Raf on the RPGDot Boards - Elenkis - 11:30:14 PM EST

Raf has been posting over on the RPGDot Arx Forum! Here's what he had to say:

On the Arx Engine
Regarding the engine: it is our own engine, and yes,it is time consuming to develop it for sure. It is also a lot of stress and long hours debugging and implementing features... But, the effort is REALLY worth it because we can get what we want with it instead of 'bending' the game design to get it to fit with the usual licensable engines.
It's also a good way to have a game with a different look, I think it's cool to have a game that everybody can recognize at the first look. I'm a bit nostalgic of the times when every game had its own engine
The engine isn't totally finished yet, because it needs some optimisations and some fast loading game format, but it's really almost all there and we're very satisfied with the result so, we don't regret anything !!!!
To be honest, when we started, if we knew it was that hard to do, we wouldn't have done it. Being 'naive' and not listening to other developer's advices helped us a lot in that regard...

The number of game areas
There are about 20 different areas to load and to travel to. There will be some travel back and forth needed, and there will be some kind of teleporting system to go directly to the important areas.

On Monster Spawning and spellcasting
Respawn : scenarically only, this means that some monsters will appear at different times of the game, but it's not the same monsters who 'resurect'.

Casting spells: You're correct, you hold a key as you draw to tell the system you're casting. Therefore, you can move while drawing. The backfire stuff is a tricky one, currently we removed it as casting a spell is challenging enough.

hope that helps...

Thanks Raf! And thanks to RPGDot too!

Wednesday, July 18, 2001

Old Underworld Reviews Compiled - Elenkis - 9:50:22 PM EST

We've updated the UW Articles page with all the Underworld 1 and 2 reviews we have managed to find online that don't result in a 404. Which as you can see is a rather sad amount indeed. We need more!

So... Know any Pre/Reviews that we've happened to miss, or maybe want to write and submit your own UW review? You know what to do: Drop us an email! ;-)

Dungeon Seige and Ultima 5 - Dan - 7:05:04 PM EST

Gas Powered Games has released video footage of their upcoming game, Dungeon Siege. This is worth your attention, because the Ultima 5 re-make project, Lazarus, will be using the Dungeon Siege engine.

Check out Dungeon Siege here.

Look at Ultima 5: Lazarus here.

View the Dungeon Siege video clip.

This post was made possible by VoodooExtreme.

Tuesday, July 03, 2001

New Arx screenshots! - Elenkis - 11:02:04 PM EST

Oh yeah, screenshot time! RPGDot have followed up their Hands-On Preview with seven very nice new shots. Make haste over to http://www.rpgdot.com/team/articles.php?ID=77 and check them out!

The game is really looking beautiful!

Sunday, July 01, 2001

Arx Fatalis Hands-On Preview - Elenkis - 8:27:05 AM EST

The guys over at RPGDot were lucky enough to recently pay a visit to Arx publisher Fishtank Interactive. Now they have returned and they've written up a nice new hands-on Arx preview! So were they impressed?

“Damn! I have to go already?” were my thoughts when I had to leave Fishtank’s office, and still today, I would like to try out some things I didn’t think of during my visit! While the version I’ve seen was quite stable already, it still lacked a lot of features, but what I have seen so far is really excellent, and I am very confident, that Arx Fatalis will indeed become a worthy successor to the Underworld games! Producer Friss Tappert is very much dedicated to the project, as are the developers themselves!

What're you waiting for? Read the whole preview right here!