Arcanum - Evaluation of the technical side.

Mmmm Pie. To bad you disregarded that idea.

I guess I'll start out with a smaller one, like a dungeon crawl or something. You know, trying to get a hang of the editor, but I will then move on to bigger projects, and this will be it. After that...well I guess I play the game til the end and back again.

/PeeCee

 

I'll have to play the game to the end and back as a techie and a mage to get the first idea, and get used to the editor. My real question is if TA will have a mod section where you can post it.

 

Archangel.

I asked that question in the map forum I think it was. And from the answer I got from Scorpion is that Aegis will be up and running by gamedate. I don't know if this place will have their own Mod section. Also I wonder if Troika will have a section where you can upload mods and such. I think Sierra will have that.

 

HAVE YOU SEEN IT???

I connected this morn to check out replies and it occured that some bastard pseudo-hacker put a pic, that nearly made me puke when I saw it, at the top of the page. And don't think that my stomach is a delicate one. One of my friends for a period of time had a custom of sending people pics from sites like rotten.com but even though never before have I seen a pic so disgusting. Anyway it's good that admin dealt with it so quickly.


Are all of you guys making mods. I have nver made a mod in my life but now that I see you talking about it all the time like it is the first thing to do after unpacking the game I think I will try that myself. PeeCee -I just hope it won't take years to dl your mod from the net. Even if it will I think I'll dl it anyway. I'll just have to ask some friend of mine with a constant connection for a little (insert number of MBs here) favor

Enzo or ArchAngel (I thought forums don't allow nick changes) I managed to get some info on that pirated version. It has multiplpayer but it doesn't allow you to play 'normal' game with your own team, it's just for playng on prepared maps I think. The editor is included it's called world editor but I don't know what options it has. The game version is 1.0.6.4. It's not much but it's all I managed to get.

MajroMax - thanks for sheding some light on what ISO is issue.

 

Kick ass! Thx Dragoon! I was really wondering about that.

P.S. This board does allow name changes but you have to ask one of the admins. I'm not sure if it takes a long or short time to do, but i think it was really nice of Calis to do this for me.

 

Hey Dragoon.

Don't feel scared. I have never made a mod either, but the editor in Arcanum sounds to be just the tool for a layman as myself. As for the sizes of mods they come to somewhere under 500KB. That is if you don't add a bunch of your own movies, souonds and stuff.

Speaking of constant connections. I just got my ADSL today. Happy as I was I ran down to the post office to pick up the package, ran down an old lady on the way (Sorry, granny) And then got the parsel, ran back hope. Ran down her hubby. Damn they are everywhere aren't they. Open the package and started to do all the connections... Ta...da...what the fu... No network card. Bummer. Got to go and buy one tomorrow.

So today I am still using the modem connection.

/PeeCee

 

Sucker!

 

Thanks Archangel. I can really feel the warmth and love on this board. Makes me go all fuzzy inside. (could also be that moldy mango I had during my lunchbrake) :wink:

/PeeCee

 

Now that's a relief with that 500KB. Up till now I associated mods with something created mainly for quake-like games and something that takes up 40MB. It's good I was wrong.

As for my modem proxy went down (again) and the little bastard reached only some 20b/s. I really wish computers felt pain. Mine would get a huge kick.

Wow, we've got whole two pages and more importantly soon I'll get rid of that supid pic under my nick.

 

..

You should try the Surprise mod for Halflife. It's about 500kb big and has lots of effects never seen before. Of course it uses the standard Hl maps and weapons, but in some really cool ways!

 

REply ro tree root

well the demo is not really optimized to my knowlage, i might be wrong though.

anyway on my computer (pII 400 64Ram Voodoo 3 2000)it doesn't really in the demo, sure the problem areas exists, that is the missing graphics...

the inventory system is at points annoying, true, mostly with the examin icon, and moving objects from the short cut slots to the inventory.

for an RPG i prefer this way, i don't want to have full control over the NPC's. the AI offcourse will never be perfect, and the NPC's not useing potions is one of those things...

no idea how the final version is going to be, i know that the streets should be marked, if its enough is an other thing.

problems with colour? well i have no problems reading the text, i agree though that its not very pretty

ROTFL, i wonder about you.

anyway, its not a combat game, and charisma is as important as the other stats, its not simply for the number of NPCs.

as for NPC's a charisma of 12 and a expert level in persuasion lets you have 5 NPC's, so thats not paying 12 points to get them, but 6 actually.

anyway, i prefer this method strongly over others, like in BG2, when you really don't need charisma at all, aside from a leader NPC paladin.

so if you now pay CP's on charimsa you gain followers, its easly as much worth it as spending those points in any other stat.

the balance is changed, you level up slower, and from the demo the town map is changed(no fog of war in the full version), the game is now better optimized, and other features are added, like gypsys letting you ID objects for a fee.

 

The map chops on my 1.4GHz Atlhon. Don't say
my MHz sucks please.

BG style fog of war rules. It's pitch black
if you haven't been there at all and it's
sorta grayed when you have. You can only
see structures and other inanimate objects, not ppl.

No and it's not a matter of hard or not hard
IMO the game has to have as much of a great
story as playability. And Arcanum lacks in that department.

Now that's not it is it? I love BG the most
because you can do a multiplayer session and
create ALL you own chars in the party. So I can have a party of 6 mages if I want to. And I control the way xp is divided.

