This game has incredible cult following.

By chance I was promted to check out the FIFE website last week. They've made huge progress since I last looked at it a couple years ago. It's worth a gander.

 

It's a nice engine, no doubt but it does feel rather bloated and overcomplicated to me. That's the problem with developing a generic engine such as that - it's full of features, most of which would never be used in an Arcanum-like game... Bit of a shame, really.

On top of that it doesn't support a seamless world by default, not a big deal as larger maps and some occlusion culling could be used but still.

 

Try a do-it yourself gender change kit! Walk into the bathroom Steve, walk out Stacy! It's as simple as zip, snip, stuff and swallow!

 

Playing the game and thinking about it recently, I have to say the lack of interactivity of the game world (read: isometric engine) really is a turnoff. Even Might & Magic 6 that came out in 1996 had a world where you could roam freely and, most importantly, fly. Seriously, aviation would be awesome on a technologist. Imagine gliding majestically above the Morbihan Plains in your selfmade balloon, casually wiping out entire Orc villages with your Looking Glass Rifle :thumbup:

 

That's actually possible with isometry if not in Arcanum, you just use a series of composite transformations that transform x/y axis dependent on Z and drop the Z axis itself (that's a projection matrix). That'll give you height and so on, but the biggest problem with the isometric viewpoint is that everything is the same size regardless of the distance. It'd make it sorta difficult to see what's going on.

In that way I don't want a fully3d sequel either, imo for an indie developer it's too much work with models and so on. I dunno, I can't actually remember seeing an isometric game with 'levitation'. It might not be so confusing.

 

I know. It sucks in all instances I have seen it though.

 

One of the SNES versions of Ultima had levitation. Charonte is right though when he said that everything remained the same size.

Other iso games with flying had to switch to a different map to simulate altitude.

 

Hrm, interesting... I suppose some sort of y (which is traditionally the "up" direction in isometry) scaling could be used to make stuff look larger at higher altitudes... Not sure what the exact factor would be, a 1:1 ratio seems a little excessive... (Doubling the size for +1 in height?). There's that and pixelation of the 2d graphics I guess...

I'm starting to think the actual maps shouldn't be tile based at all, it's sort of limiting and 3d height mapped terrain would save a hell of a lot of time in the long run...

 

What about going back in time a couple of years before Vendigroth is destroyed and call it "Arcanum: The Destruction of Vendigroth"

 

Well, people have been wanting to make something with a living Vendigroth since day one.
Thanks to the new .art software and such, this is rapidly becoming possible.

 

This picture gave me a massive hard-on.

Also: no sequel to Arcanum please.

 

...and then, out of nowhere, floyd to the rescue.

 

hahahaha!!!, i didnt notice that..

 

Welcome new one.

 

floyd: Where have you been?

thenewone: Welcome.

Grakelin: Actually, That picture reminds me of the Outer God Shub-Niggurath.

 

Welcome, thenewone.

As for that picture... well, let's just say I've watched too many tentacle animes and leave it at that, yes?

 

Xiao, why must you always "leave it at that" right before the good stuff?

 

It is to fool you into thinking there is more to say when really, like the cake, it is a lie!

 

A teaser with a taser.