. It could however be nice to make the reward more meaningful (e.g. larger XP bonus).

I found PoRR’s system also interesting and quite playable, especially when I started to invest in the resting kits. However, once you have enough cash, I presume you can buy so many that it negates all rest restrictions in the end.

For ItFR, I'm leaning towards an OC rest system, but with a blackout (Kneeldown resting is the first thing that broke suspension of disbelief for me) and some occasional WM to make resting a little bit dangerous.

Wyrin said...

Liso - thanks! they should open up a bit larger - but anyways I don;t want to give too much away!

E.C. - thanks, I appreciate that. I finally found a base interior lighting I'm happy with - I import that and then usually jus ttweak how bright the bloom makes things (1 setting) so it's a nice starting point

The nova effect is simply a case of raising the ground, and setting the area far plane to less than the height of the walkmesh. I used the basic astral skydome (which I might go back to change to a grayscaled version) and this works nicely

Jazhara7 said...

Hey, Wyrin! I recently played Dark Avenger 1, and it was lots of fun. I really like how you wrote the companions, and there's some things that really reminded me of Baldur's Gate (Especially the talking Cow, and I *swear* you modelled the warehouse right off the standard warehouse area from Baldur's Gate. ^_^ ).

However, there's three issues I remember. Well, two issues, and one thing that feels wrong.

Namely, the supply cave at the bandit's headquarter has wrong textures in the entrance area. The cave walls are covered in house textures. Very odd.

Then there's the flashback with Croaker - should he already have the eyepatch in that?

And the thing that felt wrong to me, was that picking the lock of the chests and other furniture in the village houses moved you towards evil. I wouldn't exactly call it evil, but rather more chaotic. Of course this can be topic for discussion, but please, at least think about it, okay? :)

Looking forward to Dark Avenger 2. The screenshots are looking really good so far!


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Wyrin said...

thanks jazhara7 - yeah I replayed DA 1 the other day and noticed the swapped textures i nthe cave. THat was from the metatiles I used - not sure if a patch saw them switches (when new tile textures came in). But I've changed it back

Good spot with croaker's eyepatch. It's debateable but as a flashback in chapter 2 will develop this point, I'll say no more for now ;)

Alignment shifts - that's left over from when I first started building and i had a lot more alignment shifts in dialogue that i went back to take out. I should probably remove them rather than get into the evil vs chaos debate ;)

Thanks for playing and stopping by!

Merecraft said...

Great screenshots Wyrin!

Regarding resting I prefer to restrict it to certain areas, both to offer some strategy to the game and to add a level of realism.

Oh, I've linked you on my blog now :)

Ernie Noa said...

Wow. Great stuff. I loved the first part and am eagerly awaiting part 2.

Jazhara7 said...

I've noticed that particular problem with caves having room textures in several mods. The first time was in Adam Miller's Dark Waters 2 (before the release, so it's no longer there), second here in Dark Avenger, and recently in "Crimson Cherry 2". So it's quite possible it might have something do with a patch, because it seems it was *always* that cave tileset.


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