Sean Craig was actually at the comicon yesterday, so anyone there might have seen him
this demo setup itself sounds somewhat lackluster though, from what the poster is saying; there is no one there to help? no one to guide/give instructions on how to play? i personally wasn't even aware that we had a demo going at the comicon, go figure...
a lot of the gripes sound like typical demo kind of gripes, that's good at least!
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o It looks a bit like Pool of Radiance:Ruins of Myth Drannor. Not so much in terms of graphics (ToEE graphics are far better looking, far more colorful (PoR had mile after mile of the same drab dungeon passageways)), but in terms of playstyle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
close one!
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As far as I could tell, there was no combat grid. There's a movement bar that drains as a PC moves and it was color-coded, I think, so perhaps the topmost bit of the bar indicates whether you've moved less than a 5 foot step. Not sure about that. Anyway, my point was that moving characters was similar to PoR, what with the lack of fine grain control. There is a blue circle that shows where the PC will wind up, though, so it's not too random.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
this may fall under our "minimalist" interface philosophy, the complexity is there if you want it, but maybe not apparent immediately. we wanted combat possible to be played as a "a point here, move here, point here attack this", for those that want just that much. but everything else is there, for sure!
holding the ALT key in combat will put you into "waypoint mode", where you can see exactly where you are travelling, and how much it will cost you.
the action bar (covered in previous posts), consists of a GREEN/YELLOW section. when moving, if you only use up your GREEN, then you will still have a standard action left. if your path takes you into the YELLOW area, then you are performing a double move. if you happen to do a FULL-ROUND action first, only then does the action bar indicate you still have a 5ft step. something like that, you have to see for yourself
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o Maybe it was just the settings or something, but the characters were really big on the screen. Far closer to Planescape relative sizing than Baldur's Gate, for example.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
indeed, the scale of the PC's is up about 10% or so from the original model(s) i believe, i can't remember exactly. i think this may have been a request from Atari, and i personally don't think detracts from the game in anyway. more PC detail is good, i suppose!
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o When I first went up to the game (it was on 2 stations), nobody was playing it and it was at the options screen. I chose New Game and it put me directly into what was obviously a saved position. Four characters, a dwarf warrior (level 10, I think), a paladin (she probably was a druid/paladin, now that I think about it), a wizard, and another character.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
it sounds like the demo was set up with our testing PC's. this is *not* the default characters that are pre-genned for the game, but PC characters we use to test whatever we happen to be working on. this introduces some anomalies, because i think the 2nd character currently has DRUID spells added directly via our loader, so she could very well be a Paladin, and yet be able to cast a unique selection of DRUID spells.... hmmmmmm
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inventory is pretty standard, what PCs wear wasn't a paperdoll exactly, closer to EQ's square slots I think. Easy to navigate. Left clicking an item gives its stats. The dwarf's waraxe was 1d12 (20, x4). I thought they were x3, but that's fine.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a bug i noticed many months ago, but we haven't yet fixed. no worries, these kind of bugs are prioritized waaaay lower on our lists, but will be fixed.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o Casting spells has a plus and a minus. The plus is that it's easy to choose spells. Right click the caster and a circle appears around the character, sectioned off. The rightmost section says WIZ or DRU or whatever. Clicking that causes a semicircle to expand on that side, with sections labelled 1,2,3,4,5 (no cantrips, obviously). The druid in the demo had HORRIBLE spells selections. Everything was Summon Nature's Ally, or Magic Fang, or Call Lightning. No cure spells, which hurt when I went up against the Vrock. Clicking a spell level causes another semicircle to expand outwards, sectioned off, containing the names of the spells the caster can cast (entire names present).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
see above. i think these spells were added directly, for testing purposes, and therefore 0-level spells could have been skipped.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o The minus on casting spells is that if the caster is on the right side of the screen, when the spell names expand out, you won't be able to read them. Maybe there's (actually I pray there is) a "Center On Current Character" button, since casters absolutely require that. There's got to be a button like this.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
a) right-click opens the radial menu. right-click + drag moves the radial menu, this solves the "can't see radial menu options" problem, hopefully (it's why we added this)
b) the HOME key is currently mapped to center on the currently selected character (or enemy, in combat)
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I wish there'd been somebody around to ask questions, but it didn't really seem like it. And I definitely had that "Hey, I wanna ask questions look" on my face.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o Also casting spells: Targetting is very nice. Casting fireball put up a big blue circle that allowed me to cover exactly the target I wanted (my PCs and some nearby monsters). One nice thing is that on screen you see all the saves, damage, etc. but if you want to be sure who is taking damage, making their saves, etc., there's a log of that you can look at. Targetting a lightning bolt was easy too, it's a long slightly thick blue line. Magic Missiles can be individually targeted to multiple monsters (a red circle appeared around my target with a 1/5 in the middle, every time I clicked it went 2/5, 3/5, 4/5, 5/5). That was from a wand, by the way.
