Kieron brought this to my attention over at RPS with this post. Being a sucker for D&D based games I briefly tried the demo, liked what I saw, and bought the full game. It may or may not be worth ~$25, not sure yet. I just like to support these kinds of efforts.
What’s the OGL? It’s the Open Gaming License published by Wizards of the Coast. Think Dungeons & Dragons 3.5. If you are not familiar with D&D 3.5 then know it includes a complex, tactical combat system with more options than you can shake a stick at. You can find the Knights of the Chalice web site over at HeroicFantasyGames.
The designer’s viewpoint on the genre coincides nicely with my own. The graphics are low resolution but passable. What’s not acceptable however is the font choice.
Dear god in heaven. I first started playing on my 42" but quickly realized I would have to sit across the street to resolve the characters into words. So I moved over to the 24", pushed it back 3 feet on the desk, and sat on my couch across the room. Eureka! I could almost read it. Then I discovered windowed mode and realized I just wasted quite a bit of time. Forget fullscreen mode unless you are playing on an old 13" monitor.
You can find a nice sized demo here, it starts you off in a custom made area for just the demo with a level 3 premade party. The full game starts off at level 1 and you make your own 4 man party out of 3 classes (warrior, cleric, wizard) and race (human, half elf, half dwarf).
eh i don’t know about only having the holy triad of classes (Fighter, cleric, wizard). My favorite thing about D&D games is all of the options in character creation/progression personally.
I’m still not convinced that the game fully satisfies the OGL. While it does display the OGL (and an updated Section 15 sourcing the SRD 3.5) and does contain (and identify) quoted Open Game Content text I’m not convinced that’s everything he needed to do. The monsters seem to be awfully similar to their SRD counterparts and their text isn’t available from the help. In addition I’m pretty sure the whole combat process has to be available (and it’s an open question on whether Open Game Content being in the help is enough or whether each use of OGC has to be indicated in the game itself). Also the Software FAQ seems to indicate that the data that makes the game run (all bonuses, spell information, etc.) needs to be in human readable data files and not encoded in the executable (i.e., hard-coded) – though perhaps having the stuff spelled out in help is enough.
I’m not trying to nit-pick and I really do love the game. It’s just that I’ve considered doing an OGL game and even with a great example such as this I’m not positive what exactly I have to do to make sure WotC doesn’t eat me alive. Unfortunately the OGL seems to not be very clear for software.
As for the game itself – very nice. I don’t mind the low resolution but the font should be changed. It’s just not readable. I like the music, adherence to the rules, and the AI is decent.
The interface is a little meh at times (show the class in the inventory screen – as well as to the right of the party members you can switch / trade with in that screen). I’m a little disappointed that though an uncleared area has LOS blocked by walls once cleared the LOS is not blocked. I’m spoiled by Ultima in that regard.
Wow. That’s one question I completely failed to anticipate. PC.
Really digging the game so far. It’s your typical save often (Ctrl-S, instantaneous) reload often D&D rpg, so if that really annoys you this probably isn’t your game. And the interface needs quite a bit of work. It’s usable but I think he went too far to preserve the sense of nostalgia it delivers so effectively. As if the font choice and 320x240 resolution wasn’t a major clue.
Aside from that it’s almost required playing for anybody that enjoyed the old Gold Box/Dark Sun games.
The access to important mechanics information is nice, but the layout of the character screen is especially busy (owing in part to #1), so it kind of hurts the effort to say “hey, click on this, there’s more information to discover!”.
The UI in general could use work. I was attacking with my two knights, and then it was the priests turn. I decided to shoot the priest’s crossbow. When it was a knight’s turn again, he had the shoot icon. I’m not sure if that was just a leftover graphical artifact, or if he was actually going to shoot his bow. If the latter, that’s obnoxious. The game shoudl remember that character’s last combat action and make that the default. I know I can right click anc change the action (a nice inclusion), but it’s still obnoxious.
Looting is a huge stupid pain in the ass.
I needed to rest in the demo but lacked a campfire. I was in no way prepared for the second encounter in the basement/dungeon/whatever.
