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PurpleXVI posted:Simply DM the Danish queen on twitter and I'm sure she'll fast track me. Honestly, I think it really hit me when you started using auto combat. Seeing you gradually lose any desire to play this game and any faith it could get better was the real adventure. It is too bad, I think the ingredients for a good game are here. The spell learning system could have been good if the spells were less trash or getting teachers mattered more. And the side stories and random characters are pretty fun, but they clearly had no idea what to do for a story or how to make combat fun. I was initially planning to play this along with you, but the first few updates convinced me it would not be fun. Thank you for suffering for us!
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Mar 21, 2022 18:46
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I think it would have been better if increasing skill levels in various magic keywords made Aren's spells more powerful, or if the game actually explained what any of the items or stats actually did. (Looking at a couple of the screenshots, particularly the "The party gets ready for combat" shots... did Sierra use their SCI engine to make this game? Some of those fonts look really familiar.)
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Mar 21, 2022 22:04
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PurpleXVI posted:Simply DM the Danish queen on twitter and I'm sure she'll fast track me. That was the highest civilian honour I could find. I'm still not entirely convinced that you aren't a Danish prince, very distant from the throne, who just likes to do LPs for giggles. If it would make you feel any better, I would like to hear more about why BoK was better than this. This game was an obvious (inferior) clone of that one. Edit: Do you hate this game more than Wizards & Warriors? I... kind of like that game, but I read your LP of it in one big gulp and you loathed it.
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Mar 22, 2022 02:32
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Just think though after this krondor 2: the krondening will seem so much better
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Mar 22, 2022 07:04
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Guildenstern Mother posted:Just think though after this krondor 2: the krondening will seem so much better Which is kinda funny because the impression I've gotten from the Internet is that Antarra is supposed to be this amazing forgotten gem and Krondor 2 is some lovely cash in. We now know the first part isn't true, so let's hope Krondor 2 is actually good.
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Mar 22, 2022 07:24
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JustJeff88 posted:Edit: Do you hate this game more than Wizards & Warriors? I... kind of like that game, but I read your LP of it in one big gulp and you loathed it. Wizards and Warriors was fun to hate, it was clearly the work of someone who overvalued their genius, thinking they were much better at writing funny, hot and dramatic dialogue than they were. Also even if things were loving stupid at points, they largely made some degree of logical sense and the game mostly kept on point. Plus it had enough potential for killing my dumb rear end that it kept me on my toes and some sequences required creative tactics or quick thinking(dealing with those loving poison plants, largely). Betrayal in Antara, on the other hand, resembles its colour palette, in that it's sort of a gritty brown mash that doesn't really inspire many emotions except for boredom and the occasional explosion of bafflement. Rather than being the work of one self-proclaimed auteur, if anything it feels more like it was very much designed by committee, being sent back and forth through dozens of revisions until it was full of little nonsensical appendixes(because all their connecting tissue had been cut away) and having no real consistent identity or atmosphere. Return to Krondor... well, we'll see in a week or two, but I will say this for the game: I can remember 90% of it in pretty good detail, even down to voice clips and sound effects, which means that it stuck in my mind. What might conjure it as a "lovely cash grab" in some people's minds is that it's a sequel that came out a long time after a game that a lot of people remember fondly and was by another studio(that part was entirely Dynamix's own fault!). Considering Antara, though, that was probably for the best. Antara also suffers from Betrayal at Krondor being a much better game that it has a very clear pedigree resemblance to. As for why it's better... In terms of pure gameplay, Krondor does a lot more to make battles dangerous. Even having gotten a ton of maxed-out gear, all the spells, every trainer in the land, etc. there were still fights that could wholly or partially kick my rear end, in part because it squeezed your resources more. Food competed with repair materials and buff/healing potions, which in turn competed with pure valuables(gems and spare armor/weapons) for