The Drunken Lizard Pub

The Avernum VI demo is out for windows today. Just saw it. Hope it is good. Downloading it.

Thanks for the news! I'll check it out.

I played through it a few times in the Mac version (full game, since Spiderweb games are always released Mac first, then Windows). It's a lot of fun. Not as graphically rich as Eschalon, but the party options give you a lot of opportunities for different tactics in battles and other times in the game. Definitely worth trying it out.

Wow still no walking animations! I know it seems lame but I just cant get past that, it makes it feel so dang stiff.

Hopefully his next series will have that!

Hmm... Kudos to SW for supporting high resolutions, but I'm still having problems getting into the game. The maps themselves look well enough, but the character and some object graphics still look like they don't belong. Maybe it's because of the large amount of aliasing on the characters. I suppose the lack of walking animations is part of that as well.

Also, despite controlling a party in a party-based game, everyone who you talk to treats you as an individual... that's a bit immersion-breaking for me. I don't mind that the party members don't talk to each other, but NPC's...

The game needs a little bit more QA. During the first run-in with the goblins, I killed them all off, one ran away, and *then* I got the narrative description.

I tried it for a bit....but it didn't seem t o be much different then the last 5...I'm sick of the underworld.

That reminds me: I have to get back to A6 and finish playing that game. It's been a long enough hiatus, I think.

The only negative change I can think of offhand was the maps... it's sometimes difficult to figure out, with these new white maps, what areas have been explored and what haven't . . . and in general I think the map could be more detailed.

Really... in the graphics dept., I think Spiderweb could learn a lot from Basilisk Games.

Having played the demo on mac, I have to say that Avernum 6 is the best avernum game so far, in my book (this coming from a guy who has been playing avernum 1 for the last two days). As for the walking animation, I don't think Jeff ever planned on doing that for avernum, I suppose he thought it made it more unique or was keeping some of the very first avernum's movement system alive in his latest in the series. The graphics in A6 are the best I've ever seen in Jeff's games, and even though they're not the best, his games just wouldn't seem right with graphics as high-level as Echalon. Jeff even specifically said somewhere that he thought the story was more important than the graphics. I understand he's working on a completely new series now, and he's got a link on Spiderweb Software's website to an interview about this new game, apparently due spring 2011. Here's the interview if anyone's interested: http://www.thegamerstudio.com/interview ... tware.html

I don't agree that if he employed Eschalon-style graphics & animation then they wouldn't fit the games... I think they'd only enhance his games.

But in regard to the lack of walking animations: there I agree with you, I, too, suspect that he might be seeing the quick-zoom/no-walking thing sort of an "Avernum thing"... but then, I don't know.

Finally, thanks for the interview link. I found it interesting.