Iolo

In this thread http://www.rpgcodex.com/phpBB/viewtopic.ph...der=asc&start=0 the below was posted. It will be an old school RPG unless he goes back on this. Also note that he said what I said that because of trademark law EA couldn't sit on the name forever so Fargo was able to get it away from them. It's not licensed from EA. This and some others over at RPGCOdex are so far the only posts I have seen from Brian Fargo on Wasteland.

Yes I read that post as well. About time they be made accountable to shareholders. I can't imagine how they ever were able to lay off a large percentage of their staff like with Black Isle and yet not announce it publicly either, not to mention this.

The ability to delete your own posts is also missing. There should be an option to delete your posts if someone hasn't responded to your posts yet. I mentioned this in a different thread but I don't think the mods saw it.

Certainly in 1999, a year or less after Fallout 2 had come out, they would have. Later than that or additional sequels would have required new engines.

I shudder to think of the brain capacity of anyone who saw FOBOS' atrocious trailers who actually bought the game. It was some of the worst marketing I have ever seen.

I have my doubts as well until I see something concrete.

EA, which licensed it out to Brian Fargo's inXile. And it's too bad, since he's going to make a crappy console shooter out of it. Unless you are privy to information I have not seen, InXile didn't license the rights to Wasteland from EA. They got the trademark away from them because EA hadn't used it for years and you stand the chance to lose a trademark if you don't publish anything with it for a certain number of years like 15 years. The owner of Mortal Kombat (and I have no idea who that is) actually owned the Wasteland trademark last and were going to use it for a character but they never got around to using it so they gave it to InXile. InXile did the same with The Bard's Tale; got the trademark away from EA. I know you're assuming they would do Wasteland as a console shooter but Fargo said over at RPGCodex that whereas the Bard's Tale is going to be a console game Wasteland will be for the PC and be a RPG. Hopefully at least. That would be something if a new Wasteland game was a spiritual successor to Fallout. Come full circle.

Or they are expanding the resources on the first project. I don't think you can extrapolate from this that there is a second project until they say so.

I would never buy Pokemon. On the other hand, kids might as might parents for their kids. It has a large market. I don't think that would be a good example unless I am understanding who buys Pokemon games but it seems to be a franchise marketed to kids.

Thats not suprising POR II was in the number 1 spot. Such is the power of D&D. Another reason that sales may have dropped is that it simply reached its market capacity. No one is claiming that TB games dont have a market (at least I would hope not) but there comes a point where everyone who wants the game has it and those who dont are waiting for the price to drop. When you reach that saturation point your initial sales sweep is done. I have no problem with the probability that there are 100,000 ish people out there totally dedicated to TB games. And those are the numbers that make for strong initial sales. But if that is the whole of the market those sales will soon dwindle. Consider that KOTOR on the Xbox sold I think 750,000 over the first couple of weeks. Or even better. Consider that Pokemon red is still in the bloody top 10 and has been ever since it was released. Who the hell is buying Pokemon Red ? Why dosnt everyone who wants it have it by now ? Or perhaps the reason is that other games are actually selling less than people might consider. I think it had more to do with word of mouth and some mediocre reviews about number of bugs. The game also had a demo and the full game as a 6 hour trial. I think the game itself and not the fact that it was turn based led to the drop off of sales.

The Temple of Elemental Evil is one of the best known D&D modules, if not the best known, regardless of whether it is Greyhawk or not. But like I said above it sold really well at first based on that name and because it was D&D. But Greyhawk seems to only be supported by RPGA and some WotC modules as opposed to all the different region books for Forgotten Realms like Silver Marches or Underdark so I won't debate that Forgotten Realms is more popular either.

Part of the reason I think for the delay was because KOTOR's original PC deadline would have come out for the PC around the same time as when Star Wars Galaxies shipped on the PC and LucasArts didn't want the two products to compete for salaries. Of course, it also allowed them to focus on improving both games.

Yes console only. It will sell really well because of the BioWare name. They were smart. They worked on MDK2, BG1&2, NWN and KOTOR all for other publishers and using established and well known licenses before developing their own world and game. They made a name for themselves first and developed as a pretty experienced and large and sucessful developer before they decided to take a risk.

TOEE was in NPD's top ten as number 5 for two straight weeks after it shipped. Overall it was number 10 in that month and the game shipped halfway through that month. The only reason I think the sales dropped was because of reviews and word of mouth indicating how buggy it was and how light the story was. If it had the story of BG1, it would probably still be selling really well as opposed to just decent. Considering the 3-5 Sims games that are always in the top ten, that was pretty respectable for its first month.

They didn't develop BG2. This is probably two early a question to ask anyway.

By the way, an expansion to Silent Storm has been announced and is in development. They wouldn't have decided to make an expansion if the game hadn't sold well enough against their costs. Expansions can be made more easily and quicker than a new game but only the purchasers of the initial game buy it and not 100% of them either.

Well maybe those were European numbers and perhaps they weren't up to date. He didn't provide a link or a source of any kind though so the number is doubtful for that reason.

