Abe HD Ideas

[Wil]

This isn't WDYLL.

[Nepsotic]

Here's an actual idea to get this back on topic.

Not sure if it would work as JAW don't want to stray from the original too much, but I just thought a nice addition would be making sligs (when possessed by Abe) able to pick up muds and like transport them through areas with lots of sligs, with like the mudokons scrambling and being pulled along and like the sligs laughing.. I don't know where it would fit in the game, but I could imagine it working well.

That would ruin the entire game, no longer would you be shitting yourself wondering if that mudokon would make it from under that meat grinder alive ect.

[SpAM_CAN]

No picking up of Muds, but we do need to be able to get more than one Mud to follow Abe at once, and a command to dismiss them rather than waiting ages for them to sit back down.

[STM]

How would you know that? For all you know the level design makes having more than one mudokon follow you at once void.

[Nepsotic]

STM's right. Part of the tension was knowing that you have to go back and get those other muds from.under the meat grinder. And remember those secret areas in the stockyard an Scrabania? Where you have to lead about three mudokons to a bird portal thats miles away,.while being chased by a scrab? Having to do that only once wouldn't give you the time to appreciate it.

[Paul]

STM's right. Part of the tension was knowing that you have to go back and get those other muds from.under the meat grinder. And remember those secret areas in the stockyard an Scrabania? Where you have to lead about three mudokons to a bird portal thats miles away,.while being chased by a scrab? Having to do that only once wouldn't give you the time to appreciate it.

That could always be worked around by having a slam door (which blocks the next mud) or the likes activated each time the portal is used.

[Phylum]

I found that to be needless repetition, especially if you died on the last mud. It fleshes out a really simple puzzle by forcing you to repeat it. I would rather have the ability to make multiple muds follow you and put more muds in the harder puzzles, thereby weighting them differently. As it stands the muds following you one at a time is part of the puzzle.

[Manco]

You get the option of designing puzzles around dealing with multiple Mudokons, too. Exoddus had areas where you would lead one or two Muds around, areas where you had to lead big groups around, areas where you would start off leading one or two around and pick up more throughout the level, and areas based hazards which made it difficult to successfully lead multiple Muds through without suffering losses.

So you had puzzles based around one Mud, groups of Muds, cumulative amounts of Muds, and distributing groups of Muds.

[SpAM_CAN]

Allowing you to only command 1 Mud is one of the reasons that Oddysee hasn't aged quite as well as Exoddus - the Gamespeak system feels kinda unfinished.

[Phylum]

The gamespeak system is fine, but the way the puzzles were designed around it led to lots of fake difficulty in the form of needless repetition that all had to be repeated on death.

[Nepsotic]

Abe's Exoddus had a lot of fake difficulty too. And how exactly has AO not aged as well as AE?

[Crashpunk]

Whilst I admit AO's gamespeak is a little annoying, Both games haven't aged bad at all. You can go back and have a great time on both AO and AE.

[AlexFili]

I think the original GameSpeak was innovative in it's time. Also, Exoddus greatly improved things with the ability to order about more Mudokons and replacing the less used options with new ones such as 'stop it', and 'sorry'.

The emotions of the different mudokons helped too. Perhaps this could be better utilised with a new class system. So that a blind worker mudokon is a lot different than a blind hunter mudokon raised in the wild to train his sense of smell and hearing.

The Sims games usually have good dialogue trees, and games like Mass Effect make me think that branching dialogue and alternative choices can be utilised well here. We can choose between 'serious' Abe, 'snarky' Abe or 'anti-hero' Abe. Much better than just a good/bad ending. (Considering Abe wasn't really 'bad', just lazy/ignorant)

[STM]

No whistling in AE, though. That was kinda a shame, I know you didn't need it, but I liked whistling. XD

[Connell]

No picking up of Muds

I didn't mean picking up, I meant more dragging along by the scruff of their neck, to almost give Sligs their own 'follow me' action when posessed by Abe, for example a new puzzle with quite a lot of sligs on screen and a mud has to be transported through.. It's a new mechanic, but was just a small idea.

