Hi Kelan,
thanks for all the good words :)
Game purchase is pretty straight forward. No key, just a download then install and it overwrites the demo without affecting the saves, which can then be re-used.
Just wanted to follow up a bit that I did purchase the game last week and it is going really well so far. I have a few notes that I would like to get to you, Charles, but some would be spoilers so how would it be best to get them to you? I would post them on your forums if you want, but since they contain spoilers perhaps you would rather I just PM you or something?
Of the things I can say:
I got my party up to level 7 and unlocked the 4th tier of spells. At first I was a little bummed there would only be 5 tiers of spells, but as you mention on your site, all spells are pretty useful even though there are only 4 priest and sorc spells per level. The total spell count may be lower, but the actual usefulness of them seems to be high.
At first I didn’t like the way water/holy water was handled and the sorc runes you needed to loot to cast the more powerful spells. However, now that I have been playing a while, it feels right and I can tell you put a lot of thought into how it would affect game-play and strategy. It is a nice twist on a familiar mechanic.
I was concerned a few times whether I was progressing in the proper manner/order in game, but never ended up being frustrated. By just exploring each map systematically, I was stumbling into all relevant and important events (I think). A few times the monsters seemed to be a bit over-tuned, but then I would uncover an item or spell that made them a lot easier to deal with so I would say personally the game flows very well and the difficulty is just right.
So far the game hasn’t grown stale at all, which I am pleasantly surprised with. The pace that new enemies show up with new tactics and the pace that you grow in power through new items and/or spells seems to be just right. I am quite impressed you did this alone. Your efforts at polish in game-play show. Granted, this is ignoring some of the graphics and re-usable sound effects, etc, but concentrating on the core tactics and game-play, I am getting a good experience.
Now I am genuinely interested in finishing the game, or at least progressing further. If there are 15-20 areas/maps? I guess I am only about a third of the way through and easily have over 10 hours into it already I would say. The encounters are already getting pretty tough so I can only imagine what you have in store as I get into the end game. Well done.
Thank you sir :-)
I’m really glad you’re enjoying it! You can PM here, on the forums or send an email to charles (at) older bytes, whichever you prefer.
Thanks for your support!
Edit: There are 20 areas. Some fixes needed to be made and a second update will be up soon. Maybe some or all of your concerns will be addressed by then :)
Liking the demo so far, here’s some feedback:
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I’m not seeing keyboard buffering being used in some cases, so I have to wait between entering keyboard commands. To me this is a critical element of this type of game to play smoothly once I get used to the UI. E.g. In combat I press “F” “A” in quick succession and the attack doesn’t happen. I have to do “F” <wait for prompt> “A” to get it to work. Same for movement. I should be able to press the up arrow key a few times quickly if I know I want to move multiple spaces, then the moves should queue up and play out as quickly as the rendering/sound effects can go (per the game speed setting). I shouldn’t have to wait for each individual move/turn to complete before pressing the arrow for the next one. This should be true for all screens/menus. If I know a prompt is coming to confirm something I should be able to hit “Y” or “N” before I even see the prompt on the screen if I want to preempt it.
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I need to be able to dismiss information updates from the screen quickly, and the game needs to be consistent in both how this is done and how I am informed that this option is available. E.g. After I search it appears that I need to press <space> to continue but the game doesn’t appear to tell me that. On the other hand, after I save, rest, stumble on an encounter, or win combat I seem to have no way to skip the splash screen (or combat results) other than to wait. If there is, I’m not seeing any info on the screen informing me of that. I should be able to press a key to dismiss it immediately and move on. After one successful rest I know what the message is and I shouldn’t have to wait 5 seconds after it pops up. It doesn’t sound like a lot of time but the mind moves quickly with these things and we expect the game to move according to our own prompts/timing as much as possible. Some of this may be the result of the game speed setting, but I should still be able to override that by hitting a key to move on.
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After I rest successfully I can start moving while the splash screen telling me that I healed is still showing, it should be modal. Not only that, I can get into a fight during that and the healing effects of the rest won’t have registered yet. I was expecting the move key to complete/dismiss the rest screen but instead it stayed up, I moved, and got into a fight. I never got the effects of that rest though I suspect I lost the food/water. The effects of the rest should be applied before control is given back to the player.
