| Page 4 of 6 |
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
 Posted: Fri, 31st Aug 2018 13:04 Post subject: |
|
 |
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Wed, 5th Sep 2018 00:47 Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JBeckman
VIP Member
Posts: 35156
Location: Sweden
|
| Posted: Sun, 14th Oct 2018 09:53 Post subject: |
|
|
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/underworld-ascendant-the-ultima-underworld-successor-now-in-beta-coming-november-15th.108483/page-73#post-5835996
| Quote: |
Here's the feedback I posted on their forums. Yeah, BT4 ( when it was in ALPHA ) was in a x10 better state than this game is a MONTH AWAY FROM RELEASE.
Allright, my turn after 3 hours of playing.
First of all, I have criticized the game for various design decisions I do not agree with. Teleporters being on the top of my list. Not being a true Ultima Underworld is the same.
I'll put all of that aside and speak purely on technical terms, what state the game is in, a month prior to its release.
It is a fudgeing disaster. There is NO WAY everything will be fixed by the release. No way in hell. This isn't even being at alpha level in terms of polish / robustness.
Let's see:
1. This is the elephant in the room: junkiness. Collisions are unsmooth and you'll get stuck into absolutely everything; Forget about enemies, rooms and corridors are your main enemies in this game. Absolutely everything was made to cause frustration and glitch your movements. The only case where it's behaving okay is when you're walking in a huge, perfectly flat room. Otherwise, everything WILL get in your way and cause random movements you did not task. The worst being stairs ( even very small one, with one step ) which will frequently force you to jump around to pass.
Is this real ? it's like nothing has changed since the alpha backer 3 months ago..
As before, physical objects seem extremely fragile or have incorrect weight. Worse, I've often seen objects floating above other objects. Example: a barrel floating 30 cm in the air, above another barrel. Same for smaller items like candles, on top of a table. You've probably made your physics engine too relaxed on the condition of disabling bodies from the physics sim when they're at rest.
2. Rendering issues. The list is enormous. Absolutely everything is glitching. Frustum culling issues ( with walls disappearing in the corner of your screen ). Popping of colors on materials ( like some stone wall assets have colored stones ? they'll often switch back to a neutral color ). Holes between assets showing the hollow part of the level (it's litterally everywhere if you look carefully). Assets not properly joined together, causing heavy Z-fighting. Look at Marcaul ground stones. Again, I'm not judging design decisions like the cartoon look which I hate. Just on pure technical terms, you cannot walk 2 meters without seeing something that reminds you it's a game, with technical issues.
So much for immersion.
3. Audio issues. NPCs all talking at the same time. And often with some loud ambient noises/background. Worse in Marcaul, where I often did not understand what was said. Some NPCs will sometimes speak in French (my locale), ignoring that I've set the game to English in the menu. Most often they do speak english though. No sub-titles, at least not most of the time.. it's all over the place. A big mess.
On a bright note, on pure technical terms the audio quality seems to be top notch.
4. Immersion
All these tutorial stones / graffitis conventiently placed on your path kill immersion and remind you that you're in a video game at every step.
If you're making a physics-based simulation, rules better be coherent. Like, if something is made out of wood, it should be burnable. I've encountered multiple wood walls made of planks ( like in the first room of Upper Erebus ) that did not take fire, no matter how close I had a burning box. Maybe it was a bug, but more likely, you've flagged some wooden assets as "unburnable". Big no-no.
5. AI / NPCs
AI sucks. Not much to say about it, cause it'll often glitch and ignore you, even when you're a meter away.
Undead archers are deadly accurate, even when you run around them quickly. Shouldn't they miss more when somebody is close and moving quickly ?
Some undeads did not have heads. Seemed like a bug, like they had a hole up their shoulders.
Floating lizards in Marcaul look.. stupid. Like a console kid game. There are no interactive dialogues, NPCs just say a voiced line or two when you get close to them and that's it.
THE POSITIVE
The runes system was one of the few things that was more or less preserved from the original Ultima Underworld. That's an excellent thing, cause it rocks. Finding new runes scattered all over the place is a hook. Finding new spell combinations is cool and fun. The UI for the spellbook needs work, visually.
There are hints of bright level design here and there. The entrance to Marcaul is by far the most visually interesting and well designed part of the game I've seen so far. I was impressed by it.
MISC
- there's some delay when entering a portal ( I guess while it's fading out ) where you've walk past the portal. Looks weird.