turning into money. Plus in fights if you were chugging down a bunch of potions, that took up your turn, so you had a choice of EITHER making a wounded attack OR drinking rare recovery items and hoping you didn't get dunked on for more than you recovered in that same turn. Even breaking the game as I was, there were points, like the six-wizard battle, any fight including Pantathians and the start of the first chapter with Patrus, where I was in trouble! Now imagine how it would go for someone who hadn't milked the game for every bit of available advantage. On top of that, it frankly looked a lot nicer, because despite lower detail it stuck to bolder, clearer colours and the "ren fair dumpster" design philosophy for the outfits was at least memorable and striking. Plus less re-use of the same canned sprites(with their one single pose and expression) during even the most dramatic bits. Not being afraid to sometimes just give the player a page of descriptive text also helped give the writers more to work with, they could put in thoughts, stage directions, narrations, etc. rather than just dialogue, in an era before there was the budget to smush in animated interludes everywhere(and if I may say so, the skip to making everything in games voiced and animated, rather than text and narrated, or a mix, very clearly has had a negative impact on how much dialogue a lot of games have, because now each line costs a lot more time and money). Lastly, Krondor seemed to understand that a good bit of its gameplay complexity and choicemaking came from having a wizard in the party and thus never deprived you of a wizard, Antara seems to have been made without any conscious thought, analysis or reflection on how things worked. Without any active self-critique, testing or QA(that wasn't ignored, at least). You get these games sometimes, where it felt like no one ever played them(except to possibly make sure that it would boot at all) before kicking them out of the door. Where it felt like there was no design document looking at the core gameplay loop and analyzing which choices it makes sense to present the player with at all(a choice is not a choice if it is made with zero information or if there is a single no-duh choice that any player in every situation will want to make) and/or what the challenges are meant to be(are they meant to be long-term resource management? reflexes and rapid assessment of threats/opportunities? short-term, high-effect tactical choices? something else entirely?). In some cases what Krondor got right feels accidental, like it has a lot of every simple combat encounters, so the more challenging ones do occasionally feel like aberrations, like they weren't designed that way because the devs understood what was a challenge and what wasn't, but even if that's the case, then Antara is the opposite of that mostly-happy accident where practically everything that could randomly, designed entirely by feel and gut, turn out bland and boring, did so.
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Mar 22, 2022 11:15
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Hel posted:Which is kinda funny because the impression I've gotten from the Internet is that Antarra is supposed to be this amazing forgotten gem and Krondor 2 is some lovely cash in. We now know the first part isn't true, so let's hope Krondor 2 is actually good. While I will admit that I had no idea how different RoK was to BoK in terms of mechanics and visual style, I think that a lot of this may be due to two things: One is that nostalgia is a hell of a drug but it's been so long since people played these games that they forgot how lovely they were; people were also more tolerant of bad design then because games were expensive and hard to find. The other, because nostalgia is a hell of a drug, is that BoK was first and more implanted in peoples' minds, and since RoK was quite different some people felt betrayed. For a lot of people, it's more about what evokes the best memories than what is better. As an example, I am always amazed at how many people worship Mario 64, Mario 3, Mario World etc. These are all great games, but each one has had a superior remake on a later system, yet people care much more for the originals because nostalgia is a hell of a drug. PurpleXVI posted:Words! I hope that that rant was as cathartic as it seemed to be. I underestimated how rubbish this game was.
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Mar 22, 2022 15:18
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Hel posted:Which is kinda funny because the impression I've gotten from the Internet is that Antarra is supposed to be this amazing forgotten gem and Krondor 2 is some lovely cash in. We now know the first part isn't true, so let's hope Krondor 2 is actually good. Having played Krondor 2 through twice, with at least a couple extra aborted attempts, I wouldn't call it a lovely cash-in but I also wouldn't really call it all that good either. Fun in its weird way that still makes me itch to play it occasionally, ambitious but unrealized, and with its share of odd and not always good choices.
