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Dougy
03-24-2008, 05:02 AM
Extra special thanks to TB for posting this feature.

Some changes I notices:
- intimidation skill
- no girdle slot (correction: the girdle slot has moved)
- steel battle axe (+0; 1d6+2 slashing) {x2, 5%} [70] What on earth does x2 and 5% mean?
- dungeons don't have to be in/near mountains. They're everywhere!
- the city was _so_ big, but _so_ slow!
- what are the blue & symbols? Are they fountains?
- the world is huge and looks like the char lives on a torus
- "you opened the trapped door"
- "you enter the Ancardia"
- water appears to have depth

Dorten
03-24-2008, 07:16 AM
{x2, 5%} - it's critical multiplier and chance, I suppose...

chalup
03-24-2008, 10:41 AM
Everything looks fine to me except for the city. It's just a bunch of isolated rooms that doesn't make any sense.

I'd like to see some major streets, minor streets, district of nobles with big houses, city marketplace, etc. Some parts of the town could have quite regular street grid, and the others (for example paupers' quarter) could look just like the city on the latest movie. The small village should be stretched along the roads that crosses it, etc.

I'm not the urban developement expert, but the cities are not bunch of totally random buildings - their current shape is the effect of city "evolution". The realistic generation of towns is probably something that won't be implemented in the first versions of JADE, but adding it in the future would greatly improve the playability and flavor of the game.

Laukku
03-24-2008, 12:05 PM
There's again a hill dwarf starting in a human city... :\ That doesn't make any sense (unless the story is about an orphaned hill dwarf raised by humans).

Chalup: If you look closely, a couple of streets can be seen. :) I agree though that there could be more minor streets and more stuff.

vdweller
03-24-2008, 12:55 PM
The video was awesome! THe world is really huge!

It's almost like an Oblivion roguelike!

theotherhiveking
03-24-2008, 05:51 PM
also the world warps around itself!

myrddin
03-24-2008, 06:31 PM
I agree about the city - that thing is probably way too huge.

About the "world warp" - don't all globe worlds do that? go far enough in one direction you'll come back to where you started!

Tannis
03-24-2008, 06:48 PM
The people complaining about the dwarf are being ridiculous. Dwarves and Humans are frequent allies. The dwarf could be a traveler or a trader. One would expect to find a few dwarves in a human city (especially a large one), and a few kobolds in an orc settlement. It's just logic.

As for the size of the city, it's perfect. I hate it in RPGs when you enter a "city" only to find 10 buildings. A real city has dozens to hundreds of buildings. The whole point of JADE is to create a whole world. Now, I'd be surprised if there were dozens of cities that large. I'd expect most settlements to be towns, roughly a third smaller than that.

Dougy
03-24-2008, 09:45 PM
Well... it appears as if "wraps around" like a torus or a doughnut shape, rather than a sphere. For example, on earth, antarctica is not connected to the arctic. But it looks like there are sea borders to stop you "wrapping around." I'm not entirely sure about this though.

theotherhiveking
03-24-2008, 10:09 PM
hey, what is a commoner?

MattW
03-24-2008, 11:25 PM
Everything looks fine to me except for the city. It's just a bunch of isolated rooms that doesn't make any sense.

I'd like to see some major streets, minor streets, district of nobles with big houses, city marketplace, etc. Some parts of the town could have quite regular street grid, and the others (for example paupers' quarter) could look just like the city on the latest movie. The small village should be stretched along the roads that crosses it, etc.

I'm not the urban developement expert, but the cities are not bunch of totally random buildings - their current shape is the effect of city "evolution". The realistic generation of towns is probably something that won't be implemented in the first versions of JADE, but adding it in the future would greatly improve the playability and flavor of the game.
chalup, this was what stood out to me, as well. In cities and in the world. The world's geography seemed very smoothly generated... I'm not surprised that it's a difficult thing to generate things properly, but ideally geography should keep its holistic identity while having a good amount of reasonable, realistic detail like what you just described here.

