You don't have to apologise for agreeing with me.ffordesoon wrote:it's one of the very few sixteen-color games that still looks good today (sorry, Krellen

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You don't have to apologise for agreeing with me.ffordesoon wrote:it's one of the very few sixteen-color games that still looks good today (sorry, Krellen
As I just commented in the other thread, I played it in the late 80s on a PC/XT clone, at least a few times all the way through, probably several. I'd sometimes take breaks from Wasteland and go play one of the Bard's Tale games again, alternating between the two. They were absolutely my favorite games of the 80s, which is the reason I'm backing this project. I have complete trust in Brian and his team to deliver an excellent game in this category which has been neglected for years. I'm extremely excited (and looking forward to being an NPC).Lanatir wrote:Ok, since i cant do a poll here ill just ask in a normal thread. I get the feeling that the majority here never really played Wasteland (and with played i mean dont start it up once in Dosbox or Emulator and go like 'cant get over crappy gfx and cumbersome menu, what a sucky game!').
I'd really like to know...who played it? Did You finish it? Did you like it? And if you didnt play it, why exactly are you backing it? What is your expectation?
I'd actually rather have keyboard hot keys for commands than a mouse command interface. Clickfests are not fun! But a mixture is good too. I wouldn't change the scrolling text either. But I would put it on an overlay and let you scroll back through it, and all the dialogue and other prose too. My game wouldn't need a quest journal, as you could easily read back through the story.Skirge wrote:This is about to derail the topic, but maybe a short segue is ok. It depends what parts of the original system you're talking about. For instance, I don't want to see a list of commands and have to press "U" to use an item. I'd much rather click. I also really don't want to see scrolling text for combat. I assume you're talking about other things, but you never know.Gizmo wrote:TouchéSkirge wrote:I know, but then my response wouldn't have been as funny.![]()
** But I really do think that they could assimilate the original WL system into the new design ~with improvements; and not just graphical ones.
The keyboard commands in Fallout are a welcome feature, but they seem like cosmetic elements like the mouse interface in Wasteland. Wasteland lets you program macros for repetitive commands but Fallout doesn't have that option. If I made Wasteland 2, I would adjust the scale of combat either to the experience or size of the party or adjust it to the abilities/strategies/tactics learned by the party. So, you get more complex commands as you go along, giving the characters effective macros to simplify the easy battles as you go along. I don't want to step through the same damn battle stages for ants every time I fight them as I do for more difficult, or more organized enemies. I want the battles to increase in complexity, but become easier to handle with convenient commands.Rzarkrusz Rowa wrote:When I play Fallout I use keyboard shortcuts instead of GUI whenever it's possible. The optimal way of working with computer is to have one hand of keyboard and one on mouse (when not writing, of course).
I agree with every single one of your observations and I would include improvements to those things in an expanded/updated Wasteland interface. In addition, I would like to have new options, more and different kinds of commands depending on the terrain and the situation, and ways to combine abilities/strategies together. Strategy could a learned skill, gradually improving the party's approach to difficult battles and simplifying the easier battles. It could give players the equivalent of a strategy interface to a chess game, to conveniently take advantage of the pieces' abilities; give characters a memory for good strategies.Rzarkrusz Rowa wrote: The problem with the Wasteland's interface is that it's not optimized and introduces unnecessary steps.
For example I want to give someone some item.
I can't just enter character's inventory - I need to get through character screen.
When I want to give someone ammo, I need to get through a question whenever I want to load it or not instead of having a load option contextually added to the item menu.
Also, there's no stacking, so moving 10 identical items needs to be done one by one.
It also lacks ability to select multiple items and move them together.