- auto mapping needs major adjustments. Even walking face to wall, it often does not properly fill the wall lines on the map. The range it fills is all over the place. Sometimes you're walking in a corridor or a room and when you open the auto map, it hasn't filled anything that's clearly visible in front of you, a few meters away..
- some spells are often duplicated on the spellbook, especially when you click on an already-memorize formula
- I haven't seen any way to remove a memorize formula in the spellbook. Please add a remove function
- some rune icons do not seem to match between the "big icon" ( the one displayed on the spellbook wheel ) and the "small icon" ( the one used in UI, or on graffitis on walls ). I got my healing spell wrong due to not recognizing the right rune ( despite having the good formula ! ). Was frustrating.
- UI needs to show items stats, like how effective an armor is or weapons damage. Being able to quickly compare two items is a 2018 expected feature. Overall the UI is in a very very rough state.
- some graffitis do not seem to mean anything, I just see a bunch of squares ( nothing readable ) on various walls ?
- my spellbook formulas seem to have reset after I reached Marcaul for the first time ? the spellbook suddenly became empty..
- throwing axes seemed bugged visually, and did not seem to do any damage to undeads
- sometimes chests open up into walls ( half the chest is behind the wall ). Some items spawn in vertical position and would have been too tall to fit into the chest as is ( ex.: a chest spawns a leather armor which is twice as tall as the chest's height ).
- sometimes interacting with objects ( like chests ) is glitchy. The "interaction" visual effect does not appear even when the object is right in front of you. I've seen a chest, forgot where, where you had to be very precise and aim at a specific few-pixels location in order to open the chest, despite the chest being huge on screen.
- ruins of Gwern seems to have major framerate issues ( I did not go further in the beta, because of it ). Like 10 fps on a 1070 GTX + i7 6700K + 32GB ram
- the entire UI needs to be improved. At the moment it looks like it was made by a 12 years old kid in Paint. Also, please give different icons to different items. A rusty dagger, a short sowrd and a long sword should not all have the same "sword" icon.
|
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/underworld-ascendant-the-ultima-underworld-successor-now-in-beta-coming-november-15th.108483/page-74#post-5836515
| Quote: |
Let's talk about RPG character stats, to be more positive. That game has incredibly deep RPG elements... err.. wait...
Nope, sorry, there's no character stats, at all. In fact there's no character stats sheet / menu that I could find.
There's a skill tree to "unlock", but most skills are evolutions of a few basic skills. Played BT4 ? That's similar, but worse.
Now it can be a cool adventure game. Unfortunately there are no NPC dialogues. They're just saying a line or two and.. voila, done.
Fortunately, it can be saved by cool missions / jobs. There's just a little problem there: you can only access a single mission at once. That's right, if you're in the middle of a mission and want to switch to another one, well you're out of luck. Either complete the current one, either backtrack to Marcaul ( the hub city ) to accept another one.
Think I'm kidding ? Joke's on you. Wait until you have that game in your hands. BT4 will look like the game of the year compared to this.
Added bonus: loading times between levels are ten times worse than BT4. I didn't think it was possible, but they're making the impossible possible.
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JBeckman
VIP Member
Posts: 35156
Location: Sweden
|
| Posted: Sun, 14th Oct 2018 09:59 Post subject: |
|
|
Yeah it's not sounding very positive so far, sure it's RPGCodex but the criticism seems perfectly valid and it's from a hands-on with the game during a 3 hour session with the game one month from release.
And from the sounds of it very bare bones, unfinished and still very buggy.
At best the beta build is a bit older but that still doesn't give enough time to completely overhaul things for the full release and stuff like stats (what stats?) and dialogue (what dialogue?) seems down to design decisions so that's not changing.
Not quite Ultima Underworld and a pretty poor execution of the formula from what it sounds like.
(Well I suppose in a way this kinda does execute the franchise alright, this might be quite a bomb and not a good one at that and probably going to fail horribly but we'll see although I am not liking what I am hearing.)
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JBeckman
VIP Member
Posts: 35156
Location: Sweden
|
| Posted: Sun, 14th Oct 2018 10:40 Post subject: |
|
|
That's a fair point with how the whole sponsorship stuff is also a issue in how it might influence or bias reviews to glance over or skip certain things entirely or downplay them.
And whenever something actually is criticized there's usually a sizeable group of fans verbally berating it and defending the developer or publisher from almost anything.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Sun, 14th Oct 2018 11:51 Post subject: |
|
|
so pretty much the usual deal of waiting few months for "Redux" version
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Sun, 14th Oct 2018 13:20 Post subject: |
|
|
what is this? a bad elder scrolls?
