A question and a personal opinion about "old school"

[Gudadantza]

First my opinion.

Grimrock will be maybe the best game this year. And the reason is people wanted deeply something with the old games feelings but with a renewed interface and graphics.

What the user expects about the game, is different in any every case but something in common can be the feeling of exploration, danger and some mechanics that were lost in the long way of the genre´s evolution.

What does mean old school in a new game? Were old school perfect in every state? Absolutely not. Some of the evolution of the genre, some of the polishing has been good, and even the most hardcore user use it in every game he choose.

A lot of mechanics in those old games existed just because the genres were mixed. Graphic adventure FPS RTS or CRPG were not popular terms and the games had a mix of platform, arcade and Paper pencil Dungeon dragons mechanics. Just because it was the way to do it. It was like in the old zx spectrum games. Some unplayable parts are there for make a short game longer due to limitations of the era.

So What I mean is, if it was needed to have timed puzzles in a revival like this. I am completely sure it is the thing people dislike more in this game. Harder puzzles? why not? harder fights? why not? but timed puzzles like in space quest 2?

And now the question.

Are possible in this engine no flat floors? I mean, It would be great to make floors going slightly down, and up in the same level.

Greetings.

[The_ShadoW]

So, what exactly is wrong in times puzzles?
You have responsive controls AND great audio cues. So no, it's not SQ2 era, it's much better now.

[Gudadantza]

A lot of timed puzzles "After Amiga era" were made optional in a lot of games. And progressively dissapeared from graphical adventures and RPG, and it was a devs choosing over time. So if it was something wrong with timed puzzles ask the question to past programmers and users.

I played RPG in the past because they were not arcade platforms.

Greetings

[Halk]

Something to bear in mind is that the timed puzzles in this game may be irritating people not by the essence of it, but because there seems to be a problem with game input. There's a thread about it, and the first post is now updated. It may be more down to system performance than down to the puzzles themselves.

[Gudadantza]

Something to bear in mind is that the timed puzzles in this game may be irritating people not by the essence of it, but because there seems to be a problem with game input. There's a thread about it, and the first post is now updated. It may be more down to system performance than down to the puzzles themselves.

Possibily You are right, but with the game finished, if you want to choose what kind of puzzle you have enjoyed more which could be the answer? A timed puzzle? I guess there are a lot of great hard puzzles in this game to enjoy.

Greetings.

[Myeka]

A lot of timed puzzles "After Amiga era" were made optional in a lot of games. And progressively disapeared from graphical adventures and RPG, and it was a devs choosing over time.

RPGs in "Amiga era" were limited due to system and control restrictions. When new technologies came up, RPGs split up in 2 main branches: adventure RPG (also called 'true' RPG) and action-RPG. You are refering to the first category, and of course they aren't time-puzzles in this kind of game because they are not "action based". But other devs made some action-RPG with time-based puzzle, you just didn't play them because you were focusing on adventure RPG.

[antti]

And now the question.

Are possible in this engine no flat floors? I mean, It would be great to make floors going slightly down, and up in the same level.

At its current state, only flat floors are possible with the engine. Everything can of course be updated and modified but having sloped floors is such a drastic change that would affect a million other things in the game so it's unlikely that it will happen any time soon.

[Halk]

Well, if you ever decide to do that (I can only imagine how incredibly difficult it would be) at least your graphics engine could handle it! Falling into a pit for the first time was impressive!

[Whisper]

I've enjoyed timed puzzles.

Why someone who have difficulties with them are complaining - is beyond me. They are optional anyway and can be bypassed and game can be finished without doing them.
But anyway this cries from casual crowd is realy sickening. Oh, noes spiders do poison and you can fail once at timed puzzle. Oh and there is no "compass" that points out secrets.

Just dont ask devs to dumb game down. Some of us dont like dumbed down games. We bought game, because it is not dumbed down and have challenging elements, including timed puzzles and poison spiders.

[Gudadantza]

And now the question.

Are possible in this engine no flat floors? I mean, It would be great to make floors going slightly down, and up in the same level.

At its current state, only flat floors are possible with the engine. Everything can of course be updated and modified but having sloped floors is such a drastic change that would affect a million other things in the game so it's unlikely that it will happen any time soon.

Thanks for the answer.

It could be something I do not remember on square based dungeon crawlers, apart Ultima Underworld (being the same genre it was not square based) the result could be atmospheric and scary, basic soft slopes, not reffering to room over room or something like this.