It's a very active interface! The overhead map gives you a lot of information, even though the graphics are very basic. I like a game that gives you useful information about your surroundings. I always feel like Fallout is too closed in all the time and I would rather see from a higher altitude; the HIgh-Res mods help this a bit; but Wasteland did this very simply. I don't mind my party being represented as an icon on a squares-or-hexes strategic map and i would like that for Wasteland 2.ffordesoon wrote:Answers to the OP's questions:
I've played Wasteland, though not to completion. Will probably use a walkthrough to get through it sometime soon, because I would like to be familiar with all its nooks and crannies, but I don't want to spend months on it. That's no slight to the game's quality; I'd certainly like to play through it multiple times with different parties. It's purely an issue of time; I'm trying to write stories, so I don't have the time to get to grips with the interface and solve all the puzzles and blah-de-blah on my own before the beta. I actually like the interface a lot; it's not nearly as cumbersome an interface as that of almost any other RPG from the same time period, and it's even better than some modern RPG interfaces. But I'm just not used to it.I'd really like to know...who played it? Did You finish it?
I agree wholly with what you've said. I pledged because I have wanted a Wasteland sequel for more than 20 years. I will accept whatever Fargo et. al. come up with. That game will probably be more like Fallout than Wasteland and that is okay even though I would personally like to see Wasteland's legacy extend to a more strategic kind of RPG game.ffordesoon wrote: So I'll tell you why I pledged: because (to beat that awful metaphor completely to death) I want to free the slaves and burn the goddamn slavers' goddamn camp to the goddamn ground. I want everyone who plays games to get what they want, not what Bobby Kotick or John Riccitiello allows them to have. I want to prove the shitheads wrong. I want games like Wasteland 2 to be the rule, not the exception. I want that "literary quality" that Fargo has spoken of, that maturity, to come back and stay back. I want to feel like the medium is advancing, not the industry. I want all genres to exist and to advance together. I want the Mass Effects and the Age Of Decadences, the Fallout 3s and the Wasteland 2s. I want to be spoiled for choice, not hoping against hope that cRPG X will finally break the AAA mold a tad. I want everyone to have something that satisfies them - the grognards and the greenhorns, the core and the casual. I want no genre left behind. I want everyone to have a say. I want a real revolution.
That's why I pledged.
You definitely shouldn't get it from any "aband_nware" sites or try to use any "file sh_ring" programs to find it, because those things are morally reprehensibleDocHott wrote:I played it back when it came out. It was always in my mind since then - best game ever ! Want to play it again now ! Where can I find the game and emulator ?
I think you misunderstand the point of my statement. I'm not saying that the developers chose to make a PnP RPG because of limitations of technology at the time, instead I'm saying that given that they decided to make a PnP RPG, including full on map based tactical combat like the Gold Box games while at the same time having the open world exploration would probably have been too much for the technology of the time. (Or at least the cost and time to implement them with the existing technology and tools would have been too much.)MDF_MadDogFargo wrote:wormspeaker wrote:I first played Wasteland on my C64. I still have the "album" style box and one of the 5.25" floppies. (I seem to have lost the others somewhere.) More recently I used to play it through to completion about once every year or two in the IBM version up until about 2005 or so when my old Windows 98 machine finally died and it was too hard to get it to work on my new machine.
That being said, there aren't too many differences between Wasteland updated to newer graphics and interface and Fallout 1 and 2. The main differences are in the aesthetics (Wasteland was very much a product of the 80s and Fallout had it's retro 50s vibe) and the lack of true party based combat in Fallout. (The underlying game mechanics are different, but Wasteland 2 will certainly not have the same game mechanics as Wasteland 1, because those were more or less the result of limitations in technology of the time more than anything else.*)
Okay I just want to say this limitations of technology idea is completly dumb. That is something that defines all computer and console games to some extent at every stage and generation of games. Games fit the technology that's available. That's a given.
But limitations are not a reason for designing a game. You have to put yourself in the position of the developers at the time to know the reasons for their design choices. They could have made a side-scroller. They could have made a shooter. There were a lot of graphical ways to display combat, as the many arcade, computer, and console games of 1988 will testify. They chose to emulate a PnP RPG deliberately. They chose to do that and create an RPG because they were keen on that sort of thing.
