I always tried to imagine what Abe's 2D catwalk style world would be like in real life.
Most of your adventure would essentially be extensive tightrope walking.

I imagine that most of those paths wouldn't be straight, with the natural environments meandering more that the industrial paths.

There are already several paths in the original that branch off at a definite angle from an earlier path. Often you can see the path behind or ahead in some of those screens. Sometimes the camera moves on into them. I expect that if they are recreated in the new version those backgrounds will be rendered real-time along with any entities patrolling them.

Anybody think we'll get a brand new strategy guide?

Sure we could use the old one, but one made specifically for the HD version would be nice. In the back it could explain the trophies and such.

Camera solution: have a free moving camera, but add the option to make it static like the original. That probably wouldn't be too hard to implement, and obviously there are strong opinions on both sides. I still think that the flick screens were more of a shortcoming of the original games, and that OWI probably wouldn't have made them by design if the technology was there.

Am I the only one who didn't find them that troubling? It's just a matter of timing... and instead of jumping, run off the edge and hang.

They weren't too problematic or agitating for me either. And I reckon JAW will keep these sections intact, as they have an admiration for tough, retro style games. They might alter it slightly. But I doubt they'll go easy on us with the difficulty. They didn't with Gravity Crash.

I absolutely loathed them when I first played AO, but now I find them... well... not easy, but doable.

I remember the first time I went past that first background Slig in RuptureFarms, I spent about five minutes wondering how it got there.

so its like little big planet sorta?

I also hated the bats and the pendulums. I could live with the pendulums, but the bats... argh. Evil little bastards.

personally, i liked the bats. they were few and far between, like the bees. I didn't really miss them in Exoddus, maybe coz the sloggies made up for their loss.

The bats I don't mind. Their paths become predictable with observation. The pendulum traps on the other hand are a pain. Ostensibly predictable, but with no clear way of telling how close they are. Plus they're buggy and sometimes knock Abe off if he's just sitting there waiting to time a jump. And Abe won't always catch the platform if you run/roll. Argh!

Half the Bats you can just roll underneath anyway.

Another half you can just wait at the side of the screen and go and get a cuppa while they bugger off. Those ones are a real pain. There's no challenge, no timing, just a huge forced pause.

Meh I think 2D with HD sprites may have worked better, we'll have to wait n see..

Has anyone though about how hard 2.5D will make the 'mini world' an achievable alternative perspective, it worked well fixed, having sligs firing at you from distant platforms but I don't think this will be recreated effectively in a 2.5D remake and it would be a significant loss to the franchise.

How do you feel about floating mines? At least there's a logical reason why they would be permanently flying in an angular path.

I never even noticed or thought about the angular paths of the bats until I saw the collision paths in the level editor thread. Their fluttering completely breaks up the straight lines to my eye.

I feel about floating mines about the same as I do bats that follow a repeating path. It's the bats that appear when you enter a screen and stop you from just running past until they've gone off-screen that annoy me, and only in the last couple of years. For a long time I missed the bats.

I'm just looking forward to falling meat carcasses in 3D.

I know a lot of people didn't like the bats (I liked that they were difficult to be honest), but I always found the tricks to catch the player out absolutely hilarious!

Like the part where you chant and the fireflies spell 'watch out for that bat'- but the bat gets closer and closer so if you see the full message it gets you! :D And the one in Exoddus too, with the 'pull lever for assistance', that crushes you with a boulder in Fee Co.

Reason I say is that I always felt this added to the tension, in that I couldn't trust the game! something so routine as chanting becomes threatening, and this was for me a key part of AO/AE- feeling vulnerable constantly. Games in general have gotten a LOT easier in the last few years, I really hope Abe HD remains frustratingly difficult!

Oh also, anyone fancy a trophy for completing the game without dying? (Not even a single time? :D)

The pendulums are the main things that irritate me, especially when they got the bats and the pendulums at the same time Grr.

I barely have any patience for those. It'll take me an hour and a half to get to that part, then I'll just turn the game off without saving.

