Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Post
  • Reply
Your Computer
Oct 3, 2008




Grimey Drawer

Genpei Turtle posted:

I dunno where you heard that because you absolutely customize your character‘s skills and stats in Arx Fatalis. There aren’t as many options as UUW, but when you take into account all the trash skills not worth taking in UUW, it’s probably about the same.

i was actually only talking about how you can't choose the gender but i was trying to sound smart

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

SavageMessiah
Jan 28, 2009

Emotionally drained and spookified

Toilet Rascal
If you do play it, use Arx Libertatis. It's a good game, if somewhat janky.

Joe Chill
Mar 21, 2013

"What's this dance called?"

"'Radioactive Flesh.' It's the latest - and the last!"

Your Computer posted:

i'm not an oldschool pc gamer but i just recently began playing the ultima underworld games and they are dangerously addictive and not nearly as janky as i'd expect for something that's this old


why aren't there more dungeon crawlers like this where you just control a single hero? or have they just been hiding

Maybe you would like System Shock 1 and the King's Field games?

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Your Computer posted:

i was actually only talking about how you can't choose the gender but i was trying to sound smart
No you see, the main character had to be a man, because otherwise, .... uh,

Do you even see or hear your own character at any point in Arx Fatalis

I seem to recall the magic word incantation stuff not even being your own voice

It does always suck when the character's gender is fixed in old games because most of the time it would have taken like 5 minutes of effort to allow a choice

Genpei Turtle
Jul 20, 2007

Dr. Quarex posted:

No you see, the main character had to be a man, because otherwise, .... uh,

Do you even see or hear your own character at any point in Arx Fatalis

I seem to recall the magic word incantation stuff not even being your own voice

It does always suck when the character's gender is fixed in old games because most of the time it would have taken like 5 minutes of effort to allow a choice

Technically the main character in Arx Fatalis doesn’t really have a gender since IIRC they’re a godling sent down to the world in a human body.

But yeah the MC absolutely has voice acting and it’s terrible. Of course that goes the same for every other character in Arx as well…

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA

Genpei Turtle posted:

But yeah the MC absolutely has voice acting and it’s terrible. Of course that goes the same for every other character in Arx as well…
And then you listen to the outtakes from the recording session on YouTube and wonder how the voice actors can sound reasonably charismatic when not delivering their actual lines

Thuryl
Mar 14, 2007

My postillion has been struck by lightning.

Dr. Quarex posted:

No you see, the main character had to be a man, because otherwise, .... uh,

Do you even see or hear your own character at any point in Arx Fatalis

I seem to recall the magic word incantation stuff not even being your own voice

It does always suck when the character's gender is fixed in old games because most of the time it would have taken like 5 minutes of effort to allow a choice

It's funny because there's kind of a movement over the years from "your character is a collection of numbers, who cares what they look like" to "okay we need a character model but it's a waste of resources to make more than one" to "oh, once you make the character look like something it turns out people care what they look like", and a few games from the mid-90s to mid-00s just kind of got stuck in the bad middle ground where the main character is neither an actual character in themselves, nor a customizable avatar or game piece, nor a faceless representation of the player.

Ultima 3 let you have non-binary characters back in 1983 because it didn't actually matter for anything ingame anyway and if they were gonna let you pick what gender you were they might as well give you all the options

Thuryl fucked around with this message at 05:27 on Mar 3, 2024

Your Computer
Oct 3, 2008




Grimey Drawer

Thuryl posted:

Ultima 3 let you have non-binary characters back in 1983 because it didn't actually matter for anything ingame anyway and if they were gonna let you pick what gender you were they might as well give you all the options

i was never into the ultima games but i read about this when i got into ultima underworld and was wondering "what's this Avatar business anyway" and it's both shocking and rad. ultima underworld "only" lets you pick a male or female avatar but that's still more than i'd expect from an old pc game. of course, from what i read they later decided that no actually the Avatar is cannonically a white man for marketing purposes or something :sigh:

Joe Chill posted:

Maybe you would like System Shock 1 and the King's Field games?
system shock 1 is on my list but right now i was in a very dungeon-y mood and not sci-fi. i've played a bit of the king's field games and weirdly i find them to be more janky than ultima underworld but i still absolutely want to play through them some time. a friend also clued me in on Shadow Tower which at least on a surface level i like even more than king's field because it's so well polished for a ps1 game - it just absolutely oozes atmosphere and the "lighting" is so cever (it's just using distance fog but it works amazingly) it was actually shadow tower that got me to check out ultima underworld in a weird roundabout way :v:

Chev
Jul 19, 2010
Switchblade Switcharoo

Your Computer posted:

Of course, from what i read they later decided that no actually the Avatar is cannonically a white man for marketing purposes or something :sigh:
Not just that, but they chose as a basis the big white guy from the cover of Ultima 6, which is ironically actually depicting the false prophet, the supremacist caricature the gargoyles used to paint the Avatar as the bane of their entire world and people (which to be fair is one of the available portraits, and even the only available one in Savage Empire).