Yes, he really can't act and doesn't have much of a range. The X-Files and maybe X-Files movies are the only thing he will most likely be known for and successful in.

I'm of the opinion that a good RPG shouldn't have any "easy fights" unless they are initiated by the user, or serve some significant purpose. I hate this old RPG mentality that it will be boring unless we throw in some token fights along the way. If the game is boring, having extra combat isn't going to save it. Including real-time for the purpose of bypassing easy fights is extremely pointless- why have the fights in the first place? Why not have the cupcakes run away, and not stick random things like rats in the way to waste the player's time? Perhaps but having both options in the game done well (although not necessarily identical in features or options) would serve both sides of the coin, those who hate turn based and those that like it. We will never know what Van Buren would have been like and how it would have implemented this. Sean Reynolds inquired about releasing the tutorial demo but I think he never received a response.

Locking the camera and that red bar filling up each turn (remind anyone else of a download?) bored me silly. I mean you cant even have a look around the battle field you just have to stare at the screen till the bar has done it's thing. I read somewhere SS only sold around 24,000 units which was a bit of a shock. Anyone have some different numbers or a link ? 24000 was pulled out of nowhere by the lead designer of The Fall to justify his choice of RT verus TB in that game on a thread on Duck And Cover. TOEE was TB though and that sold quite well at first until word of mouth about the number of bugs got out but even then I would imagine it's still doing respectable. Turn Based games can sell. I have no idea of any official sales figures for Silent Storm. I haven't seen any posted yet. Keep in mind though that the game just came out as well.

It is just in teamplay RT is most limiting, not when you just have one character to take care of. This will remain true as long as no true AI have been made to handle team mates in a perfect way (and no such thing has been done so far). I have to say that the more characters under your control, the less usefull do I find RT. I also hate bad control subrutines for NPC team mates as well. Agreed. I turned on all of the auto pause options in Icewind Dale 2, KOTOR and BG series to simulate turn based combat as best I could. If I ran across too easy fights, I just paused and turned them off (although I don't think I bother doing this too often in KOTOR as the battles usually were pretty quick). The more I think about it the ideal game would have both turn based and real time with pause and you would choose whichever was most appropriate to the situation. If you need more granularity or tactics, turn on the turn based option. If it's an easy fight, turn on real time. Van Buren was going to do this I think which is probably the best way to go. The players that hate turn based combat don't need to use but they may be missing out on some tactical options or won't be able to use them as effectively, which is probably acceptable based on the combat situation.

And why in a turn based option SP couldn't you also have characters doing their actions until you say to stop? I think the original Pool of Radiance had that. You had to press space bar or Q maybe once their automatic turn began to break in. Designers could go beyond this and also implement a queue for turn based actions so that in the next few rounds the character does that behavior until you tell them not to. You'd still have the option of interrupting the attack to do what you want to do instead. The difference of course is that each character or NPC acts upon its own initiative so it's still turn based. However, you could also implement what TOEE did where the enemies will move synchronously at the same time to do their attacks if it is feasible. This would reduce the wait time of your example of waiting for all 10 of the enemy characters to complete their turn. Regarding easy fights that you know you can't win, why can't a Turn Based game have an auto resolve function that resolves the combat using default behavior based on scripts and at the end of the combat you see the results like what happened to your characters. You would only use that option when you knew the fight would be easy. And if the fights are too easy, then that's a factor of poor design for those monsters. Regarding D&D being turn based versus real time in a CRPG, each and every D&D developer comes up with their own bastardized rules with an approximation of the correct rules, ignore the rule entirely or create something entirely new. NWN especially suffered from this as did BG series. At least when implemented in a turn based game there is a stronger likelihood for the rules to be implemented properly since the original rule set is turn based. Maybe WotC should come up with a CRPG real time rule set for D&D so that there was one standard that all of those RT D&D CRPGs could use. Behind the scenes in these games like BG and NWN and even KOTOR, there are still rounds. Your character makes a certain number of attacks per round. You can queue up actions in NWN and KOTOR that get done on the following rounds. The difference is you can break in at any time and change what you had queued up but the action that you queued for that round can't be interrupted once it had begun, just like a real turn based game. There is also less granularity of choice in real time versus turn based in choosing your actions. Not to mention the real time aspects makes certain tactical choices not available in a real time game. For choice of tactics, a turn based game is the way to go and you can always improve how it is designed to reduce player wait. There is no reason that turn based combat can't have evolved beyond the original Pool of Radiance. Real time combat will always be faster but it's at the expense of choice and depending on the game the trade off isn't worth it.

What about Morrowind? First person perspective with melee skills like long blade, axe and others where your proficiency in combat with the weapon goes up as you increase in level. The problem with Morrowind is that it could have used more variety in what you can do with the melee combat. I am sure most people just selected always use best attack but I may be wrong. So it may not have been sucessful at it.

They removed that actually in Deus Ex 2. It is now just based on player skill. Morrowind has it still though and I thought it was okay but the combat could have used more variety to it.