Thoughts on "Quest for Infamy" (Demo)

[Bad2DaBone]

Backers can see some screen shots of the final combat system in the backers forums.

Anything else in there?


One more thing I'll add- I think the best option for combat is a combat difficulty slider.  Games like QFG2 VGA and Mass Effect have them.  It lets people up the difficulty for a good challenge (or if combat gets boring), or lower it if they're just trying to learn their way through. (or are "just playing for the story")  That way, everyone gets what they want, whether it's a total newb or a challenge-junkie.

Might be fun if there were some New Game + rewards for accomplishments like winning the game without lowering the combat difficulty. 

[Lupin]

Backers can see some screen shots of the final combat system in the backers forums.

Anything else in there?

We've been swore to secrecy, so if I did tell you what has been released from the Cave of Wonders, then I will get dragged off to the secret dungeon.

On my own notes, there is only one thing I want to add at this point (since I am only half way through testing it myself), I hope there are more funny death moments. When I was in the pharmacy and the narrator was saying "You really don't want to touch that", all I could think was "OK, create a save file here, and lets see how I die", but no funny death happened

But I know that this is only the demo, and we will see many funny deaths in the game itself. You only have to look at the "trying to pick up the fishing pole" part for one such example

[Lambonius]

Don't forget the hidden "death by dehydration." 

[SarahLiz]

Backers can see some screen shots of the final combat system in the backers forums.

Anything else in there?

We've been swore to secrecy, so if I did tell you what has been released from the Cave of Wonders, then I will get dragged off to the secret dungeon.

On my own notes, there is only one thing I want to add at this point (since I am only half way through testing it myself), I hope there are more funny death moments. When I was in the pharmacy and the narrator was saying "You really don't want to touch that", all I could think was "OK, create a save file here, and lets see how I die", but no funny death happened

But I know that this is only the demo, and we will see many funny deaths in the game itself. You only have to look at the "trying to pick up the fishing pole" part for one such example

That is EXACTLY what I did...saved my game and tried to get into trouble anywhere I could, like in Prospero's, the apothecary, the bar (picking fights anyone?), and even the general store.  I'm hoping for more opportunities for funny death scenes too.  (I do like, for example, where he reaches for the fishing pole and they tell you the story about how, although you're not stupid enough to drown, you are dumb enough to get hypothermia...)


I also agree with Bad2DaBone (but I can't remember how to put more than one person's quoted post in mine) that an option for "Easy" or "Difficult" mode in combat would be really awesome.  Epecially for someone like myself who plays these type of adventure games for the "adventure" part and not the action...


Sarah Rupert     

[Blackthorne]

Heh, yes - trust me - there are PLENTY of places to get into trouble... I enjoy writing the death messages, heh.

And as for Battle Difficulty - yes, in the final version we'll have settings for easy, medium and hard difficulty with arcade/battle sequences.

I know I've mentioned this before, but I'll say it again - we're not going with a traditional point system, rather we're going with an achievements system and an "Infamy" rating at the end of the game.  Different events and paths you choose will affect this.


Bt

[Goatmeal]

In the latest "Hero-U: Rogue To Redemption" Kickstarter Project Update #35, Corey Cole says that Lori solved the problem of Adventure game or RPG game by implementing a slider for their game...

Lori came up with a new solution to the "Is it an adventure game, or is it an RPG?" question. Instead of having a difficulty slider (or possibly in addition), we will have a game style slider. You will be able to select "Puzzles only, no combats", "Traditional RPG with random encounters and emphasis on combat", or "Mixed adventure and RPG". We may add a few settings such as "RPG Challenge Mode".

[Klytos]

That's going to be a lot of work, in my opinion.

That's literally programming each puzzle point with at least three unique solutions.

I look forward to seeing that in action!

[s_d]

I agree.  Eliminating (or minimising) the random encounters, in regards to combat, should be fairly trivial.  Beyond that, complexity progresses arithemetically, and for puzzles in which hysteresis is respected, geometrically!  Also, the test matrix for QA is increased accordingly.

[Blackthorne]

Yeah, implementing and programming that kind of options for difficulty would definitely be a challenge.  For battle, I'd say it would be a matter of adjusting stats for the enemy characters vs. you (ie their Hit Points, strength of attacks, etc.) but it's all how a programmer does it.  Heh, it's easy to describe something as a "slider" but to make it function is a whole other ball game!  Sierra games sometimes had "Sliders" for difficulty, but they really only picked from 2-3 settings.  The slider just looked pretty.


Bt

[Sektor]

I really enjoyed demo 2. I didn't play the first demo, so it was all new to me. I got all 3 endings and I'm looking forward to the full game.

I made a video of some of the demo 2 glitches. I'm sure you know about and have fixed most/all of these for the full game already but it's fun to have a video record.

• Stuck after climbing tree glitch (I see this one has its own thread)
• Levitation near town wall glitch (if you walk to the west instead of south then something odd happens)
• Gate glitch (if the gate is closed and you walk through it instead of climbing then you go to the next screen but you can't move. If you try to climb the gate then you magically appear from no where.)
• Blacksmith position glitch

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG56E-x3loI" target="_blank" class="aeva_link bbc_link new_win">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HG56E-x3loI</a>

One of the town locals collided with Roehm during one of my games and they were just doing their walking animation on the spot but I haven't been able to recreate it and I wasn't recording video at the time.

[Bad2DaBone]

Yeah, implementing and programming that kind of options for difficulty would definitely be a challenge.  For battle, I'd say it would be a matter of adjusting stats for the enemy characters vs. you (ie their Hit Points, strength of attacks, etc.) but it's all how a programmer does it.  Heh, it's easy to describe something as a "slider" but to make it function is a whole other ball game!  Sierra games sometimes had "Sliders" for difficulty, but they really only picked from 2-3 settings.  The slider just looked pretty.


Bt

....

Really?

Huh.... I never knew that!

[Blackthorne]

Sektor - thanks for the video of the bugs!  That really does help!

I think when we come to beta testing, we're going to have some good hands on deck!

@Bad - heh, yeah, programming is quite a tricky thing.  It's not like magic where you just wish things to happen.  It's all a bunch of annoying numbers, math and equations.


Bt

[s_d]

Sierra games sometimes had "Sliders" for difficulty, but they really only picked from 2-3 settings.  The slider just looked pretty.

Really?

Huh.... I never knew that!

Well, yeah.  Then, you have a couple of options on implementing what pops out of the actual slider.  One (which I would suggest) would be to pre-set each of the notches based on testing and gameplay balance.  Perhaps from zero to ten, you increase the multiplier for random combat encounters by one per two notches, perhaps an enemy stat increases by 2% per notch (for a total of 20%), and a few other things happen at key points in the scale.

The other option would be some kind of diabolical polynomial built to smoothly scale all the relevant factors positively or negatively (does anybody actually do that?!).

[Bad2DaBone]

I think Oblivion did.  Giant demons could be slain like rats and regular guys could take hits like a tank on lowest or highest.

[s_d]

Well, yes, but that could have been a single attribute ("enemy hit damage").  I wonder if any game actually constructed a complex polynomial across multiple terms to smoothly scale loads of factors (smoothly as in differentiable and continuous multivariate functions).

Certainly lots of games have difficulty sliders, B2DB