Holy cow! Everyone who pledged $10.000 or more receives a copy of "Akalabeth"! [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Akalabeth:_World_of_Doom ]
Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
131–140 of 164 posts
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
My Ultima experience started with VI, but I remember distinctively walking into Electronics Boutique and seeing Ultima VII on the shelf for the first time. I could not believe the screenshots were real, it looked like everything a RPG should be. Ultima VI is was really got me into coding world simulations, but Ultima VII really showed the potential of the genre. I think that's why Ultima VIII and IX were such a disap…
I started on V but VI was really a leap forward for me. There was an Electronics Boutique in the Fairfield Mall (a good half hour from where I grew up) which was an amazing experience as a kid: you would walk into a store and learn about 50 new games, no trailers, just your imagination fueled by box art. The internet has kind of destroyed that sense of wonder/mystery, I feel sorry for future generations. :)
I agree 100%. For me it was Egghead Software in the late 80's early 90's. I also had fun working in Babbages in the early-mid 90's while I was in high school. Unfortunately, those years were mostly dominated by Myst and Mortal Kombat sales. I think that's why I liked Egghead so much, no BS just computer games/software.
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#133Might as well chime in with another Kickstarter in progress for a spiritual successor of another famous RPG: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/inxile/torment-tides-of-... Kickstarter has been really great so far for people, like myself, who were and are very fond of the "old school" type of RPGs.
Yeah, I'm surprised the Torment KS didn't appear on HN after it ended up being the fastest KS to hit 1 million (8 hours).
According to HN Search, several people posted it but none of them got more that 5 points.
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#134> Multiplayer Online Game - which can also be played solo player / offline I remember when UO came out...I never played it but I wondered if it would be the end of good single-player RPGs. Luckily, it wasn't, but it was basically the end of Ultima as a series, though arguably it wasn't a causation. In any case, it's hard to imagine an RPG world that could be designed successfully to be a MMO and a good single player…
Ultima VII has remained my fondest memory of an RPG. It was a world that, in comparison to its contemporaries, was practically alive, a living, changing place (that I could visit with my specially tweaked CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT). I think TES has done a good job of taking up the mantle that Ultima VII set down, but for me nothing will duplicate the childhood wonder of encountering the level of immersion and detai…
I loved U7 The Black Gate. I just hate the fact that all games are 3d now, it just doesn't add anything to the game and it's distracting (in case of RPG games). I'm too old for this s*it :)
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#135It is somewhat interesting that an online multiplayer game is having more difficulties raising funding than Torment, a single player RPG.
Both seemingly have similar old school appeal, though the Planescape Torment audience is maybe slightly younger (5-8 years?) compared to fans of Ultima.
I'll admit, while I threw a good chunk of money at Torment, this Kickstarter is less appealing to me just because it is Online.
I also feel that there is some ambiguity over the vision of this game. The FAQ says this isn't an MMO , but you have online property you can buy and it has PvP? I am seriously confused as to the genre of this game. Confused people don't pledge.
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#136I'm glad that "Meaningful PvP" was singled out. PvP is important to me and its one of the things that Ultima Online got right that vast swaths of MMOs since have floundered with (in my opinion). In parts of the world (Felucca[1]), UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stea…
While UO was my favorite game of all time, this is not UO. I won't be helping fund this. Garriot does not have a track record anymore. He's had failure after failure post-UO. He needs to take a step back and look at the successful games that have taken off recently that have roots in UO. My best example is DayZ. You run around with items that if you die fall on your body. Weapons have low relative value like UO. You…
It also appears to be instanced. After digging into the game info - it's not an MMO. Travelling between towns will be in a different mode/mechanic.
Hope crushed…
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#137I'm glad that "Meaningful PvP" was singled out. PvP is important to me and its one of the things that Ultima Online got right that vast swaths of MMOs since have floundered with (in my opinion). In parts of the world (Felucca[1]), UO was a rare RPG where anyone could kill anyone, for any reason, but with the repercussion that they would be branded a "Bad person" (visible with a gray or red name instead of blue). Stea…
Many of these things are qualities I enjoy about eve online in principle. If only it weren't so tedious for 98% of the time.