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Enemies not fighting: If some enemies of a group are injured they may move out of melee range. This is fine when there are other enemies around, but once they are the only enemies left then if they don’t have a ranged attack they ought to move back into melee range so they don’t just sit there doing nothing and helplessly getting picked off by ranged attacks
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Sometimes in combat my party members don’t seem to be getting their turn. There is no evident condition such as sleep causing this as far as I can see, unless I accidentally hit some key that caused them to be permanently out of the battle. I went into auto combat to see if that would fix it but even auto combat was only using 2 of my party members. All of my party members were capable of shooting if not in melee range. Then I was stuck in auto combat and couldn’t get out. I even slowed down combat speed to give me more time to get the CTRL-A command in, but it didn’t work. Also, sensitivity for hitting CTRL-A to go into auto combat is problematic, sometimes I have to hit it multiple times. Could be a timing issue. But if I hit CTRL-A while an enemy is attacking it should be queued up so that when one of my party members gets a turn the CTRL-A is already registered. Likewise hitting CTRL-A to stop auto-combat should register at any time, even if e.g. the enemy is attacking.
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General game speed and combat speed should be independent settings, I want the game speed to be max on the adventure map, but for combat I want a little extra time to read the text of exactly what is happening. Linking them, potentially necessitating having one either too fast or too slow, adds hassle to the play experience.
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If there are multiple enemies but only one of them is eligible for the chosen action (e.g. only 1 is in melee range), there is no need for the prompt/specification of who to attack, just attack the lone eligible enemy.
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Minor: If I cast a targeted spell on the enemy the prompt for who to cast it on should only include eligible targets, it appears to always say ‘(A-J)’ even if there aren’t actually 10 enemies.
Items 1,2, and 6 are fundamental to this type of game IMO and are cases where it feels like I am fighting the UI which makes playing the game somewhat less enjoyable than it could be.
Hi SMJ,
Really sorry I missed this. I have to check my email & see if I missed the notfication and if not, my profile to see why I’m not getting notifications anymore.
I’m working on an update right now, based on user feedback. Trade and stores will be overhauled, party gold, food & water will replace individual stashes.
I’ll look into your suggestions and see how I can work at least some of them in.
Players not getting their turns was a bug I fixed in the full file but haven’t updated the demo just yet. A new demo will be posted with the coming update. Sorry I have to rush, I’ll come back and answer in more detail.
Thanks for your feedback!
Any more impressions from folks who’ve grabbed this?
Thanks for the response. Good to see you are still making updates/improvements.
Another question/comment: does a thief in stealth mode ever have a reason that it would be better to Fight vs. Assassinate? Because if not I would suggest either disabling the Fight option when in stealth, or make Fight do an Assassinate. For some reason I’m expecting that when I’m in stealth hitting F will default to an assassination move but it isn’t. Maybe I just need to get used to hitting A, but if there is no benefit to picking Fight in that situation then the game could help me avoid that mistake.
The only times I have used Fight instead of Assassinate (when I had a choice) was when there was a high priority target in melee range that I wanted to try to take out before they got a turn. To Assassinate you have to Stealth first, then it takes a bit of time before you can complete the Assassinate. While stealthed it may allow an enemy to get off a nasty special which you may have been able to prevent if you were able to kill them with a quick Fight attack in the first place.
Also, you will find out that under some circumstances you will not be able to Stealth, so Fight/Shoot will need to be used then.
Actually what SMJ means is that when on stealth, (that choice has already been made) he would like (f)ight to trigger (a)ssassinate, unless there might be a particular reason to use fight when in stealth mode.
Which there isn’t, so it’s a very good point & will be in the update. Thanks ;)
Edit: Stealth is only available when your rogue has full health. The idea being “if you’re bleeding, you can’t hide”. This adds tactical dilemmas (should I heal my knight who’s almost dead or my rogue who barely has a scratch?" and some risk management.
The only place in the game that tells you this is when you try to use stealth despite it being grayed out. That is an oversight & will be remedied.
@Freezer - TPF browsing the forums gives an idea to the general perception of the game by players.
http://www.olderbytes.com/community
It does have a substantial amount of spoilers though as they tend to ask direct questions. The most noteable complaints besides a few bug reports are that the game gets too cryptic at times as to what to do next so I’ve been adding clues. Also the store, trade, share and gather mechanics weren’t the light of the party so I redid them. The update should be available soon now after some testing.
Ah yeah! “in” stealth mode. Missed that somehow.
Looking forward to the update. I just got past a few events and the quests are heating up some. Things are getting a little more interesting.
Charles - Thanks very much for the link to the forums.
Yep, that’s what I meant.
I may be wrong because the speed was high, but I think the auto-combat may have actually tried to use stealth when my rogue was injured and gotten that message, unless I just imagined it.
A few more comments/questions, some of these may not be practical but could be considered for the sequel:
-I accidentally hit ‘o’ instead of ‘p’ to go to options, then I couldn’t back out of the reorder menu, so I had to switch 2 chars and then go back and undo it afterwards. Don’t remember if I tried ‘x’ which I know you use sometimes for abort, I’m sure I tried at least ‘SPACE’ and ‘ESC’.
