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Dragonlady · Post by **Dragonlady** » May 21st, 2007, 10:27 am

Oh man! That is way kool and I am so looking forward to this game! Speaking of which, will the PC and Mac versions come out at the same time? I have a Mac but can run some game stuff on the PC side of the drive.

Gallifrey · Post by **Gallifrey** » May 21st, 2007, 11:56 am

BasiliskWrangler wrote:If no monsters or NPCs, referred to as entities, can currently hear you the word "Silent" appears in the Effects window, right below the automap. The amount of noise you make when you walk, attack, or pick a lock is largely dependent on your "Move Silent" skill, so the higher that skill is, the closer you can be to an entity and not have them hear you. If there is a wall between you and an entity, that will lessen the noise the entity receives. If "Silent" is not listed in the Effects window, then you are within earshot of some entity that is alerted to your presence. Monsters will hone in on your sound, or if you commit a crime alerted NPCs will become aggressive.

As for tricks...um, there are no spells or special moves like that (though a spell of silence might be cool...*jots down note*). But you can press the Space Bar to stand passively for one round. During that passive round your noise level drops to almost zero and you could passively wait for someone to walk close to you, unaware of your presence...

Wow, this sounds fantastic. So entities have patrol/wandering routes then? And presumably if you're waiting silently for someone to walk by unaware, the Hide ability would come into play as well? And, if you're in a Silent zone, and an entity (say a guard) comes past, you can kill him and no one is the wiser? Does the Silent zone diminish the longer a fight goes on, or is it a simpler case of isolating the guard and taking him down? Further to this, will entities come to investigate noises, making it possible to lure someone into a Silent zone?

I know I tend to be over-focused on theifly game play, but it's one area in RPGs that is usually implemented in a very half-arsed sort of way and rarely provides a fulfilling experience.

"Hide in Shadows" works nearly identical, only of course for how hidden you are in regards to the luminosity of the square you are on. Having very high Hide in Shadows and Move Silently skills makes you practically invisible in most cases...

So is there a Hidden designator like the Silent one? Or is it more ambiguous, with the player not being sure if he's hidden until the moment of truth?

Saxon1974 · Post by **Saxon1974** » May 21st, 2007, 12:18 pm

BasiliskWrangler wrote:If no monsters or NPCs, referred to as entities, can currently hear you the word "Silent" appears in the Effects window, right below the automap. The amount of noise you make when you walk, attack, or pick a lock is largely dependent on your "Move Silent" skill, so the higher that skill is, the closer you can be to an entity and not have them hear you. If there is a wall between you and an entity, that will lessen the noise the entity receives. If "Silent" is not listed in the Effects window, then you are within earshot of some entity that is alerted to your presence. Monsters will hone in on your sound, or if you commit a crime alerted NPCs will become aggressive.

As for tricks...um, there are no spells or special moves like that (though a spell of silence might be cool...*jots down note*). But you can press the Space Bar to stand passively for one round. During that passive round your noise level drops to almost zero and you could passively wait for someone to walk close to you, unaware of your presence...

"Hide in Shadows" works nearly identical, only of course for how hidden you are in regards to the luminosity of the square you are on. Having very high Hide in Shadows and Move Silently skills makes you practically invisible in most cases...

This is the type of excellent thought out gameplay I have been looking for! Can't wait to play it!

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » May 21st, 2007, 12:21 pm

Uh...I am not sure if i can cover all your questions at once, but I'll try...

Actually, we don't even use "patrol zones" right now. Passive entities just roam, they don't really follow a route. So yes, you can wait for them to walk past you but since it is more random than a route you may have to wait a little longer. But yes, kill a guard with no one else hearing or seeing the crime and no one will know of your actions.

Yes, Hide in Shadows comes into play there as well. Standing close to a wall, or in a corner (next to two walls) enhances the Hide in Shadow effect. When no one can see you, the effect "Hidden in Shadow" appears in the effect window. In broad daylight, however, you will need to be an extreme master for this to work. Nighttime or in a dungeon is where Hide in Shadows really starts to be advantageous.