Air Skwirl
May 13, 2007

Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed shitposting.

Chev posted:

Not just that, but they chose as a basis the big white guy from the cover of Ultima 6, which is ironically actually depicting the false prophet, the supremacist caricature the gargoyles used to paint the Avatar as the bane of their entire world and people (which to be fair is one of the available portraits, and even the only available one in Savage Empire).

You can't be female in Savage Empire?

I wish they'd made more games in that engine I have a huge amount of nostalgia for it

Waltzing Along
Jun 14, 2008

There's only one
Human race
Many faces
Everybody belongs here
I think it is pretty cool that in 1983, a 22 year old Richard Garriot, having grown up in Texas in the 70s and early 80s, was woke enough to cater to Non-binary people and furries when he made Ultima III.

Tendales
Mar 9, 2012

Air Skwirl posted:

You can't be female in Savage Empire?

I wish they'd made more games in that engine I have a huge amount of nostalgia for it

Not in Savage Empire, because it was very important that you heterosexually romance the local princess.

Martian Dreams, the superior game, let you wear a fancy dress while blasting people with your shotgun.

victrix
Oct 30, 2007


Tendales posted:

Not in Savage Empire, because it was very important that you heterosexually romance the local princess.

Martian Dreams, the superior game, let you wear a fancy dress while blasting people with your shotgun.

those games are such unhinged concepts, early years pc dev was wild

Your Computer
Oct 3, 2008




Grimey Drawer

Chev posted:

Not just that, but they chose as a basis the big white guy from the cover of Ultima 6, which is ironically actually depicting the false prophet, the supremacist caricature the gargoyles used to paint the Avatar as the bane of their entire world and people (which to be fair is one of the available portraits, and even the only available one in Savage Empire).

:eyepop:

Waltzing Along posted:

I think it is pretty cool that in 1983, a 22 year old Richard Garriot, having grown up in Texas in the 70s and early 80s, was woke enough to cater to Non-binary people and furries when he made Ultima III.

i can't tell if you're making a joke but unironically :same:

Dr. Quarex
Apr 18, 2003

I'M A BIG DORK WHO POSTS TOO MUCH ABOUT CONVENTIONS LOOK AT THIS

TOVA TOVA TOVA
Yeah it is kind of a spoiler but it really is amazing how subversive that cover art and its related decision to make the avatar male actually is, but you have to actually played through most of the game to know that, and even then of course the subtext is undoubtedly lost on many players

Your Computer posted:

i can't tell if you're making a joke but unironically :same:
I was thinking the exact same thing so that was probably serious. Even if just from a "let's give the players more character options!" intent it is awesomely progressive

Plus the way character creation works I know for a fact I had whole parties of female furry ("fuzzy") fighters given the ease of hitting F three prompts in a row

Pittsburgh Fentanyl Cloud
Apr 7, 2003
Probation
Can't post for 3 hours!

Waltzing Along posted:

I think it is pretty cool that in 1983, a 22 year old Richard Garriot, having grown up in Texas in the 70s and early 80s, was woke enough to cater to Non-binary people and furries when he made Ultima III.

There's an entire thread on one of the lovely RPG boards, anchored by Cleve Blakemore, claiming that Garriott was too young and dumb and woke to write Ultima 4 and that the entire plot was actually the work of Shay Addams.

Angrymog
Jan 30, 2012

Really Madcats

Lunacid is a modern game that's heavily inspired by Kings Field etc.