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Mar 22, 2022 18:01
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disposablewords posted:Having played Krondor 2 through twice, with at least a couple extra aborted attempts, I wouldn't call it a lovely cash-in but I also wouldn't really call it all that good either. Fun in its weird way that still makes me itch to play it occasionally, ambitious but unrealized, and with its share of odd and not always good choices. And guess what! It got a novel tie-in, too! In fact there was even an interstitial tie-in novel set between Betrayal and Return! And I've got both and will talk your ears off about them. 
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Mar 22, 2022 19:46
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PurpleXVI posted:And guess what! It got a novel tie-in, too! In fact there was even an interstitial tie-in novel set between Betrayal and Return! 
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Mar 22, 2022 20:40
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PurpleXVI posted:And guess what! It got a novel tie-in, too! In fact there was even an interstitial tie-in novel set between Betrayal and Return! I've read the interstitial (a long while ago now) but never got my hands on the actual Return novel. I am eager to hear about it. In other words,
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Mar 22, 2022 21:50
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Guildenstern Mother posted:Just think though after this krondor 2: the krondening will seem so much better Let's not get ahead of ourselfs; Return is really bad.
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Mar 22, 2022 22:27
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Night10194 posted:Let's not get ahead of ourselfs; Return is really bad. Its not nearly as bad an Antara. There's a plot line that you can explain to someone, characters have identifiable motivations even if they're stupid ones. I think the worst part is probably trying to navigate around the world with the terrible 3d. I forget if the magic was cool or not, its been so long since I've played, but I remember liking the priest.
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Mar 22, 2022 22:52
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Night10194 posted:Let's not get ahead of ourselfs; Return is really bad. I'll admit it's been a long time since I last played it, but nothing I remember is as bad as Antara. Guildenstern Mother posted:Its not nearly as bad an Antara. There's a plot line that you can explain to someone, characters have identifiable motivations even if they're stupid ones. I think the worst part is probably trying to navigate around the world with the terrible 3d. I forget if the magic was cool or not, its been so long since I've played, but I remember liking the priest. I mean, Midkemia has never really had much subtlety. People are generally driven either by HONOR, generic doing good or a deep desire just to be the biggest, most miserable shithead imaginable. But big, blunt motivations beat poorly handled subtlety any day, it's much harder for poor or mediocre writers to gently caress up. The closest you get to subtlety is Midkemia's conflict with Tsuranuanni where the novels touch on the wild and foreign concept that two cultures might be at war because of internal politics and cultural differences, rather than simply because one is good and the other is evil. Far as I can tell, dealing with that deeply shocked Feist and in the other novels of his I've read, he deeply abstains from touching it again.
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Mar 22, 2022 23:13
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I remember return to krondor being pretty fun. The main issue I had with it is that it kind of expects you to have read the book, situations where you have dialogue choices almost always have the correct choice be what was in the book. I remember somehow ending up in a situation where a cut scene during one of the last fights didn't trigger, making it unwinnable, and I think it was because I messed up a dialog tree somewhere. It also has pretty hammy voice acting, which is always fun. I think it also has a character hat shows up again in later novels, unlike poor Owyn, who is never mentioned in a Fiest novel again.
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Mar 23, 2022 03:04
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Which books are implicated in the novels?