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Sun, 14th Oct 2018 14:27 Post subject: |
|
|
I always looked at it as lowbubudget fantasy dungeon version of Deus Ex gameplay set in Ultima world .... so the "its not RPG enough" and "its not Ultima" rants kinda surprised me as i never ever though of it as RPG or Ultima .... so its certain to trigger the RPG purist sites
Sad to see the technical state of beta though  Will check on release and probably wait for bunch of patches (was worth it in case of BT4 and others)
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Nodrim
Posts: 9707
Location: Romania
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JBeckman
VIP Member
Posts: 35156
Location: Sweden
|
| Posted: Sun, 14th Oct 2018 17:08 Post subject: |
|
|
It's not quite Ultima or at least Ultima IV and on in scope but Ultima underworld was a pretty impressive dungeon exploration game at the time.
Although also really demanding for one of the first 3D game engines and with a pretty extensive list of features too. (Floors and ceilings, overlapping rooms and various interactions with the game world and it's inhabitants.)
Several floors to explore (Separate worlds in the second Ultima Underworld game.) lots of dialogue and character progression through stat growth and getting better gear plus maintaining it or discarding it as it gets worn out and then mechanics such as hunger, NPC schedules and various different factions plus several puzzles and riddles.
I think the closest we have is possibly Arx Fatalis so Underworld Ascension trying to match is was quite a tall order and it's not looking too good with the above impressions so far though it could be a OK dungeon delver still even if it's not up to the Underworld name although current-day tech and doing what the Underworld dev team did back then would be a pretty difficult undertaking requiring probably much more resources and time than they could get from just Kickstarter.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
vurt
Posts: 13929
Location: Sweden
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Mon, 5th Nov 2018 15:56 Post subject: |
|
|
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Mon, 5th Nov 2018 21:42 Post subject: |
|
|
The trailer reminded me of Dark Messiah of Might & Magic but the game probably won't be even third good.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
ixigia
[Moderator] Consigliere
Posts: 65131
Location: Italy
|
| Posted: Tue, 6th Nov 2018 04:04 Post subject: |
|
|
The ideas that the game offers seem to be extremely interesting indeed, with the multiple approaches (yer sneaky killer vs chaotic wizard vs dynamic head basher), but the engine's noticeable jankiness and very primitive plastic-looking art direction might end up being genuine subterranean party poopers. Let's hope for the best  , although I'm fully prepared for another case of desperate early-access-in-disguise clusterfuck®
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JBeckman
VIP Member
Posts: 35156
Location: Sweden
|
| Posted: Tue, 6th Nov 2018 09:00 Post subject: |
|
|
Some of the dev statements and answers aren't too confident either but we'll see what the game is once it's released I suppose.
| Quote: |
The team has changed a lot over the last few years, along with the scope. Having looked at the original documents, the original plan for UA was WAY out of scope for the budget and team size we have (and had). I can't think of another indie game that offers this many playstyle options, a robust spell crafting system, a stealth option that encompasses weapons, skills, and items, and then a movement-based combat system on top of a reactive world environment. This team is really ambitious, and the main focus of UA had shifted to accommodate the systems that were set up over the first few years of development.
The team will continue working on this game up until and past launch. It's not over.
|
The pre-order stuff and DLC is also not helping though it's a fairly standard thing by now.
| Quote: |
Having looked at the original documents, the original plan for UA was WAY out of scope for the budget and team size we have (and had).
|
That however is really not helping the game at all though again we'll see what they've done.
Factions and dialogue being gone isn't exactly doing a thing for the "Ultima Underworld" name either.
| Quote: |
JOE: For our narrative, we made a conscious choice from the start not to do dialogue trees, instead experimental with a reactive narrative where the characters react to your actions and choices in the game.
TIM: Remember that the very first thing we did at LookingGlass after Ultima Underworld 2 was to make a game where all the NPCs were dead so you didn’t have to talk to them. And we, at least, regarded System Shock as an RPG.
|
| Quote: |
the factions are represented by mediators. You will not see dwarves elves or shamblers in the game.
|
EDIT: Or the save issues and the areas resetting.
| Quote: |
The game auto-saves every time you return to Marcaul.
Returning to marcaul in the middle of the quest assumes that you've forfeit the quest so the day passes, and typhon advances.
