Vince

The game is almost done. It's fully playable from start to finish and all the content is in. It will be released in Oct or Nov at the latest. Edit: on the subject of development and different aspects. First, you need an engine, but that's not even half the battle. It seems like something until you have it and realize that it's nothing. You need the systems (character, combat, inventory, crafting, alchemy, dialogue, journal, pathfinding, AI, etc) - that's years of work, and the main assets (animations, items, icons). You have the systems and the assets - you can put together a combat game with light storytelling, which is what we did. To make a game like AoD you need tons of quests with multiple solutions, parallel, interwoven questlines, plus hundreds of thousands words, enough for 3 books, to go with it. It took us a year and a half to put together a town (quests, scripting, and testing taking at least 70%). In comparison, making a combat game is a relatively easy affair. It took us 5 months to put together the arena demo. It took us 10 months to put together this dungeon crawler.

Thanks for the vote of confidence. I hope that AoD shows that we don't have a habit of promising more than we can deliver. In general though, I think it's fairly easy to script the above mentioned interactions as it's not a new feature, but a feature that's always been done half way. The way I see it, all attempts to breathe some life into party members always fell short because the party is one of the main RPG conventions, a toy that must never ever be taken away from the player. The party members can say what they want when you talk to then, they can even participate in conversations with other NPCs, but when you're "questing", you lead and they follow without question, ready to back you up no matter what. You make all decisions, they stay silent and indifferent. Even if they say something like "did we really have to burn down that orphanage?", you say something and they happily move on. On rare occasions a party member can leave the party, but it never really affects you as you just tell another tool to take his place. That's what we want to change. I'm talking about combining what we did in AoD (tons of choices at every step) with the party members having opinions and agendas that interfere with your ability to do as you please. In other words, the consequences will be instant and reloading to avoid the negative outcome will force you to make a different non-cosmetic choice (that might have lasting consequences).

Absorbing the alien essence changes you and gives you a different 'perspective'. Regardless of what you once were, you are no longer human, which is a very significant change. Keep in mind that while the ritual is described from your perspective, the ending text is "written" by your priests two hundred years later, who aren't very reliable narrators as they weren't there to witness what actually happened. You don't know how everyone reacted to you when you returned to the cities, looking like a freak. Etc.

In a shocking twist of events we moved from "it's just, like, my opinion, man" to "my opinion is an objective fact and as such is beyond contestation". Well played.

Thank you for your support.

Because such games don't sell and when it comes to action RPGs it's not the most interesting setting. Small indie studios can get away with it because we need to sell less than 1% of what AAAs do to stay in business.

Just to be clear, we aren't aiming to make a full-scale crawler a-la Wiz 8 which was a massive game. We're aiming to make an $8 game (I assume $2 in Russia) that we can put together in 8-10 months. Fight your way out of a prison mine, probably 40 fights in total.

Pretty much. I'm excited to try it myself. We have the overall design done for both games. The dungeon crawler was always our plan B - what happens if AoD doesn't sell enough to pay for the generation ship game's development: do we give up, take our ball and go home or try something else? Trying something else (a quick and inexpensive game that's all about combat) seems like a better idea. While our goal is to put together the dungeon crawler in 8-10 months (otherwise it doesn't make sense), we'll do our best to offer new features to make the game more interesting for people who are well familiar with AoD. The setting does call for a reworked armor system (individual pieces you can scavenge and swap around), but we'll see. As for the generation ship RPG, we want it to have a very different character system and style (focus on ranged weapons, Earth-made single-shot laser weapons vs crude ship-made firearms favoring rapid fire and burst, character levels and feats, environmental interaction, etc). So far the setting is shaping up well. We'll start sharing details a few months after AoD is out. We're in your debt for all your help, so you get a lifetime subscription to all our future games. Whenever you want a key, just PM me.

Thank you for your support, guys. PS. AoD has a very limited appeal, so it will never sell even a third of what D:OS sold, no matter the coverage, but as long as it sells enough to keep us in 'business' and pay for the next game's development, I won't complain.

Putting something playable together is relatively easy. Shaping it into a quality game takes time (clearly, a lot more time than we've anticipated). When we put the first iteration of the game together, I naively assumed that the we're almost done. Turned out it was only the beginning.

Not important and wouldn't affect gameplay (i.e. whether the ship is still in transit or arrived a long time ago would have no effect on your actions, survival, or exploration). Even if NPCs tell you from the start that the engines stopped working many moons ago (implying that the ship has arrived to its destination), what does it change? You're still stuck on the ship and have no access, means, or knowledge to do anything about it. Similarly, we didn't try to convince that the AoD world was invaded by demons only to reveal that it wasn't. Antidas tells you that the Qantari were demons and Feng tells you right away that they were humans. Same reasin - not important. The true ending for the colony ship game isn't realizing that the ship had arrived a long time ago but in making a decision, which in turn would rely on your experience, interaction, and place in the 'world'. For example, what would it take to make you decide that you (and everyone else) are better off on the ship because here you're a somebody, a man of importance and influence? When the ship lands, you're a nobody and would have to work your ass off just like everyone else (think Goodfellas' ending). Etc.