Your Computer
Oct 3, 2008




Grimey Drawer

Angrymog posted:

Lunacid is a modern game that's heavily inspired by Kings Field etc.
yeah i played through this and it was fun but it had some design decisions that honestly felt dated even for the type of game it was trying to emulate

on that note i went back to play some more shadow tower and i realized why the king's field style games somehow feel a lot more clunky to me than ultima underworld (surprisingly) did: it's because the king's field games make an attempt at giving you more control during combat to avoid enemy attacks, but this means having to strafe, move the camera and attack at the same time on a poor non-analog psx controller. and because you can avoid enemy attacks the game expects you to, which means doing the clunky dance of constantly circle strafing and hitting the butt.

meanwhile ultima underworld just goes :effort: and leaves it at "you and the enemy walk up and swing at each other until one dies" and honestly i might find this preferable. first person melee combat is something i've spent a lot of time thinking about and i'm not convinced it's even possible to make it good due to the limitations and when you look at modern* games with first person combat like skyrim they've hardly evolved since ultima underworld - you just stand there and swing at each other until one of you falls over. i think this is also why it feels so good to "cheat" the system by avoiding the melee combat and why stealth archery is such a meme. first person just lends itself so much nicer to projectiles than up-close fighting

with that said i don't know what can be done to improve this or what you would replace it with if you took it out and with games like ultima underworld i don't neccessarily feel like the (bad) combat actually takes anything away from the fun of the game so perhaps it's just a neccessary component and it doesn't need to be good.

Genpei Turtle
Jul 20, 2007

Your Computer posted:

meanwhile ultima underworld just goes :effort: and leaves it at "you and the enemy walk up and swing at each other until one dies" and honestly i might find this preferable. first person melee combat is something i've spent a lot of time thinking about and i'm not convinced it's even possible to make it good due to the limitations and when you look at modern* games with first person combat like skyrim they've hardly evolved since ultima underworld - you just stand there and swing at each other until one of you falls over. i think this is also why it feels so good to "cheat" the system by avoiding the melee combat and why stealth archery is such a meme. first person just lends itself so much nicer to projectiles than up-close fighting

So for what it's worth, I think Mount and Blade stands as a pretty good counterexample to this. It's got very good first-person melee combat (though you can also do 3rd person) with RPG mechanics so it's not just twitch combat. Kingdom Come: Deliverance does it pretty well too, though you have to do it with a controller as doing combos with a keyboard + mouse is way harder than it has any right to be.

Gynovore
Jun 17, 2009

Forget your RoboCoX or your StickyCoX or your EvilCoX, MY CoX has Blinking Bewbs!

WHY IS THIS GAME DEAD?!

Your Computer posted:

:eyepop:

i can't tell if you're making a joke but unironically :same:

It's true. When creating a U3 character, in addition to Male and Female, you could choose Other. It has no impact whatsoever on the game, but I'm sure a lot of people appreciated it.

Mr E
Sep 18, 2007

Breakdown on OG Xbox, Zeno Clash, and some of the medieval simulators that have more recently come out show you can do good first person melee combat, it just takes effort that someone like BethSoft is never going to put in.

Your Computer
Oct 3, 2008




Grimey Drawer

Mr E posted:

Breakdown on OG Xbox, Zeno Clash, and some of the medieval simulators that have more recently come out show you can do good first person melee combat, it just takes effort that someone like BethSoft is never going to put in.

my bad on just separating it into "good" and "bad" but i feel like even the better examples (like zeno clash) are still really awkward and kinda disorienting. what i will say is that looking at the games mentioned they all give the player more agency so you're not just facetanking - several of these actually remind me of punchout which i suppose is a form of first person melee game? :shepface: i wonder if you could pull of some sekiro-esque deflection mechanic to make first person melee feel more satisfying, even if it would probably make combat a lot easier.

Gynovore posted:

It's true. When creating a U3 character, in addition to Male and Female, you could choose Other. It has no impact whatsoever on the game, but I'm sure a lot of people appreciated it.
oh yeah i know about U3 i just wasn't sure if the post was being genuine or making fun of me, a problem i have after being on sa for too long...


e: on a completely unrelated note i purchased system shock 1 just to see if i could get it to run and be ready for later, and i thought this https://github.com/Interrupt/systemshock looked really promising as an alternative to the enhanced edition.... but does anyone have any clue what's up with the weirdly syncopated/off-beat clown music? everything else about this source port seems great but i can't find out why the midi is so off-beat. you can hear it's not a problem with the windows midi mapper but that also sounds way worse

(sound obviously required)
https://i.imgur.com/olJkva5.mp4

Your Computer fucked around with this message at 22:56 on Mar 4, 2024

FishMcCool
Apr 9, 2021

lolcats are still funny
Fallen Rib
Found out that Daggerfall Unity has hit 1.0 on new year's eve, so went back into it with a not-crazy-but-decent mod list and I have wasted my week's gaming on it. The travel mods in particular are a fantastic addition, allowing you to travel on foot or horseback in accelerated time with possible encounters on the way. That also includes events from other mods taking place near the roads such as bandit raids on farms. It's just a cool little addition and an optional one at that, so if you just want to instantly commute, the option is still there. But if you're just playing yet another dumb character and don't care about the main quest, it adds a lot of the feels to the sandbox and its bazillion procgen quests augmented further by the quests mod packs.