Edit to provide some more detail:
Right now, ADoM's towns/cities are basically the same as villages (groups of huts) in Oblivion--just a collection of simple enclosures, perhaps with some sort of layout that has to do with a road. With the current structure, where houses are just a few squares of space with no unique features, it's not possible the sort of depth you see in large-scale RPGs in which each house/building is its own environment and you might have multiple floors or a basement. I'd like to recommend that additional detail/features, plus perhaps making houses bigger, be implemented, because real cities would open up a lot of opportunity for exploration and gameplay. I'm not saying they would have to be anywhere near as detailed as in a commercial RPG like Oblivion (which is, in fact, probably very difficult when I consider that worlds will be randomly generated) but it would be nice if settlements possessed interesting features that made them worth exploring for more than just finding shopkeepers and NPCs with quests.

Anyway, awesome video.

deepshock
03-24-2008, 11:26 PM
This is incredible! Thank you TB! With the sheer size of everything, and the added options, JADE is likely to be a blast and a half!

Dougy
03-25-2008, 12:21 AM
This is incredible! Thank you TB! With the sheer size of everything, and the added options, JADE is likely to be a blast and a half!

I personally am extremely excited and I don't think I'm the only one. Although, they say excitement is a messenger of battle.

Sradac
03-25-2008, 01:44 AM
Some things i noticed:

PC started with cursed gear??? or did the trapped door do that?

All the dungeons had the same inhabitents on the first level. I would like to stumble upon a cave in the middle of the wilderness with nothing around to see it being something quite scary for a low level character to just go exploring, like a family of trolls living in it or an ogre tribe....or a dragons den! All dungeons were "a forbiding entrance" or something along those lines. the up stairs were > and not <
when leaving dungeons you're informed "You enter the Ancardia" that was kinda funny actually lol...and I never knew a world to wrap if you go from north to south only east to west.

Sradac
03-25-2008, 01:46 AM
also about "all the houses were empty" the PC was only in viewing range of one building and there were two inhabitents inside, a blue and green @ who knows what was inside alllllll those other buildings. I was expected something that was maybe a couple screens big when he entered the city then he zoomed out and revealed it my jaw dropped lol it was huuuuuuuuuuge!.

Sradac
03-25-2008, 01:49 AM
chalup, this was what stood out to me, as well. In cities and in the world. The world's geography seemed very smoothly generated... I'm not surprised that it's a difficult thing to generate things properly, but ideally geography should keep its holistic identity while having a good amount of reasonable, realistic detail like what you just described here.

Edit to provide some more detail:
Right now, ADoM's towns/cities are basically the same as villages (groups of huts) in Oblivion--just a collection of simple enclosures, perhaps with some sort of layout that has to do with a road. With the current structure, where houses are just a few squares of space with no unique features, it's not possible the sort of depth you see in large-scale RPGs in which each house/building is its own environment and you might have multiple floors or a basement. I'd like to recommend that additional detail/features, plus perhaps making houses bigger, be implemented, because real cities would open up a lot of opportunity for exploration and gameplay. I'm not saying they would have to be anywhere near as detailed as in a commercial RPG like Oblivion (which is, in fact, probably very difficult when I consider that worlds will be randomly generated) but it would be nice if settlements possessed interesting features that made them worth exploring for more than just finding shopkeepers and NPCs with quests.

Anyway, awesome video.

bah why does everyone compare "good" rpgs to oblivion? it really wasnt that good, the skill system is easily abused, the magic system is waaaaay to simple for my likings, EVERY fire spell looks exactly the same, thats kinda lame. The Voice acting is pretty generic andthe story just bored me, i never even completed to main quest i just did the mage guild ones and whatever side ones i could find. Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines was damn good! Some people didnt like it because you could only control one char and it "strayed" from the PnP rules but i say so what, the detail in it is amazing, the voice acting is great the quests are varied to a great degree, from go kill this person, to go set up hidden cameras here here and here, to find information from someone and its up to you how to do it, bribery persuasion or force. The combat is quite fun actually I just love bloodlines so much. And its fun to be evil...very fun ;)

and the stories and quests always had me going, "Whoa!" if anyones played it the ghost hotel actually had me feeling for the lady ghost when i found out what heppened to her.

