KickStarter Serpent in the Staglands Pre-Release Thread

[tuluse]

Tuluse, I think half the updated mechanics in 2.0 are from your suggestions.

It's been a great game to test. The core is really good, I'm mostly helping you tune the periphery.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

should I play darklands

Yes, it's very fun!

As for Serpent, the exploration part will probably be the biggest learning curve — there isn't quest grinding for story and it's very open ended to what you choose to investigate. I guess sort of similar structure to Fallout 1, for an example. All the maps are explorable from the start but for secrecy few people can help you in any significant way, so you're very much on your own. Items are a big part of interacting with the world and for puzzles, so there's a bit of learning curve for that as well, but that's part of the fun.

Skills/spells/aptitudes are all straight forward, though work a little differently than other games (auto-procing) and are used for puzzles at times, so creating or finding a party that meshes well might take some trial and error, especially for mid/late game. At least one spell caster for healing is very much advised.

There will be a separate thing for a brief tutorial, and an intensive manual. Definitely read the manual. I think you'd be fine starting without any kind of prep though, the controls/mechanics are all very simple.

 

[Invictus]

Darklands is not only my personal favorite RPG of all time (along with Wizardry 7) but a Damn great game too. It was "open world" at least a decade before the term was even invented, with a magnificent setting, kickass music and the best leveless skill based system ever. Its magic and alchemy are unsurpassed and while its combat kind be a bit of a pain because of wonky AI the many charms of the game outweight any issues.
You should really try it and get a feel for it

 

[Photokoi]

Yes, it's very fun!

As for Serpent, the exploration part will probably be the biggest learning curve — there isn't quest grinding for story and it's very open ended to what you choose to investigate. I guess sort of similar structure to Fallout 1, for an example. All the maps are explorable from the start but for secrecy few people can help you in any significant way, so you're very much on your own. Items are a big part of interacting with the world and for puzzles, so there's a bit of learning curve for that as well, but that's part of the fun.

Skills/spells/aptitudes are all straight forward, though work a little differently than other games (auto-procing) and are used for puzzles at times, so creating or finding a party that meshes well might take some trial and error, especially for mid/late game. At least one spell caster for healing is very much advised.

There will be a separate thing for a brief tutorial, and an intensive manual. Definitely read the manual. I think you'd be fine starting without any kind of prep though, the controls/mechanics are all very simple.

Thx, I got to playing (Darklands) before I saw the response, and it really is awesome in that you have a lot of things to do and you feel like a bunch of kids in the beginning, wanting to be heroic adventurers without realizing that it is a rather cruel and harsh world; for example, at first, any town hall at any city rejects you, and, not only that, the game has this ridiculous description of how the guards kick you out and you fall on a pile of mud red-faced and embarrassed. I pretty much laughed out loud at that, so I like the text adventure aspect and all.

The combat can be fun too, believe it or not. It feels less chaotic than Baldur's Gate, albeit a bit more simple. Honestly, RTwP, although not turn-based (obviously), can be very fun and require planning and positioning. Also, the whole clusterfuck aspect of the Darklands combat kind of looks like what an actual skirmish would look like, even if it isn't an entirely comfortable UI. It definitely has it's charm

Finally, I love how magic is really just throwing alchemical potions, which makes the game and the history behind it that much more believable. Is SitS heavily historical to the extent that Darklands? I know it's roughly based on Transylvania (btw, Dracula is my favorite novel, so awesome setting!). From your post it sounds like it's focusing more on a tightly wrought non-linear game, which can be difficult. Extremely non-linear games like Daggerfall and Darklands which are also procedurally generated tend to be very open-ended and work great as a simulator where you play the day to day life of an adventurer(s) rather than focus on combat and puzzle solving and producing a tightly put together story/progression. Anyways, I'm all about that non-linear game-play, so I'm excited that that is what the game will try to do well.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Darklands is an immensely charming game, there's nothing else like it. The combat mentality you have going in with darklands is something we definitely strived to recreate in our own way, kind of a controlled chaos where preparation > micromanagement.

Our aim for historical accuracy was to make the world feel very grounded in something familiar to our own world (the bronze age), and have a very practical inclusion of magic, exotic weaponry and a pantheon. The gods and goddesses are more grounded too, and are like immortal creatures that have portfolios under their domain — the protagonist being a god that starts the game trapped, in hiding, weak, in a foreign body and land with little help is supposed to exemplify how fragile that coexistence is. Vol is also victim to our world's death, and gods, men and monsters all stay dead if killed, no post-living scenarios.

The folks you interact with in the Staglands are full of fun historical flavor, equipment is all acutely detailed, and the writing has a very historical flow to it and neat insults. A lot of research went into it that we hope adds to the atmosphere, it's a bit of a grim era with lots of slavery, smuggling, mouth and ear severing as law punishments, military companies abandoning their country and just sacking and settling places.

The Expansion planned has a heavily themed Dracula inspiration — lots of intrigue and ambushing overseas!

 

[Cyberarmy]

Dracula ?!?!
Now you're just teasing us!

 

[Merlkir]

Thanks for the feedback

My problem with the font isn't so much the size, the blockiness itself makes it very hard to read. In previous builds you showed there was a smooth easily readable font, could you perhaps include that as an option?

