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Topics - Raen

Pages: [1] 2
1
Hello everyone, and welcome to the topic for
|----------------------------------------------|
The Legend of Zelda 72-Hour Marathon Relay Race

Time: December 31st until January 2nd (exact times to be determined)

What: A race through all 14 The Legend of Zelda video games.

For: NAMI (National Alliance for Mental Illness) - http://www.nami.org

Zelda? Cool! So, uh. . . what is this?[/u]
The Legend of Zelda marathon relay race is just what it sounds like; a race between teams (composed of member of our little marathon group) to beat all of the Zelda games. Some of my friends and I thought it would be really fun to do a charity marathon of our own. However, in an effort to not simply copy what others do, we thought it would be incredibly fun to have a big relay race that lasts 3 days.

Sounds nifty. So, how does this work
Basically, there will be either 2 or 3 teams of 2 or 3 (this is undecided) who will be playing through all of the Legend of Zelda games to see which team can beat all of the games before the other teams can. We will be streaming this event live on UStream; we'll have a website, as well. There will be a stream where you can watch the games currently being played, and another stream with a commentator and a camera showing the room where everyone will be playing their games.

That's cool. So. . .
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait a second, I'm not finished. Along with the video streams of the marathon, there will also be a chatroom where you can talk to various other people who are watching the marathon, and even talk to the commentator/players.
We're also going to try to up the ante a bit on the competitive aspect of this, and as such we will have a voting system where you can vote on which team you think will win, and another where you can vote for your favorite team. You don't get anything for guessing right, but hilarity will inevitably ensue as team rivalries arise.

Ok, sounds fun. So, are you guys just doing this for fun, or is there any kind of point to it?
While getting to play Zelda for 3 days is a reward in and of itself, we felt it would be good to do this marathon for a good cause. As such, we will be taking donations throughout the marathon in support of NAMI, the National Alliance for Mental Health. We feel this is a great cause to support, and we hope everyone plans on donating! We will likely be giving out some prizes to people who donate at least 5 dollars, which is all the more reason to donate. So please, be generous and help a great cause.

So, you said ALL the Zelda games? Which ones are you playing, exactly?
We will be playing:

    The Legend of Zelda
    Zelda II: The Adventure of Link
    A Link to the Past
    Link's Awakening
    Ocarina of Time
    Majora's Mask
    The Wind Waker
    Oracle of Ages
    Oracle of Seasons
    Four Swords Adventure (this will be played co-op, of course!)
    The Minish Cap
    Twilight Princess
    Phantom Hourglass
    Spirit Tracks

(this is not necessarily the order we'll be playing the games in)

But what about Four Swords? Or Link's Crossbow Training? Or the CD-I games?
It is certainly a possibility that we'll play some Crossbow Training if we have extra time (which is unlikely). We can't play Four Swords for two reasons: 1) You can't beat it exactly, and 2) We'd have no way to show the gameplay, as you can't link GBAs while using a Game Boy Player, which is the only we we can show the handheld games. As for the CD-I games, I do not own or know anyone who owns the CD-I games, and none of us doing this marathon have enough money to buy them.

2
Contests / Zelda Design Competition #1 - Dungeons - VOTING
« on: August 17, 2009, 05:56:18 pm »
OK, so it's time to vote for which of these awesome dungeons that were entered in our first Zelda Design Competition is the best!

But wait Raen! I thought you didn't want to do public voting?
This is true, I didn't want to do public voting. However, with only two entries, I don't feel like there is any other way to fairly judge this particular competition, and so I gave in and am doing this by public vote. HOWEVER, there are some special considerations I want you all to pay attention to.

Considerations? What considerations?
When voting and trying to decide which dungeon is best, please keep these things in mind:

CREATIVE USE OF ITEMS: This is a pretty self explanatory thing, but make sure to take special note of creative use of the items that are available to the individual. That doesn't mean that they have to be the focus of the dungeon, but that when they are used they are used interestingly and creatively.

INTELLIGENT DUNGEON LAYOUT: What I mean by this is a dungeon that you wouldn't get lost in, and that has a logical progression and an intuitive layout. A dungeon that you get lost in all the time isn't fun, right?

THEME: What I mean by this is that a dungeon shouldn't just be a collection of rooms: It needs a theme and a setting that holds it together. Pay special attention to this as you judge.

