Grimoire - Latest Update

Corwin

On The Razorblade of Life
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Cleve has updated his site with the latest on Grimoire. It's not too long, so here's the full text:
Bloodshot eyeballs bulging out from fatigue, item editing myself into institution, drooling down chin, slack-jawed Lovecraftian style Innsmouth look of editing madness …… and still the item editing goes on.
943 items. I’ve got utilities now that give me charts by class and type showing me cost in gold pieces, comparisons of armor and spells, bonus modifiers. Checking and double checking and checking again, worked my way from one end to the other making sure the data is set correctly for each and every one.
Biggest things to emerge from the walkthrough is how many items were incomplete/blank/incorrectly set, causing crashes or other errant behaviours. There were items in there that had their class set back in 1998 and had not been touched since.
Then testing items in game. In combat. In quest mode. Designing merge tables for thaumaturges, implementing new workbench features and testing them against targets, checking prices to see if they were coming up right with NPCs, bartering, etc.
Etc. etc. etc. Nightmarish. Moving lego blocks in hell. Repetitive. Boring. Editing some more items. Then testing and checking. Editing more. Like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. Every day I wake up and that song by Sonny and Cher is playing and it’s back to editing the items. Editing. Then testing. Testing as monster weapons. Testing as player weapons. Editing some more.
No wonder I’ve been procrastinating this chore for so long. It was mindnumbingly dull back in 1997. Nobody works on an RPG this long. It’s insane. Tomorrow will be the same as today. More item editing. Testing. Editing.
“I got you babe. I got you babe.”

More information.
 
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Do you have a link for your source?
http://grimoiresystems.com.au/goldenera/

Meanwhile a new update:

As I am finally getting the items into shape, placing them in the right places and tweaking the combat to make them behave correctly. I feel that level scaling may not be needed.

Things are working correctly at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the game. Combat difficulty feels about right and the balance seems to exist. If there is an imbalance introduced by players advancing more rapidly than expected or getting certain powerful items early on, I don’t think it should be addressed by fudging the stats to scale the difficulty level dynamically. In fact, it’s too popamole. That’s what another game designer might do. I was thinking before I got a lot of this stuff tweaked that it would be necessary but now I don’t believe I will be doing it. Besides, it took a lot of tweaking to get it this balanced and putting in scaling introduces a whole new round of playtesting and rebalancing.

I think I’ll leave it alone and continue on from here. Stuff seems to be much improved since the walkthrough and there is a lot more that just feels right.

My wife gave me some more help reviewing things the other night, she had some great perspective on a quite a few things. I felt more confident after we looked over the remaining bugs I can actually finish this monster before this year is over.
 
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'I felt more confident after we looked over the remaining bugs I can actually finish this monster before this year is over. '

Yeah, sure. Hell will also freeze over.
 
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Why don't we play the silent game until this is actually out?
 
To grant him some credit - for a major game like this, it's very, very hard to estimate how much time remains. I'm constantly going about 3x over schedule, and I've worked on enough (professional, non-RPG) games in the past that I should totally know better.
 
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My rule of thumb is to multiply by 2 to 4 for all the unforeseen things. I know that is a huge margin, but it's realistic. No matter how good your planning is, you will need it for any new venture. A repeat is a different thing.
 
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Taking 2 to 4 times as long as you expected is normal and acceptable. When I was working on my thesis they told us to take however much more time we thought we needed to complete it and triple it to get how long it would actually take.

Grimoire has not taken 3 or 4 times as long as announced however. I remember it being announced that it would done in about 2 months about 10 years ago, and even back then this had already happened so often that many were skeptical.
 
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Simply put, from playing the pre-beta and the beta, this is actually a very good and fun game. It's traditional old skule and many people will love it. There will likely be just a small niche market for it now, but that niche will be pleased. Plus Cleve lives just down the road from me!! :)
 
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I didn't think it was that good but - my opinion aside - his updates have categorically and comprehensively proven to be pointless, hence, I don't know why anyone pays attention.
 
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I think most of my enjoyment comes from Cleve's ego. Here is a guy who has proven beyond a shadow of doubt of being completely pathetic. Yet, he believes himself to be a peer of Richard Garriot or Jon Van Caneghem , et al. He's not even a peer of Jeff Vogel or Basilisk dude :) Soon someone will release a game and they won't even have been born before Cleve started Grimoire.
 
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I was a bit surprised that a Grimoire update would warrant a news item myself. It's really not any different from any of his other updates over the last decade and a half.
 
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Um why not? I played the beta and it was good, I hope he does get it finished.

More power to him.
 
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It would be sad if this news post is not a troll. Actually it's sad either way.

Also 'not too long' is a relative term. Given the text being referenced contains almost no information, I'd say anything longer than a short sentence would be 'too long'.
 
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I was a bit surprised that a Grimoire update would warrant a news item myself. It's really not any different from any of his other updates over the last decade and a half.

Tradition! ;)
 
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I got to admit his opening statement gave me a chuckle. Plus 1 for that. This one is giving me fits though. As a small business owner, I have watched others try to go it alone and they usually crack and end up talking to themselves and the business slowly drives them nuts.

No wonder I’ve been procrastinating this chore for so long. It was mindnumbingly dull back in 1997. Nobody works on an RPG this long. It’s insane. Tomorrow will be the same as today. More item editing. Testing. Editing.

Two words Cleve Hire somebody!Develop some trust. There is got to be someone out there to help who won't stick it on Pirate Bay.Get somebody to do the dull crap while you work out a marketing and sales release. People will buy it just do it!
 
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Yeah.
The site would loose a fraction of its flavor without an occasional Grimoire update :).

Haha fair enough, they certainly do bring back fond memories of the old days. I kind of miss hearing the latest conspiracy theory or doomsday prophecy from the game's creator as well. Explaining to new generations of gamers why we are so skeptical about Grimoire is almost a tradition.
 
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