taking over the current discussion from another thread

talking about deponia & others

"I actually much preferred the Unwritten Tales series to both. Everything is well polished and Wilbur's voice acting in the English version is excellent and adds to the atmosphere. I never warmed to the characters in Deponia or DOTT and I found the puzzles in Deponia and DOTT a bit too difficult and obscure. I gave up on DOTT 1/3 of the way through and Deponia half way through Chaos. I mean to go back to both some day but right now I don't have the inclination.

In terms of story arch and character progression though I think Rufus in Deponia certainly has that."

wilbur has a very good voice actor but DOTT i think is the better of the 3

I assume DOTT is Day of the Tentacle?

Anyway, I love the Deponia series. I absolutely love it. It's hilarious, the characters are great and the puzzles are among the best. They are often very peculiar, but once you starte to get the way the series works, you see it all follows a certai logic and after the first game I only ever needed outside hints twice for the next three games.

And in Day of the Tentacle I did fine without any hints or walkthroughs, actually I think it's one of the easiest classic point & clicks I played. Not that I complain, I think it's all the better for being solvable without clicking everything on everything in desperation for hours.

The Book of Unwirtten Tales is nice, and I had fun with it, but it's the weakest of those three in my opinion. The puzzles were often pretty annoying, and other than Wilbur and Critter the characters were not all that memorable to me. When playing the sequel I realised the hard way just how much of the first game I totally forgot.

And since we are on the subject of adventure games, right now I'm stuck in Simon the Sorcerer. It's a fun game, but there's just way to much backtracking. There are so many locations, the whole game is very maze-like, and you can only fast-travel between a few of those locations, so every time I want to try something out there's so much walking (and possibly getting lost) it becomes really tedious. Especially when I make the trip just to hear "that doesn't work" :P

I was wondering that myself too.
I guess there aren't too many alternatives that DOTT could stand for in the adventure context, but then again, I completely fail to understand why DOTT is being compared to German adventure games made 20 years later.

There's no "natural" common ground, other than those being cartoon type adventure games. But if that's the point, then why single out DOTT and not talk about all the other games too?

Deponia and DOTT do have some puzzles that go more or less to the weird side of things (and that's a good thing!), but even with that, they aren't the strangest of the strange. Some of the things that happen, let's say, in Time, Gentlemen, Please, are much more obscure than Deponia or DOTT (and this is all good!!!).

I've been consistently disappointed with and frustrated with Daedalic's games. I think I lasted maybe 2 screens of the first Deponia before getting annoyed at the whole thing, and uninstalling it. The Night of the Rabbit lasted maybe 3-4 screens. People keep telling me I need to try Memoria (and to understand that, Chains of Satinav), but because of that, I've been putting them off.

When Daedalic games are not bland and forgettable, their humour is grating and eye-rolling. And the puzzles are like the worst of the 3rd tier adventure game companies in the 90s and early 2000s. Plus they use visionnaire, which it seems still hasn't figured out how to synch animation to movement, so the characters always look like they're gliding.
The first screen of Deponia I had to pack up to set off for some adventure, so I collect my stuff. I go to get my toothbrush, and it jumps off and scurries under some grating. PUZZLE NUMBER ONE! (I quit soon after)

I quite liked DotT's puzzles, I often use their time travel mechanic puzzles as examples of interesting puzzle design. But who knows, it could be nostalgia talking.

And I really enjoyed the Book of Unwritten Tales. I had almost written off the german adventure game scene before that game :D. I know it has its faults (pixel hunting, for example), but the humour was a lovely contrast to Deponia, and while the puzzles weren't the best, there was only a couple of places I felt the need to access a walkthrough.

Don't bother. They are superb games, but you obviously have a terrible taste in adventure games and would hate them :D

Visionaire is really the best tool for adventure game creation.
I strongly doubt that gliding is caused by Visionaire, although I'm not entirely sure what "synch animation to movement" really means.

Anyway, when you create an animation in Visionaire you bring in a series of images which form the animation. Then you set the speed and possible conditions on how that animation is being displayed.

That is all separate from actual movement. To create movement, you define an area in which the character can move, and if it's a complicated area, you put in some waypoints to create paths for movement.