COMPLETENESS: The more cohesive, polished, and complete the dungeon is, the better. This DOES NOT mean that a dungeon implemented in a game is better. I'm talking about DESIGN here. Which brings us to my last point:

DO NOT VOTE JUST BASED ON HOW GOOD IT LOOKS OR WHETHER AN ENGINE ACCOMPANIES IT!!!!


Ok, your good to vote now!  :D Go check out the dungeons and vote!

Where can I see the dungeons?
You can check them out right here! Here you go:

Niek's Dungeon: http://home.student.utwente.nl/n.j.hoeijmakers/ZFGC/Niek_(set1)_Dungeon_Competition_1v2.png
Walkthrough for Niek (READ IT): http://home.student.utwente.nl/n.j.hoeijmakers/ZFGC/Niek_(set1)_Dungeon_Competition_1.pdf

Jetstorm4's Dungeon: http://host-a.net/Jetstorm4/Golgatha%20Crypt%20ZFGC.rar

Keep in mind the criteria for each dungeon as well:

Niek -
Set 1 - 3 hearts minimum
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Bow
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang

Jetstorm4 -
Set 6 - 8 hearts minimum
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Hookshot
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather, Bombs, Flippers, Iron Boots, Ice/Fire Arrows

3
Audio / LttP Dark World Theme - An Arrangement
« on: August 14, 2009, 06:29:24 pm »
I was bored the other day, so I made this:
http://www.box.net/shared/4mahe7rgtj

It's the Dark World theme from LttP, changed and arranged by me in Anvil Studio. I had a lot of fun making this, and I hope you guys get some enjoyment out of it.

Also, since this is my first real attempt at composition/arrangement, I'd love to hear any advice any of you have as to how to make this better/ what you like/ what you hate, ect. I'd like to improve my music making skills, so all comments are welcome. Thanks!

PS. Also, if any of you awesome musician peoples out there want to make this an awesome, no midi song, that would be great. Sadly, I don't have access to FL Studio or anything, so I'm stuck with plain old midi.

4
Entertainment / Megaman Marathon for Charity
« on: August 05, 2009, 01:01:20 am »
I thought people might be interested in this:

Quote
The upcoming Megaman Marathon starts August 14th at 6:00PM and will run for 72 hours.

TheSpeedGamers have been streaming video game marathons for over a year to raise money for various charities. In total they have raised over $82,000 dollars and played 12 marathons. They have set the record for longest streamed gaming marathon at 168 hours, and have made multiple news appearances. This marathon will be for Earthday.net. This charity helps to "broaden and diversify the environmental movement worldwide, and to mobilize it as the most effective vehicle for promoting a healthy, sustainable environment."

During the marathon we will be commentating outside for parts of the marathon, trying to reduce our carbon footprint, and encouraging others to do the same.

We've got some big news, and will have prizes to be won.

And a link to their website: http://www.thespeedgamers.com/

I discovered these guys a few weeks ago when they did a week long Final Fantasy marathon where they raised over $50,000 dollars. The marathons are actually really fun to watch, so I'd like to encourage anybody who is interested to watch a bit and donate!

5
MC Link's Awakening / A Call for Progress
« on: July 14, 2009, 06:11:21 pm »
So, as most of you know, NCFC 2009 is coming up soon.

I was looking at the forums on the website for NCFC (http://www.nintendocfc.com/), and it looks like MFGG (a Mario fan game community, and hosts of this event, I believe) will be releasing a demo of their community project, and it's looking pretty good.

I don't know about you guys, but I think we have some really, really talented people here, and this community project could become something really, really awesome. I think it would be awesome to have something to show with this community project at NCFC, which will be held at the end of October.

So, here's what I'm asking for: We need some organization. We need to do some work, and get this project off the ground.

6
Discussion / Indie Game Maker | Now released in the US!
« on: June 29, 2009, 08:50:19 pm »
-----------------------
EDIT: Ok, so this has been release in the United States now. Check it out here:
http://download.cnet.com/IG-Maker/3000-20416_4-10925245.html?tag=mncol

It costs $90, btw.
-----------------------

Go here --> http://www.actiongamemaker.com

Read everything you can, specifically the Information and Features pages.

...

Ok, done reading? Good. Now for the discussion.

This seems like a very interesting program. In case you didn't pick this up, it is made by Enterbrain, the people behind the RPG Maker series of programs. This one, however, isn't limited to RPGs; it's more of a general purpose development tool that is specifically geared towards things like side-scrollers, overhead action-adventure games, ect. This means it could end up being a HUGE deal here at ZFGC. We are, after all, a Zelda development community and having a program that is geared, in part, towards making action-adventure games could be a HUGE help to our development community.

