Queen's Wish - Launches September 11

pibbur who said:

Any game with sequels, at least when the sequence is a continuation of the story, will have some retreading. But mr Vogel have gone further than that, by releasing the Avernums/exiles 3 times by now. BTW: I don't mind that, so I guess in that respect I filt the nut's description.

As for the sequels within the series (Avernum 1-6, Avadon 1-3) I don't think there's more retreading here than in other game series. He uses the same engine again and again. But that doesn't trouble me, and I actually think that RPG-lovers should pay more attention to other parts of his games. And one effect of the simplicity and his reuse of engine and assets is that his games have very few bugs on release.

For the record, I have no problems understanding why many people don't like his games.

pibbur who who still doesn't like how the new game series looks.

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Firstly, Skyrim was re-released as a remaster just 5 years after release, it wasn't even in a new engine or anything.

Secondly, Queen's Wish isn't that, it's an entirely new game. And, no, I don't even think his use of the word retread has anything to do with any remasters.

Thirdly, he doesn't use the same engine again and again and I think Queen's Wish is his fourth engine (?) at least.

Yes, his main qualities are bug-free interesting games with lots of quality RPG elements. And, yes, there is still room for criticism beyond plastic complaints like graphics and whether he remasters some of his games every 10 years.

Yes, it's easy to understand why anyone doesn't like anything, however, in a discussion we try to converse about points actually raised, you know, to prevent misinformation and to balance out chronic fanboyism and unwarranted hate.

And, yes, the 'look' of the new game is indeed uncomfortable at first glance.

I am not a fan of the new graphics and engine myself and hesitated with the Kickstarter.

But in the end I backed it and I will play it. The games I played from Spiderweg always offered a solid experience right from release.

I'm not that bothered about the graphics, they look fine. Not as nice as the isometric Avernum I agree, but they're ok. The game doesn't interest me at the minute though - I remember the Kickstarter highlighting basebuilding, which I'm not really into to be honest. And I wish he'd do another player-created party based game like Avernum. I might still pick it up if some of the folk here say it's worth playing though I guess.

That's what it boiled down to me, while I didn't agree with their kick starter goals and objectives, I did support it because I knew it would still be a product worth playing. Should there be a sequel to this game, I hope they'd step up the game a bit.

@lackblogger;: Seems like I misunderstood the meaning of the word "retread".

pibbur who realizes that Norwegian sadly is spoken by only 0.1 % of humanity.

PS. Since I like the Avernums and Avadons, I'm obviously not bothered by dated graphics. It's just that since he talked about a new engine, I feel that the result is a step backwards, which made me disappointed. DS

I think this is Jeff's softball pre-retirement series. He is not looking to advance his genre, just remain a game developer for a few more years. Maybe the new engine is simpler to implement in. It sure as hell isn't a better looking product.

People keep saying new engine but what makes it new? I mean is it just the old engine with a few minor tweaks or is it the old engine rewritten from scratch or ????

It's a completely new engine.

Just checked my Kickstarter updates. Here are some quotes (Date format as DD/MM/YYYY):

Date: 06.07.2018, 22:17

We are switching to a new game engine (SDL) which has much better interface support and can make games for Android. We’re still skeptical about doing Android games, but it is not impossible. We’ll see how the game does on iOS first.

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Date: 14.08.2018, 01:11

Spiderweb games are developed in three phases. First, we work on the game engine and system. This takes 3-5 months, depending on how much of the game is new. In Queen’s Wish, almost everything is new.
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We are still grinding our way through the first phase: the main engine.

On the technical side, we spent a while porting our code to a new, powerful game engine called SDL. In this case, the engine is the layer between my game and the computer itself. The game engine we used before was way out of date. This engine is completely current and should support lots of cool stuff, like 64-bit Windows and mouse wheel input.

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Date: 13.09.2018, 07:38

Engine

To get Queen’s Wish ready for the Kickstarter, we came up with rough, basic versions of all of the game features (abilities, buying buildings, etc). Now we have to go back and actually finish them. The building system is now complete and ready to go. So is combat, spell casting, training, the quick use buttons, all of that stuff.

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Date: 17.10.2018, 07:26

This is a pretty exciting update. The Queen’s Wish: The Conqueror engine is pretty much done. The base interface is in. The system is done. All the stuff in the game is scripted.

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Date: 21.11.2018, 07:36

As promised, we have completed the main body of Queen's Wish: The Conqueror engine work. There's still a fair amount that needs doing. We need to finalize the interface and add a lot of frills, like weather effects. However, the game is fully playable.

The new graphical engine works great and has enabled us to add a lot of things that are overdue. For example, we finally have a game with mouse wheel support. We're also adding a lot of stuff our games have never had before, like a full fast travel system.

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Date:25.02.2019, 08:51

And, of course, it’s a new engine, so we have a billion bugs to fix.

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Yeah, at this very basic level, it illustrates the fact that there is no clear distinction between where an "engine" ends, and the "game" begins. He codes the rpg systems, interfaces and some basic graphics routines on top of the SDL framework, and when it's done, that gets declared the engine, and then the game content creation begins.