And the part that really urks me is even when I hang they still get me, WTF!

Pendulums will probably be better with 3D rendering. Especially if the camera tilts just a little.

Assuming the levels are more or less the same, I'd like to see some new secret areas. Up the number of Mudokons and have cool new secrets, that'd be awesome.

And I think smooth-scrolling would work, provided a lot of thought was put into it. Things like:

-> The screen doesn't scroll so far as to show beyond a wall (so Abe can reach the edge of the screen)
-> Creatures stop chasing you when they are out of sight (Abe could use shortcuts, or be faster)
-> Maybe it's flick-screen travelling upwards, but smooth-scrolling sideways
-> Sligs can't shoot you when out of sight

Also, if the game isn't divided into a grid (and allows you to move across tiny amounts of space) operating some devices could look a bit glitchy. Walking beside other entities, also, could be weird, and I'm not sure how motion-sensor beams would look in 3D.

It'd also be cool if the path could curve, and the camera just turns around (always facing Abe side on). And if the path turns in a U-shape, Sligs can shoot you across from the other side. To make depth perception easier, some sort of very light fog in all levels would be helpful (so background objects appear slightly washed out).

I don't think slopes would work, because video game characters are usually bad at standing normally on them, and with a side-on HD game it'd be even worse unless Abe's walk was made very adaptable to terrain.

The part of the path Abe walks on should always be smooth, unless he can leave trails of trampled grass etc behind him. That would be pretty cool. Stepping across stones and such, though, may look bad (as with slopes).

I liked spiky pendulums and bats, and haven't found either of them hard. I don't want to see Quiksave, because it'll almost certainly make the game too easy. I think the way to go would be shorter paths, and when you die you always restart the path (no mid-path checkpoints).

Anyway. Just some random ideas. I'm sure it'll be good, though, no matter what :D .

They could do what they did in Sly Cooper and make it more like a spotlight you have to avoid.

Maybe there could be just a big red light on the motion sensors that flickers on and off to a pattern (like UXBs) because it's faulty, and you can't move while the light is on.

BTW, is anyone from OWI or JAW actually going to read this stuff, d'you think, or should we email it to 'em?

Gilrod and Alf peruse on occasion. But no, we shouldn't email them anything. If they want suggestions, they'll ask for them.

I wish I could do computer-y stuff, I would work for OWI.

I imagine they'd be actively avoiding this sort of thread, because they'd be worried that some schmuck would sue them if they make a game that contains his idea.

Thinking about secret areas, rather than carefully avoiding allowing the camera to pan over those areas, they could just do a front wall that cuts away when you enter the screen, like when you go into a building in old Mega Drive games.

Whatever they do, it'll have to be consistent with what they do when there isn't a secret area. I wonder if they'll leave hints this time around, like with the brew bottles in Exoddus.

Come to think of it, I wonder if SoulStorm Brew will feature in Oddysee this time around? Not necessarily as a game mechanic, but background lore and advertisements. Many more companies, places and products have been revealed since '97, both in games and particular interviews. It would make sense to make their existences evident is subtle ways.

OWI on Facebook:

Platinum trophy confirmed. For anyone curious.

And that is?

Basically it's a trophy awarded for getting all the other trophies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlaySta...twork#Trophies

But not in such a way that contradicts the Quintology's current timeline of events, of course.

All of which span no more than a few weeks. The only things I can think of that might not show up are the scrab reserve SoulStorm microbrewery and that farmer pud's RuptureFarms franchise.

Aslong as they don't alter any of the story at all, I'm perfectly happy with a HD remake. Going to be interesting to see how it will work out regarding screen movement and such over the course of time.

BM, I'm sure MO takes place quite some time after the events of AE, especially since I remember something about mudokons wondering where he'd pissed off to.

I had assumed some years had passed between AE and MO, considering Abe showed more signs of age, and many of them had relocated from Necrum to the plains.

I didn't think any of them lived in Necrum.

Necrum is the current heart of Native Mudokon society as we know it, what with all that Exoddusing that they did.

I hope you don't hold the movies to the same standard.