Obviously, there isn't a fully translated version of the program yet and it probably won't even be release officially in English. This means that either people can 1) import the program and learn Japanese, 2) wait for a translation patch (which will come, there already is one for the trial version of the software) and then import the program or 3) wait until somebody cracks and translates the program just like they did with RPG Maker (will happen eventually).

Anyway, so I just installed the trail, and I'm messing with it now. I'll post again with my thoughts on how it works.

7
Contests / Zelda Design Competition #1 - Dungeons | NEW DEADLINE |
« on: June 20, 2009, 06:10:45 pm »
NEW DEADLINE IS AUGUST 12TH
---------------------------------
Well, it's time for the very first ever
Zelda Design Competition Edition 1 - "Can Haz Dungeons Plz?"

So what is this?
I love a good competition. People, particularly on the interwebz, have a tendency to be lazy. What better way to get people to get off their butt and do something productive than to pit them against their peers in a design-battle-to-the-death, right?

So I wanted to have some sort of competition. While looking through the competition boards, I noticed we've never really had a Zelda themed competition (well, there was one), and on top of that we have never had any kind of Zelda design competition. Design is one of the biggest aspects to making a good game; you can have a great engine, great graphics, great music, or whatever, but if the game isn't fun well, then everything else went to waste.

So in an attempt to get people to actually make stuff, we're having this competition. For this particularly Zelda Design Competition, we're going to start with the bread and butter of any good Zelda game: DUNGEONS.

So what do I have to do?
You need to design a dungeon for a 2D Zelda game. Easy right? Well, this is a competition, and there are requirements. Criteria, you could say.

Your dungeon must have:
  • At least 10 rooms/areas.
  • A mini-boss.
  • A boss located at the end of the dungeon (yes, you have to design this fight and the mini-boss fight, they are part of the dungeon).
  • An item which you find in the dungeon which helps you complete the dungeon.
  • A map and a compass.
  • A boss key which opens the boss room.
  • Two heart pieces.

Oh sweet, I can do that, I'm going to go. . .
Wait, hold up, not so fast. There's more! To make the competition more interesting, we're going to try to make all the dungeons work as if they were all from the same game. So before you design your dungeons, you need to choose one of these item sets:

Set 1 - 3 hearts minimum | TAKEN BY NIEK
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Bow
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang

Set 2 - 4 hearts minimum | TAKEN BY KREN
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Roc's Feather
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle

Set 3 - 5 hearts minimum - TAKEN BY KINGROCKER
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Bomb Bag w/ Bombs
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather

Set 4 - 6 hearts minimum
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Iron Boots
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather , Bombs, Flippers (meaning you can swim in water)

Set 5 - 7 hearts minimum - TAKEN BY Jeod and Darunia
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Ice/Fire Arrows
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather, Bombs, Flippers, Iron Boots, Silver Gauntlets (allows lifting of large blocks/other items)

Set 6 - 8 hearts minimum - TAKEN BY Jetstorm4
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Hookshot
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather, Bombs, Flippers, Iron Boots, Ice/Fire Arrows

Set 7 - 9 hearts minimum - TAKEN BY KNIGHTY
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Lens of Truth
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather, Bombs, Flippers, Iron Boots, Ice/Fire Arrows

Set 8 - 10 hearts minimum - TAKEN BY DARKLIGHT
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Mirror Shield
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather, Bombs, Flippers, Iron Boots, Ice/Fire Arrows, Lens of Truth, Din's Fire (spell from Ocarina of Time)

Set 9 - End Boss - 11 hearts minimum
Item Acquired in Dungeon: Light Arrows
Items Already Acquired: Sword, Shield, Deku Sticks, Boomerang, Ocarina, Bow, Bottle, Roc's Feather, Bombs, Flippers, Iron Boots, Ice/Fire Arrows, Lens of Truth, Din's Fire, Mirror Shield, Golden Gauntlets (allows lifting of ridiculously huge blocks)

Along with each item set, each person needs to choose a theme for their dungeon. For example, in Ocarina of Time each dungeon was related to an element (fire, forest, water, ect) or a location (Inside the Great Deku Tree, Dodongo's Cavern, ect).

If, for any reason, there is an item you do not have access to in your item set that isn't added later on in later item sets, and you really want it, let me know (for example, maybe you want a water tunic or something).

It should also be noted that only one person may be assigned to each item set. If there are more than 9 contestants, I will add more item sets.