Dougy
03-25-2008, 01:55 AM
It'd be annoying to allow insta-kills, but perhaps they can be avoided in a similar way to the minatour mazes and the bug temples. The ideas do sound quite interesting. Here's a thought:

You stumble upon a congregation of dragons. Quickly the staircase below you is sealed. Several dragons loudly roar and hiss at you. One dragon approaches and says 'If you want to live, you shall return to me with the anti-dragon sceptre. Dragons cannot touch it. Do you agree?' <y/n> y

The staircase below you is reopened. 'Good, now if you have not returned with it within thirty days we shall hunt you down. Is that understood? You are free to go.'

Dougy
03-25-2008, 01:57 AM
also about "all the houses were empty" the PC was only in viewing range of one building and there were two inhabitents inside, a blue and green @ who knows what was inside alllllll those other buildings. I was expected something that was maybe a couple screens big when he entered the city then he zoomed out and revealed it my jaw dropped lol it was huuuuuuuuuuge!.

Yep, it seems that the huge number of NPCs is what slowed down the program so significantly! I wonder what can be done about that.

Epythic
03-25-2008, 10:53 AM
bah why does everyone compare "good" rpgs to oblivion? it really wasnt that good, the skill system is easily abused, the magic system is waaaaay to simple for my likings, EVERY fire spell looks exactly the same, thats kinda lame. The Voice acting is pretty generic andthe story just bored me, i never even completed to main quest i just did the mage guild ones and whatever side ones i could find.[...]

I feel so too. But that goes for any graphical three-dimensional commercial roguelike game.

Laukku
03-25-2008, 02:30 PM
Well... it appears as if "wraps around" like a torus or a doughnut shape, rather than a sphere. For example, on earth, antarctica is not connected to the arctic.

The easiest way to make a somewhat sphere-like planet would probably be forming a cube from 6 square areas:


--------
|north |
| pole |
| |
-----------------------------
|sector|sector|sector|sector|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 |
| | | | |
-----------------------------
|south |
| pole |
| |
--------


A message like "You enter sector 4 of Ancardia" would be shown when the PC walks off the edge of an area... Alternatively, Ancardia could be shaped like a doughnut. :P

EDIT:There isn't that flashing thingy under the PC. If there are many other white @'s around the PC it can be hard to tell which one is the player.

And the YASD popup comes too quickly IMO. It's not nice if the game tells you're dead before I notice the reason. I want to slowly realise, :) that my best character that I have played for weeks, has died, like this:

The orc swings his cursed poisonus crude battle axe of doom at you, killing you!(more)
You die...(more)

freekE
03-25-2008, 04:17 PM
Video looks great, good job Thomas keep it up - the world and "creating a character" looks very nice...I'm hoping the game was smooth even player, are in late-game

BowenTheKotoc
03-25-2008, 04:49 PM
Jumping on the "neat video, thanks" bandwagon. :) I don't think anyone mentioned the inventory popping up in a separate window, but that's a great feature. Cool beans! When can we test it? :)

Sradac
03-25-2008, 07:46 PM
Jumping on the "neat video, thanks" bandwagon. :) I don't think anyone mentioned the inventory popping up in a separate window, but that's a great feature. Cool beans! When can we test it? :)

2d12 + 6 weeks after the question is no longer asked ;)

rmcin329
03-25-2008, 07:49 PM
well the more people that ask, the more time he has to make a better initial release version :D

Sradac
03-25-2008, 08:07 PM
got a good point there...i dont know what i'd rather have a longer wait for super duper extra sweet content, or a shorter wait to just get in a get the jist of it. I highly doubt I will "beat" JADE if its even possible with the first releases in the time between releases so I dunno

Macros
03-25-2008, 09:36 PM
Video looks very good, and I really like it. Only thing that scares me a bit are those huge towns(not that I have anything against big towns - I really like that idea, but there is a border beyond which it isn't fun anymore, and it starts to be pain in the...) - they could be a bit smaller IMO. Also, I saw on that video two NPC's in town - too bad that you didn't decided to show something more about them(maybe in JADE video part 2?:)).

Anyway, great work! I can't wait when JADE will be out.

Grey
03-26-2008, 01:50 AM
Just saw the video, and it fills me with nothing short of glee. I love how big everything is - it took well over a year just to walk around the continent. The best thing in my eyes is that this is still early days - this game is going to be amazing when TB gets to do everything he wants to it.

Slash
03-26-2008, 02:14 AM
1. On video start, we get a glimpse of JADE at IntelliJ which gives us some insight on the structure of the program, it seems to be a flexible take on Actions and Brains, clearly seeking to fulfill his notes about similarities between player and monsters as well as a structured action model.