Lastly, you set up scaling of the character in relation to moving around the area. If there is any gliding at all, I can assume that the game creators haven't gotten the scaling thing completely right. Having said that, most adventure games have unrealistic scaling with relation to depth, for instance, the scaling and movement in The Secret of Monkey Island is completely unrealistic - when you are closer to the fourth wall a step takes you only a little bit further, but when you are moving around the islands one step covers at least 10 steps worth of distance (and yes, there's gliding).

Some of the gliding is therefore placed there on purpose, to make crossing greater distances take less time than it realistically would. Games which actually try to get movement exactly right are often boring, because instead of actually doing something in the destination, you spend a lot of time watching the walk cycle go through to get to that destination.

I don't recall any bothersome gliding in Daedalic games, so perhaps you could provide some example of that? Animated gif, YouTube video or something?

The rock, paper, shotgun reviewer claimed the Deponia games are sexist and racist. He really seemed to hate those games.
I've never played them myself, the main protagonist seems to be very unlikable.

If someone is really trying to be offended, I'm sure there's content in Deponia that can be used for that purpose. Then again, the same can be said of many other adventure games. Still, there's very little violence in the game, no offending sex scenes, no real foul language, etc. so someone must be really trying hard to hate the series there... He's supposed to be that way, so they have managed to create the character exactly as he's supposed to be like. The thought that protagonists should be kind and likable is really a bit ridiculous.

Rock toiletpaper shotgun are always letting themselves down with nonsense like that.

True.
How are the puzzles in Deponia? I can't stand the adventure game "logic" in many older games (e.g. many of the old Lucasarts classics...Monkey Island 2 is pretty horrible in that regard imo) and prefer the easier approach of the Wadjeteye games...where does Deponia fall on that spectrum?

Well, they sort of do have to be likable, in the sense that I can hardly imagine playing a game for hours where I truly hate the main character and want him to just die or at least fuck off already. The protagonist certainly doesn't have to be a kind, nice person though. But they do need to be likeable enough, in some way for me to want to spend time with them and to want to see them succeed.

To clarify- Rufus is kind of a jerk and a oblivious walking disaster, but he also has a contagious enthusiasm about his adventuring, and that "can do" spirit that nothing is impossible, and there's nothing in the verse that can stop him. It's especially impressive when everyone else on Deponia seems entirely resigned to sitting on a pile of trash and shooting down all his ambitions.

On the other hand Sadwick, from the Whispered World, is truly wretched character, perpetually whining and complaining about everything. Spending time in game with him is about as fun as a root canal, and it's the main reason why I never finished his game.

I have found it hard to really get into any modern adventure game outside of Lost Horizon, but I keep trying. I own a ton of them. Just bought the Deponia games in the GOG Summer sale so maybe they'll hit my buttons.

Hahah! I'll tell them it's your fault, then! So what you're saying is that Memoria ISN'T better than the other Daedalic games? I've noticed the issue in every visionnaire game I've seen, so I can't really say. I didn't like what I tried of visionnaire at all, so I totally disagree with you, but to each his own.

When you create a walking animation, you make several frames, at the end of which, the character has usually taken two steps (one with each foot). Those two steps have the character move a certain amount of distance (logically in your brain). What visionnaire seems to do is have the distance moved completely uncoupled from the frames of the animation, so the characters end up looking like they're gliding. It has nothing to do with scaling.
Here is a video of Deponia
Here is a video of Broken Age, a comparable game (2d Hi-res adventure) which doesn't have the same problem

You are correct in your first point, the animation goes on until the movement stops, but the animation speed doesn't change at all no matter where or how far you move (unless you create a complicated script for that purpose). You are wrong in your second point, however, as at least I can't see much gliding when moving from left to right or right to left, but when there's any depth in the movement there's some gliding, and that of course involves character scaling.


It sure has that problem!
Because the character has such a small contact point with the ground it's a bit hard to see, but if you look for instance between 7 and 8 minutes, the character glides. A lot. At the very end of 8 minute mark she's almost moonwalking away from the fourth wall, which, not too surprisingly, involves depth of movement, and that involves, as you might have guessed, character scaling.

Different game, different engine, same behaviour, same problem (if that really is a problem...).

It's way better. Memoria and especially Chains of Satinav are by far their best games, and in fact Chains is probably my favourite adventure game ever. Perfectly logical puzzles, great story, great characters, beautiful graphics.

But if you hate their other games, I'm not sure what all of that means for you. I mean, isn't it sort of like telling someone who hates fantasy games "hey, you've got to play this new RPG, it's got even more dragons and spells and everything!"