Author Topic: A Valley Without Wind 2 - a full sequel free for existing customers - is coming.  (Read 83287 times)

Offline Erkin

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I really like the controls of AVWW (Keyboard + mouse), one of the best of 2D games for me precisly because it offers a good support of mouse. The gameplay is accurate, fast and reactive.
So this change of controls (for pads ? Erkkkk) is freaking me...
« Last Edit: September 29, 2012, 11:24:02 am by Erkin »

Offline x4000

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Hey Chris,

I have only one, quite, maybe, technical question... I don't quite good understand this :

Quote
This basically uses pieces of chunks that are created by hand in a level editor and then assembled and populated randomly.  Although enemy placement will be done by the 11 broad classes of enemy, and thus will be hand-done.

How can you place manually enemies on chunks populated randomly... Sounds quite weird to me...

Well, he enemy placement spots are hand-designed, but they are just by the 11 enemy categories. So you know that a "large flying" enemy will go there at slice design time, but you don't know specifically which one. Since the behaviors of large flying enemies varies heavily, that makes the slice also vary heavily.
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Offline x4000

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I really like the controls of AVWW (Keyboard + mouse), one of the best of 2D games for me precisly because is offer a good support of mouse. The gameplay is accurate, fast and reactive.
So this change of controls (for pads ? Erkkkk) is freaking me out...

Well, the controls of avvw1 will never change, so you're safe there. Not much else I can say. :/

Edit: and it's not just for gamepads, playing keyboard-only is also perfectly awesome in the new controls.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2012, 10:40:10 am by x4000 »
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Offline Erkin

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Yes for AVWW1, but we are talking about of AVWW2 (I guess that AVWW1 will not have regular updates after the release of AVWW2). When I like a game, I expect to find the same gameplay in it's sequels. :(
Controls can totally change a game and its "soul".
This announcement make me feel that this sequel isn't for people which love AVWW1, but rather to attract a new audience.

Quote
Edit: and it's not just for gamepads, playing keyboard-only is also perfectly awesome in the new controls.
Yep, but personally I'm not a big fan of keyboard only and i found the keyboard/mouse combo more effective and fun. All PC have a mouse, for a gamer like me, it's important to correctly support them.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2012, 11:10:48 am by Erkin »

Offline Misery

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Hmm, this gets more and more interesting by the minute!

I did think up one more question:  what about enemy levels?  Previous game, they're entirely determined by YOUR level pretty much, which while it works for that game well enough, does mean that there arent any, like, unusually challenging areas with higher level monsters that you're really going to encounter.

Particularly with the mercenary idea, it'd be neat to be going through an otherwise unremarkable area, and suddenly come across a spot that's really difficult to get through at your current level, because of stronger enemies or something.  Or is the difficulty level going to remain somewhat uniform like before?



It would be amazing if there was a way, for example, to identify internally that a particular slice was gated by x ability, or y and z abilities; and then not use those slices in the generation until that feat had been unlocked. If the feats and slices were designed just right, you could still retain a heavily procedural/random makeup of the world, but one which gates everything in such a way that you genuinely feel like you're becoming more powerful each game. And if the feats list was sufficiently large (or the number of them unlocked per game sufficiently restricted) then you could even retain the sense of discovery past the first game - as each game you'll unlock a different combination, in a different order.

Whoa!  That's actually a really amazing idea -- that would totally be something we could do.  It's easy enough, logically, and it's also something that we could do as a form of gating on level-up towers beyond a certain point.  "You don't have double-jump yet?  Then you can't make it up this tower," etc.  That's... really exciting, actually!

Ooh, yes, do this.  This sounds cool.  It could tie into decision making on perks or whatever too.... like, you level up, and have to choose between things (whatever they are), and think "Ok, well, if I choose this one, it'll make these towers I gotta go through easier, but if I choose this other one, I could enter this other type of area that has something useful", or.... I dunno, something like that. Not always necessarily "gated", but could even be just that a particular area is noticeably more doable with a particular power/perk/thing, but the tradeoff of course is that you DONT get the power that makes something else more doable.   Er, well, you probably get what I mean.   I hope.   Do I get what I mean?  I'm not so sure. :P

I lost track of where else I was going with this.  Provided I was going somewhere with it.

