Legend of Grimrock

[PetriH]

Wohoo! We're in beta!

Beta screenshots and blog post:
http://www.grimrock.net/2011/11/28/beta/

Beta trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ep97ba_uWXM

[Jan]

Wow! Well done! It looks awesome! (and sounds too - where does the music come from? or did you make it?)

The enemies are pretty scary - I mean, job well done, but I don't think I'll sleep well tonight.

[Gambit37]

Oh my! Oh MY! OH MY GOODNESS!

This is looking absolutely awesome! You guys *really* understand the old-school dungeon-crawler and you *really* understand modern game design and visuals. The combination of the two looks like it's going to make for a great game, and I can't wait!
I totally love what I've seen so far -- and your version of the screamer is great, love those! Trolls, warriors, flying lizardy things, pit traps, secret rooms, items to find -- it all looks great and I got goosebumps watching the trailer! You guys have made a very professional looking game and I really hope you're successful with it.

I'm a little disappointed I won't get to play it in the Christmas holidays, but I am a patient man

I wouldn't go quite as far as this commenter on your blog, but I'm almost there:

I just wet my pants. Absolutely superb. Have I just woken up in Dungeon Master heaven?!

[PetriH]

I'm glad you like it, Jan! The Grimrock theme is composed by Stakula, a finnish composer who has created music for several games.

[PetriH]

Thank you very much Gambit! You made my day

[linflas]

i would sell my car to buy Grimrock, whatever the price.

(hope it's cheaper than my car of course )

[Ameena]

Wooooo...looking very cool! And I love the music! I hope there's more like that - a significant portion of my music collection consists of music tracks I like from various computer games . And all the monsters and stuff look cool, and the puzzles, omg it really is like DM reborn .

[beowuuf]

Oooooooooooooooooooh. Very, very cool news! Completely understandable to nudge the release to next year if you get to polish an already cool engine to make it really special. Good luck with the Steam evaluation process. Let us know if there is anythign big or small we can do to help with that (other than buy it when it is released, of course!)

[Gambit37]

Have watched the trailer a few times now. It's soooooooo gooooooooood!

I've spotted a few little visual niggles that could perhaps be tidied up, but they certainly don't detract from the gameplay:

1) The shape of the shadow cast by a torch bracket looks very strange, it doesn't seem to match the object's shape?
2) The troll's hammer goes through the ceiling bricks when he attacks
3) The skeleton's spear attacks don't seem to be connecting with the party -- they look too far away?
4) The explanations of items being over on the left of the screen is a bit weird when you're managing items on the right -- it's a bit of a disconnect to have to look in two distant spots on the screen. I think the information would be better shown on the right, probably underneath the inventory, or maybe overlaid with a fully opaque textured windows for the text to sit in.
5) On the character generation screen, the text beneath the portrait selector is very tight in its box -- needs some space around it so it's not squashed right up into the corner.
6) Items on the floor seem to be floating -- I think they need shadows to make them look more like they are actually in the world.
7) http://www.grimrock.net/wp-content/uplo ... shot02.jpg -- could the damage in the middle of the screen be made more obvious? It's a bit small and lost?

And a couple of points about realism, which I don't care about in gameplay terms, but if you wanted to be really purist about it.... ;-)

8) The flying creatures look too heavy for their wing size -- they'd either need slimmer bodies and/or a tail for balance.
9) A really minor thing -- but the bricks in the ceiling would actually collapse. How are the individual bricks being held in place like that? ;-)

[Gambit37]

There's some interesting comments over here:
http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11 ... -grimrock/

Looks like there are a lot of younger players who don't understand the gameplay roots and are writing off the combat as "awkward" or "twitchy". It will be interesting to see if Grimrock can penetrate that sector of the marketplace who have grown up on FPSs and the like. There aren't enough of us old-(school)-gamers to make millions of sales of Grimrock, so that younger generation need to be convinced to part with their cash. It worries me a little that an obviously great little game might fall at the first hurdle because modern gamers can't see beyond alleged "problems."