You mention a "silent zone"...it's not really an "area of silence" as you're suggesting, it's how much noise you are making on any particular action. Fighting tends to be the loudest action you can do, so you can be completely silent but then the first attack you make might generate enough noise to alert nearby entities...but as I said, the more skilled you are in Move Silently, the less sound you make even when fighting.

Sure, you can lure entities to you with noise....sneak into a room with monsters, make a noise, and they'll come your way. Stay hidden in shadow or silent long enough and they lose interest in the hunt and go back to passive roaming.

Gallifrey · Post by **Gallifrey** » May 21st, 2007, 12:35 pm

That sounds really darned great! I love that Move Silently affects how quietly you fight, that's a brilliant implementation.

Being able to lure enemies with noise is great. It's been used well in FPS games but I can't recall ever being able to use it in an RPG like this. I'm sure it's been done, and probably a long time ago so I've forgotten, so I'm glad to see it for Eschalon.

I think my preferred character type is going to be a blast to play in this game

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » May 21st, 2007, 12:35 pm

Dragonlady: we have the Mac version running along side the PC version right now, but we will still need to release the Mac version a few weeks after the PC version just because we need to work out a few extra things with the Mac (universal binaries, install package, etc.)

Dragonlady · Post by **Dragonlady** » May 21st, 2007, 6:17 pm

BasiliskWrangler wrote:Dragonlady: we have the Mac version running along side the PC version right now, but we will still need to release the Mac version a few weeks after the PC version just because we need to work out a few extra things with the Mac (universal binaries, install package, etc.)

Humm, okay thanks. If I get the demo version for PC will I be able to port the character to the Mac when I buy the whole game? It doesn't really matterwhich version I get. Glad I don't have to wait the extra few (??

) weeks for the Mac version. Sigh.

flinch13 · Post by **flinch13** » May 28th, 2007, 1:54 pm

Are the creatures in Eschalon in fixed numbers so that you can hunt certain ones to extinction, or are they generated as needed? Can they reproduce?

Also, with regards to gameplay itself, I know that Eschalon is tile-based. I would like to know, however, if the player's view of the world moves along with the character, or the character must move to the edge of the screen in order to see what's next door?

My final question: will you be posting a video of gameplay anytime? I'd really like to see anything. Screenshots may be worth 1,000 words, but depending on the framerate, video is typically worth 30,000 words/second

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » May 28th, 2007, 3:42 pm

There's a set number of creatures, but in a few rare cases new ones are generated (for example, random encounters while camping). Generally, a cleaned area stays clean. They don't reproduce on their own (although that'd be a fun algorithm to put into Book II...each monster is flagged as either male or female, if they make contact with each other during passive roaming they could reproduce; other's could split asexually based on lunar cycles or something...that's a rather cool idea actually.)

The screen scrolls smoothly- your character stays in the center of the screen and the world moves around him. However, the game world is broken into "maps", so you can reach the end of the area you are in and it loads the next section for you to enter in to.

Yes, there will be a trailer-style video sometime this summer.

flinch13 · Post by **flinch13** » May 29th, 2007, 5:24 am

Excellent!! I await the release with baited breath.

Rune_74 · Post by **Rune_74** » May 29th, 2007, 9:47 am

There are some free pr ograms out there that will capture a video of what you are playing on your computer....could be an easy way to get a quick vid out to apease us crazies;)

GianMarco · Post by **GianMarco** » May 30th, 2007, 6:14 am

Heres a few more for you

(sorry if its too many, answer what ever you want)

1. For the day and night system, one thing i haven't noticed is an indicator on the games interface that shows what time of the day it is. Will you guys include something that tells us? Also, will there be a time progression button?

2. Do all npcs hit the sack at the same time period, or do some stay out longer than others?

3. And to what extent are the duties of the basic NPC - Will they just move from one spot to another when Dawn/Dusk sets in, or will they carry out numerous duties in a day?