Ok, sounds good, but how am I supposed to show you my design?
You must create some kind of graphical representation of the dungeon. Just to make this easy for everyone and allow as many people to enter as possible, I'm not going to require that everyone use a specific graphics style or tileset to create their graphical representation. In fact, you could even draw your dungeon on a piece of paper if you really want. I would, however, like to highly encourage people to actually map out their dungeon in some kind of graphical style (whether it be MC, LttP, or a custom graphics style). You don't have to, though.

Along with your graphical representation, please also include detailed notes as to how each puzzle in each room works. This is to allow those judging to actually fully understand how your puzzles and such work. You can include these in a text file, write them right on the image, or whatever. If you are writing the notes in a separate file from the graphic, please number each room on the graphic file so the judges understand what is going on.

Ok, anything else?
To help with design, the screen resolution that would be used for this design game is 320x240. Assume that the boomerang and hookshot can go the length of 3/4 of the screen's horizontal length.

How is this being judged?
I'm still working on the details, but this competition will NOT be judged by having the general public vote; there will be judges, I just don't know who yet or by what criteria they will be judging.

When do I have to be finished by?
Before the competition starts proper, we're going to have a registration period; that is, a time for people to register for the competition. In order to keep the competition fair, competitors are NOT allowed to start on their entry until the official start date. I am actually going on vacation in about an hour and won't be back until the 27th. Due to this, registration will continue until June 28th. After the registration period is up, the competition will begin. The official start date is June 29th, and you have one month to complete your dungeon (an extension on this deadline is possible and probably likely, but I want to see what you guys can do quickly) The tentative deadline is August 12th.

Are there any prizes?
Not right now. If someone, however, wants to "sponsor" this competition, that would be cool. However, I would like to avoid any kind of monetary reward or real-world rewards. Maybe a special rank on the forums, and signature banner, or something like that.

List of Participants
1. Kren - Item Set 2 - Snow Theme
2. Jeod and Darunia - Item Set 5 - Ice/Fire Theme
3. Darklight - Item Set 8 - Earth Temple
4. Knighty - Item Set 7
5. Niek - Item Set 1 - Castle/sewer/tomb thingy
6. Jetstorm4 - Item Set 6 - Desert/Sand
7. Kingrocker - Item Set 3

8
Feedback / Contest Idea: Dungeon Design
« on: June 16, 2009, 01:30:10 am »
We really should have another contest, and I think I had a good idea for one. How about the dungeon design competition? Basically, all participants would be required to design and map out a dungeon for a Zelda game, using a provided tileset and some other assets (for example, sheets of enemies or objects). The competition would last for a pre-determined amount of time (duh) and would be judged based on the design of the dungeon (how inventive it is/fun it would be to play) and effective use of the tileset (as in, the tileset was used properly in that things don't look like complete crap, this isn't the most important category but we want people to be able to actually make these things).

Yes, this isn't the most detailed idea, but it is meant to be just that: an idea.

9
Entertainment / Pixar's "Up"
« on: June 12, 2009, 09:13:30 pm »
So, the other day I went to see Pixar's new movie "Up". I'll be totally honest: I was pretty much expecting it to be underwhelming, just like everyone else in the world. But HOLY CRAP IT WAS AMAZING. Just for good measure, I have to say that again: IT WAS AMAZING. Quite possibly the best movie I have ever seen. Like, ever. It was really that good.

10
Feedback / Annoying bug with the resource pages.
« on: June 12, 2009, 06:53:08 pm »
I don't know how to explain this, so I"ll post this screenshot of it:


As you can see, the banner adds show up on top of the image preview, making it really hard to actually look at anything. Can this be fixed?

11
Graphics / LttP Graphics Dump
« on: June 12, 2009, 01:12:46 am »
I realized I have quite a large amount of LttP styled/ripped stuff located on my computer. A lot of the awesome resources we used to have here at ZFGC just aren't located on the site itself anymore, so I figured it would be good to post as much as I can find here. So here we go (right click --> save as to download):

*Note: I realize a lot of this may be posted elsewhere on the internet (or even this site). If you recognize it as originating from a certain site, let me know. I may, for the sake of being polite, link to their site/page.

<---Same as other cliffs that were ripped by DJ, I just added the other cliff pieces. This is not a particularly well laid out tileset, I did this forever ago.

<---.TakaM's custom FSA grass. <--I don't remember who made this.


























