Messages

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Meet Some Of The Monsters Of Valley 2 (Concept Art)

« on: October 09, 2012, 10:46:25 AM »

Very cool monster concepts Now the monsters just have to be interesting too kill and not just to look at

Maybe it's just me, but I feel that Arcen and/or Heavy Cat have drawn some quite heavy inspiration from monsters of two other upcoming titles...



Interstellar Marines




Bioshock infinite

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Just a note about what's going on with AVWW.

« on: September 27, 2012, 03:06:14 PM »

Generally speaking, epic boss encounters on the scale of those two games requires an amazing amount of hand-crafting.  There's a reason those games are pretty short.  We're going to be de-emphasizing bosses in many ways, but will be improving them from what they were (part of the problem was that bosses were too frequent before).  Enemy designs are getting a lot of attention, yeah.  And enemy placement.

Great Sounds like a good direction to go. And yeah, I kind of knew that kind of boss encounters was out of reach, read somewhere that the guy behind Intrusion 2 spent three full months of development time on the last boss alone. But maybe you could make some of the design elements that make those bosses great your own
Similarities I see in the designs of these bosses that I don´t see in AVWW is:
1. The boss feels personal and 'out to get you', in AVWW I fell most of the time bosses are either to big or to far away to feel 'personal', they also often just roam around 'minding their own business'.
2. An emphasis on patterns of movement (both yours own and that of the boss), positioning and to a certain extent timing and precision.
3. The boss has more than one 'stage' and/or behavioral pattern it alternates between.
4. Only one or two parts of the boss can be hit at any given time.

Lastly, I find an increased emphasis on placement of enemies very interesting, I wonder, does this imply that there will be a bit less emphasis on procedural generation of certain areas of the game?

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: Just a note about what's going on with AVWW.

« on: September 27, 2012, 02:16:39 PM »

I hope the enemy designs and most importantly the bosses get some love, so to make them more memorable.
I think interesting boss designs would really help in giving the game a more lasting appeal.
I think some really epic bosses of late are present in games like Biotic Commando Rearmed  and Intrusion 2.

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Off Topic / Re: project eternity(planescape authors return!)

« on: September 15, 2012, 10:59:41 AM »

I feel compelled to point out that it says it's "trending" towards that number and specifically that "Trends are not projections"

I saw that after posting, and felt it quite probable that someone would point it out to me
I also followed PA and saw how much and how rapidly the trend was changing...  however it's interesting how close the initial trend was to the end result.

Slightly of topic... I found another interesting game on KS http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dada/pangenic/ that I have backed. However it may be a bit more of a gamble

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Off Topic / Re: project eternity(planescape authors return!)

« on: September 15, 2012, 08:52:13 AM »

Looking at this: http://www.kicktraq.com/projects/obsidian/project-eternity, I get quite baffled 
The end projection at 15M !!!

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Shattered Haven / Re: Shattered Haven -- Another Upcoming Project

« on: August 13, 2012, 05:13:25 PM »

Yeah, when I first heard about Grey's anathomy - I thought - cool New sci-fi series, quickly lost interest when I learned what it really were about....

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: [FILLED] Looking for artist(s) to develop new style for A Valley Without Wind.

« on: July 24, 2012, 04:18:59 AM »

As an addendum, if you want to go the Braid route, please make the foreground crisp and pixel-perfect art (like Braid) and make the backgrounds less distinct. Part of the problem right now is those two are mixed pretty freely (and also perhaps that many objects could do with being part of the background, like most of the random plants underground).

I totally agree, I think this could have a positive impact on game play as well, it would clearly separate background objects from foreground object, making it clear that the player can interact with mossy barrels, vases and such but mot with mushrooms and similar.

For above reason I really like the separation of fore ground and back ground in K's latest, and to top that of the whole seen is awesome 

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: AVWW Post-Release 1.060 "Release Candidate 7" Released!

« on: June 13, 2012, 03:37:36 PM »

Nothing that serious it seems but...
I created a new world with an advanced start and got an error message and was dropped in an empty chunk before the settlement. Normal start seems to work without problems.
Attaching the error log and the compressed world folder.

I haven't played the game for a while but the coming release seems great, looking toward to it

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AVWW Technical Support / Re: Where are games saved to?

