Who would pay for a quick 16 colors Nostalga fix ?

[Phasics]

In short once 4e is out who would buy a well constructed , great storyline 4e game in the vein of the original Pool of Radiance, Curse of the Azure Bonds, Secret of the Silver Blades etc etc

That is to say the game would look and play very similar to the original except modified to better suit 4e. With all the time put into game play and storyline rather than graphics.

I recon a gaming house could knock this up in a fraction of the time it would take a full blown 4e PC game to come out, give the art department the summer off.

Since it spent all the time on story the game would encompass a party's journey from 1st level to 30th level and would take a good chunk of time to complete, could be fantastically non linear
with a myriad of outcomes. Without the painful graphics for every new sub plot the creative team could have a field day

Would you buy it ? I sure as hell would in a heartbeat.

 

[Henry]

I'm betting it would sell at least as well as an RPG book from a third-party publisher. (which is to say, completely not worth any computer game company's time except a very small house.) However, I would honestly love for some small game house to utilize the OGL to do just this sort of thing.

 

[Nifft]

If the system were open source (and well written), someone might take the framework and add a pretty 3d interface to it. There's an OpenGL version of Nethack, for god's sake.

In other words: it's worth doing, but not for money.

Cheers, -- N

 

[Phasics]

Heh maybe EN World could build it

 

[Piratecat]

I recon a gaming house could knock this up in a fraction of the time it would take a full blown 4e PC game to come out, give the art department the summer off.

I'm a game designer, and this isn't really the case. Art works simultaneously with design and programming. Making a game with crappy art takes far fewer artists (and thus fewer manhours), but it doesn't take appreciably less time overall.

 

[Phasics]

I'm a game designer, and this isn't really the case. Art works simultaneously with design and programming. Making a game with crappy art takes far fewer artists (and thus fewer manhours), but it doesn't take appreciably less time overall.

Dont get me wrong I dont know jack about programming but surely the time it would take to program a Curse of the Azure Bonds style game , even tweaked and modifed would have to be less than the time taken to program full blown 3D realistic RPG ?

Put it this way If you stripped out NWN animation and Art how big would the acutal game mechanic program be vs that of curse of the azure bonds ?

 

[Zurai]

Again, art and sound are 90% of the size of a game, but do not make an appreciable dent in the length of time it takes to make a game. Programming a game that made use of the entire level range from 1 to 30 of the 4th Edition rules would take a very long time.

 

[hexgrid]

I'd buy it.

From a business perspective, it'd probably be a more viable option for release on a handheld system, where less than state-of-art graphics are considered more acceptable.

I just recently tried playing Pool of Radiance through a C64 emulator on my treo, but that turned out to be more trouble than it was worth (too slow and buggy.)

 

[GreatLemur]

In other words: it's worth doing, but not for money.

I think that about sums it up.

 

[Silverblade The Ench]

I'd kill for a GOOD full blown update to Eye of the Beholder (the game that got me into computers, bought an AMiga just for it) and Dark Sun: Shattered Lands!

Or 4th ed Temple of elemental Evil, which was a superb game, but alas buggy.