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Mar 23, 2022 03:19
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Update 18: The Nightmare Ends https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w93SWh3f_Qg  So, to recap: While attempting to recover the stolen souls of the Emperor's daughter and his son in law, we had pretty good evidence that Lord Sheffield(William's father in law) was involved in some connected shady bullshit. However, the instant we show up on his doorstep to make him explain at swordpoint why he's made me suffer through this loving game by initiating the plot, it turns out that pirates have also shown up, gutted every guard in the Sheffield household, and taken the place over. Since we do need those souls back(kind of), we're kicking down the doors and gutting them in turn. Let's get started.  We've fought pirates before, but there's something new and interesting about fighting them now. Notice how, rather than all having red bandanas, they now have a mix of red and blue? It took me a moment to catch on, but! The different types of pirates are now visually distinct. Blue bandana pirates are heavily armored melee fighters, while red bandana pirates are poorly armored archers. Visual distinction of enemy types! And it only took nine out of nine chapters! There are, of course, also some mages in here, which are distinct by virtue of having sticks rather than swords.   It's also worth noting that every second or so pirate fighter has Montari Plate, meaning I didn't entirely miss the train on getting Kaelyn a suit, though it's too late to go get it blessed. In every fight prior to this, I'll also point out, it's more or less guaranteed that every enemy would have the same type of armor and weapon, with very tiny exceptions. Enemies in a fight both being varied and being visibly varied to the player, so they both have to, and can, make choices about who to target first, is something the game desperately needed.   In any case, I immediately turn left and try to avoid as much fighting as possible, rather than barrelling on ahead. Something of note is also that this is like... the best-looking interior in the entire game. The doors, while overly thick, somehow aren't just flat sprites, among other things.   Things actually feel kind of... like a human space, not just like a bunch of random cubes, hell, look at that door casting a shadow(from a non-existent lightsource, but still.)  It's also amusing to me that the party literally ends up spending several weeks sleeping inside the estate while clearing it out(sure hope the Sheffields aren't in some kind of immediate danger) because it easily takes a day and a half for Aren to recover after a good fight's worth of buffing his party mates and maybe taking a sword or arrow to the face.    I eventually find my way to the first floor. Note that there are like... 20 fights or something in here, probably more, but only two things of actual plot-advancing interest. One room on the first floor, and the basement.   For real, though, check this poo poo out: clunky polygonal objects and furniture! They could have done this poo poo for Kaelyn's dad's workshop and the Shepherd Hideout if they could've been hosed to! The engine can perfectly well handle it! It doesn't even look all that bad! God, this is giving me flashbacks to the interiors in the Birthright videogame... ... I'm not going to LP that, too, shut up. Anyway! We crack the chest and find...    That someone's been faking Lord Sheffield's signature and they also handily left behind a key to the basement. We could go there now, but I want to head around the corner where I accidentally found the nicest-looking rooms in the entire estate.    Looks surprisingly swanky and detailed compared to the formerly completely blank areas we're used to.  I think this is meant to be a bathtub.   These glimmers of talent in design annoy me unreasonably much, because it shows they could have done better, that all the poo poo was just laziness or executive meddling or something. Having checked out Sheffield's private rooms and found them disappointingly empty of anything valuable to loot, the party decides to head for the basement rather than leaving him to get cut in half by pirates.     I still absolutely love how lazy these gates are, I'm glad we got to see another one before the game was over.   As another cool thing, the interior of the Sheffield Mansion is bugged, and despite the murkiness of the main floor and the basement, neither torches or magical light actually improve the lighting. I loving love everything being grainy dogshit.  You can barely even tell I left this room covered in a half dozen corpses in various states of dismemberment!    After hacking up another pack of idiots and their mage, I decide it's time for an experiment.   I've spent all game ragging on the wizard staves, calling them useless trash, but I've never actually shown them in use. Time to embarass the game devs(and not myself, because if it turned out I had been hugely wrong and they were actually useful, I sure as hell would not have posted about it).   Go on, Aren, show them the might of wizardry!   That's the exact same damage his Grrlf staff does when he just whacks these idiots over the head with it, and consider that magic damage is in every other case apparently unaffected by armor, so against less-armored enemies, just beating them with a piece of wood is more effective. loving Antara.  