4. Are all your dungeons hand crafted, or does the game use a dungeon generator?

5. Will there be any large scale purchases for those who attain huge amounts of cash, like a hideout?

6. Can you give us a rough indication of how big the game world is?

7. How many side quests are there all up in Eschalon?

8. And lastly, will stealing items always give your character a negative alignment point, or only if your seen doing it?

And a request...here goes...

Can you guys post up a world map of the game, or maybe some lore? Come on you know you want to man.

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » May 30th, 2007, 7:34 am

Okay...

[1] Currently there is no on-screen indicator what time it is (i.e. a sun/moon icon) but there is a big, boxy chronometer in the game that you can carry around with you if you want to check the game time. I think a sun/moon transitional icon might be a good idea...I will investigate.

You can press the space bar to allow one round to pass- pressing it many times quickly allows time to pass faster. Camping allows time to pass even faster, and staying at an inn advances time automatically to 8:00am the following morning.

[2,3] Right now, NPCs do not follow a schedule. They are just up all the time waiting to serve you. Why you ask? Well, after considering how NPC schedules effect game play, we decided to not spend the extra time implementing that additional "level of realism". Really all it does is limit the time that the player can shop in their store, since most RPGs allow the player to wake the NPC to simply talk to them anyways. I think Book II might have this feature, but for Book I it was just a lot of extra development time for something had had little or no effect on gameplay.

So why have nighttime in there at all then? Well, it does give the player a better sense of passing time. Shop owners get new stuff in every 3-5 game days, so knowing when a day has passed is helpful. Also, playing at night is a bit harder since creatures can surprise you from the dark much easier and it uses more of the player's resources (torches, mana for light spells). And finally, the nighttime is great for thief characters who use darkness to stealth around town picking locks and such.

[4] All dungeons are hand crafted- nothing is randomly generated and dungeons are not seamed together from different prefab sections like in Oblivion.

[5] There are some very expensive weapons and armor you can save up for, but no property to purchase. Within the game world there are several little abandoned "houses" that you could claim as your own if you so wanted.

[6] World scale and overall size is hard to judge in a game like this. It's a big game, maybe not on the same scale as Oblivion. I think it feels sorta like NeverWinter Nights in terms of the way maps are linked and general size, but of course we are not nearly as linear as NWN.

[7] Side quests? Seriously not sure. There's a lot in there now and more being added almost daily. When the game is closer to being completed I will gladly give everyone a final count.

[8] The computer always tracks when you commit a crime even if no NPC see you do it, although you can never get caught unless an NPC sees you do it. Stealing does very little to change your alignment, but murder or assault does.

[9] We will really start posting more stuff when we are in the final stage of finishing the game. Not more than 2 weeks ago we had to alter the world map because we had inadvertently placed a certain dungeon too close to a certain town and needed more distance between them for a certain quest to work properly. So, we don't want to post anything that might change before finalization. We do have plans to start posting a bit of Lore eventually. There are many stories of Eschalon's history waiting to be told, but not enough time in the day to tell them all and still keep the development moving forward at full speed.

Saxon1974 · Post by **Saxon1974** » May 30th, 2007, 2:26 pm

Have we talked about Leveling yet? Im curious how long it takes to level up.

The reason I ask is because I prefer games that take a decent amount of effort to level up, making it more rewarding when you do. A game that its pretty easy to level and allows you to get to level 40 or 50 kind of take the fun away for me.

I like games with level caps around 8 or 10......

YouTube · Post by **BasiliskWrangler** » May 30th, 2007, 3:43 pm

You gain levels fairly quickly early on, but then slow down as you get up there. We are aiming for somewhere around level 15 as the maximum a player will reach while playing Book I.

The cap for the rule system is level 21, but if you were to peak at the design documents, you'd see some notes for taking characters above this cap for some epic role-playing. Whether or not this makes it in to Book II or even Book III is yet to be seen.

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