[SpAM_CAN]

I didn't mean picking up, I meant more dragging along by the scruff of their neck, to almost give Sligs their own 'follow me' action when posessed by Abe, for example a new puzzle with quite a lot of sligs on screen and a mud has to be transported through.. It's a new mechanic, but was just a small idea.

That kinda works, you could use a Mud as cover for your possessed Slig :3

I see lots of things in Oddysee that don't age as well as Exoddus. A few of the things we've mentioned in other threads, like the more obvious repeating backgrounds (like the one with the pipes that was used about 8 times), the lower quality sound samples, the buggy physics (you fall and land one space to the side of where you should have landed - this was fixed in AE), and the inability to command multiple or even just dismiss Muds. This isn't to say that both games haven't aged well, they have, I just feel that AE has aged better.

[Nate]

No whistling in AE, though. That was kinda a shame, I know you didn't need it, but I liked whistling. XD

Dear god, no! I seriously think you're the only person who thought that.

No, let me rephrase: I seriously hope you're the only person on the planet who thought that. Because, otherwise...

[Nepsotic]

That kinda works, you could use a Mud as cover for your possessed Slig :3

I see lots of things in Oddysee that don't age as well as Exoddus. A few of the things we've mentioned in other threads, like the more obvious repeating backgrounds (like the one with the pipes that was used about 8 times), the lower quality sound samples, the buggy physics (you fall and land one space to the side of where you should have landed - this was fixed in AE), and the inability to command multiple or even just dismiss Muds. This isn't to say that both games haven't aged well, they have, I just feel that AE has aged better.

AE probably had many repeating backgrounds as well, but it's not as noticable because it's such a bigger game.

[SpAM_CAN]

Its not because its a bigger game, its because they covered the backgrounds up more effectively with foreground elements.

[Jordan]

I see lots of things in Oddysee that don't age as well as Exoddus. A few of the things we've mentioned in other threads, like the more obvious repeating backgrounds (like the one with the pipes that was used about 8 times)

How many people actually noticed those backgrounds while playing the game, and were annoyed by them?

[Nepsotic]

people who are looking for them, that's who, and not many people do.

EDIT: I meant don't.

[Varrok]

The question wasn't about 'Who'.

[Wil]

Its not because its a bigger game, its because they covered the backgrounds up more effectively with foreground elements.

That and the use of prophouses means less detail had to go into each matte.

[Scrabaniac]

Well in Abe HD i would imagine the backgrounds will scroll with the foreground so there wont be any repetitive backgrounds.

[SpAM_CAN]

That and the use of prophouses means less detail had to go into each matte.

True, though that isn't a bad thing. As I've said before, reuse of high-quality assets in clever ways is just fine, but copy-pasting entire backgrounds and changing the hue isn't the way to do it.

[DarkHoodness]

No whistling in AE, though. That was kinda a shame, I know you didn't need it, but I liked whistling. XD

I will say that the "whistling" puzzles were substituted in AE by Slig voicelocks. Something I didn't like in AO was that I had to write down the password whistling puzzles that you picked up from touchstones and used a little later in the level (E.g. written as: High, high, low, low, fart) 'cause I my short-term memory wasn't very good as a child.

[STM]

Dear god, no! I seriously think you're the only person who thought that.

No, let me rephrase: I seriously hope you're the only person on the planet who thought that. Because, otherwise...

I know what you mean, the puzzles - especially the long winded Scrabanian ones - were terribly arduous, and I have a very bad memory so I had to go forwards and backwards because I'd forgotten the correct order of whistles. When I said I like whistling, I literally just mean I liked to be able to whistle, with or without the puzzles. =3

[Nepsotic]

I played that game so much I don't even need the passwords now. I know them off by heart, I'm not sure it's a good thing.

[DarkHoodness]

Playing with AO's sounds today made me think of something. These sounds are important to AO's atmosphere - I'd definitely miss them if they weren't present in Abe HD. A small, tiny little touch, but they're part of what made Abe's Oddysee the game it is.



Add some extra reverb and effects, do it better than I did, and they're still awesome sounds. Or remaster them.

[Varrok]

sssshhhhhhhhhh.... TA-DUM TA-DUM.

I'm never going to forget that