Past the latest patch of dead idiots is a cave network that the Sheffields, like the geniuses they are, built their estate on top of without posting guards or ensuring it was inaccessible or something of the sort. At least torches and light spells work in there so we can enjoy the lovely brown.    There are predictably more pirates down here, clogging up a large amount of underground real estate with, as per usual, exactly one(1) point of interest that we're looking for.    The one "interesting"-looking thing down here, aside from the point of interest, is this "cliff" overlooking... yet more brown. Approaching it closely enough will trigger some dialogue from William.  Thank you for the insight, my lord Escobar, I have no idea what we'd do without you.    Eventually I spot some silhouettes in the darkness(note that this is WITH light-generating magic active, it doesn't get any more visible than this) that seem slightly different from the rest and cautiously approach.     There's no sound effect or anything to accompany it, but after this baffling loving exchange, one of the silhouettes turns into a crumpled pile on the ground. Let's hope it wasn't the one we wanted to question.  Phew, it wasn't. Let's paw over his corpse before talking to Sheffield and his daughter.   Ha ha, you thought it was simple. Sheffield was the bad guy behind it all but no, there's yet another layer of bullshit here. The dead guy on the ground is one we've never met before. I mentioned near the end of chapter 4 that according to FAQs, we were supposed to be able to have met Fellich Marr, the Clown Pope, in Ticoro's temple, making his presence outside a bit less baffling. According to the same FAQs, this guy was also meant to have popped up there. Apparently just to barge Aren out of the way, but it would have made his presence at this stage slightly less out of the loving blue. Whatever, time to harass Sheffield and make him fess up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddN4i4CeOXs Short version: Turns out Lord Sheffield is actually completely innocent. His finances were just going to poo poo, so Selana decided to impersonate him, make deals with pirates and hang out with the racist fucko Shepherds without his knowing about it! But it also turns out she's not responsible for loving with the Consort or the Wraith, that's actually down to Sheffield's conveniently absent court wizard Bryce. Guess we're going looking for Bryce! Lord Sheffield says he'll catch up with us, note this, he will catch up with us. As in, he will arrive after us.  While I make my way out of Sheffield's estate, I want to note how little I explored of each floor, I explored this much of both the ground and first floors, barely a third of each, and that still got me close to ten combat encounters. I didn't even know where to go, I just absolutely lucked into an optimal path through it, but imagine what a loving slog it would be, especially for someone less aggressively trying to beat the game and draining every side opportunity for power and gear, if you managed to bungle into every loving fight before making your way in and out.    The way to Bryce's workshop is around the back of the Sheffield castle.   For the next thirty minutes or so, the only enemies in the game are Karns.   Also caves. And we get to the part where you have to have rope to progress(though on the far side of this hole there are plenty of caches containing it).  Because crossing a pit consumes the rope you use for it, so you could theoretically paint yourself into a corner.     Our goal is to reach this poorly detailed little lair.    So we can find Bryce's journal and learn what his deal is before we inevitably stab him in the face. Spoiler: We will be stabbing Bryce in the face.            The short version: Bryce wanted to use an inimical alternate dimension full of soul-stealing monsters as a public transport system, the government wizards told him to not do something that stupid. He did it anyway and almost died in the process, then decided to swear vengeance on the imperial wizards. He's responsible for the Wraiths that were stuck in the Ridgewood, which the Children of Henne helped him herd into the wardstone circle. Then, suspiciously immediately afterwards, Petrov(the guy Sheffield stabbed) sidles in and suggests how Bryce could totally use a trapped Wraith to get revenge on the Emperor. Petrov then manipulates Selana into manipulating the Shepherds into kidnapping the Consort. The journal also happens to contain the information needed to summon a wraith, which of course we'll need to do to finish the game, because otherwise it wouldn't be here.    Continuing past the workshop we end up in the Waste, which means...    Now we're going to spend the next half hour killing red dogs!    The Waste is a kind of labyrinth of canyons, where your goal is to reach this open space near the center of it all, since that leads to Bryce's new evil workshop.    Trust me when I say it's just a bunch of brown with red dogs attacking me every five minutes except for this one fight that features a thing that only happens to me one time in the entire game.  A fire wolf, for once, actually lands a fire breath blast on someone, in this case Aren, and holy poo poo that's some scary damage, I'm glad they can't hit for poo poo.   