-Maybe I missed it but I didn’t notice a duration in spell descriptions. Took me a little while to realize bless lasts for the day.
-Could be my computer’s font or localization settings or something, but in a tome I was reading the single quote (or apostrophe) character was displaying as a question mark.
-Consider using some way (maybe color or asterisk) to show visually which spell levels have opened up for a caster (in the magic/cast menu).
-If space, consider showing the spell points and runes/holy water requirements on the magic/cast screen next to the spell name, as “Spell-Name (X,Y)” where X is the spell point cost and Y is the rune or holy water cost. E.g. “Arcane Bolt (2,2)”, not sure if I remember the costs but that shows the concept.
-Also, if it could be worked in somehow, it would be nice to see the caster’s remaining spell points and runes/holy water directly from the magic/cast menu while in combat (outside of combat it is already visible in the background in the character screen).
-I know this one may not be so easy, but I cannot resume playing the game after standby if I leave it running while going into standby, nor after changing resolution (when I unplug my laptop from my monitor). It just hangs.
That might have happened trying to press CTRL+A and only registering the A. Autocombat isn’t enabled and the attempt to enable it failed. Also the message saying stealth isn’t available doesn’t use a turn so it would’ve entered an infinite loop you couldn’t have failed to notice ;)
Already done :)
Added to spell descriptions.
I looked for an out of place question mark and didn’t find any in the tomes. It seems unlikely due to settings though as the others would have had the same treatment…
Added a third shade of gray.
That would just be too cluttered. That’s what the (S)pell description option is for ;)
I added blue and purple bars in and out of combat for visual tracking of depleteing SP, HW / Runes (contrary to popular belief, sorcerers are capped for runes by their intelligence).
I haven’t the slightest clue how to go about that :/ Yet.
All of the above updates will be in the next version release, except the standby issue. There are tons more, which is why it is taking so long. Sorry about the wait.
@Freezer: No problem :)
Sounds good.
I’ve seen the ’ vs. ? issue or similar in other applications. It probably has to do with a character set being used or something (something being translated dynamically outside of your code so you wouldn’t see it). No idea how to fix it. Maybe your code is using a default setting on the computer rather than forcing a common one?
If I have more feedback when I get the chance I will register in your forums and stop bugging you here :)
(that way I’ll also see what is going on and mention less stuff that is already done/planned)
It’s obnoxious to have to take the extra inventory step just to get that information, though. If the spells were displayed as a vertical list, I don’t think clutter would be a problem at all.
Just IMO.
Sounds like it might be an encoding issue with the text. I personally see the same problem in international emails (I believe you are in France, Charles?). Not sure of the details though, but quick research points towards an older Microsoft encoding not playing well with others.
If it’s what it sounds like the poster is describing, then this test page shows the issue: http://www.dwheeler.com/essays/quotes-test-utf-8.html
Another possibility is that the text was originally entered using a keyboard that has some similar looking but different keys - probably the single quote and the single quote looking key that’s on the tilde key (sorry don’t know the name).
Try searching for “smart quotes” to get a start.
Thanks for the ideas. I think charset will remain a low priority issue I’ll look into a bit later. Spell layout is something to think about.
Spell Name SP cost R or HW cost
Burning Hand 1/16 0/8
Animal Hide 1/16 0/8
Arcane Bolt 2/16* 2/8*
Alert 1/16 0/8
- 1 per level of caster
(S)pell description 1 2 3 4 5
If there are no game breakers discovered I’ll publish a last final honest to god there won’t be anymore after this (I hope) update after announcing the sequel. Some people need to hear about something new because I’ve dwelled on this one for way too long (first version out in march 2010!)
The sequel announcement is iminent ;)
Thanks everyone for your feedback!
Update is up. Also I announced the sequel.
http://www.olderbytes.com/swords-and-sorcery-sequel-to-underworld-announcement.html
Looking good, Charles. Congrats to you on your announcement!
I have been really busy the past couple weeks with too many home projects to be done before winter sets in, but when I am not playing Borderlands 2 with my wife or submitting Dominions 3 turns, I have been spending all my available time with Underworld. It seems every time the game starts to get a little stale, I uncover some new areas or a new quest or start getting or finding some nice item upgrades I want to go test out. I think I may be nearing the halfway point and am really enjoying plowing my way through without looking at any spoilers. I don’t think I could have done that with M&M 1, but you provide just enough information and feedback that I am figuring things out on my own at a nice pace which can be pretty rewarding.
Glad to hear you are going forward with the expansion. I look forward to seeing the finished product and trying it out someday.
Thanks, and very glad you’re enjoying it! :)