WHY THE HOLY HELL IS EVERYBODY SAYING ARCANUMS GRAPHICS ARE

BG2??? BG2?!?!!
Sheesh, cloth maps have been around for much longer than that.
I got my first cloth map with Ultima VII part one I think. The one named Black Gate, ie. the REAL BG... :smile:
Or was it Ultima VI, the False Prophet that came with a cloth map?. I don't remember... Embarassing really... It had a "moonrock" though. That much I remember. BG had a "Fellowship medallion". And Pagan had a Pentragram on a coin. Shitty game that. Pagan. Ohwell. At least I KNOW that Serpent Isle came with a cloth map.
Man, nostalgia trip. Exult beta5 is out. Maybe I should break out the old Ultimas again? :smile: Wheeee.

[Azira scurries away quickly]

 

Unfortunately I didn't play any of the Ultima games :sad: And now they're practically non achieveable in shops :sad:

 

Lack of variety

It's not so much that Arcanum's graphics are bad it is extreme lack of variety that is annoying. Gnomes look the same as Halflings. Why can't my gnome in his smoke jacket look like a gnome noble? Too lazy to do animations. Why can't we have female halfings gnomes dwarves? Too lazy to do animations. All swords look the same be it a rapier or a broadsword. All shields look the same. Slowdown problems. Equipping a latern causes the game to start lagging for some reason. Even having a latern in your inventory can cause the game to slowdown until you get rid of the latern.

 

You might be able to find the old Ultimas at some abandonware site out there... I know I saw Ultima VII, both parts, at some french site a few months back.

Oh, and the programmers were not simply lazy, when they didn't allow for female gnomes, dwarfs, halflings and half-ogres (why did you forget them?). It's a size issue. They wanted the game to ship on two CDs only, so there'd be no swapping. If they had to include all the extra sprites to allow for females of every race, they would've exceeded the space available.

Tough call. I believe the Troika people weren't happy with it either. Ohwell. Shit happens..

 

Please could we stop talking as if the programmers made all these game design issues?

Sierra is an established software house and undoubtedly uses many other development roles as well as programming. Here are a few I suspect they have:

• Game Designer: These guys determine the game concepts mechanics. All the fundamental ways in which the game works would have probably been heavily influenced or under direct control of these people.
• Analyst: Helps put the game design into computational terms. May be responsible for some game balance and performance issues.
• Project Manager: for making all those difficult decisions about what to drop when you realise you're not going to make the deadline.
• Artist: responsible for whether the pictures are pretty
• QA Manager/Testers: At least as responsible as programmers for bugs.
• Programmers: Sorry, but pretty much responsible for doing what all the people above tell them.
• Network Admin: This is you Farknl. Responsible for either (a) ensuring there is a network on which everyone else can work or (b) creating a bloody mess on which everyone can barely get any work done. Depends on your point of view :wink:

 

Absolutely correct Sheriff, and I think the bone should be pointed at the Project Manager. Let's face it, the game design is no different from Fallout 2 (and thus no need for a designer or an analyst on this one). The graphics are great (though my tech character is looks like he's in Power armour) so we can't shoot the artists. The testers either had their heads firmly wedged up their asses, or maybe it wasn't even tested.
Perhaps they were working to a script (i.e. doing the quests in the order laid out to them), and playing on amazing machines - in which case network admin was doing his/her job.
So it was the Project Manager who decided the engine didn't need a rebuild, and the product should be released before it was ready/fully tested. Budget restraints do this to a lot of games, but they usually release patches that work after they've got some money coming in.

 

[preparing his long elven bow and licking his lips in anticipation]

So, where is that project manager guy?

 

He's over at Interplay managing the Fallout 3 project.

 

hey, didn't read all the other posts, but I think truly, comparing to ps2 or dreamcast games, or even most pc games, the graphics may have style, but they definetly don't have talent or any good looks. they look like something that could have come out years ago. no offence.

 

First: owiowio my jungle love i think i wanna know ya (morris day and the times)

Second: I love Quethim

Third: The graphics engine may be dated but the artists did afine job om the textures and models. See white/black fairie tree stuff, subway booths, big fossil, Quethim and more stuff

 

graphics quality

The figures arent the 'ants' running around the older games. The lighting effects are neat.

I do wish there was a map view rotate
to fix the partially hiding done by fore walls (either that or a cursor based transparency (not just char centered)).

The animations are limited (but then is EQ's
just as bad, and THEY are 3D).


Tho start watching for the next generation 3D games using some of the newer graphic chipsets (they seem to increase capabilities
a magnitude each time). The facet counts
are going up and new widgetty features will make full realtime animation possible. Hopefully that will solve the limitations on animation actions (imagine what those glowing
void jellyfish will look like in closeup....)

 

He's talking about 3d stuff slowing it down

Network traffic isnt the problem (data is pretty small. Its the 3d emulator doing alot of stuff on cpu (like particle graphic effects) that a better graphics card would do internally (I got a laptop 850mhz and I dont notice any slowdown on the things he mentioned -- its got a GeForce 2 in it)

He prob just needs to update to a newer graphics card.

I have seen guys playing EQ and turning off
the special effects (and they were on fairly hot game machines) so that when the fireworks all go off, they dont get killed by the slowdown.