TBH, I suspect that he's just rather stubborn and set in his ways. You could put together something far more appealing than this using Godot and public domain assets, probably in much less time.

Thanks Kordanor; yea I think I'll have to agree with Ripper. There is a partial list of games on wiki.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_games_using_SDL
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Most of them are pretty simple like vvvvv and dwarf fortress (will simple graphically); though it does mention unreal tournament.

This sounds more like a library than an actual engine (which might be the reason he uses it).

Yeah, SDL is essentially a library that abstracts the nitty-gritty of actually displaying things on screen, playing sounds, and so on. Nothing wrong with it at all, and it's probably a good choice for some projects. But, if graphics are not your strong suit, building everything from the ground up doesn't make much sense these days (though he probably had no choice when he first started in the 90s.) A higher level engine, and third-party assets, make it way easier to achieve at least decent-looking results.

Perhaps maybe he will keep regressing in terms of graphics in future games, and we will see pong-like ultra primitive 1980s graphics eventually…

So this forum is a group of graphicwhore players. I remind times when Americans was joking French players arguing they was graphicwhore players. Looks like for once the French culture won and influenced the whole world, now most players are graphic whore.

All of that is a bit superficial, I'm disapointed by the low level in this forum, I was expecting more depth perspective on gameplay of video games.

I should also remind to burn all the books I have, none have graphics, that's an horror.

Dasale said:

So this forum is a group of graphicwhore players. I remind times when Americans was joking French players arguing they was graphicwhore players. Looks like for once the French culture won and influenced the whole world, now most players are graphic whore.

All of that is a bit superficial, I'm disapointed by the low level in this forum, I was expecting more depth perspective on gameplay of video games.

I should also remind to burn all the books I have, none have graphics, that's an horror.

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'Tis a pity we are whores.

Have you been drinking by any chance, or are you always like this? You've clearly misunderstood the conversation.

Dasale said:

So this forum is a group of graphicwhore players.

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If you read this thread you would've seen that a lot of members of this forum actually liked his previous games, which weren't exactly the highlight of graphics either. So your logic that we are graphicwhores just falls flat

Are you training to change your jobs for a clown duo? And the drunken pair?

Gokyabgu said:

But these graphics really turn me off.

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pibbur who said:

Same here.

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Ripper said:

moved to a cheaper-to-produce style.

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Saxon1974 said:

Yes it looks worse then Avadon. Strange.

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Vindicator said:

No worries… I'm still looking forward to playing it with my eyes closed.

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DR490N said:

Uh ? That's exactly the same perspective, isn't it ? But ok, just not the colors

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Kordanor said:

I am not a fan of the new graphics

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Enough boredom quote I let you complete it.

Yes, taking half a dozen sentence fragments out of context is a pretty good way to misrepresent a conversation, to suit your straw man.

The reason for the consideration of the graphics situation is that he held a kickstarter which specifically mentioned needing a new engine and new art. We were simply discussing the disappointing results of that investment, and how better results might have been achieved. He moved to a flat style, probably to make it more suitable to sell as a phone game, which is a rather diassapointing direction, for some of us. I don't know why you conclude that we can't appreciate the other qualities, because we're discussing the results of the aesthetic developments since the kick starter.

I'm one of Vogels' biggest fans, I really enjoy all the games he and his company have put out, but I found the kick starter to be a truly missed opportunity for them. If you check out the kinds of games I play and enjoy the most, you'll see that graphics aren't a big deal for me, and I thought Spiderweb had a great chance to improve and modernize a few key elements with their next offering. Sadly, that didn't happen but I still kicked in and plan on enjoying this new product, likely the first week or month of release.

Dasale said:

Are you training to change your jobs for a clown duo? And the drunken pair?

Enough boredom quote I let you complete it.

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Since you quote me, I'll take the liberty to quote the next sentence I wrote: "I happen to like the graphics of the latest sa Avernums, and the Avadons, I like the style." I think it should be quite clear what I think of the Spiderweb games.

How many graphics whores do you think like Avernum?

Queen's wish is the only Vogel game I'm not happy with, and the sole reason for that is the direction it takes. I had expected something different when he announced a new engine.

Additionally, from the posts you quoted:
Gokyabgu, aknowledges that "Spiderweb Games has a robust history when it comes to deep roleplaying systems". He doesn't seem to be only concerned with the graphics quality of his games in general, but are dissappointed with this one. Doesn't sound like a graphics whore to me.

Both Vindicator and Kordanor say they are going to play the game. And Kordanor backed it. Would a graphics whore do that?

And the only thing Ripper and Saxon1974 do is compare Queen's Wish to his previous games.

So where you get this graphics whore thing from is beyond me (and several other watchers, it seems). It certainly doesn't reflect the views of 6 of the 7 you quoted. Actually, I think what we wrote was very clear, we explicitly compared Queen's Wish to his previous games. We were not condemning the graphics of his games in general.

pibbur who for the record has every game Vogel made after the three Exiles