{"id":35414,"date":"2016-11-10T23:47:43","date_gmt":"2016-11-11T03:47:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=35414"},"modified":"2016-11-10T15:57:45","modified_gmt":"2016-11-10T19:57:45","slug":"ruts-vs-battlespire-and-your-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/?p=35414","title":{"rendered":"Ruts vs. Battlespire: …and Your Questions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Roger Hà\u00a5gensen<\/strong><\/p>\n

How scared shitless were you that you'd run into a game breaking bug that either hosed your save game (and would you take the time to replay it all again?), or worse the game just hate your PC and refuse to go further (which you'd realize on your 2nd playthrough with new savegames). Did you have a backup plan? (like get saves from the net that where hopefully past that point? Or just throw up your hands and give up?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Up until the halfway mark, any serious showstopping glitch I ran into would have meant the end of the series. No hesitation. That’s an explicit decision I came to in the setup phase. That said, when I came to the elevator glitch on level one, I already had enough investment in the series to spend an hour or two goofing around trying to cheese my way down.<\/p>\n

At the halfway mark, once I really started committing to the game, I started making save backups. If necessary, I was prepared to install the game on a roommate’s machine and play it there, or start over again from the beginning. After that, I was out of ideas.<\/p>\n

Da Mage<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is it possible to point to one, just one, design flaw that caused the most grief in your playthrough, and explain why you think it was that way (aka broken), and how you would have designed it differently.<\/p>\n

Obviously looking for game design problems, not technical ones.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nope. I just don’t think they made a very fun game. The combat’s too industrial and the loot is too opaque to be rewarding, there’s not a lot of interesting leveling options, the puzzles never really connect, and the plot’s too amorphous and distant to provide a meaningful context. I’m not sure the bulk of this game can be redeemed; if you stripped all the bugs out and communicated the player’s goals better, I’d rate it a solid six or seven.<\/p>\n

That said, this game does have a cult following. I’m not part of it, but I acknowledge it without rancor. I think it comes down to the idea that back when this game came out, there weren’t a lot<\/em> of first-person survival-based dungeon crawlers, particularly not with this unique a setting.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Narkis<\/strong><\/p>\n

What kept you going in the long, tortured, glitchy nights you have endured?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Same thought that keeps me going through actual problems. If this wasn’t happening, what would I have to joke about?<\/em><\/p>\n

Neko<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you were brought in to lead this project, saw it in its current state, and had six months before it had to be released, how would you fix it? Or how would you mitigate the worst bits?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let’s be real, here: if I was stuck onto this project, and it had six months before release, the team would know what to do to make the game better a lot <\/em>more than I would. The only change I’d lobby for is overhauling the combat. The click-and-drag method is for the birds; even in that day and age, the conventional wisdom was solidly in favor of clicking once to fire an attack and restricting “special moves” to some alternate fire key.<\/p>\n

With the benefit of contemporary wisdom, I think I’d also have artists work build-up frames into attacks and implement a blocking system. Anything to add a little depth and variety to combat.<\/p>\n

Stormthehouse<\/strong><\/p>\n

Do you think if this game was made recently, nothing changed at all, that you would feel less kindly towards the game because many of it's problems should have been non-existent with modern methods and tech, or more kindly since it would be something even more genuine in what it wanted to be?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We live in a charmed age. If this game came out today, and I’d heard of it, it would have been pieced together in a fever by three Swedish teenagers living in a hollowed-out tree using stolen cable and MAXI checkout computers and it would be fucking sick. <\/em>The combat would feel like greased love and the puzzles would be clever and the story would be this understated terrifying brush with pagan divinities who all feel distinct and capriciously alien. They would have arrived at all these notes with such grace and perfection because they studied thousands of other<\/em> games that did it correctly.<\/p>\n