2. From what I can get on the video, JADE is currently looking like ADOM++ running on Java, with a bigger randomly generated overworld, and levels pretty similar to what Adom stablished as standard for ADOMLikes (some dead like Legend of Saladir and Avanor)

3. The world generator gives pretty impressive results, people tends to forget producing a generator like this is never easy.

4. The UI looks flexible and the display choices are interesting.

5. I love the world generator

6. I am wondering about memory consumption, as a Java programmer :P

7. We must have in mind this is just 0.0.7

8. The town is toooo big, I agree... but I recall him saying sometime it would be like a lot of dungeon levels put in one alone?

9. Some music would have been nice :P

10. I am happy the JADE engine has reached such maturity level, which puts him apart from the talkie talkie and genroguelikes category! what we have here is basically ADOM, but (I guess) better written and without the spiky bites of code that compose a roguelike through the years, which is a feat on itself. I hope he can start implementing the unique features to make it for an interesting gameplay experience :)


Originally posted at http://www.roguetemple.com/forums/index.php?topic=163.0

Grey
03-26-2008, 03:30 AM
By the way, the date on the video was something like 6937AC - AC, eh? "After Chaos", I wonder?

moppit
03-26-2008, 03:47 AM
Ok.. Now it's time to comment on the city...

If you follow some of the creator's other posts, he makes references to citys/towns/villages....

I believe on the video he just went to perhaps one of the larger/largest cities to show off some of what is made....

I would believe that it would be an easy enough algorithm to have smaller villages/towns and am relatively certain (without knowing) that Mr. Biskup already has a variety of city densities in the game.. For one, on the video the city was huge, but I think a few of them in a game may be kind of interesting.

Keep up the Good Work!

theotherhiveking
03-26-2008, 03:34 PM
By the way, the date on the video was something like 6937AC - AC, eh? "After Chaos", I wonder?

After christ (?)

muAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA:eek:

not really :p

BowenTheKotoc
03-26-2008, 04:05 PM
2d12 + 6 weeks after the question is no longer asked ;)

I thought that was if we asked to play it. ;) Seriously, I'm assuming there's going to be some kind of testing phase, right? Or does Mr. Biskup do all his testing internally? I think I may have read that somewhere, in which case I retract the question, but if there is going to be some kind of external testing, I'd have to post my willingness to help somewhere, right?

theotherhiveking
03-26-2008, 04:20 PM
I thought that was if we asked to play it. ;) Seriously, I'm assuming there's going to be some kind of testing phase, right? Or does Mr. Biskup do all his testing internally? I think I may have read that somewhere, in which case I retract the question, but if there is going to be some kind of external testing, I'd have to post my willingness to help somewhere, right?
Yeah, Herr biskup will release something that we can test over time, but we can be sure that he will internally extensively test it before any release.

Doalag
03-26-2008, 06:19 PM
It's cool to see something concrete, it makes me "wooa" but after, my second thought was it's too big. How can you possibly fill such a vast world with interesting contents, story stuff, special things, and so on?

Some comments :
- The zoom and light effect are very cool, I'd love have something like that in dungeons too and in ADOM :-).
- I like a lot the idea to have the wilderness not only limited to one screen size (but that doesn't mean that the world needs to be bigger than in biggest RPG!).
- It seems the log is like the old ADOM log, I deeply regret that, can it be improved? I don't think successive sentences on 2 lines and many "more" requiring key hit is that good. To setup moods and important information like a text describing an area where you enter, soem dialogs, a text you read, and so on, you should have something on multiple line and with a "more" required. For the log for more casual description of actions results it should be different, more based on multiple line and special color for more important stuff and no "more" but the ability to see the history and to see only important messages.
- Where are the pets? I didn't see any pets in the demo that's a big disappointment!

Baranor
03-26-2008, 08:43 PM
There was a moment when TB changed the message height to 5. I think that means how many lines at the top are taken up by messages. He thought with 4 monsters attacking him he would get to that level of messaging, but he killed them too quickly.

Anyone notice the amazing number of goblin scavengers! He fought like 7 of them in just the game that we saw. They constituted about half of the monsters he killed!