We did some updates to the save system this weekend so that you can exit the game, but come back start at the beginning of the level you were questing in as opposed to starting back in Marcaul
pending testing
We were originally tossing around an idea that you could activate portals within the level, but it's tricky because saving every object's exact state and location would be REALLY hard to document without making the save file huge
We're currently working on a way so that if you save your progress while within a level, it preserves the quest you chose and any items you selected
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Tue, 6th Nov 2018 09:39 Post subject: |
|
|
so pretty much what i expected  the low budget just shows too much
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Wed, 14th Nov 2018 19:55 Post subject: |
|
|
https://steamcommunity.com/app/692840/discussions/0/1744469130474939612/#c1750106661715922282
| Quote: |
Question_505 [developer] 12 Nov @ 9:41pm
This was posted in the most recent Weekly Update:
Steam vs DRM-Free Key?
As I've mentioned in another thread, we were caught by surprise that GoG could not host Underworld Ascendant at launch. We still need to fulfill our DRM-free promise, but as of right now, we are unclear if UWA will be hosted on GoG after launch as well. To play it safe, we're asking all backers to choose their key assuming that there may not be a GoG launch.
Please also note that the Steam key is actually DRM-free. You can play UWA offline and without launching Steam after you download the game.
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Thu, 15th Nov 2018 21:47 Post subject: |
|
|
Underworld.Ascendant-CODEX 15gb
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Thu, 15th Nov 2018 22:57 Post subject: |
|
|
This is another Kickstarter fail by industry veterans.
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Thu, 15th Nov 2018 23:10 Post subject: |
|
|
So the usual overpromised, underfunded rushed to release project that will likely become great with "REDUX" edition within a year.
I guess i will have to try for myself after few patche
EDITT: Oh its made by like 10 people ... that explains a lot
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JBeckman
VIP Member
Posts: 35156
Location: Sweden
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Fri, 16th Nov 2018 03:19 Post subject: |
|
|
First impressions not too good.
Just look how stupidly amateurish the fucking UI is...
 Spoiler: | |
I know it's a minor quibble - but shit like that is just outright lazy and careless, and doesn't bode well for the rest of the game.
I can never be free, because the shackles I wear can't be touched or be seen.
i9-9900k, MSI MPG-Z390 Gaming Pro Carbon, 32GB DDR4 @ 3000, eVGA GTX 1080 DT, Samsung 970 EVO Plus nVME 1TB
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Fri, 16th Nov 2018 09:10 Post subject: |
|
|
GoG actually has some quality control, unlike Steam 
| sin317 wrote: |
typical jew comment
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Fri, 16th Nov 2018 09:17 Post subject: |
|
|
| Reg67 wrote: | So the general consensus is that it's great?
Not even worth a download by the sounds if it, such a shame. |
I would say not worth at this technical state... There is something nice u derneath, so if anything wait a few weeks on how patching goes |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
prudislav
VIP Member
Posts: 29148
Location: The land of beer and porn
|
| Posted: Fri, 16th Nov 2018 09:56 Post subject: |
|
|
tbh no clue , time will tell .. and i am in no rush to play it anyway (currently busy with some of my 2014 backlog titles)
but seen few similar turnarounds ...i guess we will see soon how will their communication go in relation to patches ... looking at how patching goes for BT4 or Kingmaker there sure is hope
and according to people from Otherside
| Quote: | | "The company is on solid footing (which is good-very good) the future is bright…we learned a ton about the team, about what worked and didn’t and all we can do is move to the next thing, and fix this one up as best as we can |
so there sure is a hope , but even if they fix it people who expected Ultima will rage anyway as its much more close to stuff like Dark messiah
EDIT:
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Posted: Sat, 17th Nov 2018 08:38 Post subject: |
|
|
Underworld.Ascendant.Update.v1.02-CODEX
Does not seem to fix a lot of the glaring issues.
| Spoiler: |
Update v1.02:
Russian text previously displayed missing text as blocks. This has been fixed.
Subtitles were added in the intro sequence for certain languages (French, Chinese, etc).
Partial French VO has been removed.
Faction Influences have been adjusted so more is gained from Side Bounties and the total required to unite the factions is lower.
Item names and descriptions have been updated in Japanese.
Additional monitor aspect ratio support added, like 21:9 (note that the UI may stretch in certain areas).
Player spellbook entries are preserved between levels.
Fixed issue where a pile of items incorrectly spawned at the start of some levels.
Player sound effects removed between loading screens.
In-Game Language choice preserved between play sessions. (Note that the Graffiti on walls will remain in the original language until you enter a new level).
MAGIC FIST spell now visibly causes an impact reaction on enemies.
Added more logging to help gather data on crash bugs
|
|
|
| Back to top |
|
|
| Page 4 of 6 |
All times are GMT + 1 Hour |