Offline x4000

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Yes for AVWW1, but we are talking about of AVWW2 (I guess that AVWW1 will not have regular updates after the release of AVWW2). When I like a game, I expect to find the same gameplay in it's sequels. :(
Controls can totally change a game and its "soul".
This announcement make me feel that this sequel isn't for people which love AVWW1, but rather to attract a new audience.

Quote
Edit: and it's not just for gamepads, playing keyboard-only is also perfectly awesome in the new controls.
Yep, but personally I'm not a big fan of keyboard only and i found the keyboard/mouse combo more effective and fun. All PC have a mouse, for a gamer like me, it's important to correctly support them.

Yes, you are correct, in the context of avww2 the controls are very different. And avww1 basically won't be seeing much of any more updates.

I understand your concern, but unfortunately there's nothing I can do. We added mouse support at the request of players for the first game, and it was one of the bigger mistakes we made with that game. As you say, the controls can completely change the feel of a game, but it also even changes how a game is balanced and designed. With sequels, game designers often take the opportunity to fix mistakes they made in the original, and that's what we're doing with this one. If you look at cave story or many other awesome games that were (at least originally) only for the pc, many of them do not support the mouse.

Our goal isn't particularly to try to court a new audience with the sequel here, but we are trying to make the game a tighter and more focused experience, and by definition that means cutting out some things that at less somebody liked in the first game. Generally speaking that was a huge problem with he first game: it tried to be a jack of all trades, and thus was master of none.
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Offline chemical_art

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I admit I'm a very happy camper right now:

0First with how you are presenting the new game: You have done everything I was hoping for when I wrote this . You are making a new game, so will get new reviews, and with typical arcen brillance you've done so without the PR fallout that could have happened.

Now for my response just from the first page!

-I'm happy to see combat is becoming a more intimate, intense affair [man that sounds dirty]. With smaller enemies, lack of mouse, and smaller health for all combat goes from shooting things at the edge of your screen while your mana is drained thrice it should become faster, more intense, and much more captivating.

-A somewhat more directed procedure placed enemies make it so that things feel less random, so more unique, thus more interesting over time.

-Having a much shorter loop between adventuring and city building makes  endorphin raising happiness of advancement more immediate, direct, and clear.

-Cutting out clutter from NPC's means less time "setting up" NPC's to do what they want, advancing the city itself. (The focus is on the city, not the people inside so much)

-Being able to win and lose. Very, very necessary. Helps with tension very much and provides purpose.

-Making your character "you" instead of a "placeholder" helps provide a player connection, which combined with the backstory of you and the overlord both independently and your histories together helps to establish purpose.

-The overlord's actions on the world map help to establish why you left and why overlord is bad and why you fear him. Having him come himself should help establish his badness and help player advancement. Going from "Oh no run in the opposite direction for your life" to "I'm going to disable you to try to go around you" to "I kill you now." helps feeling of advancement.


-Taking out perma death helps with establishing your character's connection to you, but also allows rivals which allows more personal connection, which helps craft a story. Very good, and establishes why enemies can come back so fast too.

-Cutting out crafting for defined classes helps in several ways:

--Characters are unique. You feel connected to your character more.
--Not having all the options avialable creates different strategies. Makes the game less samey through different games.
--More of a benefit from playing with others. Unique strategies can be developed.
--Easier to balance. You can make several more powerful spells (either based on opinion or game mechanics) but since no one can get them all you don't have to try to balance them all, just balance between classes.
--Less grinding. Power comes through general play, not specific actions, so you worry less about "set up" and more on play.

-Overall streamlining of controls. No longer having to juggle multiple platforms while dodging "god darn bats" means you can focusing more on fighting enemies and less on fighting controls.

-Feats and perks let no one player get it all, but allows further unique characters. More uniqueness, and with unique classes you get exponentially more potential strategies.



