I totally missed the Titans of Ether's December Update
Actually, I think I saw a note about this at Dino’s, but never followed up on it. My bad.
Anyhow, the Titans seem to have had a relatively quiet December. Zini was tied up with other projects, Direhaggis worked on trimming out problematic plot elements, and most of the rest of the team worked on scripting, bugfixes, or learning to use new tools.
The one really interesting development that was reported on, however, was Hyena’s work on Britain’s interiors. He’s switched methods, apparently, and although his new way of doing things apparently takes a bit longer, the results are (according to Direhaggis) “really quite splendid”, and will evidently mean that all 91 buildings in the city will have distinct, unique interiors.
Which will be nice to explore, methinks.
*91* buildings just for Britain? Isn’t that a tad overkill? 😮
The sheer volume of buildings — 91 in a single city?!?!?!? And there are like ten or a dozen cities in the game?!?!? — does explain why Redemption is taking so fergoshdamn long to finish.
Done right, it could make for an incredible play experience to see a fully populated city of that size. Done wrong, and it runs the risk of being as fun as going door-to-door in the slums of Philly.
*yawn*
I certainly hope to be proven wrong, but even AAAA high budget commercial games couldn’t do something like this right… so I’m kind worried they’re trying to do more than they can chew here.
And how many NCPs would that require really? You’d almost need as many PC Just for Britain as you had in the entire Ultima VII 😛
I’d assume that having that many locations and NPCs would give the opportunity to do side quests, discover easter eggs, some non-quest related story-telling, and general sight seeing along with the main quest NPCs/locations. Some houses just may be empty too so you can do un-Avatar like things in them.
If there’s a day/night cycle then those NPCs would need homes as well so that would have to be taken into account also.
As far as AAA games, there’s a huge difference in quality between a labor of love and the bottom line. I’m quite sure the ToE team will pull something off something much more entertaining than could be expected by a development house that has a publisher riding its back to turn a quick buck.
There’s only so much passion can do honestly – you still need huge manpower to get things done, and that is much more difficult in an amateur endeavour that with a big AAA game, or even a smaller independant game trully.
I’m honestly not sure what to expect for U9R, but when I read things like “91 buildings” that worries me – because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from Ultima is that bigger is definlty NOT better.
-Sergorn
To say nothing of the fact that introducing that many NPCs — and potential side quests, unique conversations, etc. — has a kind of multiplier effect on your workload. And not in the sense that adding another NPC simply doubles the work you have to do. In my experience, the curve is a somewhat exponential.
That could be what Direhaggis was working to correct when he talked about wiping out plot-thread Gordian knots; we’ll see, someday.
Yeah I mean even if they just have one NPC building – that’s an insane amount of people especially since I recall they wanted to have quests that offer choices and so on.
And here I was thinking having 30+ NPCs for Moonshade was already a crazy amount 😛
Heh. Sounds like they’ve expanded since last time I looked. That’s around the size I was making in Infinity Eternal. And the size was ultimately the reason I stopped. Building 91 interiors: Not so hard. Creating dialogue for a world of over 1000 NPCs… slightly more time consuming (especially when you’re making an Ultima and the towns need to seem like towns, not just a lot of unrelated people in one area).
They have a team though, so that will definately help. I am always confused when I look at their “Status” page though. It says 65% of Dialogue is done (which seems really strange). It also says only 20% of quest implementation is done… I would think that a majority of dialogue is quest-related, and therefore those two percentages don’t really go together.
My guess is that 65% was a little over-estimated. And for those that want to see Redemption become a reality, it might be worth volunteering to help out with the dialogue… Though there might be certain “story” or “plot” people in the team already who want to do that themselves. Not sure. But it would probably be possible to help out with some lesser characters at least.
I’d just like to chime in with my belief that quality always trumps quantity when it comes to NPCs in an RPG. I’d rather smaller towns have 10-12 WELL written interesting NPCs with back stories, quests, and interesting storylines than 50 blank uninteresting NPCs. Japanese RPGs do that, they have downs full of NPCs, but each one says like 3 words. It’s flat and uninteresting.
I can only agree with this assessment Dungy. Especially since that was always pretty much Ultima’s moto: quality over quantity.
I have to say than 1000 NPCs seems just utter crazyness to me. We’re aiming at 300 or so NPCs in Return and I think we are almost pushing it, so 1000 ? I have a hard time imagining a world that huge, that would manage to craft 1000 interesting NPCs.
No I’d certainly hope to be proven wrong and that the U9R team manages to nail it – but I have to admit, this worries me.
It is possible to have both quality and quantity. The key in Ultima games is making sure it seems like a “town”. Think about Monitor in Serpent Isle. It is one of the larger towns, as far as Ultima goes. But everyone in the town acts like they are part of the community. They all play their part in the overall quests of the town and it just works. You don’t think “Templar doesn’t fit in in the town”. He isn’t really mentioned by many people, but when you go on the goblin raid they send you to him as the goblin expert. And he is affected by the ambush that he was a part of. Everyone in the town fits in.
The problem with a lot of games is that towns just don’t seem like a community. Oblivion, for example. The Imperial City is large (not too large). But there is no community. There are some shops in the Merchant Quarter, and a couple of them actually interact with each other. But all in all, generic “This shop has really good weapons” comments that are randomly said by people on the street don’t create the community.
I remember every Ultima character because they all played a part in the community. I think that is what matters, and it can be done well in larger settlements.
“It is possible to have both quality and quantity.”
We’ve yet to see it. In any RPG. Ever.
If anything, history has proven that whenever a series gets bigger in size, it tends to lose depth (Gothic 3 – hello to you), while on the opposite when a developpers decides to go for a smaller but more focused world, it *gains* depth.
And while I like the romantic idea of believing in passionate fans over big evil corporate games – I have a hard believing this could come from an amateur project rather than a professionel one.
Hmm.. for my argument I’m going to do something silly and use an MMORPG as an example.
I don’t know how many people have played LOTRO, but it has one of the biggest game worlds ever (I think it comes in third after Daggerfall and something else…). So, we’re talking a *lot* of NPCs. Now, a lot of them are just filler, but I find myself remembering NPCs in LOTRO on a level similar to Ultima. And it is because they managed to create a community between the characters in towns through story and quests.
For example, in the process of trying to help one hobbit hook up with another hobbit, you talk to half a dozen others. The designers manage to actually get personality across for them in very few lines (much like in Ultima) and you end up with characters you actually remember. That span over ever settlement you go to, and there is usually interaction between settlements too. You end up with hundreds of distinct NPCs that you remember (Names don’t tend to be as easy in LOTRO though obviously. Remembering “Arty” the Mute Shipwright in Ultima 6 is a little easier than remembering “Holly Hornblower” the pie baker in Hobbiton).
If an MMORPG can do that, I think that a normal RPG could do a good job of it. I think noone has really tried yet though.
Dang well… I never played LOTR so I can’t agree nor disagree with your argument heh.
Altough you’re kinda making me curious, perhaps I’ll check it out one day – it IS free to play after all.