Well, we don't really want to rush things, so... Not true. ^ a smart soldier ^ a tough trader Obviously, it's more challenging to play a 'multi-classed' character but that's how it should be. Too much if you ask me, but kindness to the unwashed masses who would kill innocent people (and did) for a few extra skill points is my soft spot.

A new annotated combat guide by Brandon:

It's a bug, will be fixed soon (hopefuly today). My apologies for the inconvenience.

You can buy it at the pass (guards only at the moment, but will be extended to Aurelian agents as well).

We're now on Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/230070/

Then you're missing out on a top 10 RPG - Star Trail. Check it out. http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum/index.php/topic,2365.0.html

We put together the final build at 1am last night and released it to those who have pre-ordered because they come first. Now we'll submit to Valve and see what they say.

Took 6 min for me and I have a crappy connection. So, Albatross, if you're still having problems, let me know.

Not planned but possible (now that you asked). In the past shields were destructible, which is why they weren't craftable. Now that it's changed, we can add more techniques. The only issue is the lack of time (small team, too many tasks, etc), so I can't make any promises. I don't recall if we added the lich potion in the demo release. Other than that, that's all we have, but again, it's easy to add more given time.

No idea. I got this PM from another gentleman: "I recently pre-ordered AoD and have been clicking the download link obsessively all day (checking to see if the extended demo had been uploaded). BMT looks down on such behaviour and have blocked my password. The link I received was: ..." I assume if you download the file on a daily basis, they will flag it as suspicious behavior and lock the account. I'd suggest to email them as we have no control over such things. We can always give you (and anyone else who's having problems) a private link once the demo is released, so we *will* ensure that anyone who pre-ordered will get the demo, but if you want the BMT link to work, talk to them. For the record, we aren't the type to upload early and sit on it while writing pretty press-releases and contacting the media. The moment we have the final build, we'll upload it and make an announcement. So, no announcement - no demo in the placeholder file. We *are* getting close. 99% of issues - bugs, flow, transition, balance, etc are fixed. We gave the testers build #11 yesterday and are planning to give them the final release candidate tomorrow and let them test the balance throughout the weekend. If they say it's a go, then it's a go. If they uncover more issues, then it's a no-go.

I'd say yes. Freestyle interaction tends to be meaningless, nothing but filler. It's an illusion of freedom, much like Bioware's (or recentlt Shadowrun's) multiple dialogue lines that say the same thing in different ways. True freedom can only come from non-linearity, multiple quest solutions, choices & consequences.

Good question, good topic for discussion. I can't say that I like these gameplay elements, at least the way they're done in 99% of RPGs. - sneaking - click a button, your character becomes transparent and can walk everywhere in broad daylight (talking about isometric games here). When you fail an invisible check, you become visible and attacked on sight. We had an idea for a TB sneaking system, but didn't have time to implement it (which, coincidentally, goes to show that we don't throw every interesting idea into the game). - stealing/lockpicking - this one I really dislike. From the design perspective, it's a 'free stuff' skill. You run around, looking for chests to lockpick and people to pickpocket. It feels like a retarded mini-game: somewhere on this level hidden various, meaningless treasure and you should collect it all, sell it, and feel good about it. So, basically, we didn't want to do the 'traditional' implementation, but didn't have time to design something interesting. Instead, we went with scripted events in text-adventure mode that let you use skills in hopefully rewarding ways. There are tough locks, with built-in traps and such, that you'd have to figure out, there are sneaking quests (the palace infiltration, kaeso's house, etc), and so on.

It's a design decision. I remember playing PST and getting to the part with the giant skeleton guards and enchanted armor. The text description and the options to unravel the spell were like a breath of fresh air. Then later I was discussing Fallout 2 - the area where you get the part for the car, with a chickenwire fence. You couldn't climb it because it would require different climbing animations, yet a simple textbox with a check could have accomplished that easily. High Agility - teleport to the other side. Low Agility - drop on your ass. So for me, the text adventure design is about freedom and atmosphere.

Not at all. You can make a great quest even out of a simple delivery quest (like the New Vegas' plot), but usually - 99% - you get something delightfully simple and uneventful. Go to [relative], tell him that his/her [relative] is sorry, return to the first relative, collect a reward, ask yourself why you're playing this game. Google Translate does a great job letting me stay in touch with French, Italian, and Russian gamers.