Legend of Grimrock

[Silent_Buddha]

Anyone that played and remembers the old Dungeon Master games by FTL Games, will be immediately at home in this one.

It's a game that very faithfully recreates the gameplay of Dungeon Master. In my eyes a huge plus. It's currently on Steam for 10% off, so only 13.49 USD. (http://store.steampowered.com/app/207170/ )

And I have to say, it is absolutely fantastic. You can still pick up rocks, hold them on your cursor and click to throw them at monsters, thereby bypassing the attack recharge timer on your ranged rogue.

Anyone looking for a modern "action RPG" (bleh) are going to be disappointed. This is very much an old school party based dungeon crawling RPG with loads of environmental puzzles. Puzzles which often, but not always, have sometimes cryptic clues written on the walls nearby.

One change that I don't particularly like is that skills no longer advance through use, but instead are increased with points earned at level up. It's not a bad system, I just prefer the old use base increase of skills. I still remember casting things like fireball over and over and over at the darkness just to increase spellcasting skill.

Anyway, for those that like RPGs, this is definitely worth a look. I'm finding it hugely addictive (just like the original Dungeon Master), and can't stop playing it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz1tlPvQk3E&list=PL65FD7C444B46C2D8&index=1&feature=plpp_video

That's an hour long playthrough by a guy who isn't particularly good at figuring out some of the environment based puzzles. But should give at least some idea of what the game is like.

Fantastic. Easily my game of the year so far. But then, I'm a sucker for a well implemented RPG and those just aren't really made anymore. DAO being the last RPG that I thought was any good.

Regards,
SB

 

[Lightman]

FANTASTIC!

I've played Dungeon Master series back on Amiga 1200! This game was epic. Same as Eye of Beholder series

Many thanks for pointing that one to me!

 

[Sxotty]

Wow games like this could really use megatexture or something similar having those walls all look exactly the same is crazy. Anyway I am sure it rocks. I remember playing a dungeon game on an old computer that used ASCI characters. I got graph paper and made a map by hand of the whole 1st level so I could find my way around

 

[Malo]

Looks fantastic, old school style dungeon crawler. If it had turn-based combat I'd be all over it.

 

[Grall]

Wow games like this could really use megatexture or something similar having those walls all look exactly the same is crazy.

With the rather small art team these guys probably had, how many decades exactly should they be working on the game to uniquely megatexture all of the walls?

I got graph paper and made a map by hand of the whole 1st level so I could find my way around

Oh yeah. I did a bit of that back in the Dungeon Master days. My high school buddy (who trained up one character to Arch Master in all the skills - took him MONTHS!) did full maps of all of the levels, with all of the traps and teleporters and everything marked out. Heh.

He also documented Ultima 4, including who to talk to about what and dungeon layouts and all kinds of stuff. He takes his games seriously. Really seriously.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I got graph paper and made a map by hand of the whole 1st level so I could find my way around

Heh, there's actually an option in game to disable auto-mapping. So, pull out your graph paper and pencil.

It's a 14.99 game. I think it looks pretty good for what it costs and the amount of content that appears to be in it. I honestly don't even notice that all the walls are basically the same while I'm playing. I'm too engaged in the gameplay for once.

Regards,
SB

 

[Ninjaprime]

Wow games like this could really use megatexture or something similar having those walls all look exactly the same is crazy. Anyway I am sure it rocks. I remember playing a dungeon game on an old computer that used ASCI characters. I got graph paper and made a map by hand of the whole 1st level so I could find my way around

Ever wandered around in a real dungeon? I imagine the walls made from uniform bricks and stone with uniform mortar are fairly... uniform.

 

[Sxotty]

Ever wandered around in a real dungeon? I imagine the walls made from uniform bricks and stone with uniform mortar are fairly... uniform.

Yes I have and no you are wrong. The block sizes change, the growth, water seeps etc all change. And real dungeons probably are much smaller than in this game.

With the rather small art team these guys probably had, how many decades exactly should they be working on the game to uniquely megatexture all of the walls?

Actually it would be quite easy to implement a system to do it mostly automatically. Just have a few textures created that can be blended to change the tints, stains, decals etc... then have them randomly blend around the level. They could keep track of the blend values instead of doing a full MT implementation though. The point is to make it so that the walls are more unique and less repetitive either way would work. The advantage of doing some MT like thing is the blends would be saved and they could fool around with it anywhere they wanted after the fact. Keeping track of the random blends instead would make it take up way less space though which could be advantageous. I did not mind completely repetitive walls when the walls were like the following

IIIIIII
I     I
I     I
I     IIIIIIIIIIIIII
I
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

but now it gets ridiculous.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

They'll have to also recreate the wall geometry. The bricks and later on tiles on the walls are actually modeled and not just a texture.

Regards,
SB

 

[jlippo]

They'll have to also recreate the wall geometry. The bricks and later on tiles on the walls are actually modeled and not just a texture.

Regards,
SB

Indeed they are.
The game took something like 10 months to create and there were 4 developers, so doing fancy experimental stuff or artistic heavy things was not a very high on their to do list..

 

[Sxotty]

They'll have to also recreate the wall geometry. The bricks and later on tiles on the walls are actually modeled and not just a texture.

Regards,
SB

I still don't see how that makes it a problem to change the color of blocks or growth patterns. This block is brown, this is black, etc... they can still be the same shape.

 

[jlippo]

I still don't see how that makes it a problem to change the color of blocks or growth patterns. This block is brown, this is black, etc... they can still be the same shape.

Biggest problem would most likely be the amount of work and making sure that the new things do not mask any hidden buttons etc.

Perhaps next time we will see more fancy features.

 

[poopypoo]

the general theme of the game, too, is "lost in a dungeon maze", so making each wall look unique is not really wise. This game plays great and the dungeon is nothing short of brilliant, but the repetitive gameplay makes me want to take it one level every few weeks, after level four or so.

 

[joker454]

Anyone try this on a sandy bridge gpu? Thinking of tossing this game on the laptop, so wondering if it runs ok on sb's integrated graphics.

 

[Grall]

I see no reason why it shouldn't run just fine... There's absolutely nothing complex going on, so unless the PC graphics engine is seriously inefficient it should be just peachy. Heck, the game even runs on an iPhone, so it can't be too demanding!

No Mac version (yet anyway) I'm afraid, or else I could have tested it for you.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

Perhaps it's the realtime lighting and shadows that's causing issues for lower end GPUs.

Also, monsters with a roaming AI are constantly moving even when the character isn't in view. So I imagine the start of a level might be more taxing than the end of a level (when most/all monsters on that level will be dead).

Regards,
SB

 

[Grall]

How taxing can a roving AI really be in a game where all enemy movement is limited to either turning 90 degrees or moving forwards on a coarse grid of steps? There's no need for any pathfinding or nuttin. You should be able to have thousands of mobs roaming about on even the slowest of desktop CPUs available today.

 

[Silent_Buddha]

OK, how cool is this? The game includes a PDF to print up your own Legend of Grimrock graph paper in case you want to do some old school dungeon mapping. Absolutely fantastic. I think I may do that on my next playthrough after I give it a few months to fade from my memory a little bit.

Regards,
SB