The truth needs to be known, Toad-man. You can't fight the flow of information. So I take your non-disclosure agreement and I'm throwing it out the window. What're you going to do, huh? HUH? Yeah, that's right.
So, DF2 has been in beta for a while now. Why do you think it's taking so long for the new DF1 release to come out? I'm not saying that DF1 will stop existing or anything, but from the amount of resources that we've seen Toady layout for this, it's clear where the priority will be.
The first thing that shocked me is that a lot of the procedural stuff is being removed. I can see where he's coming from though - he really wants to form an epic story. To tell
his story. And the focus on episodic content is really exciting - it's come full circle in a way. We're moving from frequent gameplay releases with little narrative, to frequent narrative releases that don't try to throw in every new cool feature. I think it's the way to go to make DF2 a really fantastic game.
Now I don't want to ruin the story for any of you, but it's really cool so far. The opening animation really nails the heartstrings if you ever played the old 2D mode, it's really quite sad. But a lot changes between the two games. It's a darker, edgier story. You'll really hate the Big Bad and I gotta tell you, you really feel for the Elves. They've been the brunt of a lot of jokes around here, but when you see their tiger-back cavalry charge- oops, said too much already. And I know they have some fans out there, and Toady is a huge one, so yes - Cutebolds are in. They serve very much as the comedic element of the story, and provide much needed relief. It's a dark world, but it seems much darker against a little light, you know?
So here's the part that you've all been waiting for. Yes, there's multiplayer. Yes, it's fun. It's something I don't really think we've ever seen before in a game - it's large, epic, sweeping. It's team based but there's plenty of cool 'lone wolf' moments, too. There's a whole variety of different gameplay modes as well to mix things up - Toady's netcode isn't the strongest, but it holds up quite nicely. My favourite is a Magma Race mode, where you've got to carry your flag above the steadily rising tide of magma, and the first team to get their flag burned loses. I've had some tense moments where I've swooped in at the last minute and blasted their carrier just out of reach of his teammates, and they had to sit and watch as their flag caught fire and was destroyed. Great stuff. The only part of it I don't like is the collectable / customisation thing. It's cool, yeah, but didn't we learn from TF2 that collecting hats isn't the best way to go? I'm sure it'll be all fixed by the time the open beta comes out.
And is it still ASCII? Well, a man's got to have some secrets, I guess
But a few things I can reveal:
- It's now multicored. Toady has listened and has designed everything in this game from the ground up - rendering, AI, networking - all takes advantage of as many cores as you're willing to throw at it.
- XNA based rendering engine. Toady really wants this thing to be bleeding edge, and boy does it show. The move to SM3.0 really makes you go "wow". Plus - and I don't want to cause alarm or anything - this means that it's easy to port to Xbox 360, and with the new control system, I can quite easily see a gamepad being used...
- The first release will have two campaigns, one for the humans, one for the Dwarves (what's left of them ) I've only played a bit of both, and the story is still in a state of flux, but so far it's great. The human intro is really funny, that ThreeToe sure knows how to write. I'm not sure if the Cutebolds will get a campaign, but they're quite active NPCs. Think of them like Moogles, I guess. And as for the Elves? Well, wait and see...
- And lastly... it's open source! That's right, the engine used to power the game will be released as GPL upon release (all the story elements will of course be copyrighted) But this means that you can create whole new games with that great DF2 core! Hooray!
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Topic: I'm breaking my NDA for the DF2 beta. (Read 2193 times)