AGDInteractive - Sierra Adventure Game Remakes Forum

I watched the trailer on YouTube and the fight with the jackalmen caught my eye since it displayed the health of every enemy and two of them were injured. How does this work? Do the jackalmen switch the active fighter in the middle of the battle? One idea that came to me was that perhaps you can use the Force Bolt spell so that it richochets from one jackalman to another...

Crowley9 wrote:One idea that came to me was that perhaps you can use the Force Bolt spell so that it richochets from one jackalman to another...

We thought about it, but it proved too tricky to be a viable implementation. The jackalmen battle scene was already a real dog to script.

Crowley9 wrote:I watched the trailer on YouTube and the fight with the jackalmen caught my eye since it displayed the health of every enemy and two of them were injured. How does this work? Do the jackalmen switch the active fighter in the middle of the battle?

No. The main attacker remains the main attacker until he is killed at which point the next jackalman will jump into his position. The missing health points of the second jackal are due to him being hit by the hero's kick-move a few times. (which isn't very strong, btw)

This is still a great addition.  It reminds me of the whack-o-goblin from QFG1!!

Not sure if I'm right but from my memory of playing some time ago I think that if you hit the enemy coming towards you with some spells before you enter the battle screen then some HP will be taken off each in the group...

The jackalman who ate your dagger/rock/flame dart/force bolt prior to entering battle mode will be missing those hp as the actual fight starts.

If I remember, encountering any size pack of Jmen was just like one monster, the bigger it was, the more HP it had.

More sprites meant longer combat, that's all.

Right?

That's the way it used to be. In the original, jackals and guards simply waited on the sideline until you killed their partner. In the remake, on higher difficulty levels, additional enemies will at times try to flank you and hit you from multiple directions at once. Proper positioning, parrying, dodging and use of the sidekick is required to avoid major damage in those kinds of situations. You can see these kind of gang-tactics in the teaser trailer.

That's actually a really cool touch to combat.. makes it alot more "believable" and interesting, at least with the Jackalmen.

I suppose the Brigands still attack you individually though during the daytime :P  They might have made a good "swarm" enemy too.

Ghouls would have been downright frightening to face in more than one instance, too.

Speaking of Ghouls, do they still "kill" you if they drain all your stamina?

The ghoul is one of the more interesting opponents to fight against in the remake.  It doesn't have the stamina drain anymore, but instead it can cast anti-magic spells which drain your own mana and add it to the ghoul's own life-force.

The ghoul also has some creepy new moves in combat as well as the ability to cast one of the hero's cooler spells from QFG5.

Hopefully not thermonuclear blast :P

Naw...thermonuclear would be downright cheap. Then again, hmmmmm....would be funny.

More specifically, the way the ghoul battle works right now is that the creature's physical attacks drain both health and stamina and the sum of those two is added to the ghoul's mp. All the ghoul's abilities other than its physical attacks cost mp and the creature has its own mana bar from which to tap when using magic. Made a lot more interesting battle then simply against a stamina-draining skeleton.

And while multiple brigands would be interesting, the multiple-guards battle near the end is already a lot like what a battle against multiple brigands would be like. We wanted to try and give each battle a unique feel for the remake, so brigands will only appear solo.

What about scorpions? In the original, Uhura tells you that you should dodge the claws and block the tail, but there was no real way of blocking the tail, the only thing you could do was attacking to avoid the sting. Will it be different in the remake?

There's no way to block the scorpion's tail in the remake either. The best ways to avoid it are to step backwards before it strikes, hitting the scorpion before its tail has a chance to lunge forward, or taking a poison cure pill before being hit by the stinger (a 2nd sting will always prove fatal, just like in the SCI game).

Uhura's line about blocking the tail with the shield has been omitted from our version.

Reading this topic got me to thinking.  How hard was it exactly to play balance combat?  I had never really thought about the whole:  Okay I'm fighting the brigand now.  Okay he killed me in two hits, let's lower his attack a bit.  Okay, it took me ten minutes to kill him this time let's lower the hitpoints a little.  Okay, now I can kill him too easily, because he doesn't parry anymore.  Okay, now he just sits there and does nothing.  Rewrite script, play test, rewrite script, play test, rinse, repeat and on and on and on.

Care to reveal exactly how many gray hairs that cost you?

unique battles now? while the purist in me shudders a little hearing ghouls cast spells and jackalmen attacking me all at once (gobbos didn't in the VGA remake of 1), the other half goes: "awesome...."