<--Filter ripped by Infinitis (I think) and colorized by me (I don't need credit, it's grass, I mean really)













12
Audio / Voluspo - A Post-Metal song I wrote.
« on: June 08, 2009, 11:32:11 pm »
So, I got really into music shortly after I left ZFGC a few years back. I was in a band for a long time called Follow the Earth, but I recently left that band, as most of the members are moving to Boston in a few months, something I'm not interested in doing. I'd recommend checking them out though:
www.myspace.com/followtheearth

HOWEVER, that's not what this topic is about. This is about a solo not-exactly-side project thing I'm doing. Since I'm not in a band, I've been going nuts not playing music very often, so I started this little project. As of now, I've only written one song, called "Voluspo". Check it out here:
www.myspace.com/applesofidunn

Let me know what you think. I did all the instrument playing/singing/recording/mixing myself.

13
Graphics / Can haz mockupz?
« on: June 08, 2009, 04:46:44 pm »
So, I made this, for two reasons. I was bored, and as a sort of "target" for my Zelda game that is in the planning stages.

So here it is:


Credit to: (let's see if I remember everything)
.TakaM for the HUD
DarkLink for the Link sprite, which include the horse and the fairy.
Calevin for the trees
Faceless for the items
I forget who ripped the FSA stuff, but credit to him for the grass overlay.

14
Other Discussion / How To Kill a Mockingbird
« on: March 17, 2007, 06:21:03 pm »
So, yeah, check this out:

http://www.stanford.edu/~scodary/tkam.htm

This is the most hilarious thing I have ever seen, especially since I am currently reading "To Kill a Mockingbird" in my Honors English class.

15
Entertainment / My best friends band.
« on: March 13, 2007, 10:41:22 pm »
I know lots of people here like good music so here:

http://www.myspace.com/crypticraptureband

This is my best friends band. I'm his "producer"/site guy/recording guy. He's an incredibly talented guitarist, and the rest of the band is really good to. Check 'em out and let me know what you think.

16
Entertainment / LittleBigPlanet - Awesome new game for the PS3.
« on: March 11, 2007, 01:44:22 am »
I'm amazed that there isn't a topic about this game already.

LittleBigPlanet is a game being made Media Molecule, a company founded by some of the guys who did Rag Doll Kungfu. This game is amazing. It's quite hard to describe. You have to see it for yourself:

http://www.gamespot.com/events/gdc07/story.html?sid=6166934&pid=938583&om_act=convert&om_clk=multimodule&tag=multimodule;picks;title;3

http://www.gamespot.com/ps3/action/littlebigplanet/media.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=tabs

I'd recommend watching the keynote, lots of good info, and probably the best example of LittleBigPlanet. If you want to see just the LittleBigPlanet part, it's about 3/4 of the way through, right after Singstar. I'd really, really recommend watching that part of the keynote to really understand what the game is about.

17
Entertainment / Vanguard: Saga of Heroes
« on: February 03, 2007, 05:48:58 pm »
Has anyone bought this yet? I'm pretty interested in it, but I'm not quite sure about it yet. If anyone has any buddy keys I would love to have one ^-^ For those who don't know much about Vanguard, here is a post on some other forums that describes it pretty well(not written by me):

Quote
Introduction
What is Vanguard: Saga of Heroes?
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, or just Vanguard, or VG, or "hey that new mmorpg from those EQ1 guys" is a new MMORPG from the makers of EQ1, now called Sigil Games. it was originally going to basically be EverQuest with a new look, but it got bought out by SOE and is now EverQuest mixed with EQ2 and WoW.

Why should I care?
Well, unless you are a sucker for MMORPGS, or really liked EverQuest, like I did, then you probably shouldn't. But hey, here we go anyway..

So what's special about Vanguard?
One thing I just need to mention is that you can have two targets at once, one offensive target and one defensive target. This is handy for healing while attacking or Rescue Moves (see below).

The game is big. Really big. And there are no flightpaths. This is pretty much the only EQ1 thing they really kept alive, and I kind of like it. You get mounts really early on (see below), and it really makes the world feel more real than other MMOs.

The game is also supposed to be seamless, but I've noticed definite load lines. When you cross them the game basically freezes for several seconds, and 50% of the time demounts you. God knows what'll happen if you're flying 20 miles in the sky at the time.

I don't think it's in the game yet, and no one has enough money for it anyway, but because the game is so huge, player housing will be real. You can have player made villages with hired NPC guards and merchants, personal economies and stuff. You can also make ships and explore the oceans.. when you have enough skill :(.