[Ameena]

I don't get all these people saying stuff like "Omg the combat system looks rubbish, why isn't it turn-based?". How could you play DM with turn-based combat? How would that even work? I'd much rather be walking around and turn a corner and see a mob there and shi tmyself and frantically run back down the corridor whilst throwing my underwear at it or something. Turn-based means you get as much time as you want to think about what to do next (unless the turns are timed, I suppose) - there isn't the frantic "arrrgh shit shit shit wtf" of real-time combat. I think people these days are spoiled by the general simplicity and tendency toward n00bishness of modern games - ramp up the difficulty and let's have something that doesn't give you a bloody mini-map with nice little icons all over it and a big pointy arrow telling you where to go!

[Gambit37]

Indeed, but you're preaching to the converted! Tell it to the simpleton noobs

[Ameena]

Lol, this is true. But I have to vent somewhere and I might as well do it where I don't get flamed into oblivion because omfg stfu u r l8me .

[oh_brother]

Looking amazing, this really is what DM3 should be! One more future customer here!

[Zyx]

[PetriH]

1) The shape of the shadow cast by a torch bracket looks very strange, it doesn't seem to match the object's shape?
2) The troll's hammer goes through the ceiling bricks when he attacks
3) The skeleton's spear attacks don't seem to be connecting with the party -- they look too far away?
4) The explanations of items being over on the left of the screen is a bit weird when you're managing items on the right -- it's a bit of a disconnect to have to look in two distant spots on the screen. I think the information would be better shown on the right, probably underneath the inventory, or maybe overlaid with a fully opaque textured windows for the text to sit in.
5) On the character generation screen, the text beneath the portrait selector is very tight in its box -- needs some space around it so it's not squashed right up into the corner.
6) Items on the floor seem to be floating -- I think they need shadows to make them look more like they are actually in the world.
7) http://www.grimrock.net/wp-content/uplo ... shot02.jpg -- could the damage in the middle of the screen be made more obvious? It's a bit small and lost?
8 ) The flying creatures look too heavy for their wing size -- they'd either need slimmer bodies and/or a tail for balance.
9) A really minor thing -- but the bricks in the ceiling would actually collapse. How are the individual bricks being held in place like that?

Thanks for the feedback! We'll consider these when polishing the game although at the moment things that have gameplay relevance have priority over visual glitches.

Some random comments:

#1 that's how the torch holder looks from light's point of view - all shadows are "physically correct" in LoG - so the "strange" shadow in this case is rendered correctly.

#8 is too costly to fix at this stage

#9 yeah we know

[Chaos-Shaman]

hahaha... give me those sardines

[PetriH]

Shut_up_and_take_my_money.jpg

Zyx, psst, don't tell anybody but I'm really tempted to squeeze in mod support for you so that I could get to see earlier what you can do with LoG

[Zyx]

Challenge accepted!

[Automaton]

Greetings!

First up congratulations! Really.

No. Really.

What you guys have achieved for a self funded company is simply outstanding. If I read between the lines, I can feel some real passion in there for what you are doing, it would never have come this far without it.

I've read this whole thread - there's some ideas in there with merit and some good questions and notably, some good answers too.

I've had a look at the screen-shots - Impressive.

I've watched the trailer - Dazzling.

I can't <emphasis>emphasize</emphasis> enough how far you have come, how mature this looks and how much I am looking forward to the release. The graphics and FX look great. I wish I could hear a bit more of the sound design, I am so desperate to hear that you have given it the ambience it deserves (ermm, I am a bit of an amateur composer/sound engineer and I really want to hear windy tunnels, reverb-y water droplets, faint dungeon clicks, moans and groans in the distance, the muffled footsteps of an approaching foe and everything that goes to make a totally immersive experience)

Of course you are in a real hard place doing this. Somehow you brave souls have got to come up with something that is as compelling as DM (lets not worry for the moment about EOB, CSB et al. this is about reigniting what the original legend was, DM!) and all that entails including engaging gameplay, unforgettable (and infuriating!) logic puzzles, rewarding and taxing character management (where's the bloody fountain!), engrossing combat, learn as you play magic system and more! ..but not DM. It can't be. It's already been done. For the sake of all those tile-dungeon-crawler addicts out there, including myself, I really hope with all my heart you pull this off.