Lemme guess, the spell from QG5 is Boom? Exploding skulls.... magic-casting skeletons..... 2 + 2....  :hat

So what can we expect from Terrorsaurs? fave monsters to kill in the old version. *grins*

I didn't even notice that kick when I watched the trailer.  After reading this thread I immediately watched it again and wow, this is a wonderful addition and something I will be very much looking forward to.

Reading this topic got me to thinking.  How hard was it exactly to play balance combat?  I had never really thought about the whole:  Okay I'm fighting the brigand now.  Okay he killed me in two hits, let's lower his attack a bit.  Okay, it took me ten minutes to kill him this time let's lower the hitpoints a little.  Okay, now I can kill him too easily, because he doesn't parry anymore.  Okay, now he just sits there and does nothing.  Rewrite script, play test, rewrite script, play test, rinse, repeat and on and on and on.

Care to reveal exactly how many gray hairs that cost you?

Not too much yet...we kinda lost our objectivity there. Personally, whenever I need to test something that's not dependant on skills, I simply start the game, warp to that room and test the issue out. If testing does involve combat, I usually set my stats to a value that won't cause too much trouble, not to mention the fact I got a fair amount of practice playing the battle system over time. I hardly ever do a testing session where I play through part of the game and practice my skills manually, way too time-consuming. I wouldn't be surprised if things were still fairly unbalanced right now...we'll probably require a fair amount of feedback from the beta testers in order to obtain that perfect position of balance.

unique battles now?

Yep. One of my biggest gripes with QFG2's battle system was the lack of variety between opponents. In QFG4, every opponent had its own fairly unique fighting style that gave each of them a different feel and QFG1VGA had this to a lesser extent too. (a trait I greatly enjoyed) In QFG2, the main difference between opponents seemed to be the sprites and the stats, but they felt the same to me. For instance, Rakeesh, the brigand and Khaveen all behaved the same...strike occasionally, parry occasionally, dodge occasionally...but if the sprites were swapped, I wouldn't feel like they were acting "out of character". Heck, 50% of all opponents in QFG2 were humanoids with swords anyway. In order to adress these issues, we tried to give each enemy a distinct fighting style that you'd expect from that opponent.

while the purist in me shudders a little hearing ghouls cast spells and jackalmen attacking me all at once (gobbos didn't in the VGA remake of 1), the other half goes: "awesome...."

No, goblins didn't attack all at once in QFG1VGA, but I always considered the "waiting on the sideline"-thing somewhat illogical. What use is travelling in a pack if you're still gonna fight an opponent one by one? Besides, it kinda fit well into the "unique fighting style for each enemy"-thing we tried to achieve as the ganging-up tactic fit the jack pack pretty well.

That's also the reason we gave the ghoul an extended bag of tricks...just about every QFG-game had at least one magical enemy...the mantray, the kobold, the leopardman, the wraiths and chernovy and the centaur wizards come to mind. Yet QFG2 limited itself to armed humanoids and a few overgrown beasties. Not having at least one enemy who attacked a little more creatively seemed like a waste of the battle system's potential. But you're right, purists will probably frown. It's a risk we're taking.

Lemme guess, the spell from QG5 is Boom? Exploding skulls.... magic-casting skeletons..... 2 + 2....

The ghoul is no longer a skeleton, btw. He much more resembles a zombie than a clean-picked skeleton....kinda like he was originally designed. (at the Coles' place, we saw some sketches from the initial design stage of QFG2, including a larger forbidden city with ghouls walking it and they looked like animated rotting corpses)

So what can we expect from Terrorsaurs? fave monsters to kill in the old version. *grins

The T-saur always reminded me of those raptors from Jurassic Park and that's basically what it fights like...straight-forward attacking with every single appendage that can be used for causing damage...

Erpy wrote:

unique battles now?

Yep. One of my biggest gripes with QFG2's battle system was the lack of variety between opponents. In QFG4, every opponent had its own fairly unique fighting style that gave each of them a different feel and QFG1VGA had this to a lesser extent too. (a trait I greatly enjoyed) In QFG2, the main difference between opponents seemed to be the sprites and the stats, but they felt the same to me. For instance, Rakeesh, the brigand and Khaveen all behaved the same...strike occasionally, parry occasionally, dodge occasionally...but if the sprites were swapped, I wouldn't feel like they were acting "out of character". Heck, 50% of all opponents in QFG2 were humanoids with swords anyway. In order to adress these issues, we tried to give each enemy a distinct fighting style that you'd expect from that opponent.

So Rakeesh has new battle tactics? Pretty sweet, and interesting considering you fight him only once, and it's only to goof around. Are you also going to be giving a bit more... importance to the mock-battle between you and the liontaur?