When you die post-level-7, you leave a tombstone behind with all your items. There are two ways to keep items post-mortem:
Bind them with Binding Crystals. The downside is that you cannot sell bound items to other players once you outlevel them, and binding crystals cost money.
Keep a seperate set of items for corpse retrievals in your mount's saddlebags. I'm going to start doing this when I level up a bit more.
Once you get relatively close to your tombestone you can /corpsedrag it and loot it safely, getting back most of your lost exp and all of your items.
If you die in a completely impossible place, you can summon your tombstone to the altar you respawn at. However, you lose all the exp you.. uh.. lost, and all your items take a durability hit.

The thing I like the most is how the game is split into parts, or spheres, depending on how you want to play. There are 4 spheres, Adventuring, Crafting, Harvesting and Diplomacy.

What can I be?!
Races:
Races are split onto the three continents:

Thestra: Thestran Human (vanilla), Dwarf, Halfling, High Elf, Vulmane (wolf anthro), Varanjar (EQ1 barbarian) and Lesser Giant.

Kojan: Kojani Human (asians), Wood Elf, Half Elf, Orc, Goblin and Raki (kind of a dwarf wolf anthro thing).

Qalia: Qaliathari Human (Arabic), Gnome, Dark Elf, Kurashasha (lion anthro), Morbedi (negro..) and Varathari (weird arabic eq1 barbarian mix).
Race affects starting location, base stats and your innate abilities. Like WoW, each race gets special abilities. Obviously with the 3 tons of races you have a billion different abilities so I won't list them.

Classes:
Classes are split into 4 archtypes:

Protective:
Warrior is your basic tank. Good at dealing damage, but much much better at taking it.
Paladin, your healing warrior, less armour but makes up for it by being more universally useful.
Dread Knight, your anti-paladin, deals damage more than either other protector but takes less.

Offensive:
Rangers are awesome, masters of ranged and close combat, can dual weild (possibly from level 1, I didn't notice until level 10 though), can use longbows before anyone else, can tame beasts, can forage for ranger-useful items, have sniper shots, etc, etc. I am one of these guys if you didn't notice. Oh yeah we can also stealth (yes).
Rogues are rogues. Stealth, backstabbing, fast dagger attacks, etc. I'm sure they use poisons and FLASH POWDER and !@#$% later on too.
Monks are masters of hand to hand, and like.. wearing robes. Might be able to heal too, dunno. They also get like 50 battle stances, including DRUNKEN BOXING so yeah these rock.
Bards can play instruments, and are apparently good at it seeing as they are in the offensive fighters area. None of the animal races can be one though so I won't ever make one :(.

Healer:
Clerics are more like your traditional plate wearing healers than their weak WoW counterparts. Wading into the thick of battle with their warrior allies, smashing things to bits with hammers and pissing undead off like no one else, the clerics are pretty awesome. I'm going to make one some day.
Shamans are more like their WoW versions, being able to change into animals and wear medium armour. They also prefer more shamanistic weapons like spears.
Disciples are like monk healer things that weild martial weapons and wear medium armour. I don't know what they play like but I grouped with one and I didn't die so yeah.
Blood Mages are like emo clerics. They have mastery over blood and can transfer it from one target to another. I think they are like healing necromancers without pets. They can boil enemies blood or siphon it to a friend or probably make it spurt everywhere or make pretty pictures with it. Blood Mages!!!!!

Caster:
Sorcerors are Vanguard's wizards. They make things explode.
Druids in Vanguard are like naturist wizards. They call on powers of the earth and sky to deal huge damage and can even cause large beneficial effects. They can't fight, though, so yeah they are pure casters in this.
Psionists are mindfuckers. They charm, trap, mindblast and basically make combat very annoying. With their charm powers they can quickly change the odds in their favour, but they get clusterfucked if things go wrong due to their low armour.
Necromancers only get one kind of pet in this, apparently, the abomination which is sewn together from other bodyparts. However, they can take on undead forms themselves, such as ghosts, skeletons, and even liches. Apart from that, they are your basic DoT decay necromancers.

That's it! Whew. A few notes on races and classes, unfortunately not all races can be all classes, and there is a good vs evil thing going on. Orc, goblins, lesser giant, dark elves and I think one other race are the evil ones, and everyone else is good. However, like EQ1, you can gain enough faction to not be KoS in opposing cities! Hooray!


