The interface did feel clumsy and needing unnecessarily many key presses at times. E.g. transferring an item from one party member to another. Or unwielding one weapon and wielding a new one - couldn’t it automatically unwield the old weapon instead of forcing me to manually do it?
I also managed to get an error message about an unseen sprite or something at one point.
I didn’t get a sense of character development from the demo - do I get to make choices on how my characters develop at some point? I went up in level, but it all seemed automated with no player choices. I see there is a skill system, but didn’t see it actually in action in the demo - will that allow character development choices for the player? Or is it all down to the initial creation, and the development after that being without choices?
I must say, at over £15 (… which is my purchase threshold for games in general, both AAA and indie), this feels just a tad too expensive, but I am still very much tempted - will depend on how much money I end up having to spare for entertainment this month. It very much reminded me of old Might & Magic 4 and other games from that era, but with some modern niceties (automap).
The process for transferring items is shorter with the mouse because one click on the right hand character will both select the item and change the “focus”. There is info the game needs to carry out the task (giving character, receiving character, item slot…) and that input has to be given one way or another. It is probably the only drawback I can think of for party based RPGs though. As for the weapons that would work up until the point where your character learns ambidextria. then the game would need to know which of the two weapons you want to replace. For armor items it could work though, but it would be strangely inconsistent imo.
Ouch, will need to root that one out. They’re only in the demo though. When I strip down the full game to make the demo removing the sprite loads and unloads (they’re external files) that aren’t needed is prone to error.
Character development is passive, as it was in the MM games it draws its inspiration from. Well, actually MM1. MM2 had a basic system with pathfinding, mountaineering and the like). Active character development will be in the sequel though. Baby steps :)
Price point is a big headache. Underworld has a very limited potential market but the people that play it and post on the forums are really excited about it. recouping the investment at a low price (a pretty hefty art budget, among other things) seems next to impossible. This has been the object of much debate on various forums though.
Thanks again for your interest! If you’d like to see people’s reaction to the game the forums should provide an answer to most of your questions.
Ah, I didn’t use the mouse at all… one hand over the arrow keys and one over the letter keys was how I played the demo.
About wielding - yeah, that’s the same problem roguelikes run into for rings, and their solution for it varies. (From defaulting to the right-hand equipment, to prompting when ambiguous.)
Will look forward to your take on it.
Yeah, I can imagine, and the international rates / tax situation hurts you here. In the US, buying S&S for $20 is a third of the RRP price of a brand new AAA game for the PC… whereas in the UK, it costs over half the RRP price of that same AAA game. If it had been a third (i.e. £10), then I would have gone for it without hesitation.
Still, I expect I will be buying it eventually (especially if it ends up on GOG or Steam - I’ve voted for it on both places) - the demo was definitely enjoyable enough. Just a matter of how soon I will decide to prioritize it.
Might have a browse of your forums later - but I don’t want to risk running across spoilers… is there a good policy in place to avoid such?
You definitely risk running into spoilers from time to time, although you’ll find them marked as such. You should be OK from the title of the threads. Direct questions on game solutions are easy to spot.
Added interface changes from 2.04 to 2.07 are really nice I have to say. I do have one left over gripe.
Sometimes you can get stuck in an interface option when you don’t want to. E.g. On character inventory screen if you hit (I)nspect item by accident, you must inspect something. You can’t hit ESC to back out. Though I’m pretty suire you can hit ESC to back out of some UI stuff. I’d like ESC to back you out of any interface input, uniformly.
Thanks peacedog. Will do. Fortunately there was another request for a visible assassination score and there’s a glitch with the spell display for P[4,1] (grayed out when S[4,1] restrictions aren’t met, but it still works).
Less than an hour after v2.0.7 I have material for v2.0.8. Sysiph was a sissy :D
Went ahead and ordered it, after reading the manual and having another brief session with the demo (and again get the error about missing sprites - when trying to close the map screen).
Oh well, if bugs plague me in the game, at least I know where to turn to :) Always nice to see a developer interacting in this way. Hope I’ll enjoy the game! (Once Plimus gets their act together and approves of it… from past experience, they can be a bit slow at times.)
I’ll update the demo soon. I’ve been releasing quite a few updates & thought I’d wait for that to slow down before turning back to the demo. The full game is now at v2.0.10 while the demo is still at v2.0.4.
Also the missing sprite issue comes from the demo being a reduced version of the original file that calls a sprite load / delete that would be perfectly normal for the full game (meaning it is a bug that is not in the full game).
Sorry about Plimus. I have a backup service I’ll be switching to as soon as I’ve updated the demo. There will be a demo version for Plimus delivery for affiliates. Then I’ll be free to move on without doing them wrong.
Priced has dropped to $9.95 this weekend, so if you were on the fence like I was, now is a great time to get it.
I am having a great time with it so far. Only a few hours in, but I really like it. Great Wizardry and M&M feel to it. I would like to see a manual that goes into more detail about character classes and spells, but I seem to be figuring out things as I go along ok.
I’m creating my party and noticed a small glitch with entering text for character names and savegame names. The letters overlap each other as you type so that it is unreadable. Not a huge deal as long as you are very careful about typing, assuming there is no way to rename your characters if you make a mistake.
Are there other instances in the game where you have to enter text?
Sigh - and I just bought it the other day, despite feeling the price was a bit too high, and haven’t yet played my newly purchased copy. If only I had waited…
Oh well, I guess there is always some poor sod like that every time a sale runs… hopefully this will bring in more players.
@unic - I sent you a PM with a proposition as you were the very last buyer before the sale. I hope you’ll find it satisfactory ;)
@Freezer-TPF- I was aware that it was an issue with some screens but wasn’t able to reproduce it. There’s only name creation, save game names and a word riddle. Sorry for giving up on that one.
Charles, that’s very generous - I much appreciate it!
A few questions (about the game):
The (S)earch function - am I expected to use it on every square? (Some old-school games, one was expected to, and to test every wall for illusion walls…) Or will there be clues for when/where to use it?
Character creation - is there more information anywhere about what exactly the different stats / classes / races do? As this is a one-time choice impacting the whole remainder of the game, I would like as much information as possible for it… preferably without having to play through the game myself first to gain that information - and the manual seemed a bit low on details regarding character creation.
How is it determined which characters are in melee range or not? I’ve seen it vary widely…
(S)earching in every square no, but ends of tunnels and places with unusual markings yes ;)
For character creation, did you try the At(t)ributes button? It gives a run-down of each attribute which when correlated with class strengths (melee for knight…) should allow informed decisions.
Characters (and enemies) in melee are marked with a +. Polearms add extra reach so when a character has one and his/her turn is up you might see extra pluses appear (on the enemy side if the character is in melee, or the party side if not). Whether this happens or not depends if the polearm’s reach is equal to or greater than the number of spots away from the last party member in melee. If not nothing happens, but the popup explaining this still appears.
Then there are all sorts of tactical options that affect melee (and monsters can use some or all of those too). Ordering the party forward or back (party leaders only) have the greatest impact. Then a character can join or leave melee, shove an enemy out of melee… See (T)actical for full list of options.
Sorry I kind of decided not to make one… Keep it a surprise (like I did for the skills as well). A decision worth what it is worth and made long ago… :)