It’s not that they don’t make games at Battlespire<\/em>‘s level of making-it-up-from-scratch <\/em>anymore. They do. It’s just that today, they’re made as hobby projects and rotting on page sixteen of First-Person RPG Dungeon Crawler Sort By Price<\/em> on Steam. <\/em>I give Battlespire <\/em>most of its credit specifically because <\/em>it came in an age of comparatively scarce iteration and intercourse between developers.<\/p>\n

Chauzuvoy<\/strong><\/p>\n

What's your take on the goal they had for Battlespire? Is trying to make a computer RPG fun in the same way as a tabletop RPG possible and worthwhile?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let me clarify my specific take on Battlespire,<\/em> because it’s not quite that the development team were trying to make a direct copy of their campagins. No, they were proper videogame developers; they understood the limits and strengths of their medium and capitalized on them. Battlespire <\/em>is simply inspired <\/em>by their tabletop games, and while the influence is clear enough that you can imagine their tables pretty vividly, it’s not trying to be fun in precisely the same way–it approaches combat and platforming in a way that wouldn’t work well with dice and paper. It’s just trying to apply these mechanics towards producing the same tone. S<\/em>urvival against objective odds, sussing out alien mechanisms and equipment, keeping up with a power struggle you have nothing to do with but nevertheless must endure. <\/em>This is how taking inspiration is supposed to work: you figure out how to use a different medium to produce a similar feeling. It’s perfectly worthwhile.<\/p>\n

As for emulating their particular <\/em>kind of tabletop game…<\/p>\n

Amazon_warrior <\/strong><\/p>\n

Which bits did you enjoy? Is there anything to take from Battlespire other than, “This is how NOT to do it.”?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Melfina the Blue<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you had to remake this game into one that's fun and not an ant colony of bugs, what would you keep from the original? (Normally I'd ask what you'd remove, but I suspect with this one, the keep list is shorter.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Ander<\/strong><\/p>\n

What happened in those minutes you enjoyed? Chargen?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These aren’t the same question, but I’ll take them together.<\/p>\n

There’s a sense of humor in early games that didn’t really survive the early aughts. I don’t mean that games used to be funnier, I mean that there is an extremely specific<\/em> kind of humor that was quietly phased out. Games used to trade heavily on what I like to call Uncle Humor: jokes that tended to be more energetic or bombastic than they were, strictly speaking, funny. If I was feeling negative I’d say it’s what you get when you set out to write something funny and aren’t totally sure how to get there. Stuff like an NPC responding to, “See ya,” with “Not if I see you first!”<\/p>\n

Games that were trying and failing to be funny would be full of this. Games that actually were funny were full of it, too, except quite a few of the jokes sincerely would be good. I think voice acting is the main thing that killed this, actually–cheesy jokes are easier to get through when you can click through them as fast as you can read, and don’t really hold up when delivered at painful length and with creaky timing in an equally cheesy fashion.<\/p>\n

Battlespire <\/em>puts most of the humor into your dialogue responses, which aren’t voice acted, and it sort of works. Your choices have the precise tone of a D&D <\/em>player who’s basically making an effort, but doesn’t quite have the confidence to take their character and the setting seriously all <\/em>the time, and occasionally slips into laid-back anachronistic wisecracking. It’s an interesting experience and probably worth revisiting–maybe to a slightly <\/em>funnier effect.<\/p>\n

On another note, I’d like to point out that the story and setting are <\/em>unique. I had trouble interfacing with them, but I think this could have been done again, better, and been really interesting.<\/p>\n

Raygereio<\/strong><\/p>\n

Any thoughts about Battlespire's multiplayer?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nope. Can’t get it to work.<\/p>\n

The Right Trousers<\/strong><\/p>\n

How will you torture yourself publicly for our amusement and enlightenment next?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wait and see.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Roger Hà\u00a5gensen How scared shitless were you that you'd run into a game breaking bug that either hosed your save game (and would you take the time to replay it all again?), or worse the game just hate your PC and refuse to go further (which you'd realize on your 2nd playthrough with new savegames). […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[242],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lets-play"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35414","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shamusyoung.com\/twentysidedtale\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}