Couple of notes on overall thoughts:

--Since the player can't have it all at once, each game is more unique.
--Being able to win, lose, having one defined character and a defined overlord and rivals makes the game much easier to see advancement in.
--A lot of "set-up" grinding is removed which allows more focus on play. No grinding to get X so you can perform an action. Just do the action and X will come naturally. AVWW 1 did this too on paper except...
--Being forced to react on the world map means you have more direction rather then aimless wandering, so its not a feeling of grinding, but a matter of survival which leads to
--More tension in the game everywhere makes it interesting. A dynamic world where you and other forces effects it is much more interesting then a world you affect alone.


...

More to come I'm sure.




Life is short. Have fun.

Offline x4000

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Misery -- regarding enemy levels, it is similar to before, but a bit different. There are certain classes of enemies that are much more difficult than others, so you'll have more of a range of enemy threat levels in any area. And then when it comes to things like evil outposts of the enemy, those project a higher difficulty on all the surrounding tiles until your npcs destroy the outpost. So depending if that is worth the npc actions to you, you might instead go in on food with it still being harder.

Also, the overlord's keep gets harder and harder as you go up it, and you'll return to it several times in the game (to get new caches of Mage classes). You won't have to redo sections, though, thanks to warp gates. But if you're feeling brave, you can attempt higher levels of the tower before you are properly ready for them.
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Offline goodgimp

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Y'all are crazy. I mean that in a very good way. Looking forward to what comes down the pipe!

Hope you have plans for DLC or a paid expansion at some point, though, because as of now I've got AVWW, multiple overhauls/additions, and now a full sequel with all new art for something silly like $9.99 (my lunch yesterday cost more than that!). I'm starting to feel like I'm cheating you guys.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2012, 11:58:02 am by goodgimp »

Offline keith.lamothe

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Offline Mánagarmr

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Color me intrigued. Though I'm waiting with any comments until I've actually touched on it.
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Offline x4000

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I admit I'm a very happy camper right now:

0First with how you are presenting the new game: You have done everything I was hoping for when I wrote this . You are making a new game, so will get new reviews, and with typical arcen brillance you've done so without the PR fallout that could have happened.

Now for my response just from the first page!

Cheers, and thanks!  In your post you're really summing up well what we feel like our goals and benefits of all this are.  It's building off of what we did with the first game, but stripping out the things that didn't gel and adding in more stuff that does gel to make it all more cohesive.

Hope you have plans for DLC or a paid expansion at some point, though, because as of now I've got AVWW, multiple overhauls/additions, and now a full sequel with all new art for something silly like $9.99 (my lunch yesterday cost more than that!). I'm starting to feel like I'm cheating you guys.

If things go well, then I'm sure we'll do some paid expansions for Valley 2.  I certainly hope so!  With AVWW1 we were kind of stuck, though, because the reception to it wasn't positive enough to warrant an expansion or any further development at all, but we felt like there was a lot more that we wanted to do with it.  I wanted to avoid a backlash from folks if we charged them for the sequel so soon after the first game came out, and we'd already promised a free art revamp so we couldn't really take that back, either.  That works out just as well anyhow, because I like the idea of people who come just for the sequel also getting to experiment around with the first game as a freebie.  A lot of people who might not otherwise pick up the first game will therefore have a chance to play it, which makes me happy.

EDIT: That makes it sound like AVWW1 was a flop, which it wasn't.  It remains solidly on the path to profitability within a reasonable timeframe, which is cool.  But it's not the runaway success that it looked like in the first month, when it was selling at 3x the rate that AI War had in its first month on Steam.  And of course then Diablo 3 came out and smashed us to bits.  It's really refreshing that Valley2 isn't a competitor with Diablo or Borderlands or Torchlight anymore in the loot-fest sense; that's really not a strength of ours to create games like that, and I think that focusing more on the core gameplay instead really helps set it apart.
« Last Edit: September 29, 2012, 12:22:21 pm by x4000 »
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Offline Volatar

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We actually don't particularly want major news coverage about this in advance of it being playable, we decided.

Too late. You are now at the top of /r/Games.

Offline Aklyon

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You're also on bay12, but thats hardly as big as /r/games.

Offline x4000

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Goodness!  That's a bit of a surprise.
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