Adventuring
Adventuring is basically the EverQuest part of Vanguard. You go out, do quests, kill monsters, get exp, get money, get better items to do better quests and kill bigger monsters. We've all seen this part before.
Combat
Combat is an odd mix of EQ2 with WoW, I guess. It is more indepth than WoW, and feels faster than EQ2. When soloing it involves the normal hit abilities at the right time to whittle away at the enemies HP while taking as little damage as possible yourself. Enemies are classed by the amount of "dots" on their target panel. The more dots, the harder the enemy. IE a level 4 enemy with 5 dots would be more difficult than a level 6 enemy with one dot. Enemies with 3+ dots will definitely require at least one other person to bring down, and dungeons/caves are usually full of 3+ dotted enemies. So yeah, not much soloing going on past level 10 I expect.

When grouping, chains and stuff come into play. There are four types of chains, all set off by different types of abilities:
Chained Attacks can be used solo or grouped, and are just what they say. Hit the right abilities in the right orders to begin chains and use special abilities. For instance, if my ranger uses Blade of Winter twice in a row, it adds a Freeze effect (which is basically a stun).
Counters are used when you get hit, or you parry, or the enemy parries or whatever the specific ability asks for. Pretty self explanitory.
Rescue Actions target your defensive target's offensive.. target. Yeah. So it's pretty much a normal ability but you don't have to change targets to save your priest.
Sympathetic Actions can be used when characters use special abilities in combination with each other. I don't know what these are so I am quoting the manual.

So yeah that adds a bit of spice to group play, and as I said earlier combat seems faster. Me and 3 other guys ripped through a 3-4 dot wasp lair earlier pretty much without stopping. You regen really fast, which is nice.

Mounts
Because the game is so big, you get access to mounts relatively earlier than other MMOs. The first purchasable mounts are level 10, and are bought from main cities. You get a new tier available at 20, 30 and 40, and a bunch of non-purchased ones are out there too. Flying mounts are also available after high level quests, and seeing as the game is "seamless" you can pretty much fly everywhere after that.
Mounts also have equipment slots, for horseshoes and tacks for speed and durability, and saddlebags to hold extra equipment.


Crafting
Crafting is pretty deep, but not as annoyingly deep as EQ2's was originally. Basically, you have two types of crafting, real, item crafting, and Work Orders. While real crafting gives you a resulting item you probably wanted, they don't give much exp. Work Orders give exp and a bit of coin, but no real end items. Yeah, basically they make you grind crafting. Isn't that awesome?!

Once you get to your main city, you hopefully find your crafting tutorial NPC. S/he leads you through the process, and lets you choose your profession. The professions include, so far:
Artificing - Making items out of wood, stone and gems, including structures, furniture, boats, magical foci and jewelry.
Blacksmithing - Working with metal, making items such as weapons, heavy armours, and even tools for harvesting and crafting.
Outfitting - Using cloths and leather to make light armours, and even crafting/harvesting outfits and the like.

Each major city, and some outposts, have crafter forums. This is a building with trainers and vendors and taskmasters and workbenches and !@#$%. To make real items, you need the recipe (trainers), the items you craft with (harvesting, see below), tools (vendors), utilities (vendors) and the correct workbench. For refining, you use a refining bench, and for a finished item you use the finishing bench, etc.

To actually craft you simply click the workbench, select the recipe and start crafting. Crafting is split into stages. Stage 1 is selecting the base material, stage 2 is usually cleaning the material (with solvents or some such), stage 3 is like shaping or whatever, and stage 4 is the finish. Each stage has multiple choices, usually bargaining between point cost and quality. Oh yeah, you have limited points to use, and every ability you use takes points. If you run out of points before you finish, I guess the item dies or something. During the creation process, complications can arise to eat points, so yeah you need to make sure you have more than enough points to finish while getting the best quality possible. Higher quality "real" items will obviously have better stats, wheras higher quality Work Order items will net you more exp and money.

Crafting is way too complicated to really describe here, but I'll attempt to answer questions if you feel I haven't explained it well. I'll also take screenies next time I craft.


Harvesting
Harvesting is the best sphere imo. I don't know why I like harvesting in all games, but yeah there we go. Harvesting in this is almost the same as EQ2, except more restricted and the nodes are cooler. There are a whole bunch of harvesting skills:
Lumberjacking is obviously the decimation of trees for wood.
Quarrying is the mining of rocks and gems.
Mining is the mining of metal.
Reaping is the gathering of textile plants.
Skinning is the .. well, skinning of animals.
You can have two skills, one primary and one secondary. Like WoW, you can drop and learn a new one at any time, but the dropped one drops to 0. I don't think there is any other cost for doing this, though.