All in all this looks sweet. I'll bet there is plenty of caverns for adventurous folk, but there are also specific areas with specific quests. The city was the most impressive part for me. Congratulations, TB, it looks fantastic. I can't wait to sink my teeth into the first version (even if it has ultra-limited capabilities).

Worst Player... ever
03-27-2008, 12:08 AM
I really like most of what I've seen. The different types of customizable views were especially nice. :)

A question I have is, if you've got randomly generated dungeons, how will the monster strength within be determined? It looked like there was nothing listed where a player could determine if the level was right for him or not. I'd get tired of hacking my way through goblin rockthrowers after a while, but I wouldn't want the generated monsters to match my level either. I've seen that in other RPG's, and you don't really get the impression of gaining in power, since the everything you encounter at level 12 is just as hard to kill as everything you encounter at level 1.

Dougy
03-27-2008, 12:26 AM
Well perhaps 'c'hatting with friendly NPCs could help reveal what is in dungeons nearby. "I'd wouldn't go in the dungeon to the east, nobody who entered there has ever come back alive." This way, there's a way to avoid walking into death-traps, but at the same time you don't always have to battle 10 levels of goblins before getting anywhere decent.

Those with the appraisal skill could get messages along the lines: "You feel like you don't belong here."

Silfir
03-27-2008, 01:45 AM
If I were asked, the title of the first JADE fansite should be "Enter the Ancardia".

Dougy
03-27-2008, 03:20 AM
If I were asked, the title of the first JADE fansite should be "Enter the Ancardia".

With a name like that, I can really picture a heavy-metal intro! Oh, and a movie made from the game.

Dougy
03-29-2008, 12:01 AM
I wonder what would happen if you tried to rob a shop in town... buahaha!!!

Tennforce
03-30-2008, 09:06 AM
Um... there is a girdle slot.
It's just been moved in between Gauntlets and Boots;)

adom-admin
03-30-2008, 01:01 PM
After christ (?)

muAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA:eek:

not really :p

Ancardian Calendar :D

Grey
03-31-2008, 02:21 AM
Ah, shoulda known it'd be something so similar.

I must say, the mention of an early release for JADE is actually kind of worrying. Whilst I will be ecstatic when I finally get my hands on it, I would probably prefer if more work was done laying down the building blocks before it was released to the public. Otherwise there's going to be a lot of repetitive minor bug reports and fantastical suggestions of gameplay additions that could get in the way of further development. With how long we've been waiting already I think I can wait a bit longer to be sure of a better JADE release...

rmcin329
03-31-2008, 05:51 AM
well the easiest way to delay its coming out, so more bugs can be fixed first, is to keep asking when it'll be out lol. Everytime someone asks it gets pushed back another 2 weeks i believe it is.

Elone
03-31-2008, 09:48 AM
There exist two logical reasons to release a (barely playable) version to the public.
A) To satiate their impatience.
B) To let them test, and point any bugs out.

Well, A, all of you seem to have a mixed feeling if Jade should be released sooner or later, so The Creator will decide on his own instead (as he cant already satisfy all of you at the same time).

And B, The Creator most probably does not need us to test any bugs yet, because... He can get only so-much work done, and I think that he, as of now, already has enough work for the next few months. If he released a version, from which 30-40 of us will constantly report bugs one after another, do you think that he would have an easy time to focus? One rule of nice eating is that once you take a bite and start to choke on it, you do not stuff the next bite right onto it. (I'm not saying that Creator is choking, but he stated that the more he uses Java, the more possibilities he finds, which he'd rather implement all at once if he could.)

This does not mean that I dont want a release yet. It means that Creator gives us a release, we will start bothering him and complaining about everything, without limits. Creator will know when it's the right time, and way, to release a version for all of us.

Feel free to flame me if I didnt make any sense here.

coppro
04-01-2008, 05:25 AM
hey, what is a commoner?Well, D&D uses commoner (and a couple of others) as the classes which regular NPCs have. Or it could be just a weaker class for added game challenge, like farmer. But I think the most likely option is that TB, like all good programmers, is lazy, and so the Commoner represents his first class - one that does absolutely squat, and is there only to provide a baseline and for testing purposes.

theotherhiveking
04-01-2008, 01:55 PM
Well, D&D uses commoner (and a couple of others) as the classes which regular NPCs have. Or it could be just a weaker class for added game challenge, like farmer. But I think the most likely option is that TB, like all good programmers, is lazy, and so the Commoner represents his first class - one that does absolutely squat, and is there only to provide a baseline and for testing purposes.