I have a hard time understanding what your point is here. Are you saying that you would prefer the abstracted non-visual combat system of Wasteland (or say, Bard's Tale or Wrath of Nicodemus, or basically just about any RPG of that era that wasn't the Gold Box games) than the visual tactical map based combat that has been the standard for PnP RPGs and all computer RPGs since the 90s? Or a completely keyboard driven interface? Or both?MDF_MadDogFargo wrote: The more I examine the two games the more they seem like different operating systems. Wasteland is more like a command line interface, although the choices are laid out in a menu and on a map. Fallout is a graphical interface. Computer gamers who are not familiar with command line interfaces and only know graphical OS's, might not be able to imagine a game without a graphical interface. Wasteland's graphics consisted of a map to show your location and the character portraits in the encounter menus. You navigate Wasteland using keyboard commands (the mouse interface is entirely cosmetic); you navigate Fallout visually. This of course is usually taken for granted and assumed to be superior to the non-graphical interface of older games.
At this point, I'm almost positive that you have misunderstood my point. My point extends simply to the interface and combat system. I think that maybe you feel that I was suggesting that they go with a real-time combat, or some JRPG crap, or a first person shooter or something? If I wanted that stuff, I could get it from Fallout 3, or Final Fantasy, or something.MDF_MadDogFargo wrote: Why would you want to make a game today that has a command-oriented interface rather than a visual-oriented interface? I mean if technology lets you build three-dimensional menus for your games that take up 90% of the storage and 99% of the cpu power, then it must be vastly superior to the olden days of room-sized computers with ticker-tape displays and no monitors right? Well, maybe, but what we've seen in computer game history is (I argue) the development of an industry that hypes new superficial features and makes its money from bloated graphical albatrosses rather than creating unique new stories that might be possible with a simpler, less graphics-oriented interface similar to the first generation of computer RPGs. Those games are still fun to play, even though their interfaces could be improved and updated to something more modern in the same style, like a visual novel.
I don't believe today's visual novels (as a whole) are exactly a modern incarnation of classic CRPG games either, at least not yet. Some of them are more like that than others. There are also apparently some games for the DS and PSP that resemble text adventures and Roguelikes and other old styles of games. I don't think there's any reason to go backward in time to an old style of game precisely, but the command interface plus graphics is a valid approach to gameplay.
The Civilization games do a good job of showing what is possible with a turn-based strategy game. If you gave the battles in Civ a Wasteland-like command interface but expanded, what you might have is something like an updated Wasteland encounter format. But unlike the Civ games, in that kind of game I would drastically reduce the time scale and focus the personalities not on rulers but on individual party members and NPCs. It's another possible evolution of the platform that Wasteland originated, whereas in reality we have seen its influence fork into the more tactics-oriented and narrower of scope game of Fallout 1/2.
I would love to hear what you feel are the differences between the two games.MDF_MadDogFargo wrote:I believe this is a poorly formulated comparison. Besides the general idea of the apocalypse and a few references between the games, there is barely anything left of Wasteland in Fallout. So, a Wasteland 2 that picks up from Fallout 2 with even less to do with Wasteland (the game), wouldn't satisfy me at all. If it was a completely different engine from Wasteland and completely different rules for skill gains and exploration and it abandoned the MSPE influence entirely, I would feel cheated out of a Wasteland sequel.wormspeaker wrote:I
No doubt somewhere there is someone who has compiled a list of differences between the two properties, but I think the two that I listed are the only major ones. The rest of the differences are ones of extent rather than kind.
The album-cover games were actually a bit of an innovation from the early Electronic Arts. See avatar for an example ->Drool wrote:Both? Huh. I had the album-cover version for the C64. That's how most games came (aside from SSI's Gold Box games). Starflight, Bard's Tale, etc.
I wasted so much of my youth playing that game.Gremlin wrote:See avatar for an example ->
The Apple II version came in both editions too. I happen to have the boxed Apple II version right here.ad1066 wrote:According to Mobygames, the Apple version came in a folding album thingy, the PC version came in an actual box with the yellow logo that you see on this site's homepage, as opposed to the cutout version attached to the box art), and the C64 was available both ways.
Oh, man so did I. That was such a fun game. Have you seen Starfarer?krellen wrote:I wasted so much of my youth playing that game.Gremlin wrote:See avatar for an example ->
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