Avernum 6 & Genforge CD

[Dragonlady]

I got my spiderweb software company newsletter this morning. Thought I'd share part of it for those who like their games..while waiting for Book II of course.

* Avernum 6 Announced

We have finally released the first screenshots and information for our
next all-new fantasy role-playing game: Avernum 6. This game will be
the last chapter of the Avernum saga, in which Avernum faces its final
crisis. Wander the underworld, gain power and influence, and help to
determine your subterranean nation's ultimate destiny. Avernum 6 will
feature an enormous world, a fascinating story, and beautiful,
completely redone graphics. Be sure to take a peek ... It's looking
really nice.

Avernum 6 should be out for Macintosh by November, 2009 and for Windows
in early 2010. You can learn much more about it at ...

http://www.avernum.com/avernum6/index.html

* Geneforge Saga Now Available On One CD

We have released the entire Geneforge series on one CD for Windows and
Macintosh. For the first time, all five games in the epic,
award-winning Geneforge saga are available in one bundle at a
considerable discount.

My son has been playing Avernum the last 3 weeks and I didn't realize it until this morning that he is beta testing Avernum 6 and not playing the other versions. Lots of ground to cover and lots of fighting from what I've seen in passing his computer. He's beta tested a number of the Spiderweb games in the past. He thinks this one is great.

[BasiliskWrangler]

Avernum 6 does look nice! I am anxious to give it a spin. I'm in awe of how quickly he can produce games (one per year, sometimes even sooner?). Jeff Vogel is a more a god-like machine than man.

[CrazyBernie]

This is probably the first Spiderweb game that I actually like the look of, as far as how the graphics mesh together.

[Dragonlady]

I agree with BW and CrazyB.

The battles are great with magic spells going off everywhere..at least in the beta version I spied on.

[Saxon1974]

The graphics dont look that much different to me from those screens. Are there walking animations now? If so, I might play this one.

[getter77]

One of these days I should give the Spiderweb stuff a shot....one of these days...

Maybe somewhere in 2010 or 2011 there will be mega-collections for both series and I'll just dive into the deep end.

[CrazyBernie]

Hmm... I might have to revise my comment a little bit...

The indoor graphics look really nice, but there's something about the outdoor shots that I'm not feeling. And the character portraits could use some work. But that's just me being picky.... ^_^

[Evnissyen]

Yes, I find it disappointing that he hasn't updated the figures at all -- or even the character pictures -- and even the interface graphics look a little cheap . . . but at least the realm graphics look a little bit nicer, nicer even than Geneforge 5, though really mostly in that it just has a little bit more detail. More detail doesn't necessarily mean better graphics. (Eschalon's graphics are still superior.) But still, it looks good. It also looks like he might've been working on the animation as well -- I hope this is the case.

I'm not sure what I found disappointing about Geneforge 5 in comparison with Geneforge 4. In general #5 was the superior game. However... I don't know. I haven't put too much thought into it. I think probably I'm just burned out on Geneforge. (And that's always been my favorite series, too.)

And... yes... no need to tell me we're not discussing Geneforge. I only mention it in respect to graphics and the fact that Geneforge 5 was his most recent game and that the interface of Avernum 6 looks very similar to that of Geneforge 5.

[Zeno]

I refuse to play his games until he either lessens the price to around 20 dollars, or adds WALKING ANIMATIONS. For the love of god! Is it that hard?

[Evnissyen]

Zeno, all the Geneforge games have walking animations, but... point taken on the Avernum series. There, I agree . . . although it's nice to be able to zoom from place to place the way you can't do in the Geneforge series.

I'd gladly wait two years per game if only he improved the graphics and animation to Eschalon level, but... he has to make money if he wants to stay in business solely as a game developer. I suppose the trick to his staying in business is cutting corners and corners and corners as far as programming and world building are concerned (and, visually speaking, keeping them, ahem.)

(Of course, if he improved the graphics and animation, I believe he could increase his sales. The question of course is how much of an increase, and whether or not that balances out better against his current approach, monetarily speaking.)

[Randomizer]

I refuse to play his games until he either lessens the price to around 20 dollars, or adds WALKING ANIMATIONS. For the love of god! Is it that hard?

If you wait for multiple game CD-ROMs then you can buy several games at once for an average price of $20 or less. Right now you can get all 5 Geneforge games for much less than buying them individually. Or you can wait until October when there is an annual sale on everything.

Forget about getting Eschalon type walking animations. Jeff takes too long to generate even these poser type animations so he doesn't put much effort into graphics. He mostly spends his time on plots.

The reason Spiderweb can put out a game per year is that Jeff recycles everything: graphics, code, and maps whenever possible.

At least Avernum 6 has a decent new plot that really has some interesting twists. You get a relatively large demo taking place in the Great Cave so you get to explore the Castle, the major cities of Almaria, Dharmon, and Blosk, Patrick's Tower and several forts that defend the Great Cave. After 3 1/2 weeks we haven't seen half the game map. This looks like an easy 50 or more hours of playing.

[Zeno]

I refuse to play his games until he either lessens the price to around 20 dollars, or adds WALKING ANIMATIONS. For the love of god! Is it that hard?

If you wait for multiple game CD-ROMs then you can buy several games at once for an average price of $20 or less. Right now you can get all 5 Geneforge games for much less than buying them individually. Or you can wait until October when there is an annual sale on everything.

Forget about getting Eschalon type walking animations. Jeff takes too long to generate even these poser type animations so he doesn't put much effort into graphics. He mostly spends his time on plots.

The reason Spiderweb can put out a game per year is that Jeff recycles everything: graphics, code, and maps whenever possible.

At least Avernum 6 has a decent new plot that really has some interesting twists. You get a relatively large demo taking place in the Great Cave so you get to explore the Castle, the major cities of Almaria, Dharmon, and Blosk, Patrick's Tower and several forts that defend the Great Cave. After 3 1/2 weeks we haven't seen half the game map. This looks like an easy 50 or more hours of playing.

October Annual sale?

...I know what I'm buying in October.

[CrazyBernie]

I didn't notice this before, but I have to give mad props for this one little detail....

System Requirements:

PC Running Windows 2000 or later or Macintosh running System 10.3.9 or later.
800 MhZ processor. Minimum 1.6 GhZ processor recommended.
Video card or processor with OpenGL support and 32 MB video RAM (64 MB recommended).
512 MB RAM.
200 MB hard disk space.
1024x600 screen resolution with 32 bit color.
Avernum 6 will run natively on Intel Macintoshes.

High five for catering to the netbook crowd!!
Although I noticed the screenshots were all in 1280x800... hope it scales down well enough. Of course, I'm still shopping around for something in between a netbook and notebook that has that higher resolution and bigger keyboard...

[ido]

I refuse to play his games until he either lessens the price to around 20 dollars, or adds WALKING ANIMATIONS. For the love of god! Is it that hard?

As somebody who tried it in his own games - yes it is!

It is a lot easier to do pixel graphics than it is to do animations, and you just need a ton of them - for every character you need 4-5 frames for walking in each direction + walking animations of the character with each type of weapon + attack animations with each type of weapon and so on.

It basically means you will need several times the amount of sprites.

That being said, there are ways to make 'icon' graphics work well. Have you played Battle for Wesnoth? That one doesn't have walking animations either (although it does have attack animations) but it makes it work out pretty well anyway.

[Evnissyen]

In case anyone's interested: Avernum 6 is still on track to be released before the end of the month: News here (and A6 page here). Apparently the game is finished, according to Jeff, except for some final preparations.

Whee!

(Of course, this only applies to Mac users. PC users, of course, will still have to wait until Spring.)