I liked the feat recommendations on level up.
It being a game that is “faithful” to the OGL version of D&D 3.5 (or whatever) may have some drawbacks. Did I see random HP gains on level up? God I hate that.
My memory of 3.5e combat mechanics is slightly suspect. Iremember being annoyed in ToEE that 5-foot step wasn’t the default action when you moved while adjacent to an enemy. Maybe there are reasons why you’d rather take a full move, but I seemed to recall wanting a 5-footer to be the norm in that scenario. This game could use that.
The AI was interesting. The enemies liked to grapple. Mages cast plenty of spells. Enemies weren’t shy about targeting the softies.
Interesting game. I’ll probably buy it. But the interface could use some serious work.
I noticed this too. It’s annoying but it shouldn’t be too hard to fix, and he has been whipping out updates pretty quickly so far.
Looting is a huge stupid pain in the ass.
Agreed. Something has to change here.
It being a game that is “faithful” to the OGL version of D&D 3.5 (or whatever) may have some drawbacks. Did I see random HP gains on level up? God I hate that.
In the options you can have it give you the full amount on level up.
My memory of 3.5e combat mechanics is slightly suspect. Iremember being annoyed in ToEE that 5-foot step wasn’t the default action when you moved while adjacent to an enemy. Maybe there are reasons why you’d rather take a full move, but I seemed to recall wanting a 5-footer to be the norm in that scenario. This game could use that.
This is actually in the game, at least the full version anyways.
Found a ReadMe.txt file in the application directory, which gives some good keyboard shortcuts.
Some of my favorites:
Pushing Control and mousing over a character displays his line of sight.
1, 2, 3 and 4 open the character screens for the first, second, third and fourth characters in the party.
5, 6, 7 and 8 open the inventory screens for the first, second, third and fourth characters in the party.
SPACE closes a character screen or help screen, bringing the game back; or, if you are mousing over an item icon, pushing SPACE will pick up the item(s).
CONTROL+S saves the game on the slot number 1 (does not work in dialogue, inventory and character screens and item/character observation modes).
CONTROL+L loads the game on slot number 1 (does not work in dialogue, inventory and character screens and item/character observation modes).
Pressing space to pick up the item is much better than drag n drop, for sure. Being able to just click the item and have it magically appear in my inventory would be better still.
Better than that, I shouldn’t need to click on one of those treasure icons, just pres 'g’et (or something).
Even better still, auto loot. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
One funny moment: I was fooling around in the character info screens, following links and such, when I wandered back to the main info screen and stared at the AC value. “Holy crap, that’s terrible”. I removed my armor, and it droppped. I put the armor back on, and then it increased. “WTF? AC counts up?”
And then I remembered I was playing not just a 3.5e (ish) CRPG, but a CRPG like pretty much every other CRPG in recent times save Devil’s Whiskey and Dark Spire (and maybe EO; I can’t recall there). I.e. we dropped the stupid “negative AC is better” mechanic ages ago. I guess the game just put me back into a simpler time. ;P
Fixed the Orc Stockade and Taneliz group assignment bugs – pretty critical. Please let me know if anything like this shows up again in the later parts of the game.
Fixed an issue that happened if a character in the party was standing at the top of a campfire square just before it’s created (bear cave): the game will push the character to an empty square.
Fixed an issue that happened if one of your character gets an ability damage or ability drain so high that he becomes paralyzed. If this happens, at the end of the fight his stats will recover to a minimum of 1 so he can at least move around.
Just a few bug fixes, he said he is having the artists make a higher resolution font for the next version.
My party is level 10 now and my opinion on the game just keeps improving.
I barely survived my first battle, with some lizardmen. 3 of my 4 party members were unconscious by the time I finished off the last mob. So, I’m trying to find a way to rest, but no campfires in sight. Then I suddenly find myself cornered by a large bear that proceeds to own my party handily. I’m not getting how to heal up. I have a priest but he can barely heal 1 party member up, let alone 3. Is this just a hard part of the demo, and the full game is much easier? Or maybe I just suck at these games now.