On quests by the way, the latest one I did was to help organise a "birthday party" with a kidnapping theme. Had to visit a guy in his home at night, throw a bag over his head and carry him to an undead-infested underground crypt 2 days travel away where his friends were (allegedly) going to just wish him a happy birthday, and don't-you-worry-the-guards-are-on-it-so-they-won't-arrest-you-and-there's-1000gold-for-you-on-delivery. Press X for doubt... But then, whatever, they had me at 1000 gold. Went in, kidnapped the guy, brought him to the crypt and as I enter the crypt... a bunch of people run in, shout SUPRIIIIIISE and it indeed was all a big joke for his birthday... :allears:

There's also a mod revamping language skills, allowing you to use them to pacify monsters a bit more easily if you invest enough, and eventually chat further, asking them where the dungeon objective is, or even getting them to join you as companions. They never last too long, but it's cool to walk around with a pet rat/skeleton/zombie/battlemage for a bit. Also, even if you fail the join request, pacified monsters are no longer on the monster side, so they start fighting other monsters and it's utter chaos, creating a lot of backstabbing opportunities for you.

Sure, it took 27 years, but we finally have the Daggerfall we always deserved.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.
The Monster Arts and Wonders (MAW) mod for Might and Magic Merge is wild.

https://github.com/Malekitsu/Maw-Mod-MMMerge

Fully revamped, Merge mod made for veterans of the games. I'm playing on default mode and this game is tough. You have to be smart about your enemy pulls as: 1. Melee monsters move double speed. 2. Ranged monster shots have minor homing on them.

Plus the boss enemies are strong and some of the items are better than artifacts/relics:



This rear end in a top hat here reflects physical attacks, including bow hits. I had to use Stun to stop his movement and then rely on my magic users.



53 hit points and +106 to my stats, holy crap.

Kuros
Sep 13, 2010

Oh look, the consequences of my prior actions are finally catching up to me.
Also found out in the MAW mod, flying and fighting isn't allowed in many zones. No more easy dive bombing of enemies!

Chairchucker
Nov 14, 2006

to ride eternal, shiny and chrome

THUNDERDOME LOSER 2022




Hello

GOG has rereleased Alpha Protocol. Some bug fixes and controller support are included. I think that's cool as hell.

https://www.gog.com/en/game/alpha_protocol

Apparently it even has the copyrighted song in it.

This game is janky as hell and probably deserved all its poor review scores but it is also possibly my favourite RPG ever and I'm glad a lot of people will now have the opportunity to play it that wouldn't have otherwise.

Mr E
Sep 18, 2007

I haven't ever played an Ultima game really before but am playing thru Underworld 1 right now (up to level 4 of the dungeon) and I really love it so far. Loved figuring out the lizardman language, and that I can just punch doors open if I can't be bothered to find the key that's needed. I have an unidentified magic ring equipped because I guess I don't have enough lore yet so I don't even know if it's accomplishing anything but I love that it let me equip it anyway. I got a stew recipe back at level one and I guess I need to find the ingredients now so it's cool that you have to go back to higher levels sometimes and you're not just done as you finish exploring the first time.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Gynovore
Jun 17, 2009

Forget your RoboCoX or your StickyCoX or your EvilCoX, MY CoX has Blinking Bewbs!

WHY IS THIS GAME DEAD?!

Mr E posted:

I haven't ever played an Ultima game really before but am playing thru Underworld 1 right now (up to level 4 of the dungeon) and I really love it so far. Loved figuring out the lizardman language, and that I can just punch doors open if I can't be bothered to find the key that's needed. I have an unidentified magic ring equipped because I guess I don't have enough lore yet so I don't even know if it's accomplishing anything but I love that it let me equip it anyway. I got a stew recipe back at level one and I guess I need to find the ingredients now so it's cool that you have to go back to higher levels sometimes and you're not just done as you finish exploring the first time.

Ultima Underworld I and II are probably the best "no handholding" RPGs out there. You have to actually explore and think, but nothing is really obtuse.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • Post
  • Reply