Past the only accurate fire wolf in the land we're...  we're back in more generic empty corridors meant to look like human habitation, Bryce's new lab.   More pits! It's actually weird how they've been completely non-existent in every cave or structure we've been in previously, and then the last two interior sections of the game are suddenly crammed with the loving things.    Much like under Sheffield's mansion, the end goal is to find some vague silhouettes and approach them.    Oh no, it's Bryce!  Oh thank God, he just set some dogs on us.   Oh no, it's Bryce again!  Oh thank God, he just set some dogs and himself on us. I have no idea why it was split into two fights, and it's less threatening as a result. If Bryce had just brought out all the dogs at once, he could've stood at the back and cast spells, instead he's now within whacking distance.   Also the one point where a fireball might've saved the day, Aren whiffs the shot like always.  Bryce also made the dipshit decision to bring and use a Carluda's Chain, which means that rather than shielding him, his bodyguards are now a liability.   Inexplicably, a spell hard-coded to do 40 damage also does 35 damage when he casts it. I wonder if he's using another version of Lightning Bolt or whether Kaelyn has some hidden non-conductive property.  Since it's also the last fight of the game(spoiler, I guess!) I decided to bust out Blizzard, a spell I hadn't shown yet, and it actually turns out to work!    It does enough damage that William can finish off the fight with one swing. Now let's find out who Bryce was holding at spell-point.   How the gently caress did you two get here before us?  We'll never know because Kaelyn refuses to talk to them.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1RUp_sFRKs Short version: Bryce gives us a very abridged version of his diary, refuses to help us and then dies. Now we have to summon up the Wraith that has Aurora and the Consort's souls and convince it to hand them over.  The chest to the left holds all the ingredients mentioned in Bryce's journal.  And the cauldron on the right is a container we can put them in. All the clues necessary are in Bryce's journal, can you figure out how to finish the game??? Senwater, nudberry, talicor dust, Trrkaa feather, and hardening fluid in no particular order. As soon as we do, we're then plunged into cutscenes, the final cutscenes of the game. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eORCpOflOXI&t=53s Timestamped to skip Aren putting the ingredients in the cauldron. Short version: The wraith shows up and goes: "Blarrr, I ain't handing over no souls." William says to just kill it, Kaelyn says we lack Wraithslayer blades to kill it with(interesting fact: her sword still had the enchantment at the start of chapter 8, but I sold it for an upgrade, I wonder if it would've dissipated at the start of chapter 9 otherwise or just been ignored) and instead we have to bargain with it for the souls. Then Sheffield and Selana rush in and offer up their own souls in exchange. Then the Wraith peaces out as the Consort and Aurora's souls zoom off to their bodies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Af-_XAJFs Short version: Two months later the Consort and Aurora are going to be married, and our crew reunite as they attend the wedding. Kaelyn has, in the interval, become the Emperor's official diplomat to the Grrrlf. William's still doing nobleman stuff, but now with somewhat more respect from his family, and he defends Selana's actions post-humously as "just doing what she thought was right." My man she attempted to empower a bunch of nazis for financial gain. There's no defending that. Meanwhile, the Clown Pope officiates the wedding and the party notices his staff of office. Which is tipped by a silver hawk. Petrov's orders were signed by the silver hawk. Petrov entered the plot after the Children of Henne assisted Bryce. And then the game ends. We'll never know why the pope was evil and wanted to gently caress with the empire. Presumably it was a setup for a Betrayal in Antara 2, a game that I pray we'll never see, because then I'd have to play it. That was Betrayal in Antara, thank gently caress it's done and thank gently caress I can move on to games that are less shoddily designed and written.
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Mar 23, 2022 16:04
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Well that was an ending at least. I will never understand why so many games undermine their own ending for a sequel hook. A sequel requires the fans to be invested in the original, but who'll be invested in a story that undercuts itself at the last moment, even if it was great on the way there. In Antaras case finishing off this story here and having an unrelated sequel showing off a different part of the world makes more sense to me. Thank again for showing this off, even if the game ultimately ended up being disappointing. Hel fucked around with this message at 17:04 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 16:41
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PurpleXVI posted:That was Betrayal in Antara, thank gently caress it's done and thank gently caress I can move on to games that are less shoddily designed and written. Thank you for showing us this, and showing me why I should just not bother despite the idea that keeps popping up in my head once a year that I should give it a real chance.