While playing the beta a bit, I ran into some typos, is there a bug tracker to report these to? Or just on your forums?

 

[mindx2]

and an intensive manual. Definitely read the manual. I think you'd be fine starting without any kind of prep though, the controls/mechanics are all very simple.

Been a longggggggggggggggg time since that's been a part of gaming or I've heard a developer say that!!!

 

[hoverdog]

fuck this shit. preordered.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

fuck this shit. preordered.

Hey man thanks a lot!

It's been a great game to test. The core is really good, I'm mostly helping you tune the periphery.

It's been much appreciated — we've been moving at breakneck speed since the KS focused on getting the planned content in, and we've glazed over some great updates you've suggested.

My problem with the font isn't so much the size, the blockiness itself makes it very hard to read. In previous builds you showed there was a smooth easily readable font, could you perhaps include that as an option?

While playing the beta a bit, I ran into some typos, is there a bug tracker to report these to? Or just on your forums?

Yes please! Throw anything you happen to see in there, they go right to our bug list. However since the last patch we've corrected quite a bit of the minor typos, so you may as well hold off for 2.0 to make sure we hadn't fixed them already.

As for the font I think you're referring to some of our ~KS era UI, which is prior to when we optimized the rendering for all the art and cameras, so this is simply size related. For the reason I mentioned in my previous post a vectorized font just isn't possible, but maybe I'm failing to explain that well. The game is running at say 320x240 (varying on aspect ratio), and because the game window is zooming into that we can't use a vector font or sub-pixel rendering techniques or it will look like a blurry mess, so essentially we're working with DOS sizes.

We're also dealing with a lot of text on that small screen size, which is why we're also not using the typical 2-px thick font used so commonly at that time (I think even in Fallout, if I recall right), we need it 1-px thick. We took some time tonight and completely changed the mid and large fonts to new ones that are much more clear and not so uniformly sized. They have improved the reading clarity quite a bit, we think.

 

[Merlkir]

Riiight, you're actually working in this resolution, I thought those were fake-pixels. OK, interesting, got it.

 

[Rostere]

Hey man thanks a lot!
As for the font I think you're referring to some of our ~KS era UI, which is prior to when we optimized the rendering for all the art and cameras, so this is simply size related. For the reason I mentioned in my previous post a vectorized font just isn't possible, but maybe I'm failing to explain that well. The game is running at say 320x240 (varying on aspect ratio), and because the game window is zooming into that we can't use a vector font or sub-pixel rendering techniques or it will look like a blurry mess, so essentially we're working with DOS sizes.

We're also dealing with a lot of text on that small screen size, which is why we're also not using the typical 2-px thick font used so commonly at that time (I think even in Fallout, if I recall right), we need it 1-px thick. We took some time tonight and completely changed the mid and large fonts to new ones that are much more clear and not so uniformly sized. They have improved the reading clarity quite a bit, we think.

I think the text is perfectly appropriate is it is. Looking forward to see the new font.

 

[agris]

We took some time tonight and completely changed the mid and large fonts to new ones that are much more clear and not so uniformly sized. They have improved the reading clarity quite a bit, we think.

Wanna drop us a teaser shot?

 

[Hormalakh]

Even though I did not back this game I didn't do so with a lot of hesitation. Money was tight. In any case, this is a game that I am looking forward to. All the best to you guys and hats off to you for actually engaging us here on the Codex.

 

[Infinitron]

Even though I did not back this game I didn't do so with a lot of hesitation. Money was tight. In any case, this is a game that I am looking forward to. All the best to you guys and hats off to you for actually engaging us here on the Codex.

It's not too late: http://serpentinthestaglands.com/community/order-game/

 

[Hormalakh]

Thanks! Will do so.

 

[Bleed the Man]

I just pre-purched the game (Thanks Infinitron )

I went for the 35$ for the sole purpose of supporting the devs as much as possible, as I won't be able to give feedback for the beta, because I can't play a lot right now and I don't want to spoil myself, so if anyone wants my beta acces, I'll be happy to give it to him/her.

 

[Photokoi]

It bewilders me that just a guy and his wife can create such a cool-looking game like this. When I get the money, I will purchase as well.

 

[Avellion]

35 dollars is a worthy investment for supporting the incline.

After finally getting paypal to work again, I donated 43 dollars to the cause.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Wanna drop us a teaser shot?

Working on the kerning in some places yet:

Thanks for the support guys!

We'll be doing some video playthroughs of the new patch 2.0 areas and content alongside releasing it, so you can get out a more detailed look at the gameplay then.

 

[Darth Roxor]

Do you plan to release a demo with the game?

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Do you plan to release a demo with the game?

Yes, we'll have a demo up with the first few areas for Windows/Mac/Linux on the site closer to release.

hoverdog, stellar portrait

 

[Spockrock]

Why are some of the NPCs from Romania?

 

[Darth Roxor]

Yes, we'll have a demo up with the first few areas for Windows/Mac/Linux on the site closer to release.

I CAN'T BROFIST THIS ENOUGH

 

[hoverdog]

hoverdog, stellar portrait

stellar artwork