Thanks, the google search returned some results about British law... thats why i asked.


CONGRATULATIONS 99999th VISITOR! YOU JUST WON POSITIVE KARMA!

Epythic
04-05-2008, 11:35 AM
CONGRATULATIONS 99999th VISITOR! YOU JUST WON POSITIVE KARMA!

Did i miss something??

EDIT: Or is this the forum-version of ADOM, with lots of hidden features?

theotherhiveking
04-05-2008, 12:52 PM
Did i miss something??

EDIT: Or is this the forum-version of ADOM, with lots of hidden features?


You dont know what karma is?


Karma are points that people give you for useful post, these points can be good (green) or bad (red) to give karma to someone, click in this icon "http://www.adom.de/forums/images/buttons/reputation.gif" on the post you want to rate.


You can see the karma that you have in your user's cp, but the tab won't apear until you have at least one point, good or bad.

Epythic
04-05-2008, 01:25 PM
You dont know what karma is?


Karma are points that people give you for useful post, these points can be good (green) or bad (red) to give karma to someone, click in this icon "http://www.adom.de/forums/images/buttons/reputation.gif" on the post you want to rate.


You can see the karma that you have in your user's cp, but the tab won't apear until you have at least one point, good or bad.

I know what karma is, I just didnt know that the 99999th visitor gets some for free.

EDIT: And I never gave karma on this forum. On most forums, people either don't care about Karma or abuse it.
The only place I know where karma is of actual importance is Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/).

EDIT 2: Give me karma! :)

EDIT 3: Do you think the karma system is a good, a bad or a useless thing?

Grey
04-05-2008, 04:50 PM
EDIT 3: Do you think the karma system is a good, a bad or a useless thing?

Very silly and pointless thing I think. Even the Slashdot system is awful in my eyes. Still, I gave you a point just for the hell of it :P

Dougy
04-05-2008, 11:19 PM
Oh, when I first read this I thought you guys were talking about luck in ADOM.

Ars
04-06-2008, 01:34 AM
What bothered me about the map, that such a huge city was surrounded by zero smaller towns or villages that I could see...

Nezur
04-06-2008, 03:07 PM
What bothered me about the map, that such a huge city was surrounded by zero smaller towns or villages that I could see...

Good idea. BTW I have lately given thought to the arbitrary size of wilderness squares. How huge a square really is? It is true that a gigantic city could be placed on a square, but if other squares surrounding it are considerably smaller should the town be divided into multiple squares, starting from Outskirts and ending to Central city?

Dougy
04-06-2008, 09:55 PM
I'm sure all this would be sorted over time.

Dougy
04-07-2008, 02:42 AM
I wonder if it's necessary to have everyone moving constantly in the city. Perhaps only the people within the line-of-sight of the PC should need to move. It appears quite slow on the video so this way might possibly speed up gameplay. But, this may all be later issues.

rmcin329
04-07-2008, 02:56 AM
heh you have a point there about it slowing things down. But i don't mind things that might slow it down if they'll make it nicer. With 2GB of ram, i probably won't notice much dif anyways :D

Dougy
04-07-2008, 03:08 AM
Some screenshots from the video:

Dougy
04-07-2008, 03:11 AM
Some more:

rmcin329
04-07-2008, 03:11 AM
it looks nice so far, even if there will be a few new complications to learn.

Dougy
04-07-2008, 03:13 AM
Some more, there is a 5 .jpg per post limit and there's also a size limit, hence the limitation on the size of the first one of these screenshots. Hopefully this helps those readers with less bandwidth.

Nezur
04-07-2008, 07:55 AM
I wonder if it's necessary to have everyone moving constantly in the city. Perhaps only the people within the line-of-sight of the PC should need to move. It appears quite slow on the video so this way might possibly speed up gameplay. But, this may all be later issues.

The video was recorded at only 10 FPS. Though I wouldn't be surprised if there were loading pauses especially at this stage of development.