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Mar 23, 2022 16:44
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I've only ever wanted to play this game because it once graced the cover of Sierra Online's InterAction magazine. Now I know I don't have to and don't want to. Thanks for putting up with the color brown, I couldn't have done it.
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Mar 23, 2022 17:35
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Thank you for suffering through this game in our stead. It makes sense that these pirates were such a thorn in the side of the empire if they're all tricked out in montari plate and could easily raid any jaeger's home, if not the emperor's. Maybe that was the true threat to the empire? That would be quite a happy accident.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:12
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sb hermit posted:Thank you for suffering through this game in our stead. for real. What a weird game. I assume it must've been plagued with dev problems from start to finish because they were clearly capable of doing better, sometimes, they just couldn't or didn't do it for the other 8.5 chapters of the game
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Mar 23, 2022 18:19
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That level of wet fart  is about what I expected for an ending, really. Though making the real true no-honestly actual villain be some guy we never met, saw or heard about sure was a choice.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:22
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Ugh, bad news on the Return to Krondor front, it seems that it may be either a difficult or uncrackable nut with regards to actually recording the drat thing.
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Mar 23, 2022 18:33
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PurpleXVI posted:Ugh, bad news on the Return to Krondor front, it seems that it may be either a difficult or uncrackable nut with regards to actually recording the drat thing.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:04
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Xander77 posted:How so? Well, with both the GOG and Steam versions, no matter the settings and compatability options enforced on either the game or OBS, I'm only able to record the game as a postage stamp-sized window, no matter that it's actually a perfectly fine, full-screen size when I'm playing it. Googling around, no one else who's had this problem has had a solution for it. I see one recorded playthrough on YouTube and I'm hoping the person who recorded it gets back to me on how they got it to work.
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Mar 23, 2022 19:15
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With some settings fuckery, this is the best I managed for resolution: [img]https://lpix.org/4257200/2022-03-23 19-18-24.mkv_snapshot_00.30_[2022.03.23_19.19.48].jpg[/img] It's not terrible, but I worry that it'll make text and details troublesome. At least the game cinematics are saved as nice, separate .avi files I can just upload, at which point YouTube crusterizes them as it yanks them into a higher resolution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3HndS65YSY
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Mar 23, 2022 19:39
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it seems to always be recording 640x480, so playing around with canvas size and scaling the display capture, I can get it to 1280x960, (2x each side) How readable is it( please ignore the fraps readout):   What I did was setting the canvas to 1280x960 ( File -> Settings -> Video, both base and output) and then editing the display capture transform to double the size, which would be dependent on your screen resolution.( Right click Display capture-> Transform -> Edit Transform -> Size) Hel fucked around with this message at 21:33 on Mar 23, 2022 |
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Mar 23, 2022 21:30
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Hel posted:What I did was setting the canvas to 1280x960 Could you screenshot your settings? Because I could swear I did the exact same thing and it didn't work. Also lol, we're rolling anyway. 
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Mar 23, 2022 21:32
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PurpleXVI posted:Could you screenshot your settings? Because I could swear I did the exact same thing and it didn't work. Here:   My screen resolution is 1920x1080 so that size is double that.
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Mar 23, 2022 21:36
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Holy poo poo thank you, I guess it just isn't an LP for me unless I learn something embarrassingly simple immediately after making the first post. At least this time I learned it after making a first update that looked way worse than all the rest. 
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Mar 23, 2022 21:43
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Not having the party face Petrov was baffling. Even if he wasn't the mastermind he was the main mover behind a lot of the party's struggles. How bizarre. Fair is fair though, there was a pretty big betrayal in Antara.