I was thinking the same thing, except that I rarely find it tedious. One important thing about Eve Online is that there are hundreds if not thousands of viable ways to play the game - many of which bear little or no resemblance to the other ways of playing it.
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#138I grew up on the Ultima series - in fact it is exclusively the reason I became a programmer and game developer. I do not know how good this recent iteration will be, but at least it looks like Richard is keeping a close ear to his community. In all honesty though I would have settled for a 2D/isometric non-MMO (in the spirit of Ultima 7) -- I think that's where his original fans lie.
It was Ultima III that first made me realize that all data lived on the disk and that I could alter all of it. And I did. Maybe I'm weird but it's fun to read the assembly for Ultima 3. I was stuck in the Apple world so I stopped playing after U5. I bought the Ultima-giftpack on GOG.com before Christmas, but still have only had the time to work through the first 3. I'm savoring them, still.
Me too... Ultima III was part of my introduction to hacking, but on an entirely different platform.
I had it as the NES cartridge, mostly oblivious to the franchise's history on the computer platforms. I also had the Game Genie cheating device, whose codebook had a fairly rich set of codes for the game, changing your characters' health and stats and such. There were enough closely related codes (30 strength, 60 strength, 90 strength) that I started seeing the patterns, working out how the Game Genie code letters mapped to bits and represented the data values. So then I started synthesizing more codes that weren't in the book: hey, adding one to this letter changes the next stat instead, that must be a memory location. What happens if I add 16 to it, nice it changes the next character.
Ultimately I never really played the game with hacked characters, since the challenge of the game wasn't the stats but in exploring and mapping the dungeons and hidden areas. (I had nightmares for years about getting lost in Ambrosia.) Other NES games were much more interesting with hacked stats, notably Final Fantasy I.
Ultima III on the NES also contained the first major loophole exploit I discovered in a game. When in a dungeon, your magic power would slowly recharge with every step, but also risk running into a monster encounter. But I happened to realize that _rotating in place_ did the former and not the latter. So just by pressing the right arrow 300 times between encounters to recover 75 MP, you could cast the top-end magic nuke spell on every single monster group, virtually achieving god mode.
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#139Earlier quoted context omitted.
First, I don't see anything on that page that would disqualify this project. Second, why is this project a staff pick by Kickstarter if it somehow violates the spirit of their rules? http://www.kickstarter.com/discover/categories/games?ref=hom...
The same reason blatant scams get allowed, kickstarted has a significant financial incentive to allow as much as possible. Why would they shut down a kickstarter that will put $50,000 in their pockets?
How does that possibly fit with your claim that it is against the stated purpose of Kickstarter? Kickstarter gets to define what their purpose is, and their actions are as clear as their words. You'd have stronger ground complaining about Kickstater than this project.
Re: Lord British launches “Shroud of the Avatar” on Kickstarter
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was Ultima III that first made me realize that all data lived on the disk and that I could alter all of it. And I did. Maybe I'm weird but it's fun to read the assembly for Ultima 3. I was stuck in the Apple world so I stopped playing after U5. I bought the Ultima-giftpack on GOG.com before Christmas, but still have only had the time to work through the first 3. I'm savoring them, still.
Me too... Ultima III was part of my introduction to hacking, but on an entirely different platform. I had it as the NES cartridge, mostly oblivious to the franchise's history on the computer platforms. I also had the Game Genie cheating device, whose codebook had a fairly rich set of codes for the game, changing your characters' health and stats and such. There were enough closely related codes (30 strength, 60 stren…
I'm not too familiar with the NES port of U3. Could monsters walk over chests? Did monsters in dungeons drop chests?
In dungeons, if you were standing on a location already holding something (chests and strange-winds, basically), a monster couldn't show up, because it would have no place to drop its treasure chest.