DM might be just a spec of dust on the receding horizon of gaming, but to me (read: us, this is a DM forum after all) this was a game (a bit like the original "Elite"), like so many modern day film sequels, which has never truly been reproduced to the level of the original. It holds a special place in my heart, truly.

There are quite a few things I could comment on in terms of what I have seen thus far, but I think you are on your path now and I wouldn't want to distract.

You boys go and do this. I can smell it getting close.

Auto.

[Gambit37]

Looks like someone at GameSpy has already played a preview!
http://uk.pc.gamespy.com/pc/legend-of-g ... 943p1.html

[Bit]

Hehe, Gambit all aware again - nothing can pass

@PetriH: Is there anything you wanted to tell us?

[PetriH]

Well, lets see This has been the most intense project I've ever been part of (except maybe for a demo project that we did ten years ago in 42 hours with a couple of friends - nonstop coding for two days with 5 of us crammed in my 29m2 flat). Starting up the company, doing subcontracting work to raise up money, learning the ways of the business (still learning every day, heh), shoe string budgets, and of course intense coding sessions. But it's all finally coming together as we are getting closer to launch. And it's totally worth it! But this also means that the pressure is rising. People are expecting us to deliver a worthy successor to DM, and this has been the goal of the project all along, but this also causes us tremendous pressure. DM is an incredibly well-balanced game and topping that will be very difficult. That said, I'm glad that the most important elements, puzzles and combat, feel good, and the transition from 2D to tilebased fully animated 3D graphics works surprisingly well although many aspects of the game had to be rethought because of changes to timing. For example, the pace of combat and movement speed are subtly different from pure old school 2D dungeon crawlers.

Overall the reception has been overwhelmingly positive and we're getting lots of encouraging emails which make the long days endurable - Thanks to everybody for the support! We're trying to read all the comments and suggestions sent our way. If you have something on your mind, now's pretty much the last chance to affect things.

Lately I've been working on improving the ai and monster behavior. We have had all enemy types implemented for some time, and our goal now is to make each enemy type unique in someway instead of just reskinning the same monsters over and over. It's also fun experimenting with this stuff because changing a few code lines makes a big difference.

You can also read more of our ramblings in the blog. So be sure to visit grimrock.net from time to time too!

Cheers!

[Bit]

Hey PetriH, don't let you trick into long reports. However, you still sound very positive, and that's the most important.
Keep the spirit!

[Automaton]

If you have something on your mind, now's pretty much the last chance to affect things.

I hope you have implemented encumbrance and puzzles that involve weights and the weight of the party - this was great in DM. Hidden skills like luck - are they in there ? In fact one of the main things that made DM what it was was attention to detail and using game mechanics so well (who can forget "time is of the essence"? or the riddle room ?). It was this interplay of riddle, logic and combat that made it great for me.

What about levelling? Superb in DM, one of the best systems I ever saw. I loved how actions equated to different types of xp, not just a generic character level but in relation to the different fighter, ninja, priest and wizard genres. I hope that's covered.

Auck! - I need to get a gander at the real thing to see how it is! You have done such a good job thus far that I am getting feelings of apprehension. "Will it be as good as...", I really hope so.

Auto.

[RAF68]

Pétri and the team finish the game the best you can

I have already put money into my PayPal account

meadows to buy the games !!!

[RAF68]

did you integrate team particle effects of smoke or dust when the walls of the passages open secret ???

it’s so realistic !!!

[Gambit37]

You're a little obsessed with that detail, aren't you?! I think you've asked for it four times now...

[Jan]

Repetition is a mother of wisdom!

(and a daughter of sclerosis )

[MitchB1990]

Just read this article on Joystiq.
http://www.joystiq.com/2012/01/27/indie ... than-most/

Not only am I happy that you reintegrated the arrow movement system, but the reasoning behind it impressed me. You guys rock, and I cannot wait until this game goes on sale!