D&D 4E Is there any D&D 4th computer game?

[AbdulAlhazred]

What about powers that let you shift before or after an attack? Choosing which foe to mark with every attack? Stuff like that.
I'm not saying it couldn't be done, I'm just saying that 4e is harder to translate to a semi real time format.
But I'd love to see a game with 4e rules, true turn based combat (like ToEE) and a good story like BG2 or PS:T. Ah, one can dream.

Yeah, exactly. The entire way 4e combat is structured is just not going to work in any kind of non-turn-based game. You have to decide if you're going to shift or not when do X, am I going to OA so-and-so, am I going to use Combat Challenge, etc etc etc. No way you could even stick close to the 4e rules unless its totally turn based. Even then the amount of going back and forth between different combatants during each other's actions is really kind of prohibitive.

Honestly I'm not convinced you could implement ANY kind of strictly 4e based game that would play reasonably well. 1e and 2e were vastly simpler in turn structure and thus MUCH more amenable to building a variety of CRPG type games.

For a game company though the real question is "why bother to try to implement a set of rules designed for PnP play on a computer?" Its just as easy to start from scratch and design the system from the ground up to work well on the computer. My guess is that's the real reason there has been little action on making D&D games in the past couple of years. It just really is not worth the hassle just to slap a name brand on it. The bigger game companies already have plenty of their own brands they can use.

 

[Ryujin]

Remembering the old AD&D games like Pool of Radiance, turn based is something that I might actually buy. I can't get into first person shooters.

 

[keterys]

Lots of games managed D&D without being turn-based. Whether you shift or not doesn't need to be decided then - the power just lets you move without OA for 2 seconds, etc.

Marks there's a real decision to make with respect to overwriting, but that's more likely a design decision than not. For example, say that incidental marking (fighter, frex) you won't overwrite another's mark unless you hold down a key.

 

[Garthanos]

Honestly I'm not convinced you could implement ANY kind of strictly 4e based game that would play reasonably well.

It is a completely different medium it wont be strict, it needs to be close and it has to feel like 4e. It needs the sense of induced movement and moving without OA and marking so the bad guy feels less like attacking your allies and It needs warlords giving there allies extra opportunities to attack... etc.

 

[Garthanos]

Remembering the old AD&D games like Pool of Radiance, turn based is something that I might actually buy. I can't get into first person shooters.

The current stint of MMO's arent anywhere near first person shooters... (alah reflex games). I used to play quake ... there was no character skill level only player skill level.. and player reflex.

These games are closer to speed chess already...

 

[abyssaldeath]

Please no MMO's. I would rather see a single player game that has a multi-player aspect like that of NWN.

 

[Garthanos]

Please no MMO's. I would rather see a single player game that has a multi-player aspect like that of NWN.

I dont know NWN but I do know that until I was able to play with other players online I had no interested in computer games(And if it was only single player I wouldnt be interested.). I liked being able to build my own levels for Fantasy Quake... etc. and that is seriously missing from the MMO's.
Arguably the best single player rpg currently is a game called Oblivion... the level of character personalization is incredible.

 

[kolpo]

Yeah, exactly. The entire way 4e combat is structured is just not going to work in any kind of non-turn-based game. You have to decide if you're going to shift or not when do X, am I going to OA so-and-so, am I going to use Combat Challenge, etc etc etc. No way you could even stick close to the 4e rules unless its totally turn based. Even then the amount of going back and forth between different combatants during each other's actions is really kind of prohibitive.

Honestly I'm not convinced you could implement ANY kind of strictly 4e based game that would play reasonably well. 1e and 2e were vastly simpler in turn structure and thus MUCH more amenable to building a variety of CRPG type games.

I do think that it is far easier to make a TURN based game for 4th edition then one for any other edition. This is because the whole way powers are described in 4th edition is far easier to understand for a computer, then how they where written in the previous editions.

Things like do x damage to everyone in burst 1, slide target x squares, change taregt AC by -2. That are all things that a computer can "understand", you can program them without needing extreme amounts of code(and thus also extreme amounts of bugs).

But in previous editions where the spells often worden in ways that would be extremely difficult for a computer to understand. Previous editions had also far more then 4th, what appeared to be an endless spaghetti of interconnected rules. Both those things are a nightmare to program and especially a nightmare to debug.

In previous editions where there many abilities and spells that most likely would never be implemented in a computer game, they where simply way way to time consuming to program or simply flat out impossible(how can a computer for example ever know if your suggestion is worded on a reasonable way?).

So for as long as you keep the combat of the game turn based, do I think that we can get a game that is far closer to the pnp rules then any game written for any of the previous editions.

But 4th edition seems to be so heavily based and build around turns that I have a hard time imaging how you could make it real time without changing it in something that isn't d&d4 at all. If you read about d&d mechanics, is turn a word that keep appearing again and again, trying to make it non turn based is like trying to make a non ball based basketball, it would no longer be the same game.

 

[abyssaldeath]

NWN you could build your own campaign worlds for online play. There was(still could be) a very large community of people who built these servers. There are a lot of mods that were made for that games too. You could play multi-player mods with friends over LAN or internet. Some of the persistent world servers were really nice.

 

[renau1g]

Well to those that don't say a Turn-based game can sell well, check out FF tactics, approx. 2.25 million units (at least). Not bad at all.

Also, The Shining Force series did great on Genesis and now on the VC

The HoMM series also is decent (I think so, they made 5 games + expansions)