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Mar 24, 2022 00:40
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Hypocrisy posted:Not having the party face Petrov was baffling. Even if he wasn't the mastermind he was the main mover behind a lot of the party's struggles. How bizarre. Oh, betrayal is one thing the game isn't short on. Felich Marr, obviously, but Selana poses as her father in order to cozy up to pirates and nazis, Bryce and Petrov betray the Shepherds, William and Aren betray the mercenaries, Lord Caverton betrays the audience by somehow being completely innocent... Incidentally, I'm pretty sure the Pope's goal was to put Aurora on the throne because he thought he could easily manipulate her, which means that the wraith stealing her soul instead of the emperor's meant that his whole scheme had catastrophically backfired.
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Mar 24, 2022 01:42
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Man, what a dumb motivation for the villain. It is literally the mad scientist from old B movies screaming about how they called him mad, but he will show them. But played completely straight, like we are supposed to care. I wonder if the game was originally going to be longer with an actual conclusion. Good luck with Return, that screenshot is bringing back all kinds of memories. Thanks for the LP, sorry this one ended up being such a drag of a game.
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Mar 24, 2022 02:12
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PurpleXVI posted:Well, with both the GOG and Steam versions, no matter the settings and compatability options enforced on either the game or OBS, I'm only able to record the game as a postage stamp-sized window, no matter that it's actually a perfectly fine, full-screen size when I'm playing it. Googling around, no one else who's had this problem has had a solution for it. I read every word (or near as drat it), both yours and the game's, but I didn't watch a single video... so I was going to say 'gently caress recording, just do an SS playthrough of RoK, but it looks like you have it sorted. I confess that watching you become steadily more venemous toward this game as you progressed was rather entertaining. In this playthrough, you were the canary and we were the miners; thanks for taking that metaphorical bullet for us.
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Mar 24, 2022 03:04
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What would an Antara 2 look like? How much more batshit crazy could the plot be, given that the pope is the mastermind?
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Mar 24, 2022 03:06
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I can't drink any more whiskey to comtinue writing this dreck, someone put me out of my misery
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Mar 24, 2022 03:08
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JustJeff88 posted:I read every word (or near as drat it), both yours and the game's, but I didn't watch a single video... so I was going to say 'gently caress recording, just do an SS playthrough of RoK, but it looks like you have it sorted. Part of the problem is that I need to record, because I record a video and then snap screenshots from it, so I don't play for two hours and then realize I forgot to screenshot the Space Dildo Mk IX or something in the first five minutes of the session. RtK also has the issue that it has... no subtitles. At all. For practically anything. It's aaaaaaaaaaaaaaall spoken dialogue. sb hermit posted:What would an Antara 2 look like? How much more batshit crazy could the plot be, given that the pope is the mastermind? I feel like Antara 2 would have focused on two plot threads, based on what the game set up: Firstly, you'd have the Vell, who got kind of dropped by the wayside. Maybe instead of an apprentice mage, one of the characters would be an apprentice Vell Forger or something, using Vell tech items, kind of like a Wizardry 8 gadgeteer. Secondly, the whole mystery of the Triune would probably be dug into. Perhaps one of the protags would be a priest of Henne(or perhaps the Triune Undivided, a new heretic cult), who felt a call to challenge Fellich Marr due to his political shenanigans losing him the faith of the god(s). Mind, this is assuming that a second Antara game would have competent, non-moron writers, which is a pretty bold bet.
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Mar 24, 2022 09:39
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I can't help but think the game must have been developed out of order, and they did the Sheffield house parts first for a publisher demo vertical slice or something. Because they never really did interiors ever again.
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Mar 26, 2022 06:49
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Finally read the last 3 updates and my god, what an absolute poo poo show of a game. That they went from BaK to this garbage pile is astounding. There’s so much I hate about it but one of the worst is definitely the move from bad dev team renfaire outfits to exceptionally generic avatars especially since 99% of them are all the same dumbass vacant, soulless looking head-tilted design with various (often minor) changes. Even some of the grrltfttlflyltlftltlt use it with some quickly drawn fur. Everything about this game screams incompetence and/or a total lack of necessary funding and dev time. My condolences for the time you lost playing it for our amusement.
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Apr 10, 2022 22:47
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