Eschalon Book 1 and 2 with Eschalon Book 3 engine ?

[ManusDei]

I was asking myself, once eschalon book3 is out, will there be a way to play eschalon book1 and 2 with the engine for book 3.

I'm not talking about having food and water in book 1, but more about the better graphics.

[CrazyBernie]

This has been discussed before... IIRC, BW will not completely re-make Book I or II with the Book III engine. He has talked about the possibility of cleaning up the code for Book I and including some extra content, but that's it. *If* he is able to code a set of content creation tools for the Book III engine, it'll be up to the community to recreate Book I in all it's updated glory.

[silverkitty]

Awww, too bad. If he updated Book I even to just the Book II engine, it would eliminate the technology issue that prevented the Ash Island expansion :/

(On the other hand, it would probably take a lot of re-balancing of the game to make it an "official" release. Whereas fan creations are allowed (though not encouraged! by far!) to have broken/wonky balance)

[ManusDei]

I see. I thought it might be just pointing to different image files for the tiles, and some minor changes like that for moves.

Well, game is fun anyway

Edit : I was only thinking of graphical changes(playing in 1024x768), not playing book1 with Foraging (an example)

[silverkitty]

Yah, it's a nice idea, but the game has changed - new skills, modifications to old skills, new kinds of skills and actions available (weapon feats, for example), new and changes to spells, new reagents and changes to alchemy formulas (and new alchemy formulas) - even the way XP is given out has changed.

so, for example, the availability and placement of trainers and skills books might have to be different - some kinds of weapons and armor and magic rings might be over or under powered under the new rules - there might be insufficient or too many monsters to give out decent XP values under the new way XP is given - all kinds of little changes that would add up to a lot of work to re-balance the game for the new engine. work that likely would never be compensated.

[Evnissyen]

As I'm guessing most everyone knows by now, I'm mostly interested in one thing: Is the writing really, really good: in other words, not just the story but also the characters and character interaction. (Note: plot is not highly important to me. Amnesia or no: not important; However: an engrossing, ever-evolving story is very important to me.)

I love well-written and fleshed-out characters, and unfortunately this seems to be quite rare in RPG's . . . including Book I, sorry BW (though I've said this before). Hope Book 2 is better. I'm sure I'll enjoy it either way, but if the writing and characters are better, I'll be an even happier player.

Perhaps every RPG should be written with the mindset that you're writing a novel or novella, whose story and characters everyone is going to judge, analyze and/or romanticize. Of course: games are very different from novels and therefore require a different approach, but what I mean is: when you're writing a novel, you pay attention to things in a way that RPG writers generally do not. Too often, RPG writers are like really lazy novelists. And I think I've yet to see an RPG with a strong storyline that does not have holes and/or other problems like continuity issues, stretches of believability too wide for the audience's Willful Suspension of Disbelief to span, and so forth.

Heavy analysis of the characters and story are a sign of good writing. I've seen this kind of analysis with The Witcher and NwN2 . . . even, to some extent, Geneforge.

The graphics and animation, on the other hand, are in my opinion just fine as they are and I don't have any problem at all with them . . . except for spell effects. Spell effects can be a cheap way of helping to distinguish one spell from another. If our eyes take in different info with each one: we experience less of a demand from our other senses, including our knowledge of what the spell does. Just knowing that we'll see something different with each one is a big thing, I think.

And I'll even forgive the blocky, thick-shouldered characters, because of how well-done the graphics are in general . . . I understand that making sprites that small look like realistically-crafted people must be a challenge. I'm sure, in fact, it helps to make the characters a little bigger and scope in a little bit. (Also, it can make the whole world more attractive and more engrossing: look at Geneforge vs. Avernum, for example . . . but not too large, like, say, the Kivi games, if I remember them correctly, since that can tend make the games cartoony.) If Book 3 is to have a larger screen (and it should; I mean: who uses an 800x600 screen, these days?) then you can do this more easily. You can enlarge all the graphics, and therefore make slimmer, more realistic-looking people. That's my only other issue with the graphics. Everything else is beautiful.

Am I starting to babble, again? Oh, well, it's what I do.

Anyhow: when I look at Eschalon's graphics I see a game whose designer has a very good visual sense. The colors are nice, the graphics are done in a very clean yet not at all simplistic way. They are just plain nice to look at, very classy.

In contrast: whoever does the graphics for the Spiderweb games has yet to understand graphics in a way that BW and/or the graphics person for Eschalon does. I think it's probably telling that Jeff has admitted having taken some/many of the images/sprites from public domain collections. And no matter how much work he and/or the other to do trying to prettify everything... it still looks cheap and lacks unity . . . though still better than earlier games.

I suppose there's a reason why I connect Basilisk Games & Spiderweb Games together . . . not entirely sure what that reason is.

BW:
I've asked this before but nobody ever answered, and it's not specified in the game's credits: who does the graphics? Is it you yourself?

Like I've said before: I don't know yet what's been done with visual spell effects in Book 2 (nobody tell me: I want to be surprised), and probably won't know fully well until my second run through, since, as I've said before, I intend to do my first run as a dedicated swordsman. Second run: dedicated magick user. I want to have a working knowledge of the game before I go for the more challenging characters.