Torment Torment: Tides of Numenera Pre-Release Thread [ALPHA RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Darth Roxor · Oct 27, 2014

inb4 it falls 2k short...

t · Oct 27, 2014

Maybe you can finally remember to pledge, Darth Roxor?

Darth Roxor · Oct 27, 2014

But I already have

t · Oct 27, 2014

Then there's no way to reach that goal, all is lost

Infinitron · Oct 27, 2014

They're going to make it and then some. The rate of donations has actually gone up in the last few days and we're not even in the last day rush.

Sensuki · Oct 27, 2014

They'll easily make it with a few K extra.

Infinitron · Oct 27, 2014

http://tormentrpg.tumblr.com/post/101098315570/having-fun-brainstorming-abilities-for-companion

“Having fun brainstorming abilities for companion in Torment: Tides of Numenera! Setting lends itself to creativity w/your character concept.”

Chris Avellone

Infinitron · Oct 27, 2014

Zeitsagram! http://gziets.tumblr.com/post/101107339823/a-few-words-about-the-gullet

A Few Words About the Gullet
So here we are… four days remain on the Gullet stretch goal, with a little under $7000 left to raise. Before the stretch goal ends, I’d been meaning to say more about how the Gullet came to be, so if you’re interested in the realities of area design, read on!

I wrote my design for the Bloom in late 2013. At that point in time, very little work had been done on the content side of our game. All we had was a Mere that consisted of two scenes, and we still had to determine the overall look and feel for Torment. My goal was to give our players an experience that was as close to the original Planescape Torment as possible - I played PST a lot while I was writing the design documents, trying to make sure I hit just the right tone and analyzing what worked and what didn’t.

One element that sometimes worked… and sometimes didn’t… were the dungeons. While PST was primarily a dialogue-driven experience, it included a few dungeons, strategically scattered throughout the game. Some were purely combat-focused, like the mausoleum in the Hive. Others were a mix of combat, exploration, and dialogues, like the catacombs beneath the Buried Village. I thought the latter worked best. Combat wasn’t one of PST’s strengths, but when it was balanced with exploration and a few dialogues, the whole experience was tense, interesting, and fun. It also contrasted nicely with the dialogue-driven gameplay that preceded and followed it.

So when I designed the Bloom, I decided to include something similar (though shorter in length) – a “dungeon” environment that skewed more heavily toward exploration and discovery. And since players would pass through this area on their way into the Bloom’s depths, it would be set toward the end of the zone… a perfect time to pay off on some of the player’s earlier choices.

That’s how the Gullet was born. This was where old and forgotten things would be found, devoured by the Bloom in the distant past, sinking slowly into its guts, finally coming to rest here. Echoes of the Bloom’s victims would wander here too, including victims the player may have “nudged” to their demise. In the end, all things find their way to the Gullet. (Last week, somebody on the team likened it to the Bloom’s liver, which I thought was a particularly apt comparison.)

I drew up a map on graph paper, numbered the encounter areas (old-school D&D-style), and detailed everything that would happen in the Gullet. When the other leads reviewed the design documentation, they seemed to like the Gullet content, and I was pretty excited to include all this weird and horrific stuff in the game. But strictly speaking, the Bloom could function without the Gullet (and its most important content could be relocated somewhere else), so when we realized that we didn’t have the resources to develop all the content I had proposed, the Gullet became [C] priority. I was sad, but such are the realities of game development.

In the old days (by which I mean 2012 or so), a cut was a cut. If we didn’t have the resources to implement everything we had planned, we made the decision to cut something, and that was that. The cut content was forever lost. But now, in the strange world of crowd-funding, the Gullet has a second chance at life. Will we make it to the stretch goal? I hope so. I think it’ll be fun to prototype our version of a PST dungeon, full of exploration and weird discoveries. If you’ve contributed, thanks for getting us this far… and if all goes well, I’ll see you on the other side of the finish line.

StaticSpine · Oct 27, 2014

That was a cool read.

Too bad I get my first salary on my new job only in November :negative:

Stainless Veteran · Oct 27, 2014

Infinitron said:
Zeitsagram! http://gziets.tumblr.com/post/101107339823/a-few-words-about-the-gullet

A Few Words About the Gullet
[...]
One element that sometimes worked… and sometimes didn’t… were the dungeons. While PST was primarily a dialogue-driven experience, it included a few dungeons, strategically scattered throughout the game. Some were purely combat-focused, like the mausoleum in the Hive. Others were a mix of combat, exploration, and dialogues, like the catacombs beneath the Buried Village.
[...]
So when I designed the Bloom, I decided to include something similar (though shorter in length)
[...]

Click to expand...

This part sounds somewhat alarming though. If he's talking just about Weeping Stone catacombs, they really weren't so big:

So if the Gullet is even smaller, then I kinda fail to see why do they need 250k to implement it.

If, on the other hand, he's talking about Weeping Stone catacombs + various crypts + Dead Nations + Warrens of Thought, than it's the whole other deal, of course.

Infinitron · Oct 27, 2014

Uh, I'm pretty sure the Weeping Stone catacombs didn't have dialogue so it obviously can't be just that

Cazzeris · Oct 27, 2014

Dead Nations were awesome.

Minttunator · Oct 28, 2014

Only $1,683.79 remaining with over 3 days to go - looking good! :bounce:

Stainless Veteran · Oct 28, 2014

Infinitron said:
Uh, I'm pretty sure the Weeping Stone catacombs didn't have dialogue so it obviously can't be just that

Well, it had dialogues, just not much. Cursed stone head (Glyve), for example, some other interactions with environment.

hoverdog · Oct 28, 2014

I'm p.sure he's talking about the entirety of the dungeons, which is four major locations (weeping stone, dead nations, rat warrens, and the flooded crypts) plus a few tombs - not a whole lot, but I can live with that.