After getting your skills (and level 1, free tools: each harvesting skill requires a new tool, but you store these in your harvesting toolbelt which takes up one equipment slot on your harvesting page, which is awesome) you run out into the wilderness and look for nodes! Because of this, it's a good idea to level adventurer and harvesting levels at the same time. Lumberjack nodes are specific trees, which you actually do cut down and they fall and !@#$%. They respawn though :(. Quarry and Miner nodes are different rockpiles, copper for miners and basalt for quarriers, reaping nodes are plants and skinner nodes are.. well you have to kill the animals first.

once you find a node, you right click it and your guy gets to work. He smacks it with the tool and you see items building up. The higher level your skill, the more items you get. You might only get 5-10 wood from a tree at skill 1, but at 100+ you will be getting 20+. 20 of a resource stack into a "real" resource, and you use those for crafting. So if a recipe needs 5 timber, you need to go out and get 100+ wood from trees and stack them into 5 timber :/. Once you get 20+ from one tree though, this is no big deal.

Higher skill, better tools and better harvesting clothes increases the yeild, and so does group harvesting. Even if you do not have the same skill as a friend, you can help them harvest a node and you both get harvesting exp (there is a universal "Harvesting" skill which increases all yeilds, as well as specific skills (mining, lumberjack) which increases one type of yeild). You also get more items this way, but only one person can loot so you need to be in a group you trust.


Diplomacy
Diplomacy is weird. I like it, but yeah it's really odd for a MMO. It takes the form of a card game between you and the NPC. You have a set of cards that you build up as you skillup in Diplomacy and get quest rewards. I'll explain this more when I do some more diplomacy, as it's too hard to explain without pictures. The game offers tons of tutorials for it though, so if you get it yeah the game will explain.

You get a seperate Diplomacy suit, like crafting and harvesting, that all add bonuses to your differing diplomacy skills/factions.


Game Mechanics
Graphics
It's not the prettiest, and currently runs horribly due to it being new and badly coded. I hope they fix the framerates, but once you're out in the wilderness it's pretty smooth.

Sound
Pretty cool MMORPG music, although I've only heard about 5 tunes. Sound effects all fit, etc.

Controls
Basic MMORPG controls. WASD, although I find myself using the mouse far more often. Hotkeys and !@#$% all work familiarly.

Patching
At the moment they bring it down every day for 2 hours, but this is just temporary. If you hate patches, wait a few months until it settles down.

Billing
$15/mo like everything else. Payable through gamecards, I think, and CC.

UI
I think it's just as customizable as WoWs, and it has a MoveAnything! mod built in which is awesome. I haven't explored the UI customization scene much, but seeing as they are patching every day I expect they'll all be broken every few days :/.

Outro
So yeah, that is it. Vanguard is basically a very new basic MMORPG that brings little new to the table, but what it does bring is pretty awesome. I think, in a few months, when most of the major kinks are ironed out, it will be a pretty solid game. Of course, Conan will probably come out then, but hey I've had two MMORPGs at once before.

18
Entertainment / Can you turn the fairy off in Tp?
« on: December 30, 2006, 04:19:41 pm »
Can you turn the fairy off in TP without having to turn all the pointing fuctions off? I heard you can, but I don't know how.

19
Graphics / 1337 Mockup Topic
« on: December 16, 2006, 03:15:19 am »
I thought it might be fun to start a topic for people to post any mockups they have made. I've always enjoyed seeing what others invision their "dream" 2D game would look like, and I enjoy making mockups myself. I'll start by posting a couple:



I can't remember how long ago I did this. I quite like it. I don't know why I put the master sword there, though.

Ok, nevermind, I lied, I'll only show one :P It's all that is in my Photobucket account right now, and I'm not at my PC which has all my old mockups on it.
Feel free to post any and all mockups you've made, I'd love to see them. ^_^

20
http://www.purevolume.com/crypticrapture

This is a song my friend has been working on for a while. He's gotten quite good at it, and is going to be playing it at my school's talent show next week. We decided to record it. Currently, we only have the guitar recorded, but we will be doing the piano and vocals sometime soon. I'm posting this to get a bit of C&C. I'd like to know if people like what he's doing.

>.< I just realized I left that "ariba. . . . adios" thing at the end of it :P We were bored, so my friend just yelled "ARIBA!!!" at the end, and then my little brother said "adios". Think nothing of it, it's just kinda there :P

You can also hear one of his own songs, Isolated Desperation on there. It's an acoustic only song. It has lyrics, but we haven't recorded them yet.

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