Dougy
04-07-2008, 10:10 AM
Looking at the video, it appears as if it takes a full second or two for each character movement. You're right, it is an early stage, but it'll probably need looking into before a release.

BowenTheKotoc
04-07-2008, 05:57 PM
Hey Dougy, thanks for the screen shots. Some of that stuff went by so quickly in the video that I didn't see any detail. I really like that it shows which attribute each skill is tied to, that's awesome. Makes it a bit more D&D-like.

Epythic
04-12-2008, 01:26 PM
Very silly and pointless thing I think. Even the Slashdot system is awful in my eyes. Still, I gave you a point just for the hell of it :P

Slashdot's system has its flaws (for example that slashdotters are predictable - mention the word "karma" and you wont get modded down), but I like the idea of it.

Thanks for the point, gave one back ... which demonstrates another flaw: users starting to give karma because they got karma.

Just wanted to point that out. Back to topic.


Some screenshots from the video:

Yay. What do I hate about JADE ?

The message boxes, the windows, the changing window titles.

Why is it not like it was in ADOM, everything in one window? This kills immersion.

Laukku
04-19-2008, 02:52 PM
Something I noticed long ago, but forgot to ask... In the video, there are some plus & minus things next to the main attributes in the status bar. What do those mean? Are they some kind of debugging stuff?

Grey
04-19-2008, 04:44 PM
They're called "AtBo" and "Total". From observation it seems the first is an bonus you get to each increase depending on the relevant attribute. When you choose an increase in something with a +0 Attribute Bonus you get an increase of +1 (shown in the Total column on selection - Total meaning the total increase you've just applied it seems). If your attribute bonus is +3 then you'll actually get an increase of +4 (seen in the selection of Athletics and Swimming). However it seems that multiple selections of the same skill only result in +1 after the first increase (and so we see Dodge, with a +1 AtBo, go from 0 to 2 to 3). I don't know what the numbers in brackets in the Total column mean exactly - often they match the AtBo column, but sometimes they don't.

Laukku
04-19-2008, 05:01 PM
They're called "AtBo" and "Total". From observation it seems the first is an bonus you get to each increase depending on the relevant attribute. When you choose an increase in something with a +0 Attribute Bonus you get an increase of +1 (shown in the Total column on selection - Total meaning the total increase you've just applied it seems). If your attribute bonus is +3 then you'll actually get an increase of +4 (seen in the selection of Athletics and Swimming). However it seems that multiple selections of the same skill only result in +1 after the first increase (and so we see Dodge, with a +1 AtBo, go from 0 to 2 to 3). I don't know what the numbers in brackets in the Total column mean exactly - often they match the AtBo column, but sometimes they don't.

Eh? It looks like I have been misunderstood...

You seem to be talking about the skill selection screen. I was talking about the status bar (reread my post), that one that is at the bottom in ADOM:


Gaff

Hill Dwarf
Fighter 1

Xp: 63

St: 17 / +3
Le: 9 / -1
Wi: 9 / -1
Dx: 13 / +1
To: 17 / +3
Ch: 11
Ap: 11
Ma: 11
Pe: 13 / +1

DV: 15
PV: 6
MR: 0

HP: 32 / 39
PP: 0 / 0

Sp: 101
Mv: 82

Wt: 665s

Grey
04-19-2008, 05:51 PM
Heh, sorry, completely misread. Those are current stat modifiers, like on the @ screen in ADOM. You can see when he puts on rag at 8:41 that his Ch and Ap are modified. Although... the screen shows -1, -2 when it should be -2, -4. Odd...

Elone
04-21-2008, 01:53 AM
I will explain this. D&D (Dungeons and Dragons) system is a basis for many other systems, in the same way that Tolkien's mythology is a basis for every fantasy medieval world. In D&D, a stat of 10 was about average, and you would indeed be exceptional if you could get any of your stats over 20. Anyway.

Let's take Str as our observed stat.
[Str 10 / +0]
Str is average and gains no bonuses. Same is when Str is 11. But once your Str becomes 12, you gain an additional Str point to reward you for being above average.
[Str 12 / +1], which literally means that you have 13 Str.
Notice the stats with 17? And that they have bonus of 3? The real Strength will be 20. I will write the basic list here.

