KickStarter Serpent in the Staglands Pre-Release Thread

[Starwars]

I have a feeling this thread will soon be about PoE.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I'm done playing early access/alpha/beta thingies, figured out this kind of stuff really cuts some of my entertainment when playing a game first time.

 

[DwarvenFood]

I forgot backing this.. nice surprise but didn't have any time for it yet.

 

[crakkie]

How come nobody has posted any first impressions yet? I thought this was the hip and trendy game that everyone was on its nuts.

There were some first impressions but they made references to PoE, so apparently they were jettisoned. Can't find them at all now.

 

[leino]

I'm sorry for the off-topic, but since there are no first impressions yet, I couldn't resist.

I don't get this.

Weren't pikes strengths as anti-cavalry / crowd-control / massed ranks vs massed ranks weapons?

In a 1-on-1 combat, once an opponent gets inside the reach of the pike, the pikeman is in big trouble. He could try and reset his grip along the shaft but that risks getting the weapon knocked away by any half-competent opponent. Unless (Roman legionnaire) he changes to a short sword at that point. Except ... swords are trash. Huh?

One on one, it is no problem for the pikeman at all. A skilled fighter with a polearm will move nimbly sideways and back keep his distance, adjust his grip, strike with the other end, etc. (This is assuming by "pike" we mean something reasonably sized like the Roman hasta, not the massive anti-cavalry pikes which would be ridiculous in an adventuring context anyway.) A polearm can strike from different distances and angles very rapidly.

... why would swords "be absolutely trash for adventurers"?

Duelling aside, swords would (soon) be trash because they would become all chewed up and useless after a day or two of fighting at the rate adventurers in games do it, especially against armoured opponents. Swords are, essentially, very fine strips of metal, and both more fragile in some ways than other weapons and harder to repair and replace.

Pikes kick the shit out of swords in a group setting but y'all are trippin' if you think pike or pike/shield is preferable to sword/shield in a dueling situation. That's part of the reason they were used as sidearms.

That's because you can't really lug around a spear as a sidearm. If you look at historical texts that discuss such duels, they favour the pike, quarterstaff, halberd and similar weapons against swords. The fencing master George Silver says a polearm has the advantage against two men with swords, and there is for example a famous account of the English sailor Richard Peeke killing three Spanish swordsmen at once with a quarterstaff, which was his preferred weapon for the bout.

 

[Stokowski]

^ Cool. Hadn't considered the rate at which sword blades got worn/damaged.

I got caught up on a - frankly, hardly relevant - point of detail mentioned in passing by the dev (Whalenought_Joe ), when really all I want if for them is to keep their noses to the grindstone so games turns out to be as cool as it looks to be shaping up.

 

[Angthoron]

Just reposting my impressions from the news post with a couple of additions:

First impressions:

+ Character creation is cool, you get to answer a few questions about your avatar's background, then pick stats etc.
+ Graphics/art style
+ Atmosphere
+ Music
+ Writing seems pretty good so far, at least I'm certainly interested about what's going on, and the world sort of seems to be pretty interesting as well. Good job there.
+ Combat is a little slow in terms of turn-taking, but resolves pretty quick (fought some goblins and wolves so far). Pretty much the opposite of PoE combat as it is now. Good, I guess - at least you can control your party without a need to pause for endless micro.
+ Looks like some environmental hazards are in already, you can slip on wet surfaces. Looks funny.
+ Stuff you wear displays on your characters. Eat that, WL2.
+ Can create your own party or/and hire henchmen.
+ Characters that know who you are acknowledge your char gen choices (Oh, you're the trickster god that likes to come around during festival time and sleep around with local girls! You, sir, rock! Well, not quite like that but anyway.)
+ Retro-FMV intro is nice

- Font is straining on the eyes
- Special font is really fucking hard to read; pixellation + stylizing = not so good
- UI could use some more mouseovers, no idea what some of its elements do, of course, random clicking helps find out
- Overall UI wonkiness, but it's a beta build so I expect it to improve
- Unity
- Funny duplication/respawn bugs (shit respawns fully on reload, can even hire same NPC multiple times). It's a beta thing of course.
- Language is occasionally a bit too flowery (think BioWare in BG1/BG2 dialogues). That's not to say that the writing is like Bio, just some occasional stylistics stuff. Not really a big issue though.


Overall, looks really promising.

 

[Sensuki]

I have briefly played it but haven't had a chance to dig in yet. Been super tired the last few days.

Combat has better pace than Pillars of Eternity (but I agree that it's a bit slow) and the way weapons work is actually displayed correctly in seconds/milliseconds from the get go

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Do those questions you answer at the start make any difference to the char? I didn't notice any.

 

[Angthoron]

Do those questions you answer at the start make any difference to the char? I didn't notice any.

Going to check once I get off work, but I think it's probably only going to influence the story at the parts where the characters know who you are. How strongly? Not sure, probably largely flavour/possible sidequests.

 

[Kem0sabe]

How well does it run, considering its unity?