o Summoned monsters didn't impress me. I had the druid cast a few nature's ally spells against the Vrock. I couldn't tell if they even had hit points, since the Vrock would do some kind of stunning breath or sonic wave or something and the polar bear and dire wolf (and one other, I think, boa constrictor, maybe) just fell over.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
yeh, this setup doesn't seem too fair. summoned monsters will probably get their butt kicked by the vrock...
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o When I realized the Vrock fight was going poorly, I tried loading a different save. I was eventually successful, but there was EXTREME lag in trying to select a new save to load. Probably just some kind of memory leak or something and one of the traits of a demo.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
the save and load screens are indeed performing slow, i think this is because the game is still running underneath the interface. it's a relatively easy/small issue that we are going to fix
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o The Vrock was in a courtyard of a caste or something. My party went underneath an arch to get into the courtyard and the game paused, obviously loading the Vrock and the visible area. I saw somebody else send characters through a doorway and it was a more traditional area transition.
o The demo characters' equipment was pathetic. No wonder I had trouble against the Vrock: no magic weapons. I think the one hit the dwarf made, one point got through DR. No potions, either, although the wizard had a Brew Potion section on the opposite side from the spells. The druid/paladin had a bunch of special abilities. I had no luck with Lay On Hands, though. Is it supposed to draw an AoO? The Heal ability (skill?) healed the cleric (that was the fourth character, I think) from -5 to 23, but she didn't get up. Not sure if that's how it's supposed to be, if she was permanently stunned by the Vrock, or what.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
heh, the latter sounds like a bug report. i'm going to have to ask the person to list step by step what the problem is, so i can recreate the error and trace it...
...but really, i can't comment on this because i would need to see it actually happening and determine what the correct behavior is, versus what actually happened.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o Scrolling the screen and character movement was a little slow. Either a demo issue (I hope) or controlable via settings.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
scrolling can be slow, and we are also doing optimizations right now. however, i just want to be clear that scrolling is "weighted", the longer you scroll in a direction, the faster it moves, and if you immediately scroll in the other direction, it "smoothes" and slows down. i believe this is similar to scrolling in ... Star Trek Away Team?
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o There was no rogue in the default party so I never thought to try sending a character off on his own to scout stealthily. I did send a character out alone a bit and monsters immediately reacted. Hopefully they have to make spot checks against hiding characters.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
again, this is our testing PC's it sounds like.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o Of the creatures I killed (giant frogs, kobolds, I think), none had treasure. No treasure chests either.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
frogs/animals shouldn't have treasure, i believe, and the kobolds may have been utilizing kobold specific weapons/armor. certain critters we don't allow PC's to loot their weapons/armor, strictly from an art/design standpoint (like a giant sized weapon shouldn't visually be equipped by a PC, although we do it here all the time, hehehe... it looks like Cloud Strife!! :O )
the treasure chest issue is strictly design. if it's in the ToEE module, it's there. or should be. we change what is necessary, but i think in general there aren't random treasure chests lying around, at least at the moment.
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
o I'm tempted to go back tomorrow just to spend more time with the game. If I could rearrange the casters' spells, I'm pretty sure I could apply some smackage to that Vrock, despite its 22 SR.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
these past few days Craig Matchett (our modeller) has gone thru the game multiple times and built up super-strong parties. he is now officially our Demon killer... his party is built specifically to kill all the demons in our game! i.e. his spellcasters are all built to penetrate spell resistance... let me tell you, the Vrock is cheez compared to the Balor and others... heheh.
well, i hope that clears up any questions! i'm glad the game is out there to be played, and while i think this poster had a few gripes, i hope those issues have been addressed (unfortunately no one was around to help him/her out). it sounds like the poster enjoyed (i hope!) playing even just this bit of it, and if they're going back to playtest tomorrow/today, that's a good sign
