Whoa, thanks for all these links, Wizzy! I didn't realize such a thing existed, or that it had old pre-release Cythera screenshots! ^ ___^ Those were fun to look at!
The Wizard said:
For starters, it looks like the main character originally did wear a t-shirt and blue jeans. To me this would have made a lot more sense for a person supposedly living in the modern world being pulled to this foreign land. I think playing with a character looking like that would have really served as a constant reminder that you are a stranger in this world, and that Earth is your home. As it is, I often forget that my character isn't a Cytheran native since apparently he runs around in skirts all day.
I've never seen that sprite before! I wonder why he decided to change it to the more heroic-looking versions we have now. I think I like the current versions better (I'm assuming that behind-the-scenes, Bellerophon changed into some Cytheran clothes upon arriving at LKH), but there's something to be said for the reminder that you're a stranger in this land. I'm guessing that the sprite was replaced by the current player sprites, and that's why I've never come across it before, but is it possible the old sprite might still be hiding in some dusty corner of the data? I'm mostly wondering if we could hack ourselves into the original blue-jeans sprite.
Edit: Bryce confirmed that the T-shirt & jeans sprite isn't in the data : __( Thanks for checking, Bryce!
The Wizard said:
Tables, potions, trees, bushes, beds, fountains, everything looks just a little different, although a lot of the layout is the exact same. Clearly, they wanted to redo most of the graphics, but I'm not sure they've changed the feel of the game all that much.
Yes, I think overall everything looks nicer in the final version, though I'm not sure about the potions. I think the old potions look more like potions than the weird circle things we have in the final version. Also, I totally want one of those green-blanket beds for my house in Cademia!
The Wizard said:
The dialogue window was radically different. Apparently, character responses used to appear in little speech bubbles, and there wasn't a formal background to the dialogue. I think the redesign is good in this case since it puts the dialogue front-and-center.
Yeah, that old dialogue format looks hard to see and confusing!
One other thing that stands out to me is the lack of a path from LKH. The caption even reads, "Here you see the player having left the mountain stronghold of the LandKing and getting ready to brave the trackless forest between there and civilization." I wonder if the beta testers had trouble finding their way around, so he added a path from LKH to Odemia?
Gandreas said:
I try to cover as many bases as possible - obviously I can't cover everything, but I try to cover most of the interesting ones (or the more common, though dull, ones). In general, though, except for a handleful of key plot points, I try to avoid the "one right answer" approach. My rule of thumb is "at least two right answers". For example, if there is some important information, at least two people usually to know it. If you don't have the key for a door, you can break it down. Things like that. The "you crash on an alien world, and unless you have a screwdriver that you needed to pick up at the very beginning of the game you can't open the door to get out" type of puzzle is right out. Instead, if you had the screwdriver, fine, you can open the door, but if you don't, well you can take a crowbar to the window and break it open, or fire a disintegration ray at the door, etc... Again, take some simple behavior of simple things, and allow complex interaction to build "naturally" from them.
I really appreciate this philosophy for completing quests in Cythera ^ ___^ It's especially important that he makes sure there's more than one solution for each problem, because often one of the solutions doesn't work :x
The Wizard said:
The screenshots from July of 98 are not too special, but I did enjoy seeing how different Ferazel's Wand looked back then! Now that game really did benefit from entirely redesigned graphics; the final version still looks pretty good today in my opinion.
I guess I'm just not as familiar with Ferazel as I am with Cythera, but those screenshots don't look all that different from the final version to me :x
The Wizard said:
Anyways, Ferazel's history is interesting as well. As is Harry the Handsome's. Manse is on that page as well. You should just browse around through the Times a bit yourself to get a better appreciation of the history of some of these games. It really is pretty fascinating to look at.
I might do this, it does sound fun ^_ __^
The Wizard said:
The other major takeaway for me was about the release time. They initially planned to release Cythera in fall of 1997, and I think it's a pity they weren't able to. It's just weird looking at all those screenshots for two years of a game that barely changed visibly. I'm shocked that there was so much development left when it looked basically ready for release at the end of 1997. It makes one wonder if it would have had a larger following if it had been released earlier. Or would its following have waned more quickly? Would we all be here on this forum if it had been two years older? Hard to say.
I wonder about those two years too : __( Was Gandreas just being a perfectionist and trying to make everything as pretty and tidy as he could? Or did he really need that time to finish the scenario and core functionality of the game? If it was possible to release the game two years earlier, I think they would have been better off doing that. As you mentioned, Diablo and other RPGs were released during those two years (I don't really know what Diablo is, but whatever), which maybe made Cythera (which was designed to run on 68k macintoshes) look old-school by comparison.
As for me personally, I probably would've gotten into Cythera at more-or-less the same time whether it was released in 1997 or in 1999. It's a shame that it wasn't more popular, considering it's the greatest computer game ever, but in a way, I like that the Cythera community isn't huge and intimidating ^_ __^
This post has been edited by BreadWorldMercy453 : 15 July 2015 - 01:23 PM