 

[Sensuki]

There's a fair amount of slowdowns/microstutters and the typical NGUI/unoptimized listener button lag but other than those it runs okay. Can give you exact FPS when I finish uploading this video.

 

[Chaotic_Heretic]

Is there any way to get beta access now?

Despite being RTwP this sounds promising.

 

[Sensuki]

yeah I upgraded my pledge $20 and got the dl link. Took em a day to get back to me.

 

[Makagulfazel]

I bought it at 10:00 P.M. Pacific Time and received it two hours later.

That is neat.

 

[Merlkir]

Here's an Alpha LP:

 

[Darth Roxor]

Looks better than PoE, that's for sure

 

[Crooked Bee]

Backer beta v1.1 coming tomorrow:

http://serpentinthestaglands.com/community/forums/topic/beta-v1-1-coming-tomorrow/

]Thanks everyone for all the feedback and suggestions in v1. We’ve been working on them as you’ve flagged them, and are finishing up the list of bugs we’ve compiled. Quest completion bugs and inventory bugs should also be gone. Duping will be missed. Also of note: you can now play when zoomed with the mini-map (there are 3 scales now). No atk speed check on barrels, either, so you can wreck them all with haste! Still holding out on candle-whipping.

We’ve had a few skill/spell bugs, and we’d like to see more of those the next round if you could start testing more skill combinations. The areas you are in are roughly level 1-3 areas, and we’ve adjusted the EXP needed to level up and the amount given from quests/kills to reflect that. We’ve also implemented the armor combat-ailments, where generally the more armor you turtle into, the slower your attack speed/phys dodge chance. Merchants now have limited/finite items.

We’ll hold off adding the higher level locations in the area until we can get a better idea of how combat is playing out these first couple levels. For a beta version down the road we’d like to give you a quick-start option with a party of pre-made 5 characters with 3 or so levels worth of skill points to distribute, for an easier way of testing all the skills/spells, although for this one you’ll have to start fresh.

Again, thanks much for digging into the game thus far, your input has been very helpful. The Carrion god would be most pleased.

Complete update list:

* ENEMY: Additional wildlife enemies
* ENEMY: High-level spiders
* ENEMY: Children spawning in town
* ENEMY: Plebs conversations imported
* ENEMY: Arbiters spawning in town

* INV: Kitchen knife/Frying pan now weapon equips
* INV: Duping with party members fixed
* INV: Incantation Book displaying available curses from skill lvl
* INV: Imp jar added
* INV: Incantation Book added

* UI: font bitmaps updated to be more readable
* UI: larger font used only for headers
* UI: Journal scroll, “recent conversations” more organized.
* UI: Fullscreen supported
* UI: Removed graphic Anomalies when moving (needs further testing)
* UI: Camera movement updated (needs further testing)
* UI: new overworld map art and functionality (needs further testing)
* UI: Tooltips on everything
* UI: More notifiers in game feed (barrels/caught stealing/etc.)
* UI: Options menu opens up with ESC
* UI: Can type all letters into save boxes without being disrupted
* UI: Stat reset button during Character Creation

* Skill: Can cast spells on portraits
* Skill: Woodwise conversations imported for smarter animals
* Skill: Agile fighting fixed
* SKILL: Explosive elixer now doing unblockable damage
* Skill: Assassin damage augmentation fixed
* Skill: Slayer damage augmentation fixed
* Skill: Blood Cocoon procs slightly faster at skill lvl:1

* Game: Dual-conversations fixed
* Game: NPC do not wander away during conversation
* Game: XP at end of quests
* Game: Quests starting/completing triggering properly
* Game: No atk speed check on barrels
* Game: Group-exiting sub-maps smoother
* Game: started emeralds more appropriate, convo changes related
* Game: Mob saving, won’t spawn on top of player location if loading
* Game: Can rest at inns to switch day/night and fully heal
* Game: Merchant items fix, now limited

Cheers!

 

[bonescraper]

Wow, this thread was hard to find.

Are we going to get a link to this new build?

 

[Silva]

So, does this game also has those beautiful static images where you do macro-choices ala Darklands ? Frankly, those were more emblematic of the game to me than the somewhat crappiesque combat.

 

[Whalenought_Joe]

Wow, this thread was hard to find.

Are we going to get a link to this new build?

I'll PM the folks who backed through the Codex campaign again when we send out the beta emails. I updated our forum page about it, but we'll be sending 1.1 out tomorrow afternoon sometime — we wanted to get to a few more bugs and updates overnight that people had asked for during 1.0.

 

[Inquisition]

So, anyone else playing this? I like what I heard so far, any more opinions on the beta?

 

[Sensuki]

I am going to wait until the 1.1 patch before giving it another go, looks like they're addressing some of the glaring issues.

 

[Doctor Sbaitso]

So, does this game also has those beautiful static images where you do macro-choices ala Darklands ? Frankly, those were more emblematic of the game to me than the somewhat crappiesque combat.

Does anyone know?

 

[Sensuki]

New version is out.