One more thing about the map is that in some
quests you don't actually have a point to
travel to it just says "North of town" or something like that. And since visibility is LOW, you may have to wander around for AGES to get to that place or person. I mean the resolution should be much higher, I hate it when I can see like 3 chars in one window. It makes travelling so much more difficult.

No it's completed, not completed and spoiled quests. And yes, green on white is totally bad on the eyes.

I think lvlcap of 99 like Diablo 2 would be
appropriate. And as for being an uber-char
look at D2's exp/diff system. I think it's brilliant. As you go up levels so do the monsters you fight. It's way nice.

Now actually I like that the game is hard and
you have to repeat one battle thinking of diff. strategies and stuff. This way it's more of a triumph when you finally DO win =]

 

Didn't think of combining Charisma with Persuasion to get more max.followers - thanks. Though it won't be much use in the demo

I'd rather it depended more on the difficulty setting you choose. After all a guy with a revolver shouldn't have much harder time than one with a sword.

I had Hl some time ago. It really annoyed me that it hung up so often if only I used Open_gl or Direct3D. I wrote to Sierra and they helped me with Direct3D but did nothing with Open_gl. I hate it when they send you an answer with a brilliant idea of reinstalling your drivers and troublesome software. Like it ever helped anyone. That's why I'm afraid as to how often Arcanum will hang up and that will depend mainly on how much Sierra messed with the engine. Anyway perhaps I'll try the mod. I'll just have to borrow the game again and I'll have to want to play it again. Generally FPPs don't hold much replay value for me. System Shock 2 was an exeption but it was more of an RPG than just FPP.

 

It feels really good to see someone agreeing with me on so many issues. thx Jubei_TRZ

 

Jubei_TRZ

the fog of war in BG was functional(in a sense)as the areas where small, and it doesn't really matter if you can view it all, and imo it pretty much sucked, i allways feel like my characters are stone blind when they can't view the ground 10m away!

the areas in Arcanum is much larger, and i prefer Arcanums view setting being based upon you perception, not some set radius of fog.

story based or playabillity? you must be playing the warez version to have a hum of the first, and be stone cold sure on the later, imo Arcanum plays very well, with some qiurks, but i like it. as for the story i have no idea, if you do, and have played the warez version then you are in no position to complain*.

sure its fun in BG, but its not really roleplaying, creating your own powergame party, and Arcanum is not a strategy RPG, its an RPG.

well i'm sorry for your eyes, i can cope with fine, it just looks silly *g*

some points on this, arcanum is no linear like diablo, so

1. it gets much harder to make some fight count, and some others to be easy enough to pass for a low level character.

2. try creating a character in arcanum with level 99 (i'm sure you can, its not hard, really), what you will find is that virtually every fighther will look the same, and every mage will look the same etc etc, the reason is that too many points virtually kills the character, and makes it like every body elses. alas, its not like in Diablo when you have classes, and you can virtually pump zillions of points in some stats.

3. Troika might want to create a expanssion, and also perhaps got this in mind for the level cap. You that claim that you enjoy BG so much shouldn't be picky about level caps, the funny 89 000 XP point cap in BG was something i broke way before the finish, and the same goes for BG2.

also, if you are playing the warez version, you will level up to quickly, due to unbalance, anyway, in the final version if you feel that you level up to quickly still, turn up the difficutly a notch ot two, and you will recive less XP points.

as the peep before wrote, its not made so that every situation can be adressed and brought through the same way for every type of character, imo the bridge fight should be made so that only the best of fighters can get through alive imo


Dragoon

i had no problem with my marksman killing them on the hard setting in the demo or the beta...

anyway Arcanum is not an action game, there are other aspects, and imo you shouldn't be able to lower the threshold so that a non killer can kill hard targets, its just my opinion though.

 

I have the exact same view as monkeypunch. It's not a action game like Diablo it's a RPG, so the game should reflect that. In my view it has done that very well, but I’ve only played the demo so...

 

I had firearms at 2 and apprentice training, Sogg and Virgil in my team and still I had to depend on luck to beat those guys at the bridge.

I just think there should be a lot of options to be set so that everyone could play the game in a way he likes to do it.

 

try dropping a few traps on the ground around you. Or throw a few of thise grenades and stuff.

/PeeCee

 

he, two points in a skill is nu uber fighter, i take it your dexterity and perception wasn't really high either

and did you at least have a fine pistol? otherwise your blown right out at hard or harder easily(imo)

arr! so you makee a non uber fighter, and expect that the harder battles are for you? try talking the bad guys and gals in say... BG2 ToB out of fighting you, like you can in Arcanum

in the bridge fight you have 4 real options, aside from sneaking pass the river up north(you can in the demo, but perhaps not in the final game), and thats almost 3 more then in most games i've played.

complaining about not being able to fight them without a real fighter, is like complaining that you can't talk them into letting you pass(and get 200 coins for free)with a non diplomatic character etc.

if you could in either case the game would get way to easy, being able to solve each problem with any solution, with any character type, its not an option imo.

still the point is that you can make those choices, if your character can take the pressure.

 

In Fallout I played a diplomat who mostly convinced people not to fight but who knew how to take care of himself when need arised.



One annoying thing in Arcanum I didn't write about earlier. Items' descriptions are scarce. Once that healer girl had some schem to sell. Well I only knew the name and price. Nothing about required components or even more importantly no required skill level to put the thing together. I didn't get to know the required skill level even after learning the schematic. Perhaps this info will be in the manual but I don't like to have to have to browse the manual every 5mins. As for weapons no str req. Only after purchasing and equipping a wep you get to know whether your strength is sufficient for it or not.