Erpy wrote:

Lemme guess, the spell from QG5 is Boom? Exploding skulls.... magic-casting skeletons..... 2 + 2....

The ghoul is no longer a skeleton, btw. He much more resembles a zombie than a clean-picked skeleton....kinda like he was originally designed. (at the Coles' place, we saw some sketches from the initial design stage of QFG2, including a larger forbidden city with ghouls walking it and they looked like animated rotting corpses)

Ghoul city? Oooooo..... Doubt we'd be seeing that in the remake, though. Too much to add, correct?

And I noticed you didn't say whether my guess was correct or not. *grins*

Erpy wrote:

So what can we expect from Terrorsaurs? fave monsters to kill in the old version. *grins

The T-saur always reminded me of those raptors from Jurassic Park and that's basically what it fights like...straight-forward attacking with every single appendage that can be used for causing damage...

Sweetness.

Are you also going to be giving a bit more... importance to the mock-battle between you and the liontaur?

Same purpose as usual. It's possible to earn honor of sparring with Rakeesh. Since he's a Paladin and he uses Soulforge, he has a few specialized moves too. His sense of honor plays a part in the duel as well.

Ghoul city? Oooooo..... Doubt we'd be seeing that in the remake, though. Too much to add, correct?

Originally, the entire Forbidden city was supposed to be much larger and had many extra screens, areas, and puzzles. Obviously many of them were trimmed out of the final QFG2 design doc due to space and time limitations. I guess some other things were cut due to the fact that they weren't pivotal to the game.

And I noticed you didn't say whether my guess was correct or not. *grins*

But, don't take that as an indication of confirmation or denial. It's just that if we tell you too much, there will be nothing new to experience when you actually get to play the game. We've got to keep a few surprises in there, you know!

So Rakeesh has new battle tactics? Pretty sweet, and interesting considering you fight him only once, and it's only to goof around. Are you also going to be giving a bit more... importance to the mock-battle between you and the liontaur?

You get points for sparring with Rakeesh, same as usual. His help is still mostly focussed on advice-giving though.

As for his battle tactics, Rakeesh is a paladin and hence has a very defensive fighting style, compared to most other weapon users in the game.

Erpy wrote:As for his battle tactics, Rakeesh is a paladin and hence has a very defensive fighting style, compared to most other weapon users in the game.

As would be logical, of course.  What I'm curious about is if he makes it more challenging by using Honor Shield or Healing Hands at any point.

Healing hands, no. He already parries and counters most of your attacks so that would make the battle next to impossible. Honor shield was actually a technicality...most enemies, when knocked to the floor, will fall on their back, hence pushing the attack button, your swing will naturally seem to miss them. (as it goes over their head) However, Rakeesh falls prone in a similar way to Motaro from Mortal Kombat 3 (if you ever played that game), meaning his back legs simply give out yet he doesn't actually fall down, but at that point swinging at him looked kinda weird since your swing still seemed to connect to him, but went right through him. In order to avoid that abnormality, we made it so that Rakeesh automatically deflects your blows with honor shield while he's in the process of getting up. In normal situation, he'll simply rely on dodging and parrying to defend himself.

That's actually a pretty cute and in-canon trick for fixing and yet not fixing a problem, Erpy.  My hat's off to the one who came up with it.

HEaring about the ghouls in the Forbidden City really perked me up.  I do hope it gets in there (if not, I'll live... *sigh*)  I remember being excited about exploring it and a bi tdisappointed when it was pretty linear.

Another thing occured to me.  What about the Griffon?  Is his combat style going to take more advantage of his flying (say more like the Mantray?)

How about the Earth Elemental battle?  anything special there?

And another thing.  Do actions like that "kick" command to fend off Jackalmen feints have "other" uses in regular battle (say against single oppponents) or is it just useful in those instances?)

Jack Sawyer wrote:HEaring about the ghouls in the Forbidden City really perked me up.  I do hope it gets in there (if not, I'll live... *sigh*)  I remember being excited about exploring it and a bi tdisappointed when it was pretty linear.

Nope, that idea never got past the ideas-stage and even the Coles didn't work it out past the point of a few sketches. We simply didn't have enough to work with, so the forbidden city's as it was in the original. It was already enough work to script it as it was.

Another thing occured to me.  What about the Griffon?  Is his combat style going to take more advantage of his flying (say more like the Mantray?)

How about the Earth Elemental battle?  anything special there?

I think we've already said way too much.

And another thing.  Do actions like that "kick" command to fend off Jackalmen feints have "other" uses in regular battle (say against single oppponents) or is it just useful in those instances?)

No, in one-on-one battle, that key doesn't even work. It's just there to avoid getting tag-teamed.