[Stat 07 / -2]
[Stat 08 / -1]
[Stat 09 / -1]
[Stat 10 / +0]
[Stat 11 / +0]
[Stat 12 / +1]
[Stat 13 / +1]
[Stat 14 / +2]
[Stat 15 / +2]
[Stat 16 / +3]
[Stat 17 / +3]
[Stat 18 / +4]
[Stat 19 / +4]
[Stat 20 / +5]

And yes, that means that a character with base stat of 20 will have a real stat of 25. The actual base stat is still used for requirements to wear armour, cast spells, or learn new skills, and other character-bound issues. The bonus though, is applied to combat, disarming draps, smithing, and other actionlike moments. From looking at this table, it's obvious that Creator adopted the well-known D&D stat system.

While still on the topic of D&D, I can say that their armour system SUCKED like a vacuum. Their armours had AC (Armour Class) which was same as our DV, and armour was not used for damage reduction at all. Stronger armours like Fullplate have more AC. It lead to the situation where it's easier to dodge an attack in an overly heavy iron armour (probably as heavy as the character wearing it, or more), than if you were wearing, say, a chainmail. No, in ADOM, platemails reduce your DV; but they do have a high PV, which is as it should be - easier to hit but harder to damage.

DV/PV system is the best system I saw anywhere. Creator added magic resistance too, which is okay because it's still only 3 defensive stats, which is not overwhelming.

Ars
04-21-2008, 02:04 AM
I wonder if it's necessary to have everyone moving constantly in the city. Perhaps only the people within the line-of-sight of the PC should need to move. It appears quite slow on the video so this way might possibly speed up gameplay. But, this may all be later issues.I recall Tomas stating that he won't worry about JADEs performance on older computers, as by the time it's complete it'll most likely run perfectly on the computers that are around then.

Dougy
04-21-2008, 06:54 AM
I guess it depends on how close he is to releasing JADE. It's probably not too important an issue since (I guess) there will only be a few places as densely populated as the "human city." But, who knows, there might be bigger ones...

Ronsian
05-18-2008, 06:09 PM
Stat bonus is something like this.

[10] +0
[11] +0
[12] +1
[13] +1
[14] +2
[15] +2
[16] +3
[17] +3
[18] +4
[19] +4
[20] +5

This actually is talking about skill bonuses. For instance, assuming you made a walk silently check in Dungeons and Dragons. You rolled a 15 and your attribute was 16. You would get a bonus of +3, making your total roll 18 to see if you made it. I am assuming this is the case for Jade.

Ars
05-21-2008, 08:02 PM
I guess it depends on how close he is to releasing JADE. It's probably not too important an issue since (I guess) there will only be a few places as densely populated as the "human city." But, who knows, there might be bigger ones...

One thing to look forward to is a goblin city...

Maul
05-21-2008, 10:03 PM
Yeah, well, I'd love it if all the orcs wouldn't attack everyone, including orcs, on sight. Sure, in ADOM ChAoS can drive everyone to try and kill you on sight but in JADE I'd find it nice to be able to visit different races' villages. (They should be different of course. Some cities might be in caves. Others might be concealed... whatever.)

heavensblade23
05-27-2008, 03:00 AM
Ah, shoulda known it'd be something so similar.

I must say, the mention of an early release for JADE is actually kind of worrying. Whilst I will be ecstatic when I finally get my hands on it, I would probably prefer if more work was done laying down the building blocks before it was released to the public. Otherwise there's going to be a lot of repetitive minor bug reports and fantastical suggestions of gameplay additions that could get in the way of further development. With how long we've been waiting already I think I can wait a bit longer to be sure of a better JADE release...

I think you're the only person worrying JADE will be pushed out too early. :) We've been waiting years at this point.

Grey
05-27-2008, 03:36 AM
A bit mad of me yes, especially since it seems work on it has ground to a halt again. However I wouldn't want TB getting bogged down with minor details involved in creating a releasable version when at this stage of design it's best to concentrate more on the general architecture of the program and over-arching features. In the long-run (and it will be a long run either way) we will have a better JADE if we let him do his own things before a playable version is released.

Timpak
05-27-2008, 12:16 PM
Early release = we can help more with bug reporting and things like that. I will not mind playing an extremely buggy and inbalanced game, I've done it many times before.