« on: April 26, 2012, 02:22:07 PM »

I did this today

It may also be an good idea to transer you settings.dat (I think it contains your character) and inputbindings.dat (if you have changed any of the key-bindings) in the Runtime Data folder.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: (Dev Really Wants Info) One Item You Most Want Changed This Week In AVWW, #1

« on: April 16, 2012, 01:27:19 PM »

Gravestones... right now they are just irritating 
There are at least two mantis issues addressing my concerns:
1. Remove them from the minimap.
2. Add at least some possible randomized texts to them and decrease their seeding frequency, I think there shouldn’t be more than two gravestones on average in a stash room. If this isn't in scope for release then remove them, as there is not much point in them all being 'anonymous grave' 

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: "pause and examine"...

« on: April 14, 2012, 12:32:05 PM »

I think this is a great idea Hope you get the support of the devs. Have you put it in Matis?
Regarding the distance to 'p', I have remaped pause it to the 'r' key.

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AVWW Brainstorming / Re: Brainstorming ideas for minor rewards for defeating enemies.

« on: March 05, 2012, 07:38:42 PM »

I like Martyn's suggestion as well, and here comes my twist

I like the general idea of making the rewards from trash mobs similar to  the cave story buffs, however I fear it will conflict too much with the upgrade stone and enchant systems, which has already been pointed out. Therefore I came to approach a solution from a slightly different angle.

I like games where when you get more powerful, it gets reflected in others reactions towards you, and this works as a kind of reward. If I recall right, Borderlands for example have this - if you approach a group of low level Skaggs when you are many levels higher than them, they will run away.  This is a quite subtle system that ideally wouldn't even needed be explained to the player.

The core idea is that instead of altering the glyph bearer you alter the mobs reactions to the glyph bearer. As monsters are killed the glyph bearer rises thru a few menacing-ranks. The enemies then alters their behavior depending on the menacing rank.   

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: NPC Rescue Missions

« on: March 02, 2012, 05:39:01 PM »

Even thou I have completed some of this type of missions, I am - like Panopticon - a bit unsure about the condition for their completion.

The flowing I haven't reported on Mantis because I don't know the ratio 'bug' / 'me don't understand game mechanics'.
Anyway, the other day I went on a secret rescue NPC mission inside a house. I found the NPC and led him back to the mission entrance, then I went thru the entrance so that I was back in the mission staging area. I was expecting to get the message that I had rescued the NPC, but I got none. The mission was still active so I went in again only to find that a new mission room had been generated, so I started to make my way thru this new room (which had monster spawners in it), after having traveled some distance in this new room I get the message that the NPC is dead and after a few more steps I come across the NPCs vengeful ghost  .

This has raised a few questions / ideas for improvement. Firstly, it seems possible to (without warning) leave a rescue mission and i.e. accidently leaving the NPC behind. I think it would be great to get a message similar to 'X have not kept up with you. Do you want to leave X behind?', if you are about to leave the mission without the NPC. Secondly, If you leave the mission and thus leaving the NPC behind, the mission should probably be forfeit.

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Re: So, what lore do folks have questions about?

« on: February 14, 2012, 06:33:25 AM »

How did people get turned into consciousness shards, is this still happening in some places? How come bosses and some more advanced enemies like the clockwork probe drop masses of consciousness shards? What is the Ilari using the consciousness shards for? Is it possibly slave labor?!

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A Valley Without Wind 1 & 2 / Battle rhinos advace!

« on: February 13, 2012, 05:10:53 PM »

Okay, so I have been playing a T1 battle field mission in windstorm with both clockwork probe and urban crawler unlocked.
First time I rushed the enemy base and almost died, losing 285% out of 300% boosted health
But the victory gave me earth essence so I unlocked summon rhino.
Tried a battle mission again under the same circumstances, summoned a few rhinos and they smashed thru the enemy lines 
Conclusion, rhinos are very good for this kind of task However, I don't think they are over powered so please don't nerf them

By the way when I upgraded the rhino spell it looked exactly the same, I had to test to verify my suspicion that what I got was a tier 2 rhino instead of one of tier 1. But this should preferably be stated in the upgrade information for the spell, i.e. how the stats of the summoned rhinos change.