Newsgroup: it.comp.giochi.rpg
Titolo: Arcanum - E3 stuff

[Da qualcuno che l'ha visto alla recente fiera]:
I got to see the editor in detail on Saturday. I wanted to stay longer
but my blistered feet (and GF) were itching to move on (The guys at
Troika were pretty easy going and not stuck on whether i had a media
badge stapled to my chest--i thank them for that).
Anyway--on to the goodies. You've maybe seen pictures or seen reports
on the MOD editor. All i have to say is that they can't possibly do
justice. Without a doubt, this is what us wanna-be designers have been
salavating over the past few years. If you struggled with the
puzzle-box known as Revenant (as I did) or any other crappy
development engine, you will love this thing. I mean it. It has the
ease of something like StarEdit for SC and the power behind it to make
your own RPG (minus the art 8-)).
NPCs:
You can equip their inventory by dragging objects onto them after you
place the NPC on the map. Shift-drag to force them to equip the item.
Weapons are not shown until combat initiates.
Right clicking on any entity will bring up a menu that allows you to
do stuff like set waypoints, day or night activities, AI, attributes
(you can also write a script for them to use) You can also specify
which faction an NPC belongs to so that when set to 'kill all' they
will only attack creatures/npcs not of their faction (not bad for 'cut
scene' style battles the character can happen upon).
There is also a full condition/action script engine that was less
flashy but very intuitive if you have done map design in the past. you
can use it to generate scripts for your npcs to follow. You are
restricted to their conditions based upon a combo box (drop down list)
containing all the conditions supported in the game (for instance:
Character is Carrying ... ). It's basic and effective.
You can set outdoor and indoor lighting overlays. I was shown a red
overlay for the outdoors that only triggers when the in-game time
reached midnight. 8-) this combines with the other in game lights
(such as streetlights). The most useful aspect of this ligthing is
that you can set it to pitch black. THis lets you create a map of all
indoors tiles with the outside lighting set to pitch black--in other
words, a dungeon.
You can lay down locations that will trigger scripts as well. All i
have to say is that this is the BEST authoring tool for any game. It
will not require any knowledge of C (even though I do code for a
living, this is a major plus).
You can create as many maps as you want and link them together by
placing an 'area'on the map that triggers a map swap (or even a
location swap to a different point on the same map). Also, maps can be
freaking HUGE. The designer i talked with (i gotta start asking for
cards and remembering names) opened up the actual game map and showed
the largest city in the game in design mode. Sweet. And if you are all
nice and cozy on the same network, you and your comrades can work on
teh map together. I'm not sure how wise this is, or if it's like
working in SourceSafe (a programming tool that only
lets one user check out a piece of code for editing at a time). I
imagine it must work well since the designers seemed to have all their
hair follicles and there were no fist-shaped clumps missing.
I look forward to authoring with all you guys when this opus hits the
shelves. It's a worthy title.
[Bene, bene... dopo l'RPGMaker95+ ^_^ e prima di NWN, sarà una gran
cosa il tool di nuove avventure di Arcanum, oltretutto credo che sarà
anche più facile grazie alla visuale standard]
--
--------------------------[ M a t t h i a ]---------------------------
Nick             :  Matthia
E-Mail           :  
cla...@tin.it
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ICQ Number :  31640393
E-Mail to GSM: 
clau...@sms.tin.it
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-- I titoli che aspetto di più:
Arcanum - Anachronox - Divinity - Morrowind - NeverWinterNights
Vampire - Baldur's Gate 2 - Werewolf - Cthulhu: Dark Corners of Earth
Deus Ex - Outcast 2 - Republic: The Revolution - Quark - Hitman47
Dreamland - Jagged Alliance 3 - H'n'D 2 - Mobsters - Commandos 2
Duke Nukem Forever - Team Fortress 2 - Wizardry 8 - Max Payne
Alone in the Dark 4 - Monkey Island 4 - Blade - PcCalcio Online
-- Mi piacerebbe poter giocare: Shen Mue (DC) - Code Veronica (DC) --

your own RPG
Uuuuuh...parole grossisssssime...
(promette bene)
Saluti!  ^_^
--
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dimer-c...@libero.it
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